vatheon app: PART ONE

[mistedreading]

[ Player Name ] : Qu-ko
[ Personal LJ ] : aphotic
[ Age ] : 20
[ Timezone ] : EST
[ Other Characters ] : N/A

[ Character's Name ] : Kasumi Yashiro
[ Character's Age ] : 12, presumably
[ Series ] : Muv-Luv Alternative
[ Canon Point ] : December 30th, the day of the announcement of Operation Cherry Blossom, after Takeru's conversation with her


[ History ] :
There are literally no full English summaries for this game that cover everything. Hell, there aren't any Japanese ones, either. Here's a Wiki link, but honestly, it doesn't disclose much.

So, first, it's vital to know information about how this game is split up and how it all connects: Muv-Luv is split into three main games, called Extra, Unlimited, and Alternative. Extra is more or less your typical slice-of-life high school dating sim where the jokes are flying a mile a minute, starring one Takeru Shirogane. But once you beat both of the two main heroines' routes, Unlimited is unlocked. There's a nice, informative rundown of both Extra and Unlimited located here, but no such thing exists for Alternative, so prepare for incoming TL;DR. (Note that the summarization for Unlimited, at the minimum, is NECESSARY reading to understand Alternative, so please read that first!)

Kasumi, at first, does not exist in Muv-Luv Extra, and is a new character introduced in Unlimited. Next to nothing is known about her throughout the game, except for a couple behavioral hints and suggestions in dialogue that she's somehow connected to Sumika, who is absent from Unlimited at the time. In Alternative, much more is revealed, and so in the "retake" world of Alternative, it's possible to summarize her history from the beginning.

As Yuuko describes her, Kasumi was born as a sort of cursed existence from the very start. In a desperate effort to find a way to communicate with the hostile alien invaders who threatened humanity's very existence in firepower and in numbers, the Alternative Plan was conceived. The first two were total failures, and concluded very little about the existence or motives of these aliens, the BETA -- the first plan, Alternative I, was an attempt to understand their language, which yielded absolutely no results whatsoever; the following plan, Alternative II, cost many lives to capture a live BETA and study it, but the only possibly conclusion that was able to be drawn from it was that BETA are carbon-based life forms, as humans are.

Alternative III was the successor to both these failed plans. The idea that the BETA had some sort of thoughts or willpower spurred the idea of actually reading the BETA's thoughts with ESP at the Soviet Science Academy. They made individuals with ESP interbreed over the course of several generations to produce children with more powerful abilities, eventually resorting to methods like artificial insemination and genetic manipulation, until the last and most well-developed individuals were produced, Kasumi among them. Even for her generation, her powers were far beyond average; as a result, she was feared and disliked by even those who were technically her sisters.

The point of Alternative III was essentially to send the individuals with the most well-developed artificial ESP on a mission to get into the center of the BETA hives and get readings, despite a survival rate of only six percent. The plan was ended before Kasumi herself could be sent out, but the experiment proved the BETA have thoughts that go along the lines of not considering humans to be "life forms". That, however, was all that was gleaned from them, and attempts to project the idea of peace onto them (using the projection ability that goes hand-in-hand with the reading ability) were either unsuccessful or completely ignored.

When Alternative III ended, Kasumi was instantly shipped off to Yokohama Base and put into the care of Professor Yuuko Kouzuki, who needed her for her ability to communicate with a still-living disembodied brain found in the Yokohama Hive upon which said base was actually built. The idea of Alternative IV was based upon the results of Alternative III, and it had been decided this brain would be the perfect candidate to become the 00 Unit -- essentially, a human brain within a machine body, a living being with no living basis and no living reactions, hence the name "00 Unit". Technically, the actual living brain was to be disposed of, but it would be the contents that were to be placed into a "quantum conductive brain" with an ability to read and project even higher than that of Kasumi, which would become an essential ability for the concept of Alternative IV. But until this brain could be used for that purpose, and the development was complete, Kasumi was tasked with communicating with the brain in the meantime, primarily in order to learn more about the BETA.

After a few months of doing readings, she learned that the brain was a girl named Sumika Kagami who had been... not exactly killed by the BETA, but disembodied and kept alive in a tube for experimentation with technology far beyond that of humans. For a long time, Sumika (for what she was capable of thinking with so little sensory input) and Kasumi considered one another the only real friend of the other -- Yuuko, though she did not exactly fear Kasumi like everyone else had in her life, as she states Yuuko is really only capable of "interest and disinterest". This sole living brain found in the hive was the main reason the BETA facilities in the base were kept active, because human technology did not have a way to sustain it without their help. She considered Sumika her "other self", in a sense, and started to believe that Sumika's memories were her own, without any human memories or identity to call her own.

It's estimated that she's there for a year, give or take, by the time Takeru Shirogane arrives at Yokohama Base. The first time he comes into her room and greets her casually, as though he knows her, Kasumi is understandably intimidated -- he, in fact, knows her from the previous world, but that means she does not know him. However, she takes a look at his thoughts and concludes he's sincere, a fact which she confides in Yuuko which allows her to trust him to some extent for the time being. As he undergoes training and begins to steel his resolve to change the future of this world by December 24th, the beginning of the execution of Alternative V in Unlimited, he visits with Kasumi much more often, though she is very taciturn and does not initially open up to him much, seeming cautious instead -- and for good reason, since she isn't exactly keen on him finding out who and what she really is yet.

From the beginning, the difference in Takeru is fairly obvious to most of his squadmates in that he's done it all before, making them think he's been trained previously. As time goes by, he begins to slowly alter the course of the future as he knows it; first, he correctly predicts from memory the thwarted BETA invasion of mainland Japan from Sadogashima, when in the previous world they almost broke through the Final Defense Line. A few days later, he cuts off a good few days from his squad's repeat of the Comprehensive Combat Skill Evaluation, passing much more quickly and effectively than the last attempt. He also throws some new efforts into the mix, such as helping to propose a new OS to Yuuko, the testing and development of which becomes a large part of the game plot.

