TLR A Fistful of Rito: Copy Chaos

Unending BE - episode 897813

A Fistful of Rito: A cloning experiment results in four Rito copies! Well, perhaps copies is too simple a way to put it given how different their personalities are.

α

”Hit-Split Copy-Kun!”

...and immediately following the words from a feminine voice Rito didn’t recognize, there was light! It was a blinding brilliance with no particular source, just brightness so intense it was impossible to describe as white or any sort of color. It was all colors all at once everywhere, a vision so magnificent that even were his memory perfectly whole and healthy, it would even moments after be impossible for him to think back and recall anything more than a fraction of its splendor.

Thus, when the light faded from his vision, it was fairly understandable that Rito Yuuki was a little disoriented. Here he was, standing in his own living room when he could have sworn he was just lying in his bathtub only seconds earlier. One moment he was naked, reflecting on his failure once more to approach the attractive Haruna Sairenji at school and one flash of light later he was naked, downstairs, and staring at three beautiful girls who had pink hair... and tails that looked like a devil’s.

“D-D-Demons!” he shouted, vaguely aware that a fourth girl screamed in unison.

“Whoa, hold on!” said a voice that sounded suspiciously like his own. At this point he noticed not one but two copies of himself staring at him in their birthday suits. One of them had been addressing the entire room, while the other was confronting the tallest of the demon girls.

“Lala, why do all of your inventions get rid of my clothes?”

“Calm down,” the first Rito copy continued. “I’m sure we can figure out what happened together.”

So to sum up, Rito basically had two choices. Option A, listen to a never-before-seen mirror image of himself and hope there was a rational explanation for the unprovoked kidnapping, forced stripping, and devil summoning. Option B, back away slowly and rush for the door at the first opportunity.

“Okaaaay, I’m going to go look for clues in... the street,” Rito began saying as he back up against his couch and reached for a throw pillow to cover himself with. Unfortunately, someone else had the exact same idea and his hand was not the only one to grab the pillow. Rito turned his head to find himself staring into the same eyes that greeted him in the mirror every morning. These eyes however belonged to a person with slightly longer hair, a slimmer, more delicate face, and a body that was almost his height but possessed feminine curves, including two conspicuous ones in front. Oh, and she too was nude.

Once again the pair shouted together in alarm, and both broke for the nearest exit, modesty be darned. The front door was directly behind the girl, so Rito had to satisfy himself with jumping out the nearest window and landing in a bush that was far pricklier than it would have first appeared. There was no time to lick his wounds however. He could hear the two copies and three demons shouting about following him, so Rito Yuuki took off down the sidewalk like a streak, in more ways than one.

β

“Okay, so what just happened?” asked one of the two remaining Ritos, as they each watched a male and female version of themselves run for the hills. They both were able to retrieve pillows without difficulty to cover themselves. “And when did Momo and Nana get here?”

“What are you talking about? We live here now,” Nana, the furious pettanko, replied.

“Yeah,” the second Rito replied. “Lala’s sisters moved in upstairs a while ago, don’t you remember?”

“No, the last thing I remember, Lala was going to turn me into Riko temporarily for a date with Kenichi... who is in for a pretty big surprise, I think,” he trailed off, looking out the front door that the female Rito had run through.

“Actually, I think you’re the one in for a surprise,” Lala said, steepling her fingers together nervously. “The date with Saruyama-san happened several months ago. A lot has happened since then.”

“Huh? If that’s the case, then why can’t I remember anything that happened during the date, or after it?”

The other Rito spoke up this time. “I’m not sure, but it’s probably for the same reason that I can’t remember the date or anything before it.” He closed his eyes and concentrated. “I don’t recall anything before that... I don’t even remember meeting Lala.”

“Well, she crashed into me, err us in the bathtub. Kind of hard to forget. Before that... now that you mention it I can’t remember anything that happened before that night. So what caused us all to appear in my living room?”

“Sis was testing out her new device,” Momo explained, retrieving a small white baton-like device with a blue light on one end and a green light on the other. “We were all trying to clean up from our attempt to fix Mikan breakfast in bed.” Well, that explained why their kitchen was surrounded by yellow DO NOT ENTER tape. “Rito, err you, joked that it would be quicker if there were more of you.”

