DURARARA!! NicoNico Special Chapter 2 “Nicococo!!x2”
Durarara!! NicoNico Special Chapter 2 “Nicococo!!x2”
An apartment on Kawagoe Highway
Celty Sturluson, Ikebukuro’s Headless Rider, was panicking.
We’ll upload a video that’s gonna top the ranking!
Her friends Karisawa and Yumasaki had foisted this formidable task upon her, and she couldn't bring herself to turn it down.
There was still some time left till the deadline they had agreed on, but Celty had yet to come up with an idea for a video. It didn’t help that the video she uploaded previously had only managed to garner an abysmal 12 views and 0 comments.
- Hmm…why not start from watching the most popular videos?
Having decided to try to learn a thing or two from the strengths of others, Celty turned her laptop on and started browsing NicoNico Douga’s rankings.
- Let’s see what No. 1 is…oh, a gameplay video.
- Yumasaki and Karisawa discussed this with me…but I don’t think I can do gameplay videos.
- And then there’s the issue with copyright…I don’t know enough to tell between the games you can upload videos of and those you can’t.
- Although some more recent games come with instructions saying you can upload videos of them with conditions…
- Urgh, it’s just too much to think about.
She realized just how troublesome the peripheral details could be before she even started to think about what makes a video popular. It struck Celty again just how ill-considered her decision was.
- Anyway, I guess free games would be a safe way to start.
- Let me see what's popular in the horror genre..."Blue Kappa". Sure, I'll give it a go.
Upon locating a game that had been appearing frequently in the rankings for the past few years, Celty started to download it.
- Sounds like a scary one, but spirits and demons have got nothing on me.
- Fufu, aren't kappas just adorable?
Picturing herself playing her way through the game undeterred by its horrifying images, Celty started the game with a slight sense of pride.
♂♀
An hour later
"Celty, Celtyyyy. Your favorite show's about to start!"
Kishitani Shinra, the Headless Rider's roommate, was shouting as he stuck his head in the room.
But Celty was nowhere to be found.
"Hmm, this is just weird. Where could Celty be?"
Shinra tilted his head and, after looking around the room, made a beeline for the closet and opened it without hesitation.
"She's...HERE!!"
As he opened the closet, a gigantic fist made of black shadow emerged from it, measuring about one meter in diameter and knocking him straight into the air.
"Cough!"
Shinra rolled onto the floor and looked back at the closet. Holed up inside it, Celty was shuddering nonstop like a cell phone on vibration mode.
"...Celty?"
Celty finally turned to face Shinra, who was calling out to her from his position on the floor.
Stepping gingerly out of the closet, Celty made sure that no strange shadows lurked around her before running to Shinra and sticking her smartphone in his face.
[I-I'm sorry, Shinra! Are you alright?]
"Of course I am!"
Rising to his feet without a moment's delay, Shinra gave Celty a thumb-up.
"I can take violence from you, Celty, no matter how unreasonable it is! Even if the whole world hates you for being an abusive heroine, I'm still on your side! I'd never let anyone else take you, and I'll become a masochist to keep you if need be! Come on, feel free to step on me and do Hindu squats!"
[I got it, I'm really sorry! Just calm down!]
Seeing that Shinra was about to roll onto the floor again with flushing cheeks, Celty hastened to calm him down while looking around nervously.
"What was up with you anyway, Celty? Why were you so scared that you went inside the closet?"
[I-It was that game.]
"What game?"
Looking at the desk, Shinra saw that someone had apparently been playing a game on the screen.
"What's this?"
[It's called B-B-Blue Kappa. I thought all you'd have do would be to run from kappas inside some mansion like how those ghost games always go, but...]
Hiding behind Shinra's back, Celty continued her explanation.
[It turned out that the Blue Kappas were not demons, but aliens who possessed every human in town within a day...! Near the end, not only the people but other things in town started to turn into aliens, too...! Blue Kappa alien faces popping up on every wall and every floor...! Nooooo...!]
"...Is it an adventure game? A visual novel?"
[No, it's a farming simulation game.]
"What sort of person comes up with that? It's scary."
Finding the game terrifying for a different reason than Celty's, Shinra shut it down.
"Here, it's OK now. Aliens don't exist."
[R-Really?]
"They don't they don't they don't they don't. They don't they don't...snap!"
Shinra exclaimed as he tried to hug Celty, but Celty read his moves and dodged, sending Shinra head-first into the closet.
"Ouch, that hurts...but Celty, it's amazing how scared of aliens you are."
[How can I not be? It's the universe!! What if all the planets in the solar system become aligned on a straight line and form the Grand Cross and black holes start emitting Photon Belts?!]