After giving Kasumi a present from Sadogashima island on which his squad took the Comprehensive Combat Skill Evaluation exam -- a seashell -- she gives him a mysterious present in return, which takes Takeru by surprise. It's a drawing of his Game Guy, a handheld game system which, while he possessed it in Unlimited, he no longer has with him, meaning there's no way for Kasumi to have known what it was, let alone what it looked like. He begins to draw some striking similarities between Kasumi and Sumika that he's unable to completely connect together yet, and also seems to dream about his time with Sumika in his own world every night.

More events come up that Takeru realizes he should try and alter the course of, one of which involving the HSST on a collision course with the base from the last world which had to be sniped down. While trying to convince Yuuko to stop it before it happens, she gives him more information about the BETA hives, alerting Takeru to the existence of the largest hive on Earth, the "Original Hive" in Kashgar, and then mentioning that Yokohama was in fact built on top of the Yokohama Hive after it was nuked with two of the new, potent weapons called G-bombs. Eventually, the HSST incident is prevented entirely by stopping it from falling at all as Yuuko continued to perfect the new OS.

After realizing he needs to implement the OS into the TSFs of his two future teammates in a practical exam, Takeru goes to Yuuko to try and persuade her to put them in. At first she refuses and begins to get irritated with him when he persists it will cut off five days of training, and throws a stack of papers at him. When he looks at them, he realizes he knows the diagrams and equations on them from his home world as something Yuuko the physics teacher developed and then quickly discarded as ridiculous at the time, as she'd gotten the idea from a video game. The professor Yuuko starts shaking Takeru in a desperate attempt to get him to remember what the alternate Yuuko had written, as it's the incomplete half of the formula she'd been working on. Takeru is unable to recall much, though, and then tells her to "go ask her other self" in exasperation... which gives her the idea to start working on a way for him to temporarily go home to his own world. In the meantime, she grants his request for putting the new OS in the two other TSFs, which does, in fact, save them more time before the deadline.

When Takeru approaches Kasumi to talk to her, she flees to Yuuko's office not long after, and he follows to encounter a man whom he'd never met in the previous world... from the Imperial Ministry of Information. It turns out certain people are beginning to get suspicous of Takeru, considering he's actually supposed to be dead in this world, and one Sakon Yoroi has come to investigate it. He and Yuuko soon get involved in a very cryptic conversation that seems to suggest internal tension in the Japanese government that America seems to have some part in, as well as bringing to light the anti-Alternative forces who would rather just switch to the desperate last resort of Alternative V.

Once Yoroi takes his leave and the subject is changed to what Takeru was doing here, he mentions his dreams of Sumika ever since the Evaluation, and is ordered to sleep on Yuuko's couch without being provided an explanation as to why. When he wakes up, Yuuko explains that the dreams he has are not quite dreams, more than they are literally him visiting his own world, due to his being an "unstable existence" in this world. Later that day, he's taken to an area of the base he's never seen before with Kasumi, who is stated to be helping Yuuko with a very important part of an experiment. Yuuko spouts off a great deal of scientific jargon to get to one basic point: that as an unstable existence, Takeru's willpower is important in keeping him anchored to one world or another, for one, and that his previous world has become unstable too due to his having left, and so is trying to pull him back to regain stability, because "worlds don't like to be unstable". She soon reveals that she's made a machine that, using a great deal of ridiculously complex quantum physics and electricity, can reduce his existence to what it was before the current world acknowledged it, thus reducing everyone's awareness of Takeru to zero and allowing him to return to his world for a while. She states she wants him to go to his world and retrieve the theory the other Yuuko discovered, so she may complete the 00 Unit, but that it will take a few experiments and fine-tuning to make it work properly. He does, in fact, manage to get back to his world for an instant, and upon returning, Kasumi passes out. Yuuko insists he take her back to his room, and that they will now be rooming together so that Kasumi can keep him a stable existence.

The next morning, Kasumi accompanies Takeru to the cafeteria, called the PX in this world, and does something particularly odd, and equally Sumika-like -- she starts trying to feed him, as Sumika used to do in class back home. In front of his squadmates, no less, which seems to make them suspicious of him. The experiments, however, continue, as Yuuko attempts to materialize Takeru in his own world while solidifying his willpower to remain there and have an influence on it at the same time. While the suspicion amongst his squadmates grows comedically, when he meets Yuuko to discuss the day's experiments, she mentions the signs that the next event from the past world to happen will be the volcanic eruption at Mt. Tengen, as Takeru deduces, which he tells Yuuko to take measures to prevent.

Yuuko declares if the next experiment doesn't work, she's destroying the device, since she can't affort to waste time, effort, and resources on it any longer. She entrusts Takeru with a letter for her other self, and tells him he needs to imagine his old world and gather his resolve strongly enough to materialize properly this time, but that he must avoid interacting with anyone except the other Yuuko. Finally, he materializes on the hill and makes his way to the school, where he has to dodge being seen by Sumika and his alternate self briefly before making a beeline to physics teacher Yuuko. He gives her the letter, and she seems to understand right away after he explains what's going on with the multiple universes. Eventually, she tells him to return in three days, but suggests he go for a stroll around town for a while to help get him back into the other world, so long as he doesn't interact with anyone along the way. It doesn't quite work, though; he runs into Sumika on the street, who is wondering why he's ignoring her. They have a brief conversation that seems to weird her out a bit, and then is drawn back to the other world.

Kasumi passes out as soon as he returns, and at this point professor Yuuko decides it's time to explain her power and role in the experiments to him. To start, she explains the past of the Alternative Plan, being that its ultimate objective was to search for a way of establishing communication with the BETA. Her role in the current experiments with world-hopping goes along with her ability to focus on a single image after capturing it once, and in this case, it's to keep from forgetting Takeru completely as he goes into his own world, as the safety net that allows him to return to the other world afterward, even though it consumes an incredible amount of mental energy. Hence why they were made to live together and bond; it strengthened the safety net, reduced the strain on Kasumi, and extended the time Takeru could spend there.

