Endless Apoptosis Is the nineth chapter of the Steins;Gate visual novel.
Plot[]
Rintaro sends the D-Mail and he finds Lukako has no memory of their date. He asks Luka to go check for the IBN 5100 and finds it was stolen. The lock had been broken. It appears he had to undo all the D-Mails after all.
The next D-Mail was the hardest because Rintaro had to find someone he never wanted to see again – Moeka, the very person who he had witnessed shooting Mayuri dead many times during his time leaps back. Rintaro yet again, explains eveything to Kurisu again about his time leaps and asks if she could go with Mayuri to the ComiMa to confirm whether Mayuri’s fate has changed or not. He’s witnessed Mayuri die too many times now. Kurisu agrees and goes with her the next day.
Rintaro goes wandering around Akiba hoping to find Moeka but then remembers she mentioned she worked at “Arc Rewrite”. He decides to go there but finds out there was no one by the name of Moeka. The staff there does mention a woman had resigned not long ago and passed on the address.
However, Rintaro arrives at the given address shocked to find a woman had committed suicide there yesterday. Could it really be Moeka? Why would she commit suicide? Unable to get any more information from the police, he returns to the lab to time leap and arrives just in time to find someone else using the time machine. He rushes up the stairs but the timeline had shifted and the person was gone before he could find out who it was. Who could it have been?
He decides to wait a while longer until the fated hour just to see if Mayuri’s fate had changed but as he feared, Kurisu calls to report Mayuri died from sudden suffocation. He proceeds to time leap back to the night before the suicide. The apartment was lit. He goes up and opens the unlocked door. There he saw Moeka kneeling down, rapidly tapping away desperately at the phone, asking herself why “FB” hadn’t contacted her for so long. She was ignoring Rintaro and wouldn’t talk to him.
Kurisu calls to check where he was and she agrees he will have to take extreme measures in these circumstances if they’re really going to find out what she wrote in her D-Mail. It won’t mean anything after the timeline’s shifted and he time leaps again anyway. Rintaro hangs up and tries to grab the phone from Moeka. As before, she holds it desperately. It was the only way she can keep in touch with “FB”, her leader.
Rintaro knew he had to do what he must. He grabs her by the neck and they struggle. He grabs her phone and runs out the apartment, holding the door tightly shut. Moeka desperately tries turns the door handle, trying to force it open as Rintaro tries to send an e-mail from her phone, letting Moeka in the past know not to change phones. However, despite trying many times, the Reading Steiner effect didn’t trigger. He tries sending a few more messages but they don’t work either. Glancing at the phone, he realised it was exactly the same as before Moeka sent the D-Mail. Kurisu suggests going through the sent mail history but Rintaro had no time for that. He’ll just have to go back inside and find out directly from Moeka herself.
A rough struggle breaks out again until Rintaro manages to pin Moeka to the ground. The noise makes the next door neighbour knock on the door, asking Moeka to keep the noise down. Moeka screams for help. Rintaro’s hands were too busy keeping her pinned down so he does the only thing he could think of to keep her quiet. He kisses her and the neighbour goes away, muttering how inconsiderate young people were these days.
Moeka bites Rintaro’s lips and he pulls back but wasn’t going to give up until she cooperates. Moeka lay in silence for some time before she finally asks what she had to do to get her phone back. Rintaro questions who was FB and why was she so loyal to him or her that she wasn’t say what she wrote in the D-Mail. Moeka replies she doesn’t know. FB was her leader but they have never met. One day she received an e-mail from FB recruiting “helpers” and she signed up. FB was very kind and caring which comforted her very much but after her last mission to find the IBN 5100 and putting it away in a locker, FB suddenly cut off contact.
Now that Moeka had given up her struggle, Rintaro picks up her phone to send a D-Mail telling her not to retrieve the computer from the shrine but nothing happens. She must be too cautious to trust just any messages she receives. They’ll have to undo the D-Mail some other way and obtaining FB’s phone is probably the best way.
After confirming with Daru that the locker Moeka mentioned was in use, Rintaro returns the phone to Moeka and invites her along to for a chance to find out who FB really is. She hesitates and doesn’t follow.
