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[Andromeda]

Chapter 311 has arrived now, a little later, but still pretty good on time, since I did just write it now in an hour and half. This chapter I ended up putting off partly due to matters of my own making, but also due to other issues within the story. The biggest issue was that I was working on the new characters I was introducing. I needed them to show off their powers a little bit so that you knew what to look forward to in the future.

All of the UN team needed some new powers, something that was going to be different from what has been seen before, but also powerful and advanced enough for evolution and the future. Like I said, they'll be important later on. So they needs to be powerful now and even more powerful in the future for when Yuki and company have to fight them for real. Right now is just the tease. And I even withheld two of the people's powers for later.

The whole point with the Seiji fight was just to give a good gauge on their strength and allow them to showcase some of their unique abilities. The UN team is a very different set with some vastly different types of powers that I haven't really shown off so far. The hope is that I can keep coming up with some original powers and original uses of some more standard powers. Which is really important for the future.

The one that I teased the least was Masayuki's since I wanted to do a lot of build up with him. He's stronger than all of them and has a vast array of potential. So for now, his presence is enough to set things up. Though Yuki does sort of make them all look like children next to what he can do. Which drives home how powerful and weak Yuki can be. He was knocked out for the entire fight, but still is able to put them all in their place. This should not really be a surprise though, since I intentionally showed off this capability during the second arc, since it is going to be something that's important for the rest of the story. Yuki does have some story breaking powers, but he is also more honorable than someone with his powers need to be. So I'll take advantage of this power at times, but when Yuki fights people for real, it'll be because just negating their powers won't actually win the fight. Yuki will need to beat them or show that they are wrong. But it is still something that I will address and not forget. I'm not going to ignore it or use it to make cheap fights.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Chapter 312 is now available for your reading pleasure! With the little skirmish settled, I continue my development of new seeds. As I have said already the UN team is completely different thing that I'm going to be handling in the future. This chapter continues to cement their seeds for the future. It's only a two chapter deal, but considering some of the seeds I've put into place, this is actually a pretty good planting.

The biggest thing is the cliffhanger. So I'll jump on that first and work around. I actually planned on the scene to go longer. But I just couldn't stop writing it. So I actually cut it down and move the other half of the conversation into the next chapter. So there is going to be a little continuing on with it. And I'll probably come back to this from time to time, since the UN is an always present threat in the Japan. But the biggest issue is that Yuki was identified as a threat. I'm going to assume people already have some assumptions about things, but I'll those assumptions up to you for now. I'm not going to fully explain the situation and people involved for a while. But since Yuki has been marked, it does mean that Masayuki's group will be hunting him down since he is someone completely driven by upholding peace and justice. Something that will complicate matters in the future, but what would things be if they were not complicated.

The rest of the chapter finally gets everything up to the speed and in place for re-uniting with Hiroshi and the others. Something that's been a long time coming now. That's be in the next chapter. But the Atlantean businesswoman is back again. She was seeded back in first arc for several important purposes to the story. This is the first major part she has to play in the actual plot. But she's got quite the history and I'll be hinting at her history a little this time around. But it will be more teases than clear answers. Just stuff to keep you guessing for now. But she's actually quite important, I did sort of relate her to Urahara from Bleach I think in the past which is fairly accurate, though her reasons for exile are quite a bit different than his.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Now available for reading is chapter 313! Things are finally coming back around and heading into the final stretch of the arc. Yes, the arc is surprisingly nearly over by now. Though the last stretch is still going to take like a good chunk of the year to complete, which should not really surprise you. Given everything that's happened, you can pretty easily see where the lines are being drawn now. There are a series of fights that are being created now. What makes this arc interesting is that it is friend against friend, though in this case it is more unwilling than anything else.