Overhearing the conversation and making herself known, Kasumi slowly backs away when Takeru notices her presence after waking up and goes running off. He pursues her, but is unable to catch up with her, going to his room and trying to send mental pleas to her, begging her to come back so he can ask about her connection to Sumika, among other things. She wakes him up again the next morning, claiming the sentiments reached her, and they go to eat lunch together before heading to the roof of the building, where Takeru teaches Kasumi how to play cat's cradle. He then takes her to the top of the hill in Hiiragi, since he realizes she's rarely if ever been outside before. She projects onto him the image of Hiiragi as he knows it from the top of the hill, and he reminisces about his old world and Sumika to her. It comes up that Kasumi doesn't have many pleasant memories of her own, so Takeru promises to make memories with her, too. She agrees that she'd also like to do that, in her own quiet way.

When morning comes, an unexpected alarm sounds, which causes Takeru to panic and assume the worst, that Alternative V has been given the go-ahead. He rushes to the command center to find Yuuko discussing the situation with General Paul Radhabinod and Undersecretary Genjousai Tamase, which is confirmed to be an internal Japanese coup d'etat with Americans attempting to offer reinforcements to the government so as to try and leave them "indebted" to them. The political unrest has built to a cusp, with a political and military power vacuum having been formed in the Japanese government, and dissatisfaction amongst a number of people. Part of what caused the unrest were the strings Yuuko pulled on Takeru's behalf to prevent the HSST and Mt. Tengen incidents, as well. To cut a long, un-Kasumi-related arc short, Takeru and the rest of squad 207 are sent out with the Imperial Army, come across the Grand Shogun in disguise who has escaped the capital, and are forced to try and relocate her to safety, even despite the trying conditions. The rebels find out about the Shogun's whereabouts and surround the group, proposing a ceasefire in the Shogun's name in which the cadets are forced to wait. Eventually, after a great deal of tension, they come up with a plan to use the Shogun's twin sister (who happens to be in squad 207, essentially as a political hostage) to pose as the Shogun herself to try and negotiate with the rebels. The plan fails when an American soldier shoots prematurely, and the situation breaks out into fighting. The Shogun and all of squad 207 make it out in one piece, but it's their first taste of war casualties, and is the catalyst of character growth for all of them.

Soon, Yuuko and Takeru discuss trying to merge the consciousness of the Takeru in his old world with the one in this one, and it's stated that in order to converge with the Takeru of his world, he needs to match his willpower to the will of the other Takeru. If he can converge and materialize well, he's charged with fetching the other half of the theory the other Yuuko was preparing for him, and has eighteen hours to do it, all the while with Kasumi continuing to observe him from the other world. Yuuko states it will be his last session, due to the issues of power, strain on Kasumi, and suspicion around the base, among other things. When the machine is activated, long story short, he manages to materialize and merge with his other self, and retrieves the equations from Yuuko.

The next morning, to Takeru's surprise, he and squad 207 are officially promoted to UN Army Eishi and the rank of second lieutenants, and thus earning the right to pilot TSFs. The first mission they're charged with is to pilot the new XM3 OS in a comparative test against seasoned "oldbie" pilots who have no experience with it in a mock battle. In the first battle, they more or less thrash their opponents, but during the second battle, an unexpected turn of events occurs -- the security is turned to DEFCON 1, and BETA attack without warning. The exercise is cancelled, and the platoon is ordered to reteat, and A207 is injected with stimulants and exposed to a post-hypnotic trigger. This, however, causes Takeru to lose control of himself, and he attacks the BETA recklessly instead of falling back like he was told to. His TSF is eventually attacked and put out of commission, and he's rescued by a pilot who he'll meet later as a member of squad A-01.

In the aftermath, he mopes in the ruins of the town that was being used as the battlefield about how powerless he was, and how he was unable to do anything. His squadmates decide to let him have some time to himself, while his instructor, Marimo, goes to comfort him. After a while of talking, though, he turns around to look at her... to find her getting her head eaten off quite graphically by a straggler BETA, even though the area was supposed to have been clear. He passes out from the emotional trauma, and when he awakens, he's drugged up heavily and interrogated about Marimo's death, as the only one who witnessed it. He's quickly diagnosed with PTSD, which Yuuko suspects he'd been suffering with even before this event, and is prescribed anti-depressants and hypnotic therapy to counter it. Even despite this, he's still promoted to squad A-01, Yuuko's personal, hand-picked squad that is deeply tied into Alternative IV.

In trying to deal with all the stress and failing, Takeru decides he wants to go back to his world for good. He approaches Kasumi, who instantly senses all the mental strain on him, and begs her to help him return to his world in his state of abject despair, but she's absolutely terrified of him in seeing how he's not thinking straight at all. She flees into Yuuko's office, where Yuuko finds him and takes him back to the experiment room. She tells him she'll send him home, but warns him of a few stipulations: first, that he cannot question the nature of his existence there; second, that when Kasumi stops observing him, he'll be unable to return to this world. As he leaves, Kasumi mutters something unusual under her breath; she calls Takeru a "coward".

