Just out of curiosity... how much of the information in the chapter did you catch?
I was mostly talking about the information on Saaya's medical status, which will be important for her treatment and recovery. For example, knowing that we really shouldn't try to get the Lock back yet, and in fact need to ensure the opposite.
As for general information... well, I do my best to read things carefully, but I would be surprised if I focused on the parts you meant to be important, or reached conclusions you were hoping for us to reach. That said, here are some parts of the chapter that got me thinking about their implications:
The rift was growing at an alarming rate, the wind escalating from a mere storm to a deafening gale. Air was finding its way from everywhere around her—the cracked walls, the open classroom door—to hurl itself into oblivion. Amu felt it tugging at her, an almost magnetic force pulling her towards the blinding light of the rift. She shielded her eyes with her arm, but it was barely enough; the light pierced through, revealing the fracturing reality around her—the classroom, a thumping wound in the mental space surrounding her, and an indescribable elsewhere that seemed to stretch the very fabric of her understanding.
I don't think this is really
light piercing through.
Somewhere that she couldn't see. Somewhere she could barely sense at all, except that the mental space was getting bigger, in a way she found impossible to describe. The tinkling laughter was getting louder, crueller, and had somehow gained an undertone of irony.
The mental space is "getting bigger" somehow, and the laughter has an undertone of irony. Putting these together with Saaya's actions, it sounds like whatever is on the other side of the rift (or possibly the rift itself) might be amused that Saaya is feeding it.
It's the "mental space" that seems to be getting bigger, not the "indescribable elsewhere". The same mental space with the "thumping wound" in it. Is the mental space expanding into the "indescribable elsewhere"? Or into the physical world? Or is something else going on?
The rift's expansion seemed to be avoiding Saaya.
At this point, Amu has not yet performed the mental dive that would tell her what Saaya was doing. So why does she think the rift is avoiding Saaya, as opposed to Amu or the Lock, both of which are right next to Saaya? Maybe she jumped to a conclusion, or maybe her more detailed view of the scene than ours let her judge more about the shape of the rift's growth. Or, maybe her psionic senses are telling her something she isn't consciously aware of.
She reached for Saaya's hand, and recoiled as a bolt of electricity lanced up her arm. It felt like static shock, but a thousand times worse. The Humpty Lock, still looped around her neck, turned ice cold.
Gritting her teeth, Amu reached for Saaya's hand again, only to be jolted by another surge of pain. It was like a thousand static shocks fused into one, sending her nerves into a frenzy. Despite the pain and her instinct to withdraw, Amu held on. Saaya's skin was scorching to the touch, yet underneath the heat she was sweating, her entire body shaking. Her lips moved, her teeth clenching and unclenching as she mumbled under her breath, a string of syllables and gibberish.
Physical contact hurts now. The mind link doesn't seem to hurt later in the scene, though. Could be Amu's mind is sturdier than her body. Could be the Humpty Lock is more effective at buffering mind-to-mind contact. Could be particulars of the exact way Saaya is breaking down. Could be something else.
She was dragging Dia up out of her semi-comatose slumber as quickly as she could, but that wasn't fast, precisely. In the real world, her eyes dimmed. Had anyone been there to see them through her closed eyelids, they would have seen them lose their faintly luminescent glow, regaining the same pure brown colour that they'd had when she was younger. But no-one was, and no-one did, and even Amu had never experimented with Dia in front of a mirror.
Her eyes dimming is obviously significant. The narration suggests it's connected to Dia, instead of to Amu "dropping out of reality", which is a little weird. Dia is Shugo Chara canon, unlike the psionics system, and I don't think anything like this happened with Dia in canon. It suggests something important about Dia has changed since canon. (Perhaps "developed" would be a better word than "changed"?)
Also, Amu is trying to bring up Dia, but it sounds like she's trying to bring up Dia as an active part of her mind, not as an external entity. So if she's still keeping Dia inside, why would boosting the activity of her most "special" Chara
deactivate her "special" eye glow, instead of making it brighter?
I don't know, but I have some highly speculative hypotheses. One is that Dia helps stabilize or block psionics, and the eye glow is an uncontrolled power manifestation that Dia helps control. Another hypothesis is that Dia somehow represents a part of Amu's mind that got overtaken back when Amu's eyes originally turned yellow.
(Unrelated: I suspect "real world" is a misnomer.)
The rift was still present in this world. Amu could sense it, a gaping wound in the space around her, and a distant part of her was aware that it was continuing to grow. But there was no wind here, only a distant awareness.
The rift is still present in whatever this magical mindscape is, but not generating wind. Perhaps that's because there's no
air in this magical mindscape.
And Saaya's mind was a mess. Amu couldn't tell where the world around her began, and where her mind ended. They were fused together, fragmented shards of Saaya spraying sparks and arcs of energy, her consciousness splintering. Amu reached out, and-
I'm not sure about the antecedents of some of these pronouns. Assuming the "they" in "They were fused together" refers to Saaya's mind and this place, that's a strange description, especially since none of the fragments sound like they're stuck. I'm not sure if it's just an odd word choice, or if it's supposed to indicate more.
Saaya, cutting her hair short on one side of her head, and being told off for it. She'd thought it looked cool, but it turned out she'd gotten a bad haircut.
I am not sure when this happened, or if it was a canon event. It doesn't sound like it has any major setting implications, but it does make me wonder what happened to her hair afterward. Did she just go to school like that? Did she hide it, with a wig or hair extensions or something? Has enough time passed for her hair to grow back to its previous state? Imagine if her hair extensions ended up falling out in all this chaos.
That dream. That stupid, impossible, stupid, wonderful dream.
