Jump 424: Elfen Lied

Jump #424: Elfen Lied
>King of Swords, reversed: A mature leader of unyielding ethics and absolute authority.
>Age: 24
>Location: Kakamura, Japan
>Identity: Researcher (-100)
>Like A Scalpel (Free, Researcher)
It's an ugly task, but preventing the eventual extinction of humanity is necessary.
>A Little Nerve (800, Researcher)
So... wait. I can increase the pain for increased data on experimenting... or I can operate on someone and do as I will without giving them any pain at all? Suddenly giving people Esper powers is less unpleasant than it ever was before.
>Necessary Evil (600, Researcher)
As I said, preventing humanity's extinction is necessary. Though adding ethics to this is important also; necessary does not mean it is desired and suffering should be lessened wherever possible.
>Destroyer of Worlds (300, Researcher)
So what you're telling me is... I can put a "voice" in anything I genetically modify? Like for example, creating a user's guide if I were to upgrade humanity to a form that can use various forms of magic or psionics or what have you? Let's do it.
>Anti-Diclonius Technology (0, Researcher)
Oh, now, some of this has major potential. A jacket that'll suppress the powers of anyone who wears it? Sold. Less so, the aircraft that uses vectors, but you can't have everything after all.

You know... I'd written up a nice long thing about this jump. How I'd given Lucy a third option instead of everything happening as it did. But in the end, it didn't feel quite right.

So, this is the much shorter version: I spent my time throwing everything I had into the vaccine. Made it an airborne virus that would self-destruct after a given period of time or if it mutated notably from its intended purpose - it would cripple any diclonius' vectors to the point of unusability, and make any carrier of the diclonius virus infertile.

With a great deal of magic and running about like a madman, I rewrote the memories of anyone with knowledge of diclonii to think it was a biological weapon rather than what it really was, a nonsensical leap in evolution. Well, everyone except the diclonii themselves, anyway. And when the research facilities exploded shortly after that task was complete - and yes, there were two, the government had one - they had little trouble believing some random eco-terrorist group that claimed credit for it was responsible.

Specifically, it exploded right after Nana was sent ashore, and a very confused Nana ended up being more or less adopted by a boy named Kouta and his ... actually you know what we're not going to explore the Japanese tendency to pull a Lannister today, either way she was basically their adopted little sister of sorts.

Also, said Nana was very confused because her horns fell off and she lost her vectors.

Also also, her hair turned pink. Why? The world may never know.

As for Lucy... well, no one ever saw her after she escaped. Maybe that's for the best. Maybe she's living a nice quiet life somewhere, away from all the insanity, away from humanity, finally able to simply make peace with herself. I'd certainly like to think so.