Takeru returns home, and all is as it seems for a while, even though he's still haunted by the memories of Marimo's death, and his friends back home continue to worry about his odd, out-of-character behavior. When he meets her, he winds up crying into her lap for a while, and she invites him to dinner with her to try and make him feel better. Then, the next morning, he hears Sumika crying downstairs, and is directed to a news broadcast that states Marimo was brutally murdered by a stalker and tossed headfirst into a meat grinder. The report sends Takeru flying off the handle once again into derangement, perhaps even worse than before, claiming not to believe it while Sumika, Meiya, and Tsukuyomi all try to get him to get a hold of himself. Nothing they do helps, though; he runs to Hakuryou High School to "find" Marimo, as if it were a normal school day, even though school has been canceled that day, and runs into Yuuko instead. She instantly asks him what happened in the other world, knowing that Takeru is not really his own world's Takeru anymore, but a phenomenon created from having lived in multiple worlds. She tells him he came back carrying Marimo's death with him, and that he's become a living "causality conductor", so his presence brought back all the causality information related to his memories in the other world because he himself is acting as the "receiver" for that information. After a great deal of quantum physics infodumping, Yuuko resolves to put a stop to all this, and tells him to return if he senses anything strange. Takeru meets with Sumika and goes looking for one of his friends (which one depends on which option is chosen by the player), after which he returns home. The next morning, he agrees to go out with the girl from earlier for a while to take both their minds off things, but is shocked to find that she's started forgetting things gradually, until eventually she begins wondering who Takeru is. Remembering Yuuko told him to go to her if things started to go wrong, he runs to her lab at school and explains the situation. She explains that the causality information from this world's Takeru is starting to leak out, and that in fact, Takeru is acting as a "pipe", sending causality information from one world to the other, because according to the theory, it flows from "high places to low places" like water. As long as causality is higher in one world than the other, it won't stop, either.

Yuuko promises to work on something to try and fix the problem as Takeru worries about Sumika's well-being, and wonders if she will start forgetting things too. Assuming that she does not exist in the other world, he's satisfied with the thought that she will, in fact, be the safest of all his friends, and goes home to allow Yuuko to work. As it turns out, he runs into her in the shopping district, tries to run away in an effort to protect her, and falls asleep on a park bench. He wakes up to Sumika trying to comfort him, and he tries to explain things to her, even though he thinks she might not believe him. After telling her she will probably forget him if she interacts with him too much, she vehemently refuses to distance herself from him, even knowing something like that could happen -- is happening. And so the next morning at school, when she greets him in an unusually distant way, Takeru is absolutely heartbroken. It doesn't take long for more Bad Things to happen after that -- during gym class, Sumika is crushed under a fallen basketball hoop in the auditorium and rushed to the hospital. Yuuko grabs Takeru at this point and shoves him in her car to take him first to Sumika's house and show him her diaries, desperate attempts at not forgetting who he is, and then to an atomic power research facility after a much, much longer and more detailed scientific infodump. She's put together a makeshift device to send him back to the other world and fix what has gone wrong, even risking her own job as a teacher by breaking into the facility without permission.

Takeru returns to the other world to be greeted by the professor Yuuko. He begs her to help him again, and she claims to have completed the 00 Unit a day ago, which she immediately brings up to her office. To his shock... it looks exactly like Sumika, with Kasumi accompanying her. After a bit of an episode with 00 Unit-Sumika flipping out and screaming "kill, kill, kill" all over the place, she passes out, with Kasumi looking concerned all the while. Yuuko claims he has passed a test, and that she still has some use for him, so she allows him back into squad 207, under the pretense he was on a special mission on the front lines for a week to cover his absence. He is reintroduced to squad A-01, the squad he was scheduled to be integrated into with squad 207 earlier, and is made to catch up on his missed briefings in the meantime.

At the same time, Yuuko charges Takeru with "tuning" the 00 Unit. Yuuko and Takeru enter the room with the cylinder, which he notices no longer contains said brain, and puts two and two together: it turns out she was the brain in the tube Kasumi was so attached to the whole time, right under his nose, even though he had no knowledge of it. As Kasumi tries to teach Sumika cat's cradle to the best of her ability, Yuuko explains the significance behind the brain's presence, and Kasumi's connection to it. The BETA were trying to research humans, apparently, and Sumika is thus far the only known survivor of being kept captive by them. As ideal raw material to work with for the 00 Unit, she was preserved in the cylinder she was found in until she could be given an artificial body and the quantum conductive brain, a parallel computing device with fifteen billion semiconductors (in this world, AI and prosthetic technology is far more advanced in 2001 than it is in our world even in 2011, due to the sheer number of soldiers who require such a thing to improve their quality of life). The 00 Unit's goal in Alternative IV is described as espionage, as she is presumably recognized as a life form by the BETA as well as capable of gathering information from them psychically. The body contains an artificial nervous system made out of the BETA-manufactured high-temperature superconductive material Gray 9. The idea of tuning her ultimately involves restoring her humanity and trying to recover her personality so that she is less like a machine and more like a human, and can make similarly human decisions while still utilizing the power of her quantum computer brain. The rest of her physiological functions are virtually identical to a human's despite being simulated, to give her a sense of being human so that her mind does not collapse and the human part of her does not die off as a result. They then talk a little about Kasumi's involvement with Sumika, and how she was filling her empty self with Sumika up until now. Yuuko seems to pity her, calling them borrowed memories that will never really be a part of her.

Yuuko leaves the room, and Takeru interacts with Kasumi and Sumika, who are still attempting cat's cradle on their own. Kasumi says that Takeru elicits a slightly different reaction out of Sumika, although she cannot describe it due to something Yuuko calls "halation", which really only indicates Sumika is extremely messed up mentally at the moment. She calls her thoughts formless and scattered, and has difficulty reading an actual picture from her. They seem to make up soon after, as Kasumi thanks Takeru for coming back, and he likewise thanks her -- verbally rather than telepathically -- for being Sumika's friend. After his lesson with Isumi about the basics of the various species of BETA, he meets with Kasumi in the hallway, who admits she read memories from both Takeru and Sumika, and actually got most of Sumika's behaviors from Takeru rather than from Sumika herself, because she could only read fragmentary things from her brain at the time. She confesses she wanted more fun memories of Sumika, too, and that all the memories she has of her are jumbled up. But as soon as Takeru starts to doubt his method will work, Kasumi quietly tells him not to hesitate, to believe in what he is doing, and that no one else can feel the same way he does for Sumika.