“...so she brought out a cloning device and used it on me.” One Rito nodded in a resigned manner to the other. “Okay, so there are four of us... but why are we having a hard time remembering anything?”

“I’m sorry, It must be a malfunction,” Lala explained. “While the device was able to split Rito into four identical copies, it looks like it wasn’t able to copy Rito’s memories into everyone. Instead they seems like they were divided up between the four of you.”

Momo pointed to the first Rito. “So, you remember from the moment you met Lala until the date as Riko. While you,” she said, pointing to the other, “remember from after the date until the present. I’d wager that means the male Rito that fled only has memories of your life before you met Lala, while the female you only has memories of your date as Riko.”

Nana looked back and forth between the remaining pair. “But which one is the original?”

“I am,” the two Ritos answered simultaneously.

“Actually...” Lala began, with a large teardrop forming on her forehead. “I don’t think either of you are the original. Look at the back of your left hand, err hands.” Both Ritos complied, using their right hands to cover themselves. A large black symbol marked each boy; the earlier Rito that remembered meeting Lala had the Greek letter ‘β’, while the one with the memories that ran to the present had the Greek letter ‘δ’. “The way ‘Hit-Split Copy-Kun’ works is, it takes the original person and creates the clones from them. But it’s easy to reverse... if we have all of the copies in one place.”

“Looks like we need to find the other two quickly, before they get into trouble,” Rito Delta said to his counterpart.

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Rito Beta replied, less enthusiastically. While the explanation of a cloning device and memory-splicing seemed more than reasonable considering what he knew of Lala, it still felt rather unreal to Beta. This wasn’t a sneak peek of his future, if the others were correct this was definitely the present, but from his perspective how could he not see it that way? And while this future seemed far from horrible (Lala was becoming more than a just a friend even during the time he remembered) he was always able to draw solace from the possibility that someday the seemingly daily craziness would come to an end, and he would be able to confess his feelings for Haruna Sairenji. The two would settle down to a normal life with their abnormal friends visiting (briefly!) occasionally. But if anything, it appeared that his life was only doomed to get even zanier. Is that a life he wanted to get back to?

Rito Beta’s train of thought was derailed when flying pillows struck both Ritos. “No, the three of us and Peke will go look for your two naked copies,” the pigtailed Nana said. “You two... go upstairs and put some clothes on, you perverts!”

γ

About two blocks from the living room the girl had suddenly found herself in for no apparent reason, she spotted a pair of trash cans and took shelter behind them. There she confirmed that she wasn’t being followed (yet) while massaging the bottoms of her soles. Running for your life is actually pretty painful when you’re barefoot, which admittedly is one of the lesser inconveniences about being stark naked in public.

The girl counted her blessings at least that no members of said public had noticed her yet. She would have a hard time explaining why she was streaking in this neighborhood, especially since she herself didn’t know. Since the coast was clear for the moment, the cute brunette considered what it was she did know. Quickly adding ichi to ichi and arriving at ni in her mind, she was able to confirm that she knew both how to speak Japanese and do arithmetic. In fact, to the best of her knowledge she believed all of her thought processes were working fine. So why was she so confused about who she was?

As far as she could tell, it was some strange form of amnesia, that mental condition that was overused by all those television shows she couldn’t remember. No matter how hard she tried to think back, all she could recall was approximately the last two hours, and even those memories were: A. hazy and disorienting, and B. at odds with her current predicament.

What she needed most right now was clothing but a close second on her list were answers. How did she go from being on a date in town to naked in a stranger’s house? Why was she so uncomfortable on that date? There was something off about the name her date Saruyama kept calling her: Riko. Was it that the name seemed ‘wrong,’ or did it seem ‘incomplete’?

And back to her current dilemma: What connection did she have with the three naked boys that were in the house with her? Were the pink-haired girls responsible somehow? And finally, why did she have a large black ‘γ’ on the back of her left hand?