I am not sure if this refers to a canon event either. It doesn't sound like the Hinamori Dream incident. It definitely sounds like an important turning point, but it sounds more personally significant than "big hint" significant. Maybe Saaya will open up more about this as we advance her social link.
She had punched out against Amu, wanting nothing more than to turn her smirk into a hole, and had realised only a second after she'd done it what that would do to Amu, that she'd just tried to kill her classmate, and Amu hadn't even seemed to notice, and then-
This tells us that Saaya was in fact going for an attack, and that the attack was supposed to be more "head crush" than "mind crush". Amu's head is physically fine, though, without even a bloody nose. Unlike when Amu tried to interact with the rift, or when Amu "reached for Saaya's hand, and recoiled as a bolt of electricity lanced up her arm", the Humpty Lock didn't obviously react, either.
It could still be the lock's protection, just below the threshold where Amu would feel anything from it. It could be (and this is not mutually exclusive with the previous thing) that the attack would have had to go through Amu's mind to reach Amu's face, and Amu's mind was too sturdy. It could be something else.
Reality had come apart, a yawning feeling just like her door-
The rift incident feels like the door incident. This is evidence that the way Saaya broke reality is
like the way she broke the door, instead of being fundamentally different. More reason to make sure Saaya is very careful with her powers.
Maybe later, once Saaya is more stable and her powers are better understood, she can help us make weird holes in weird things. We're probably going to have a lot of weird things we want to make holes in down the line.
And she was still there, her consciousness a muddled jumble. A million versions of Saaya, none of them able to agree on anything. But they all had a core, and they all agreed on a single fact. They were scared of everything, including themselves. They were attacking everything, including each other. They couldn't fit the pieces back together, couldn't remember what not being broken felt like.
It's interesting that the mental splintering created
versions of Saaya, instead of, like, "the fragment that handles blinking" and "the part that remembers how doorknobs work".
I wonder what happens to all the pieces that get sucked into the rift. The natural assumption would be that they get destroyed or devoured, but that's the kind of natural assumption writers rely on to maximize the shock when the people who weren't saved come back as some sort of enemy or tortured monstrosity.
Amu took a deep breath. She couldn't stay too close, and not just because Saaya had asked her not to. She glanced back at the rift, which had barely changed. How long had it been—seconds? It must have been seconds, but it had felt like an eternity. Running away with Saaya was, apparently, out. Her hands burned, a thousand mental cuts where she was touching her, and the air was starting to smell of ozone.
"a thousand mental cuts where she was touching her" is a bit of an unusual description. The cuts are described as "mental", but localized to parts of Amu's body rather than her mind. Does "mental" mean it just
feels like she's got cuts there? Or does it refer to physical cuts, made by Saaya's mind? Or cuts on the parts of Amu's mind that handle the parts of her body that were touching Saaya?
She didn't know how to put a mind back together, or even how to start. She wasn't like Dia.
Dia-
Her hands moved, nearly on automatic. She reached up to the locket hanging around her neck, and undid the chain. She held it up, the Humpty Lock glowing in the light of the rift, her hands shaking a little. She'd held onto the amulet for nearly four years. What it did was a mystery even to her. Support her transformations? Let her fly? Yes, but she could do those even without it, most of the time. What it did do—what she was sure that it did, with a certainty coming from nowhere at all—was act as a shield, a focus. A scaffolding.
Amu started bringing up the Dia part of her earlier. This sounds like that part of her giving its input.
There was a single future in which Saaya lived, and was able to shout at her again, and it was the one in which she did this. She could see that future clearly now. Saaya walking next to her, snarking about her choice of clothes while they searched for a cafe to eat lunch in.
Not sure how much of this is flowery description and how much is Amu's one dot in precog.
Amu took a deep breath, then slipped the locket around Saaya's neck. It was an awkward fit, given the girl was lying down, but the lock clicked shut, and the chain seemed to adjust itself to fit. Her hands were shaking as she gently brushed a strand of hair from Saaya's face.
She knew the Humpty Lock didn't act on its own, and Saaya was in no state to control it. With a deep breath, Amu reached towards the locket nestled against Saaya's chest. She didn't touch it physically; instead, she focused her intent on it. The locket responded, glowing a vivid pink that swiftly morphed into a dazzling, almost blinding, shade of deep-sea green.
Considering how many times the Humpty Lock seemed to protect Amu on its own without Amu consciously making it do that, "She knew the Humpty Lock didn't act on its own" is a bit of a strange thing to say. Plus, it looks like it just adjusted its chain on its own.
Adjusting its own chain stands out as particularly weird. For one thing, this capability doesn't seem to have anything to do with the lock's psionic functionality. For another, I'm pretty sure the chain isn't part of the Humpty Lock. It's just a chain!
She knew the Humpty Lock didn't act on its own, and Saaya was in no state to control it. With a deep breath, Amu reached towards the locket nestled against Saaya's chest. She didn't touch it physically; instead, she focused her intent on it. The locket responded, glowing a vivid pink that swiftly morphed into a dazzling, almost blinding, shade of deep-sea green.
Saaya's reaction was immediate and terrifying. She began to scream, a sound filled with agony and fear. A shockwave ripped through the room, hurling debris in all directions. Saaya convulsed, her back arching off the floor as a torrent of green light burst from her, forming emerald ribbons of energy that writhed and then retracted back into her.
The screaming abruptly ceased. Amu sensed something like ethereal bars of light pressing into Saaya, knitting the scattered pieces of her mind back together. The process was far from perfect; she was riddled with enough scars and missing pieces that Amu wasn't sure how she would ever recover. But she wasn't dying anymore.
Something's nagging at me, saying there's more to this lightshow than the obvious. Maybe we'll get more context later.