When Kasumi wakes him up the next morning, she suggests Takeru give Sumika a Christmas present to try and jog her memories a bit. He remembers his experience with her last Christmas in the previous world, remembering she wrote on the Tanabata paper that her wish was "I want us to be together", and that it was probably referring to Sumika somehow. After training, he realizes that Kasumi's bunny motif -- in her outfit, and in the stuffed rabbit she sleeps with and calls Usa-san -- probably came from Sumika, and he goes to ask her about it, only to find her and Sumika attempting cat's cradle again. He tries to talk to Sumika, and for a while it goes well, until she freaks out again, and Kasumi warns Takeru he can't rush the process. Kasumi confirms after that she made Usa-san for Sumika, but that she "did badly", and that it didn't look anything like the image she picked up, so she didn't want to break Sumika's memories by giving it to her. Eventually, Yuuko enters the office, and Takeru asks her for materials to make a little rabbit sculpture for Sumika.

The next day, Takeru enters to Kasumi trying to converse with Sumika about Takeru, asking if she wants him to be with her, if he is important to her, in order to try and trigger her emotions so she can read them. After a bit of trying, Takeru convinces Sumika to take a walk with him, he gives her the finished wooden "santa bunny", and it seems to spur a positive change in her.

Yuuko mentions the next day that memories from the other world that were previously floating around in empty space have started filtering into this world, to their respective "owners", including to the 00 Unit version of Sumika. After this conversation takes place, Takeru finds Sumika waking him up the next morning as she normally would, and she's begun to behave much more normally, though she still appears to be unable to differentiate her own memories and the memories of the other Sumika flowing into her. The same day, the UN 11st Army HQ officially announces the operation against the Sadogashima Hive to all Far East and UN Armies, a large-scale joint operation called the "Objective 21 Operation" to take down Sadogashima Hive on Christmas Day, December 25th. A-01 will be the only ones from Yokohama Base taking part, and will be given a special mission as part of the Alternative Plan, to defend the prototype weapon piloted by the 00 Unit known as the XG-70b. Glossing over most of the details that don't really concern Kasumi, the operation does not go quite as planned -- the XG-70b manages to fire two extremely powerful shots that wipe out unheard-of numbers of BETA, but becomes useless after the second shot when a malfunction occurs and Sumika goes into autistic mode to protect her quantum computer brain, forcing her to be retrieved by Takeru. Casualties are suffered when the captain of A-01 is forced to self-destruct the XG-70b manually, with her still in it. In the end, it's not such a total loss, because Sumika did get some informative readings from the BETA, much was learned from the prototype weapon, and the entire island of Sadogashima was more or less disintegrated off the face of the planet in the explosion, along with the Sadogashima Hive.

When Takeru returns to the base, he meets with Kasumi, who seems to feel guilty that so many painful, bitter things have happened to him, and yet she can't do anything for him. She claims what Sumika is doing is something she should be doing, and feels terrible for being useless. Takeru reassures her that she's not useless, that she's the only one who knows how everyone truly feels, and takes her to see Sumika, who is recovering in the cylinder room. The liquid that flows through her body, called ODL, needs to be purified every two days or so, and abnormal degradation of the ODL was what caused her to pass out and go into autistic mode during the Objective 21 Operation, likely from emotional shock. Takeru realizes it was because he remembered a past loop he'd experienced in this world, in which he was in a relationship with Meiya, that she picked up on through her readings and caused an emotional scar on her.

By the time Sumika is fully functional again, she's introduced into squad A-01 as only a girl with an "illness" who is part of Alternative IV after Yuuko takes measures to be certain she can no longer read Takeru's thoughts. Which appears to be a good thing, because at this point, Takeru is remembering past loops with all the girls in his squad very clearly. The next day, though, after training, Takeru notices she's becoming distant from him, and that night, she returns the santa rabbit he made for her without explaining why and running off. He starts to think that maybe, even though he knows he loves her, he didn't take the feelings of this world's Sumika into account, even though the one from his world reciprocated. For a while, Takeru is unable to find her, but Kasumi directs him to the top of the hill behind the base that Takeru showed her previously to find her, knowing she's suffering alone and that she needs his help.

Takeru reaches the top of the hill to talk to Sumika, who rejects him point-blank, saying her duty as the 00 Unit is more important, and then drops a bombshell, saying she's going to have him decommissioned from A-01 tomorrow, and that she's already ironed out the details with Yuuko. At that point, she takes off, leaving a blankly confused Takeru to wallow in misery at the top of the hill alone. Meiya sees Sumika passing by with tears on her face on the way back to the base, and goes to talk to Takeru, suggesting that he compare her current behavior to her old behavior and try to find contradictions if he thinks she was putting up a front. So he goes back to her room, witnessing Kasumi running out crying after a misunderstanding between her and Sumika. Kasumi later claims she said something out of line by voicing her opinion, without regard to Sumika's feelings -- to stop avoiding Takeru -- and Sumika projected her previously-sealed memories onto her angrily because she felt Kasumi couldn't understand her, which shocked Kasumi enough to make her run away in fright.

After that incident, despite not finding out what happened until later, Takeru reluctantly drags Sumika back up to the hill one last time, trying harder to find the gaps in her behavior and expose them. Eventually, to try and make him understand why she wants to distance herself from him, she does a projection on him of what happened to her in Yokohama Hive. She was being held captive by the BETA, having watched the Takeru of this world get eaten alive when he tried to protect her from being taken away, and then was subjected to various experiments by them -- most of which involved being violated by them as they seemed to try and find out her pleasure centers. Eventually, once they were done with that, she claimed they started removing body parts one by one, things that were irrelevant to pleasure, until all that was left was a brain and spinal column in a tube, and they started stimulating her directly through that instead. She was absolutely ashamed that she allowed herself to enjoy it, even though the body of hers that went through all that is long gone; she still claims her "filthy heart" remains despite that. Takeru manages to convince her that he loves her no matter who or what she is, no matter which world's Sumika she is, and that as long as she's any Sumika at all, he'll continue to love her. He takes her back to her room, where they do the naughty (which was actually something Yuuko suggested he do with her to stabilize her further -- hey, it is an H-game, after all!), and then wake up the next morning to an unexpected alarm going off. Trouble is... it seems the sex caused another abnormal degradation in the ODL fluid, so Sumika doesn't wake up at first. Yuuko puts her in the purifier in the meantime while Takeru attends the briefing.