A lot of the chapter does focus on the UN and Masayuki. The stuff from last chapter spilled over more than planned and I wanted to fully seed things. So the stuff has been clearly setup now with Masayuki. He's not going to be on the hunt for Yuki. So he has another thing tailing him. This one is certainly more complicated than the others. While Masayuki is an antagonist, he is something that believes strongly in what he is doing is right and is a largely rational person that can be reasoned with and talked to, except when it comes to the peace of Japan. He is completely focused and devoted to bring peace to Japan. Yuki and him are in ways on the same sides, just different sides going at things in different ways. Which is why it'll be interesting when they clash again. But Masayuki isn't evil, not like some of the others and he's not doing bad things. He is a police officer in a way and not even a bad or aggressive one, just one that passionately believes in the peace. Unfortunately, he now believes Yuki is a threat to the peace, which is going to make him nearly impossible to reason with now.

The rest of the chapter finally brings everyone back together. Which only ends in an expected way. The Hiroshi is now is too binary for Yuki to accept. And it's only made worse with them learning what happened to their friends. So there will be a lot more clashing and butting of heads before things settle out. The whole arc has been fun because it is put characters you know into a different light and situation. They are acting foreign because of the new life they had to deal with. I do wish I had developed more background characters to work with for this arc. But they probably would have been forgotten.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Chapter 314 is now available! Things have slowed a little with it coming more down to personal drama and leading into more flashbacks. This one I'm imagining to be pretty short though. It is purely there to just set Hiroshi's current personality with a little more development. He's already had plenty of pieces throughout the arc so far. So I don't need to do a lot of really add to it. Just a little story. It's mostly needed for the sake of getting Yuki to be a little more willing to work with them. The emotions are all running to hot that Yuki's not going to forgive or easily work with them. So he needs something.

I do come back to the guilt that Yuki has for the problems that he caused. It is something that he feels all the time now that he is back in Japan. It is only made worse seeing how everything has collapsed into ruin. But Seiji can keep on him on the course without Saki doing it.

The showdown is coming up though as promised. There is very little standing in the way of it right now. Overall this has been a pretty short arc and even when it ends, it should only be like 50 chapters long at best. It's more of a setup and tone shift arc than a massive epic like the last one. The fourth arc is going to be pretty long from all of my guesses. So you can look forward to that again. Though the plan is not to do massive arcs like that anymore. There is only really one remaining arc that has the potential of being massive, but a 200 chapter arc is just more than necessary. There are too many arcs going on and plot threads that the story won't survive well with massive arcs like that.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Chapter 315 is now up! The flashback starts, but doesn't end. Yeah, it should not be much of a surprise at this point. While I was writing it more came to me to give Hiroshi further development and the story. It felt like just one chapter was going to be too brief to handle the weight of what it was. So I split it into two chapters. It's a short story, just one that helps to position Hiroshi.

Starting with the cliffhanger, yeah this is going to be one of those moments where you need to have a really good memory. Because this is a callback, a really far one at that. You have to go all the way back to chapter 56, which was years ago. So unless you re-read my story a lot, which is unlikely probably, you don't remember her. Sakura is the girl that Hiroshi knew from his time in middle school. She actually appeared in the other Hiroshi flashback. They knew each other, but their relationship was never really made clear. It was a brief sort of flashback. But Sakura is back now and well you probably know how this is going to end at this point. There is not a lot of mystery given the tone of this arc. All it is now will be seeing it play out. Which will be the next chapter.

I think I mentioned it before, but I drop a lot of names during this arc of students that get killed. They're all background characters that never really were addressed in any meaningful sense. So their deaths are a little weak, in that sure the whole thing is terrible, but you have no emotion connection to people that never had any speaking lines. Having Sakura really helps give more weight to things with Hiroshi, especially giving their history. The character defining moment in his life is the next chapter and it could only be done with someone important to him. A little sad I never had a lot of extra time to work with Sakura, but it largely would have been fluff or filler if I had. The story is already long enough as it is.