"Calm down, Celty. The planets can't possibly form a Grand Cross and be aligned on a straight line at the same time."
[R-Really...?]
Finally looking like she had calmed down, Celty stopped shaking and put her arm around Shinra's shoulder.
[Thank you, Shinra. I think playing a horror game might not be such a good video idea for me after all.]
"I see. It's about Yumasaki-kun and Karisawa-san's request, right?"
Realizing that it had been all about the whole NicoNico Douga business, Shinra put on a refreshing smile and said to Celty:
"Hmm. If you like games, Celty, why not try to clear some super hard ones rather than scary ones?"
[Hard ones...like the ones where you have to die multiple times, or those Kongming's Trap-type games?]
"Exactly. The already famous ones may not create much impact on the viewers, though. I think you should try a super hard game that no-one knows about."
[A game that no-one knows about...? Is there even such a game?]
Celty tilted her helmet in question. Shinra rolled his friend's name readily off his lips.
"Yes. It was made by Orihara-kun, so the difficulty is as much as guaranteed."
♂♀
Back in high school
"What are you doing?"
Shinra asked cheerfully as he walked up to his classmate Orihara Izaya, who had a laptop open.
"Oh, just trying to kill some time. I made a little game."
"A game?"
The teenager gave him a smile darker than the shade of his black school uniform. He handed a CD-ROM to Shinra.
"If you want, I can give you a copy."
"Are you sure? What kind of game is it, anyway?"
"It's a game designed to test the limits of human endurance. It's not very well-made, though, so I'm not planning to distribute it on the Internet."
♂♀
Now, Shinra's apartment
"Wow, it's working even on the newest version of the OS!"
Shinra was humming a tune as he spoke. Celty, on the other hand, felt uneasy and asked:
[Are you sure it's a good idea? If it's made by that guy...]
"It's OK, I didn't find any viruses on it when I played the disk."
[You've played it before?]
Shinra nodded to Celty's question while smiling refreshingly.
"Yes. I stopped playing after 10 seconds, though."
[What? I have no idea how hard this game is, but 10 seconds?]
As she said these words, Celty turned to look at the starting screen.
【FIENDISHLY DIFFICULT! IZAYA CITY! OR, A CHALLENGE FROM IZAYA】
[Sorry, Shinra, I'm pissed already.]
After seeing the title, Celty went through the trouble of opening a new text file to complain. Shinra responded:
"I know. This is designed to irritate people more the better they know him. And, knowing Orihara-kun, I'd say he'd probably only give this game out to people who know him well."
[That guy is the worst.]
"Our only good fortune is that Shizuo-kun doesn't use laptops. Were he to play this game, he'd have destroyed every computer that could be called a computer within a 5-kilometer radius."
Picturing her acquaintance in the bartender suit in a rampage, Celty felt a chill down her spine and proceeded to start playing.
Upon clicking the start button, a male figure, presumably that of the protagonist, appeared at the center of the screen.
It seemed that one could use the arrow keys to move the figure left and right, and hitting the space key made it jump.
- Huh. Looks like a pretty orthodox horizontal action game.
"You'd think that, wouldn't you?"
[Stop reading people's minds, it's creepy.]
- Well, since Izaya is the one who made it, I can more or less guess where this game is going.
- It's probably going to turn halfway into a difficult quiz game, or a race game, or a mahjong game, or an RPG, or a detective adventure game, or simply torture me by forcing me to take long detours within what's supposed to be an action game, right?
- If I just go into it expecting all those things to happen, then this game's got nothing on me.
Celty took it lightly as she began to move the figure -
- Oops, there's a pit already?
On the screen a pit had appeared, into which her character fell.
But it wasn't game over yet; the screen turned pitch-dark, and the character kept falling down the central axis of the screen, leaving a trail of residual images.
- Hmm. Is this transitioning into another scene? Is there an underground route?
- ...
- .........
- ...............How long is he going to keep falling?!
After about 30 seconds, the screen began to change.
Next to the falling character, text started to roll slowly upwards from the bottom.