It turns out BETA from the Sadogashima Hive that had not been present at the time of the bombing of Sadogashima Island are heading in the tens of thousands from underground towards Yokohama Base, which can only be for the working BETA reactor still active underneath it, since the base used to be a hive and still has active BETA facilities. The number one priority is to protect the 00 Unit and the two XG-70 models currently being rushed into production. The sheer numbers of BETA overwhelm the already-scattered troops on the front lines, and Yokohama Base is quickly overrun. Squad A-01 is eventually forced to move inside and defend the XG-70d "Susanoo", and Takeru and the current squad leader, Mitsuki, are sent down to the reactor as another member of A-01 who is usually relegated to the sidelines volunteers for a dangerous mission to shut down the reactor from the control center nearby. She is killed before managing to input the shutdown code properly, and so Mitsuki and Takeru are forced to try and blow up the reactor. Things don't go well on that front either, though, since the BETA destroyed the timing mechanism and only the timing mechanism on the S-11s that were being used to destroy the reactor. Mitsuki is forced to go back and do it manually as Captain Isumi did before her, but before leaving, she suggests to Takeru that perhaps it's the reactors that are a means of information sharing amongst the BETA hives -- it's recently come to light that the BETA are not as strategy-dumb as they were once thought to be, as they've recently begun employing tactics that before were unheard of by them, such as diversions, and targeting things they normally were not known to target. Mitsuki realizes if this is true, then the reactor needs to be destroyed at all costs before any more information leaks out, and she gives her life to set the devices off manually.

Once most of the BETA have been staved off, the base is in ruins and everyone in it in total disarray. More than half the people on the base are listed as MIA or KIA, and a couple thousand more injured according to Yuuko in the briefing that follows, though the estimates are sure to grow. She also explains the extensive damage to the base itself, but then drops the shocking news onto squad 207, the last remaining members of A-01: that Operation Cherry Blossom, the worldwide effort to destroy the Original Hive, is scheduled to begin January 1st, two days from that point. The reasoning is to prevent the information leak from spreading any further, because according to the 00 Unit's readings, information is not spread from hive to hive, but sent back to the Original Hive and then distributed amongst the hives in a fixed period of time. If they don't take out the Original Hive now, all the information about humanity's tactics they have will become absolutely useless, up to and including the G-bombs America was planning on using for the extreme final solution of Alternative V. Speaking of which, it's also stated that if Operation Cherry Blossom fails, Operation Trident will be the fallback, which is essentially another name for Alternative V, the ending Takeru is trying so hard to avoid coming to. The Susanoo is not irreparably harmed from the attack on Yokohama Base, and so it's scheduled to be used in the attack on the Original Hive as well with a few modifications. This time, Takeru will be piloting it along with Kasumi and Sumika as a three-man team: Takeru as the pilot, Sumika as the engineer, and Kasumi as the navigator. They'll be infiltrating with a team of only five escorts -- the remainder of squad A-01. However, the resources at the base are absolutely a mess, and there are virtually no fully functional TSFs with which they can take into battle. Knowing this, a first lieutenant from the Imperial Army with ties to Meiya, Tsukuyomi, allows the squad to use the advanced Takemikazuchi models normally reserved only for the Imperial Army and the royal family despite it making her the squad's "partners in crime".

Takeru has one last conversation with Kasumi, who is still feeling mildly guilty about being useless and not being able to help anyone. He reassures her that there is something in this world only she can do, and also tells her he trusts her to be by Sumika's side as an irreplaceable friend during all the strife. Eventually, Kasumi says she's happy she can help humanity and those she cares about by fighting alongside Takeru and Sumika this time, like her brothers and sisters did before her, and that that's what she always wanted out of life. Takeru seems happy she's expressing a will of her own now, that she's tired of sitting on her own hands and watching people suffer after coming back from the battlefield. She seems to consider the success of this mission her purpose in life, having found a reason to live that she's happy with. After Kasumi tells him to go to Sumika, Takeru takes her to visit her house briefly, and then spends some more time with her at the top of the hill, as their last opportunity before the mission begins.

(All events after this point come from after her pull point, but I figure they're worth mentioning anyway to get the full picture of what happened.)

Takeru, Kasumi, Sumika, and squad A-01 spend some time practicing in the simulators before being launched up in space shuttles to enter the Original Hive directly from orbit. Things go mostly smoothly at first, although Takeru is constantly worried about the strain on Sumika, who controls the Susanoo directly using her powers, and is in constant communication with Kasumi, who monitors her condition. As they start towards the center of the hive, the squad uses a special chemical to trick the barriers in the hallways (which are actually types of BETA in their own right) to open and close. Enormous waves of BETA pursue them from the front and from behind, so an S-11 is set off to slow them down. Sumika manages to shield the entire squad with a protective Lazaford field, but in the explosion, one of the chemical tanks is damaged. Two squad members stay behind to keep Takeru from being overrun by BETA from behind, but they wind up getting overwhelmed -- so, together, they set off their self-destruct devices at the same time and cause a cave-in behind the Susanoo to stall for time with their last moments. However, with the chemical tank damaged, they can't close one of the barriers all the way, and as a result, two more squad members are taken down, one after running out of ammo in trying to destroy the brain that controls the gate's opening and closing to keep it closed permanently, and the other after actually destroying it, getting smashed by the sea of BETA.

