A Spirit’s Self-Reflection

(First written from November 7th, 2024 to January 13, 2025)

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1. A Spirit’s Self-Reflection
   1. Glossary
   2. Foreword
   3. Story
   4. Afterword

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Glossary

This section details various relevant parts of the story. Underlined entries have links to pages that explain them in further detail.

• Chō: A traditional Japanese unit of measurement, equivalent to approximately 109.1 meters, or 357 feet and 11 inches. As far as I can tell, Japan doesn’t use this type of measurement as much as they did in the past, mostly using the metric system instead; the use of chō in this story is meant to indicate an old-fashioned character.
• Cry of Home: A powerful Null/Damage/Experience-type finishing move used by Terumi. She thrusts a ball of magic straight forward that explodes around the opponent in a tangle of pale spiky vine-like objects, which twist and turn around the opponent to poke and shred them, then fly into the opponent’s body to unleash a pure surge of damaging power from inside.
• Hotch Harbor: A location invented for Chaos Zone. Named after “Hotchkiss’n”, a robotic enemy from the 1993 video game Mega Man 6.
• Mack: A character from the 1996 video game Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars; known as “Claymorton” in the 2023 remake simply called Super Mario RPG. In Chaos Zone, his full name is Mack K. Claymorton. A robot built by Smithy, who has long since defected from him and lives life his own way, fighting to help those whose voices aren’t being heard. He met Yuugen-V and Terumi in 2022 and quickly developed a sibling-like bond with them, the three living together since then. Mack tries not to swear in front of Terumi, often stuttering or stopping himself mid-sentence to make sure of that.
• Mitsumo: A character from the Len’en Project series. An ancient sentient mirror from Mugenri that can possess people by showing them their greatest fears. In Chaos Zone, Mitsumo can puppeteer people even when they have died. Roughly some time from 2014-2016, Mitsumo took control of Terumi’s body this way, and neglected Terumi’s needs for human survival for long enough that she died under Mitsumo’s control, and Mitsumo continued to use her body after this. By the start of the story, Mitsumo has never met Mack or Yuugen-V, and doesn’t even know what a robot is. Mitsumo has no definitive birth gender, using they/them pronouns.
• Mugenri: The main location of the Len’en Project series, and the home of Mitsumo and Terumi. A realm filled with supernatural creatures, and seemingly separate from the rest of the universe; there isn’t a clear, consistent way to enter or exit Mugenri, and any attempts to do either seem to be special occasions.
• Smithy: A mechanical blacksmith from the 1996 video game Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, and the creator of Mack. His desire was to create a world of weapons, but Mack defected from him on poor terms after Smithy’s plans failed.
• Terumi: A character from the Len’en Project series who was possessed by Mitsumo for several years (not aging while under Mitsumo’s control), until she “died”; due to Mitsumo’s control over Terumi stemming from perpetually showing her worst fears, Terumi became a ghost; she was then found by Mack and Yuugen-V in 2022, and the three quickly developed a sibling-like bond, the three living together since then (though she has never clearly told them about what Mitsumo did to her). While Terumi was six years old when possessed by Mitsumo, and was still a six-year old (not counting when her aging was stopped) when meeting Mack and Yuugen, the start of this story indicates that Terumi is now eight years old (again, not counting her past halted aging). While Terumi was assigned female at birth and kept this identity in her first Chaos Zone appearance, she came out as non-binary between then and now, and likes being referred to with she/her pronouns or they/them pronouns interchangeably.
• Yuugen-V: Full name “YuugenMagan Visage“, also goes by just “Yuugen“. An original character directly based on a character from the 1997 video game Touhou Reiiden ~ The Highly Responsive to Prayers. An otherworldly entity who met Mack and Terumi in 2022 and quickly developed a sibling-like bond with them, the three living together since then.
• Zenny: A major currency in many Capcom games (such as the Mega Man games), as well as in Mega Man RPG Prototype and The Chaos Zone. The actual value of Zenny doesn’t seem to be clear in Chaos Zone as a whole, and I wasn’t sure how to convey its value in this story; 500 Zenny (500z) is meant to be like 5 USD ($5), but 10,000 Zenny (10000z) is portrayed more like 1,000 USD ($1,000). I know this doesn’t make sense, it was a mistake.