【Your character simply keeps falling, and falling, and falling, towards the bottom of a dark pit. Rather than crushing to the ground and meeting his end from the impact and the pain, he just keeps falling, feeling his fear. Eventually, fear turns into anxiety. The end doesn't exist, does it? Without hope for an end, wouldn't it be that I can only keep falling forever, and death is not even an option? The anxiety then turns into a sense of loss. Both fear and anxiety are uprooted from his heart, and he falls prey to the feeling that he was losing his own past and his feelings. But wait, he might be thinking like this: do I still have those feelings to begin with? My life ended when I fell into this pit. Didn't I leave my memories, my feelings, even my reason for existing behind me, on the sun-lit grounds above this pit? What am I, then? Still falling, he now loses even the will to consider the meaning of his existence. Why was I even born, if the only thing I'm allowed to do is to fall?...With that thought on his mind, your pathetic character becomes one with the act of falling, which is now his symbol. If he had any emotions left to speak of, it would be a hatred towards you, dear player. Why did you so carelessly take that step? If you knew that Orihara Izaya was behind this game, why did you still allow yourself to be carried away by the fantasy that the floor was just what it seemed - the floor? It was all your fault. You were the reason your character lost everything and ended up trapped in this monotonic falling motion. I can't forgive myself I can't forgive myself I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't...that's what you're thinking, isn't it? Well, there's no need to feel guilty, for the same is true for you. Doesn't this character - with only those pitiful excuses for residual images to prove that he is still falling - seem to symbolize your own life, dear player? How much time did you already spend on this game? In this meaningless game, have you been able to find anything that you can call nourishment for your life? Oh, you're saying that you're only playing it to kill some time? Have you been able to kill any, I wonder? Or did you simply compound it by burdening yourself with this difficult task, which is making your life even more unwieldy for you than before? If there is nothing to distract you from your boredom except pain, then alas, you're really no different from this character, who just keeps falling, and falling - 】
The text rolled slowly, very slowly upwards, with a new line appearing every 5 seconds.
When they first appeared, Celty was able to sit still and read them, but eventually her patience ran out. She asked Shinra:
[...Hey, this isn't responding to anything I do.]
"The same thing happened when I played. I fell into a pit after 10 seconds and couldn't do anything afterwards."
[How long will this pretentious, teenager-like writing keep mocking me?]
"I tried letting it sit for an hour, and it was still going. You've really got to give Izaya credit for putting in all that work."
After hearing that, Celty immediately clicked on the × button in the window's upper-right corner. As she did so -
【Oh my oh my, you're giving up already? Running away doesn't solve anything, you know. If you're really hell-bent on turning your eyes away from the reality, why not just terminate this program in your Task Manager? That would also be the moment you admit your defeat to me, of course. 】
Instead of closing, the program issued a pop-up window. Celty had to fight her every urge to smash the screen after reading it.
[Urghhhh! What the heck!]
"See? Difficult, isn't it? Do you still have the will left to clear it?"
[That's not the kind of difficulty I'm after!]
"Well, you knew that this was going to happen, didn't you?"
Trying to comforting Celty, who looked like she was about to go berserk, Shinra seemed to have remembered something.
"Speaking of which, only a guy named Tsukumoya was able to clear the game, and sent Izaya his comments...Izaya was creeped out, too. He didn't even know that guy, nor did he recall ever sending him the game."
[What? That's scary...could he be an alien...?]
Feeling a chill down her spine, Celty quickly changed the subject to brush it away.
[How in the world am I supposed to do a gameplay video of something like this, anyway?]
[Don't worry, Celty, I'll film your every reaction when you look at the screen - your frustration, the way you fight to hold back your anger and look like you're about to explode!]
Smiling dreamily, Shinra gave her a thumb-up.
In the other hand, he was holding a high-performance video camera.
"When I upload this to NicoNico Douga, Celty, your charm will be sure to make everyone smile!"
[......]
Several minutes later, after she had tied Shinra up and put him in a corner of the room, Celty began to think about the video she was going to upload to NicoNico.
- Hmm. It looks like gameplay videos simply aren't right for me after all...
- I need to find a video to give me ideas...
As Celty stared at the laptop screen, she noticed something.
- Oops, that was close. My NicoNico points are about to expire.
- I've got 2,800 points left. I'd better use them soon...
Deciding that it was a good opportunity to lift her mood and use her NicoNico points, Celty began to search for movies.
- Hmm...let's try something with ghosts.
- Huh, Dark Skies is coming out on NicoNico Channel's movie listings.
- I've been interested since I saw the poster at Sunshine 60 Road.
- Looks like it's from the same people who made Paranormal Activity...
- I have no problem watching ghost movies. I look forward to this.
- Dream Catcher also sounds too good to pass off. Looks like it's also a horror movie.
- The Fourth Kind looks interesting, too.
- Let's see, which one should I pick...?
Then, two hours later -
After finishing the movie, Celty climbed into the closet again and started shaking non-stop.
What exactly did she see in the movie?
The answer could only be found in NicoNico Douga.
"...Celty, can you untie these shadow ropes for me already? Celty? Celty?"