With four out of five of the escorts dead at this point (which Takeru is unaware of due to the Susanoo's radar being fooled into thinking their markers are still active by the rest of the squad themselves), Takeru and the Susanoo reach the central chamber, where the Primary Objective resides -- by destroying it, the Original Hive will be rendered useless. It turns out that the Primary Objective, too, is an unidentified strain of BETA. As soon as they enter the chamber, the barrier closes without warning, and the Primary Objective reaches out with tentacles, penetrates the Lazaford field, and smashes into the Susanoo, but not to destroy yet. It appears to recognize Sumika as a form of life, as intended, as well as a source of "transferring information", and it actually takes control of Kasumi for a while, as she and Sumika are forced to try and translate the images they process. Takeru tries to converse with the BETA "higher existence", as it calls itself, and it makes a few startling revelations to him -- among them that the BETA does not see carbon-based life as an actual life form, just as materials to be recycled, which means they do not see themselves as life forms, either. Instead, they only acknowledge silicon-based in telligent life that can reproduce and scatter to be true life forms, implying that their creator is, in fact, silicon-based, and that they are exterminating carbon-based life in the universe to prevent some sort of universal disaster from occurring, as well as to gather materials for said silicon-based creator. The higher existence estimates the BETA totals in the entire universe is around 10^37. Takeru also asks about the BETA researching humans, but continues to deny that humans are proper life forms that are able to be naturally created, as it claims itself that it's unable to disobey the commands of the creator.

Meiya charges in not long after the BETA requests proof that carbon-based life can be considered a naturally-occurring life form and severs the connection, but Takeru finds that the control system of the Susanoo is completely locked up, because Sumika is unstable from the communication attempt the BETA made on her. While Meiya keeps fighting, Takeru and Kasumi try to figure out a way to stabilize her when Kasumi's projections aren't doing any good. Kasumi decides to use the synchronization device connecting her to Sumika to amplify her power and dive deep into her subconscious, a risky move that could get Kasumi trapped in there forever if Takeru's voice can't snap Sumika out of it. Not long after pleading with Sumika to no avail, though, Meiya gets in a jam, being held to the hull of the Susanoo by the Primary Objective, and she offers to sacrifice herself to buy Takeru time to fully charge the cannon that can destroy it and restore the controls of the Susanoo. She attempts to activate her S-11 self-destruct device, but winds up getting attacked again, damaging her TSF even worse. By the time Sumika responds, Meiya is begging Takeru to shoot the cannon, even knowing she will be blown away along with the Primary Objective. However, her body is being taken over by the BETA tentacles crawling through her TSF, making her unable to move on her own. It's a difficult thing for Takeru to do as Meiya pleads with Takeru to let her die "by the hands of the man she loves", that a death like this is far too great an honor for someone like her, but once she starts screaming in pain, he pulls the trigger hesitantly, blowing away Meiya and the Primary Objective along with her, and ejects himself, Kasumi, and Sumika together from the Susanoo in their escape from the Original Hive.

Takeru is woken up on the escape shuttle by Kasumi, who tells him there are countless overjoyed and grateful people outside waiting for him to emerge victoriously. Kasumi explains that they're back at Yokohama Base, waiting for the shuttle to cool down, and Takeru reminisces about the rest of squad 207, while she reassures him that they were able to fight hard and protect him and humanity all at once because they knew he cared and was worried about all of them. Kasumi refers to Sumika in past-tense, however, which causes Takeru to go to her in the 00 Unit control block and open the console. When she doesn't wake up, Kasumi informs him that she never planned on coming home in the first place -- when the Yokohama Base reactor was destroyed, she realized she was working on limited time, because the ODL purifier machine was connected to the reactor and would stop working when it was destroyed. Even so, she was the one who projected the weak spots of the reactor to Mitsuki so she could completely destroy it instead of disable it, and there was a good reason for this, as well. Every time she purified, information from her brain was being sent to the reactor, and subsequently to the Original Hive and the rest of the BETA as well. In a sense, she was an unwilling spy for them the whole time. And to make matters worse, Sumika was also aware she was the one making Takeru a causality conductor, because the G-bombs set off in Yokohama Hive caused a distortion in spacetime that resonated with the reactor and opened a path, very briefly, to a relatively close world -- Takeru's original world. Sumika's powerful feeling of wanting to return to the "day of fate" and redo things was altered and amplified by the reactor, until Takeru himself was brought into this world as a result and forced to loop every time he died until he reached Sumika, as a result of her strong subconscious desires. In truth, it isn't actually Takeru, but a phenomenon created out of Sumika's despair, where elements of him were gathered little by little from the worlds that branched off of the "day of fate" until there was enough to make the Takeru in Alternative. After she became aware of it, she decided she wanted to end Takeru's suffering, and the suffering of all those who had been affected by the loops, in this way, so that his world could be rebuilt the way he wanted, freed of all the tragedy that Takeru brought to and from both worlds, and to atone for her jealousy and selfishness. Ultimately, she was aiming to release him from the loop she created, because she lost the power to make him repeat it again before they were deployed. It was why, originally, she wanted to be sent out alone in the Susanoo. At first, Takeru wants to remain in this world so that he can continue to fight for those who lost their lives, but Kasumi tells him he can't stay because he's not from that world, and that he deserves to protect his peaceful world after all the terrible things he's been through, to put Sumika at ease.

Later, Takeru visits the town one last time to remember his time in this world, where although he tried to save everyone, everyone wound up saving him instead, and gave him a reason to fight. Yuuko and Kasumi approach him to speak one last time -- Yuuko mentions that when he disappears, everyone will forget he ever existed, as long as he has nothing left to do in this world, and that he'll return to a fresh world starting from October 22nd, the day of fate Sumika kept wanting to repeat from. She offers to let him shoot her for all the grief she's put him through, as she'd done once before when the 00 Unit first appeared, telling him that even if he kills her, nothing will happen to the Yuuko in the other world, since all the events he interfered with were reset. As she explains, with all the information and technology Takeru left behind, humanity should last another thirty years at least, assuming they can get past their own internal conflicts and don't destroy each other before the BETA get the chance to. As the phenomenon to take him back to his own world begins, Kasumi says she will always be watching over him no matter what world he's in, that she'll never forget him... and then confesses something else; although she's not sure whether it was Sumika's feeling or her own, she still loved him.

