Keep Fighting to Survive on Meteor Street and in France

[Full manuscript complete; blurb saved on 20260121]

Ayr's life was irrevocably changed when he was three.

His younger sister remained in France, immersed in a vat of liquid, sleeping forever.

And he was cast into Meteor City in another world, a place where the rules are written in garbage and blood.

To snatch his sister back from the "Faunus" laboratory and the "Paris Commune," he needs power.

So he became the Phantom Troupe's twelfth Spider: cold, dangerous, and willing to do whatever it takes.

His Nen ability is called [For Ninel].

A single thread connects him to his target, at the cost of his memories, senses, and even his lifespan.

In theory, this thread can reach back to his sister.

But the price may be more than he can afford to pay.

Meanwhile, Ninel in the tank is dreaming a dream she does not wish to wake from.

Her supernatural ability, [Amber Between Midnight], freezes time and locks her in an eternal childhood.

While her brother becomes unrecognizable in another world as he tries to save her,

all she wants to ask is: If I'm saved like this, am I still me?

He helped drag me out of the experimental chamber labeled "Black No. 12" and gave me a name, and a tank.

Inside the tank was a "Nibelung."

I knew it was one of my kind.

But I don't trust humans, including Verlaine, who claims he saved me.

Still, he showed me the memories he'd read using his ability: memories of a little girl named Ninel and the brother she lost.

So she had once been human.

So she, like me, had been stripped of her name, her past, and the right to choose when to wake.

Verlaine said this was the Paris Commune, a place dedicated to liberating the oppressed.

Yet his comrades decided in their smoke-filled room to seal her away forever and treat me as a "disposable weapon."

All I can do is sit in the dim confinement room, keeping watch over that jar of blue light.

Outside the window is my first glimpse of Paris at night. Inside is her sleep, her eyes never opening.

Verlaine once promised me a cup of hot chocolate, the kind of pointless promise people make to each other.

But I know that in this world,

only the girl in the tank and I are alike:

neither human nor weapon, just "beings" abandoned beyond the bounds of definition.

And I will keep watch until the very end.

Until she wakes, or until this hypocritical "Commune" collapses completely.

[Highlight] Apologies for the out-of-character portrayals; this story is full of personal headcanons.

Theme: True salvation is not taking someone from one definition and assigning them another, but giving them the freedom and strength to refuse to be bound by any definition.