The next day, Rintaro goes alone to the locker and he spends the whole day keeping watch but no one arrives to open the locker. Rintaro decides to try and break the locker open. The police is alerted and he time leaps back. The next day, Moeka joins him bringing some food with her and the next day someone finally appears. He didn’t seem to be FB. They follow him onto the train but lose track of the man he passes the case to. After another time leap they finally manage to get back on track. Surprisingly, Tennouji from the old TV shop was arrives to give them a lift. Rintaro time leaps again and goes to rent a car ready to trail Tennouji and the Rounders. Moeka was a “paper driver” which meant she hasn’t driven for a very long time but she manages to somehow… They end up arriving at Suzuha’s home where the IBN 5100 is moved inside.
They watch the house waiting for any more movement. There was none. Night soon descended and the men who attacked the lab arrives. They take the IBN5100 and learn they were heading to France with it where SERN’s HQ was. Rintaro calls Kurisu to tell her to keep watch from outside. She was to call for help if neither he or Moeka comes back out. They enter the house and Tennouji greets them. He collects the Divergence Meter yet again but sits down. The displayed value had increased which confirms undoing the D-Mails was working.
Moeka stays silent until Rintaro reveals they knew he was working for SERN. Tennouji takes out a gun, his smile faded. He admits to be “FB” and was only using Moeka to find the IBN 5100. She was no use any more. Rintaro was angry. Angry that the very person that Suzuha had gone back in time and ended up looking after was the person to steal the IBN5100 she retrieved. As if in answer, Tennouji smiled and pointed the gun to himself. He’s sorry for Suzuha and pulls the trigger. After picking up “FB” Yuugo Tennouji’s phone, Rintaro tried looking for Nae but was glad she wasn’t there to witness the whole event.
Together they leave the scene quickly back to Moeka’s apartment, ready to send the D-Mail they need. However, just as Kurisu mentions she saw a little girl running out the back of the house after the gunshot, Tennouji’s little daughter Nae appears in the room and greets them hello. She suddenly takes out a gun and shoots Moeka, laughing eerily. She tells Rintaro to wait in fear because he will be next in the future and runs out the apartment. Both Kurisu and Rintaro were shocked. That did not sound like a little girl talking.
With the D-Mail on standby, Moeka apologises for what she’s done and passes out. Kurisu remains calm, urging Rintaro to send the D-Mail but he doesn’t. He wanted to know the truth and who Nae really was. He time leaps back to before they arrive at Suzuha’s house and waits outside together with Kurisu while Moeka goes in alone this time. He instructs Kurisu to go in and pick up FB’s phone after hearing a gunshot while he goes after Nae.
Unprepared, little Nae brandishes a knife and lunges at Rintaro’s shoulder. She reveals she was Tennouji's daughter who had time leaped over 2700 times to return 15 years from the future for revenge. But she couldn’t kill Rintaro yet because otherwise she would never be able to travel back in time to kill Moeka like she just did. Either way, she joins Rounders and is the one that ends up capturing Rintaro in the future, torturing him about his resistance group and letting him die a slow death. With that she runs off just as Kurisu catches up. Rintaro takes the phone from Kurisu and sends the D-Mail.
After the timeline shift, Rintaro finds himself standing in the streets and immediately heads to Moeka’s apartment to see if the D-Mail worked. She confirms she was no longer looking for the IBN5100. As he made his way back to the lab, he grimaced remembering what happened in the other timeline – Nae bent on revenge and Tennouji committing suicide to stop Moeka working for the Rounders.
Finally the IBN5100 was back in the Future Gadget Laboratory. Rintaro cries out happily, ready to have Daru erase traces of their D-Mail from SERN’s surveillance logs and shift the timeline for good so that Mayuri is finally saved. Unfortunately, Daru was away at the ComiMa so Rintaro time leaps to the moment Daru is still around.
Daru sets up all the commands ready and gives Rintaro the privilege to hit the enter key. However, just as he was about to execute the commands, he realises he had forgotten something important… If he stops himself sending that D-Mail about Kurisu’ death, they will end up in a timeline where she will be murdered.
Characters[]
By order of apparence: TBA
Chapter Title Explanation[]
TBA