Kakurenbo: Hide and Seek: Endgame

By Churnok

Disclaimer

Kakurenbo: Hide and Seek, its characters, and concepts are the copyrights and/or trademarks of someone else and are used here purely as part of a contest on another site. The hero and his technology are my creation. My only profit, other than the fun of writing this and showing it to fellow nuts on the internet, is the small prize I won in that contest. For a summary of the film and to view all the entries of the contest visit mypage./tshingle/dyami/

His superiors were going to read him the riot act for this, and probably demote him for breaking the inter-dimensional prime directive, but he could not allow this to continue. This town was suffering from two problems, overpopulation and lack of power, but instead of solving both problems separately they had used a nano-parasite program to solve their power problem with their population problem. When the town's power dropped below a certain level the program lured seven kids into a game and then hunted them down with four mechanical drones. Getting their systems pumped up so that they actually survived being hooked up as batteries for the main generator. Except for the last player in each game, the winner, who serves as the next host for the central control unit of the program. The whole thing was wrapped up nicely in mythology so that no one suspected the truth. The four drones being called demons and given specific forms and titles even though their functions were the same.

His purpose in this reality was just to observe and gather information. He wasn't even supposed to be visible on this mission, but when he saw what was being done to the kids he just had to do something. So he reconfigured his body into that of a child within the program's parameters, acquired a mask and entered the game. Avoiding the drones was the easy part. Allowing them to catch the other kids was harder but for his plan to work he had to get direct access to the central unit, and that meant he had to win. Now he faced the host ready to accept his prize.

He watched the mask that was the Central control unit as it went through its spiel and transformed into its transfer mode. Then the poor kid who had served as the host performed the final command and transferred the mask to his face. He waited until the program began to take over his body be fore activating his counter program and ejecting his consciousness from his body. The program reconfigured the system so that it released the kids and operated everything off the power core in his android body. The core contained enough power to sustain the planet for the duration of the local sun. The program also reconfigured the drones so that they could reconfigure and maintain the central generator. There were also some plans in the program to help these people with their population problems. As his mind passed through the dimensional barrier and returned to his real body in the control rig he contemplated his actions. He had saved the children of this town and given its people the information to help them solve their two major problems all for the small price of on metamorphic observation body. The cost of which was probably going to come out of his pay for at least a year. Life was good.