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Foreword

I would recommend reading the Ability lists on the pages of Mack, YuugenMagan Visage, Terumi, and Mitsumo before reading this story. In the middle of the story is an action scene where the characters use several named abilities, with all but one of them being described on their character pages (the last being listed on the aforementioned Glossary).

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Story

(The story begins in November 2024, at a location called “Hotch Harbor”)

(The scene cuts to a forest near Hotch Harbor)

(Fast forward a few hours)

(Fast forward a few minutes; it’s now unclear if the trio is actually in the forest near Hotch Harbor)

(A flashback to “Mack in Town, Part 2“)

(A flashback to “Mack in Town, Part 2.5“)

(The scene cuts back to the present day)

(Indeed, the three are now in what remains of Terumi’s home village in Mugenri)

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Afterword

“A Spirit’s Self-Reflection” was an interesting writing experience, as The Chaos Zone was in something of a lull of activity when I was uploading it to the roleplay, which was at odds with how the story’s basic outline was complete enough that at some points I had entire sequences of dialogue prepared well before the story reached said points (most of all Mitsumo’s direct talk with Terumi, and Terumi’s subsequent speech of determined anger before cracking Mitsumo). The Mega Man RPG Prototype website my writing is first uploaded to has rules against subsequent posting in short amounts of time; checking the forum’s rules later, I’ve found the suggested time between posts is 24 hours, but I was worried it may have been somewhat larger, so I waited a full week before uploading each post. I hold nothing against the roleplay’s other writers for the lesser activity; people have lives to live and sometimes one can be drained of inspiration or motivation, or focused on something else.

The idea of Mack, YuugenMagan Visage, and Terumi (collectively earning the name “M/Y/T”) living off of various small quests and missions on a bulletin board was something inspired by Fantasy RPG video games, which often have similar quests with rewards (albeit often in a “guild” of some sort).

A big goal of this story was to elaborate on Terumi’s backstory, and give her some closure regarding her past conflict with Mitsumo. “Mack in Town” ended with Terumi in a position where they weren’t actively being pressured to fight during hostile encounters, but wasn’t a hindrance when they did so anyway; I don’t know how much that’s actually changed, but I think I wanted to at least slightly lessen the fear between Mack and Yuugen-V that Terumi couldn’t be a little bit more self-reliant, and I figured having Terumi face the monster who made her who she is today would be a perfect fit. I also just figured that with both Terumi and Mitsumo having been known for a while in the setting as separate individuals (unlike in Len’en, where Terumi is still under Mitusmo’s control and likely will be for the rest of the series), it would be worth it to finally see how the two faced each other in a conflict going beyond the status quo of the Len’en games.

The idea of Terumi’s village being attacked and destroyed before she was possessed by Mitsumo in the past was an idea first alluded to in “Mack in Town, Part 2” and the “Interlude” (scenes that are shown again in this story as flashbacks), but a couple of questions as to what those scenes meant from offline viewers made me want to spell it out a little more clearly, though I figured I’d keep at least two details more implicit to see if readers picked up on it by themselves with the strong hints about it:

While Mugenri had already been used in Chaos Zone prior to this, it was never by me, and it was suggested to be less accessible to the rest of the world as, say, Chaos Zone‘s version of Gensokyo (which could probably be found on a map). The idea of characters being sent to and from Mugenri from the energy of characters who had long lived in Mugenri was based on an alternate idea three writers had regarding how to find Gensokyo, loosely based on the idea of getting lost in enchanted forests in certain folklore. I’ll admit the explanation is a bit fuzzy in Mugenri’s case, and it was mostly done to try and find some way to bring the characters to Mugenri (where Terumi’s village used to be) and then bring them back home at the end of the story.

The extent of Mitsumo’s defeat was actually a pretty heavy decision; I rarely feel confidant about killing off characters, even villains, due in part to the sheer amount of characters from other media who I can’t use as villains of my own due to other writers using those characters (on top of the fact that these are characters who have, in a sense, been under my care, which makes me afraid to make such an intense decision for non-villain characters). However, I realized the writing wouldn’t be very satisfying if Mitsumo simply escaped after Terumi finally fought back against them, and so I made sure Mitsumo was defeated enough that, at least in terms of the narrative, Mitsumo was damaged enough that they couldn’t hurt anybody anymore (and if I ever did decide to bring them back, it would take the assistance of some other villain).