The Distant Valhalla

Youen no Valhalla (遥遠のヴァルハラ) is a Steins;Gate light novel set in the Alpha Attractor Field. It takes place on worldline divergence 0.334581%, a year and a half after the Rounders raided the Future Gadget Lab and captured Rintaro Okabe, Kurisu Makise, and Itaru Hashida. The story was written by Naotaka Hayashi (the Steins;Gate visual novel's main writer), and features art by Juu Ayakura. It was originally released on August 13, 2010.

Plot
The story is told from Okabe's perspective, a year and a half after the Rounders raided the Future Gadget Lab, captured Okabe, Daru, and Kurisu, and killed Mayuri Shiina. The captured trio lived out the year and a half after the attack at the SERN facility near the France and Switzerland border, their actions carefully monitored.

In this worldline, similarly to the 12th iteration of worldline 0.337187%, Suzuha Amane had failed to change the past, and Okabe and the others heard about this failure in a suicide note delivered to them by Mr. Braun. However, unlike in that 12th iteration of worldline 0.337187%, the Rounders showed up immediately after this, killed Mayuri, successfully stopped Okabe from using the Time Leap Machine or sending a D-Mail, and captured Okabe, Daru, and Kurisu.

Though Daru and Okabe were allowed to stay together, Kurisu was separated from them and held in a different building; as a result, Okabe and Kurisu had not seen each other since the attack on the lab, a full year and a half. The novel opens with Okabe and Kurisu's first reunion since the attack, where Okabe outlines "Operation Valhalla", his plan to escape from SERN and return to Akihabara alongside Kurisu and Daru. This plan seems to involve the help of Takumi Nishijou from ChäoS;HEAd (whose codename is Lightning-Fast Neidhardt).

Okabe and Kurisu run away from pursuing Rounders, but instead of the original plan of going to the Geneva airport, they follow Plan B and head down into the Large Hadron Collider to meet up with Neidhardt and Daru. Okabe and Kurisu have to run around all the way from one end of the LHC to the other to get to the designated meeting place, and are unable to get in touch with Daru. Neidhardt shows up late, along with some Rounders, and it turns out that the Neidhardt they were in touch with is actually a SERN scientist, Akiko Hiiragi, who reports directly to the Committee of 300, and not Takumi Nishijou after all.

Akiko Hiiragi does an experiment to test World Line Convergence, having the elite squad of Rounders shoot a barrage of bullets at Okabe and Kurisu from very close range, using night vision goggles. Okabe shields Kurisu and while some of the bullets graze him or hit him in non-vital spots, he is not seriously wounded, and the majority of the bullets miss Okabe and Kurisu completely. The experiment proves World Line Convergence correct, meaning, the events Suzuha Amane recalled happening are guaranteed to occur, so Okabe is guaranteed to die in 2025 and Kurisu is guaranteed to work for SERN and invent SERN’s time machine.

Kurisu resigns herself to her fate of becoming a SERN scientist but still holds out hope that maybe someday Okabe will return to SERN to come rescue her. Akiko Hiiragi deliberately lets Okabe and Daru go back to Japan and form their resistance group Valkyrie in order to avoid messing with World Line Convergence, because SERN and the Committee of 300 are pleased with the version of the future Suzuha Amane described and do not want to do anything to alter the course of events that leads to it. Unlike Okabe and Kurisu, Daru was caught by Rounders peacefully, without being shot at.

Daru gets to attend the winter 2011 ComiMa along with Okabe, but Rounders continue to follow them around everywhere to monitor them. At the ending of ComiMa, Daru meets a famous cosplayer, Yuki Amane, his future wife, and he gets her and the other cosplayers and otaku to surround and distract the Rounders so that Daru and Okabe can lose them and stop being tracked. Okabe and Daru successfully escape from the watch of the Rounders, resolving to form the Valkyrie resistance organization and stop SERN from achieving its dystopia, even though the earlier experiment proving World Line Convergence showed that this goal is impossible to do without switching to a different world line.

Main Characters
Okabe Rintaro

Makise Kurisu

Akiko Hiiragi

Supporting Characters
Itaru Hashida

Yuki Amane

Lightning-Fast Neidhardt

Organizations
SERN

Committe of 300

Locations
SERN

Trivia

 * Although its original format is a light novel, Youen no Valhalla has been remade into a visual novel by fans, which can also be watched in video format on YouTube.
 * Youen no Valhalla was partially adapted into an anime-like format through Steins;Gate-themed pachinko machines in Japan.