Tatsuya is someone that I don't really get to put a lot of time into. So it was nice to do this from his point of view. He's got a lot going on just like Hiroshi. The first part of this chapter is just as important as the rest. Since it does pick up the pieces from what is happening with Hiroshi and Tatsuya both everything went sideways. Something that I definitely wanted to show was that Hiroshi hasn't been handling Kazuhiro's death as gracefully as he is presenting. He was a friend and even more to Tatsuya a childhood friend. So they are both suffering in their ways, in very quiet ways. Showing how Tatsuya supports his friend, even though Hiroshi is often seen as the leader is a great moment for them. It clear through the arc at present that Tatsuya is the hand pushing Hiroshi forward and Hiroshi is struggling, even though Hiroshi plays a strong front. Something that Yuki is blind to, as he is not great as reading people yet. Ayumi would have picked up on and Nerine would as well since they are raised to being good at reading people, it's a necessary skill for them. It is the reason why I mention it a lot during their fights. When you're fighting where secrets are the thing that get you killed, reading the other person is the most important skill to learn. Yuki still has a long way to go, even though he has plenty of masks that he works around as well.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Now available for reading is chapter 316! This chapter does actually conclude Hiroshi's flashback as promised. It is easy to make it long at times as you already likely know with me. So that I was able to keep it on point is good. It did not need to be a huge a flashback, it is not necessary to be really long. You know mostly already about how Hiroshi is and can easily guess how he got there too.

Even if you know or have a pretty good idea what is going to happen. It is still good and important for the character's development to know what happened and how it played out. In a classic case of melodrama, Hiroshi had to kill Sakura as the first person, who was clearly very important to him. Sakura's importance to Hiroshi is a story for another day. If I got into all of the different aspects, it would end up just bloating everything. So I'm keeping things focused. Hiroshi's importance to the story doesn't end in this arc. He's got more coming up for the future. Which Yuki and him will have a changed relationship and approach.

One thing that I did try to be careful about during the whole thing is that this is a story from Tatsuya's point of view not Hiroshi. And given what happened, this is not the sort of thing that Tatsuya went asking Hiroshi about after the fact. It is not something that he would willing or not talk about. So when they go up fighting on the roof, I don't show any of that. Hiroshi just comes out of worse from the experience.

There will be some quick follow ups in the next chapter to answer the last couple of points to what happened after Sakura. But that won't be a flashback. It'll be back to the present.

Enjoy!

[Andromeda]

Another late day on the count of wanting to finish, but chapter 317 is now available! With the flashback over, it is now back into the heart of the matter. Things move pretty quickly and it is clear that I'm pushing to the end of the arc now. There has not really been a lot left to get into for the arc as I've been saying. So the showdown will be starting soon.

I do have to wonder for what I've done which side people will thinking it was going to play out on. The classic approach is that after hearing the story Yuki would see that Hiroshi is a good person still and caught in a bad situation. He would agree to work with them aiming for things to improve and probably work on Hiroshi for atonement. But that wasn't the way it played out. Even after listening to the story, Yuki refused them.

This actually ended up complicated matters for me. Because I was going the classic route in my original plans. However, as I started to write the arc, Yuki's personality spoke up about how he would feel about the situation. And I realized more than anything that Yuki would have difficulty facing anyone that was killing people, especially a friend. That first meeting was a sign of that. Yuki though he came close to wanting to kill before, has managed to keep himself from doing so because he sees that as a line he can't cross. Sort of makes you wonder how he'd handle it knowing that Saki has killed. And I'm not even referring to those that she killed in this arc. They all get a pass in this arc due to not being themselves. But Saki has intentionally killed and hid it from Yuki. Which will be a fun conversation when that happens.

Though in the case of Yuki, it is not that he hates Hiroshi, he doesn't. He just can't agree to work with them knowing that doing so would likely mean more people will die. Hiroshi and his group are convinced that killing is the only way to settle things. Yuki sees that and can't accept to work them. He does understand what happened to Hiroshi and even feels for him, but can't allow himself to be party to killing people.

So Yuki is moving independently to solve things. But the biggest surprise I think is Seiji's betrayal. I left things on a pretty big cliffhanger here since there are some implications in his words that could mean one thing. And for his character, that is saying a lot. So it makes for a really fun place to stop.

This arc has always been about betrayal and friends fighting friends. It is also the first arc to really drive home the point that what Yuki has done to Japan probably is not a good thing. It gets him depressed thinking what he did, but he does have a more hopeful outlook that good could be found in what happened, since his friends have managed to find good out of it. However, the darkness of Takako and the heavy shadow over all of Japan as the UN, makes it clear that nothing is simple or completely good. Shattering the naive reality is a pretty strong theme.

Enjoy!