Far, far too many questions, none of which were going to be answered while hiding behind plastic trash containers. With her feet no longer smarting quite so much and still no sign of pursuit, Riko Gamma took a deep breath and got ready to continue on. An unattended clothesline with simple yet summer-fashionable attire hung out to dry wasn’t going to find itself. After checking both cans for anything useable and finding them both empty, she snagged a pair of particularly leafy branches off a nearby tree to preserve at least a modicum of modesty and set off down the sidewalk.

Unfortunately, Riko Gamma’s luck with passing cars and pedestrians had just about run its course. As she neared an intersection, she could hear voices talking to each other and walking towards her just around the corner she was on. A tall, white picket fence prevented her from seeing them (and more importantly them from seeing her), but she didn’t need to see them to know who one of voices belonged to.

“I can’t wait for this Thursday night. Run-chan’s putting on a concert in town and I scored two tickets! I’m going to get Rito to give one to Riko-chan. And then after the concert, dessert at a cafe, maybe even an evening walk through the park, just the two of us...”

Kenichi Saruyama and his two friends turned the corner and continued walking up the sidewalk Riko was just on, unaware he had just missed seeing his dream girl nude by the half-second it took her to scale the fifteen foot tall privacy fence. It’s amazing the feats one can accomplish given proper motivation (or in her case, desperation).

Her mad scramble over the fence failed to account for the fifteen foot fall on the other side, and the nude girl tumbled over the wall, landing on her rear in a stranger’s back yard. The impact left her bruised but otherwise uninjured. Her painful landing however had been worth it, as she realized her luck hadn’t abandoned her after all. If Kenichi hadn’t been coming around the corner, then she never would have discovered the only family in the neighborhood that had clothes hung out to dry outside that day.

Rushing over to the clothesline, Riko first selected a pair of pink panties that probably belonged to someone her own age. Without a thought to the crime she was committing, she hurriedly slipped them on, and then reached for a matching bra that looked reasonably close to fitting her admittedly ample bosom.

As the teenaged girl held the bra in her hands and stared at it helplessly, a truly bizarre revelation occurred to her. For the life of her, somehow she could not remember how to put a bra on. That made absolutely no sense, which only made her angry. Her memories may be gone, but she had been confident her knowledge was still intact. In fact, she dropped to one knee and mimicked tying a shoelace on her naked foot to confirm that she still possessed everyday skills. Her breasts were, objectively mind you, large. They hadn’t grown to this size overnight. Putting on a bra should have been second nature to her, so why wasn’t it?

“Hmm, I think that’s a little small for you, sweetie.” Riko didn’t even have a chance to turn around, as a pair of feminine hands reached around her and groped her chest. “Such a perky pair! How come I’ve never seen you around school before, my little thief?” a girl with short, dirty-blonde hair whispered in her ear.

Desperately Riko fought free of the girl’s perverted embrace, but her assailant managed to grab hold of her wrist with one hand and began pulling her towards her house. “Wait, where are you taking me?!”

The girl laughed mischievously. “Don’t worry. Risa Momioka’s going to take good care of you.”

Confused? Perfectly understandable! Here’s a quick guide to the four Rito copies in the above story:

Rito Alpha (α) - This clone has all of Rito’s memories prior to his first encounter with Lala, right up to the moment before she came crashing through his wall and landed on him in his bathtub.

Rito Beta (β) - This clone remembers Rito’s first encounter with Lala and all of his earlier adventures with her, right up to the day he reluctantly agreed to let Lala turn him into a girl so his friend Kenichi Saruyama could have a date with the girl he fell in love with at first sight. The last thing he remembers is Lala pointing the Changing Boy-Girl-Kun raygun at him.

Riko (Rito) Gamma (γ) - This clone is mysteriously female, and only remembers the horribly awkward date he had with Kenichi in manga chapter 106. The pair went to a romantic movie, encountered Yui Kotegawa as they walked through town, and ended up in a park. Her memories are less distinct than the others’.

Rito Delta (δ) - This clone’s memories start from the end of the date (when the gender-switch suddenly wore off, but Rito escaped before Saruyama noticed) and continue to the present day. Presumably that includes the events of ‘To Love-Ru Darkness’ as well, but that is up to the future authors.

Go back - Go to the parent episode.

Sirocco (siroccoadd.livejournal.com)

Sat Jul 20 13:24:12 2013

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