[ Personality ] :
Kasumi is, first and foremost, very, very quiet and not a little reserved, and does not openly display her emotions. For all of Unlimited and the beginning of Alternative, she is a mysterious figure, suggested to be part of the plan to save humanity, but she's hardly keen on revealing it to Takeru or anyone else. When she speaks, it's usually in very short lines, and rarely if ever harsh. However, there's a reason she's difficult to get to open up to others -- as an esper raised for the sole purpose of sacrificing herself on the front lines for humanity's sake with abilities far beyond even those of her siblings, she's been mostly feared all her life. She was also emotionally neglected for most of her life, with no real parents to speak of, and no friends at all. It's easy to conclude she was feared because at any given moment, she was reading the minds of her peers, which would naturally make anyone uncomfortable. She's a very private person, something that her ability has taught her; if she closes herself away and avoids contact with others, she won't have to sense their their feelings about everything, including her and her ability... which are usually dislike or fear when it's revealed. She seems terrified of having people reject her anymore because they find out about her ESP and are disgusted and turn her away, because even if they don't act that way, she'll still be able to sense their true feelings. But even so, Kasumi really desires the experiences and memories of being a normal preteen girl. She holds no ill-will against humanity in spite of her treatment as a child, preferring to be grateful to them instead of holding a grudge for being neglected -- she's a peaceful girl at heart, and dislikes conflict and negative feelings, perhaps because she was so used to feeling those things (or seeing them, really) along with others in the past.

In truth, her lack of memories and identity are what actually define her as a person -- when she was tasked with communicating with the still-living brain found in Yokohama hive, she was able to connect with it in only the language of telepathy. They could not speak in words (in fact, it took a few months for Kasumi to learn the brain's name was Sumika Kagami), but she still felt very close to this poor girl nonetheless. At the same time, however, Yuuko states that Kasumi feels a constant void in her heart because of the lack of anything to base herself on. At that point, her tendency to adopt memories to fill a void in her heart was also the main reason she had taken on quite a few of Sumika's feelings, because they considered one another for a long time the only real friends each of them had; although some people in the base joke about Kasumi and her being like mother and daughter, Yuuko doesn't really have much of an emotional investment in Kasumi herself, only her ability and how useful it is to her, and in this sense is only using her like a tool. But with nowhere else to go anymore now that the Alternative III plan has been scrapped and she's outlived her usefulness in that respect, there's no choice for Kasumi but to accept the fact that the professor is utilizing her as another "pawn", no matter how valuable she is. At the very least, Yuuko does not fear her like others might, so she can at least feel somewhat comfortable around her. At some point in Alternative, though, she decides not to look into people's hearts any more than necessary for the mission, a decision that probably takes a great deal of mental strength for her to make, considering her previous inclination to read the memories of others and try and interpret them as her own. It was also probably helped by Takeru's promise to make more memories of her own with him, and although he'd gone through a lot at that point (and plenty more after it), she still trusted his word.

Takeru observes a number of times that Kasumi is "stubborn" on occasion. At first glance, Kasumi doesn't seem very stubborn with how ridiculously withdrawn from everyone she tends to be, but in truth, she's quite strong-willed when she wants to be, particularly when it comes to people she truly cares about who she feels will not judge her for her ability. Hers is a complicated situation underneath the surface, partly because of the way she tends to try and fill her own personal emptiness with someone else's experiences -- aside from Kasumi's own loneliness, she is also deeply affected by Sumika's despair, which has been festering for so long on top of having been deprived of all but one source of sensory input that when she finally appears in Alternative, she is extremely confused and unable to process emotions or senses correctly anymore, often having "temper tantrums" over her abnormally strong desire to take revenge on the BETA for ripping her and Takeru apart. By that time, Takeru also observes that Kasumi, too, has a sort of sisterly instinct of her own, as she tries to play with Sumika and teach her cat's cradle despite her own lack of skill at it. This powerful will is also seen in her determination, when Takeru revisits his own world, to desperately continue to remember him and preserve his influence in the alternate world (and subsequently allow him to return to it) by drawing his picture over and over again and going over what knowledge she has of him for hours at a time, a feat that is said to require a great deal of mental energy, and one that becomes his only "safety net" to return there when he's done. In times like these, it can be said that she has a very well-concealed source of willpower, as a girl who, when she puts her mind to it, is able to make decisions on her own and stand up for herself, if only in her quiet, gentle way. She's sensitive towards them, even without reading their thoughts, and does not like to see them suffer in a way she cannot help them with, even though sometimes she hesitates to express her own opinion (although the fact she had no trouble doing it with Takeru in calling him a "coward" at one point again speaks of her inner strength). Often, she feels guilty about not being able to do anything to help her friends other than just stand by and be there for them, when her siblings all fought for humanity, and yet she cannot fight herself. In the end, though, she accepts that the role of support and being able to fight from the sidelines in her own way is the "something only she can do", and that being needed and being able to be useful in some way makes her happy in a pure, selfless way. By the time she finally opens up and starts expressing her own opinions and acting on her own desires rather than what's solely desired of her or what she's instructed to do, Takeru notices the change for the better, too. She claims it to be her purpose in life, to do things to support others. As a result, it's the people she can truly bond with that are her source of strength, however, that help her to feel more human despite having been shying away from people (with bodies) for so long that she seemed to have almost lost the ability to take pleasure in anything. Even so, deep down at heart, she is just a girl who was conceived irregularly, deprived of normal human bonds, and burdened with a power that caused her to be used as a tool all her life, yet still retains some semblance of being a curious child as well in spite of all her inner emptiness.