Lusica

Lusica

Information
Full name	Lusica
Affiliation	URNC, William (nominally)
Voice actor	Ishikawa Yui
Artist	Unknown

Lusica (露西卡, ルシカ, 루시카) is a pan-immunosome consciousness born from the Shrike due to William's experiments. She is an important background character in Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery.

She usually has the same appearance as Jefuty, except for yellow instead of blue eyes and thicker eyebrows.

Story Involvement

Due to the time-travelling nature of the story, the following ad-hoc names are used to designate specific versions of the characters:

• Nirvana-Lusica and Nirvana-Jefuty designate the version of the characters that made the pact in 2097 and are waiting to manifest at the end of operation Bakery.
• Past-Lusica and Past-Jefuty designate versions of the characters belonging to different timelines, at earlier points in time than the one currently being discussed.

Early timelines

Lusica is a functional replica of Jefuty through the use of Progenitor Shrike cells. This gives Lusica the same power as the Shrike Progenitor Noylu, including extreme resilience, ability to take any form for infiltration and high attack power, as well as the innate ability to activate Relic Technology as a pan-immunosome.

In the earliest timelines, William would create Lusica and manage to infiltrate her into Hollow City long after 2097, allowing Jefuty and Mendo to live peacefully in South America for several years before William caused “the end of the world” through mass Relic activation. Lusica would however find that this outcome does not suit her either, as she found that becoming the last living organism in the world was too lonely. A version of Jefuty eventually allowed Lusica access to Nirvana and the Virtual Cognition Image (VCI), enabling Lusica to speak with alternate versions of Jefuty and search for the "Jefuty who can change fate".

Lusica was originally confounded that Jefuty, despite having complete control over Nirvana, would not send memories to versions of herself far in the past in order to easily alter the end of the world. After accessing the VCI, Lusica realized that Jefuty was actually unwilling to radically alter the lives of Mendo and her friends. Instead, Jefuty persisted in finding a way to prevent the end of the world by preventing access to the relics, either by destroying them or by taking out any way to interface with them (achieved by Jefuty altering her own genes). Moreover, Jefuty refused to send detailed information to her past selves so they were free to make choices for themselves. Lusica noted that, since herself and Jefuty could be considered descendants of the unknown civilization, Jefuty could be considered a traitor to her kind since, by neutralizing relic activation, she was actively preventing their potential return. However, Lusica admired the lengths Jefuty would go to for Mendo's sake, calling it a love fit for a goddess.

The major fault in Jefuty's plan was Lusica herself, because as long as Lusica existed, a mass relic activation could occur at any time. Lusica's solution to avoid the end of the world was to prevent William from ever creating Lusica in the first place. Lusica intended to prevent the creation of her other selves by having Jefuty return to him and disturb his research by abusing his faith in her until he was no longer a threat. Lusica had another stake in this plan: she resented William for always considering her a mere copy of Jefuty, and wanted to spite him by preventing him from ever reaching his ultimate goal of unlocking the mysteries of the relics. To implement her vengeance against William, Lusica needed to transfer her consciousness into Jefuty's body, while Jefuty needed a way to ensure past versions of herself would reach the ideal timeline under her preferred terms (ensuring the survival of her loved ones and preserving the self-determination of her other selves).

To meet these requirements, Jefuty would allow Lusica's consciousness to enter her past body through high-dimensional memory transfer, while Lusica would allow the same with Jefuty's consciousness. Lusica agreed not to interfere with the decisions of past versions of Jefuty, only taking over when she would depart to join William. Meanwhile, past versions of Lusica would allow Jefuty's consciousness to take over her body until the end of operation Bakery. This entity composed of past-Lusica's Shrike body and Nirvana-Jefuty's consciousness would come to be called Lige. Lige's role was to allow past versions of Jefuty to complete the anti-Shrike serum in 2084 instead of 2097, and to ensure that the final Jefuty would adhere to the pact between Nirvana-Jefuty and Nirvana-Lusica by surrendering to the URNC and returning to William at the end of operation Bakery. Jefuty added the condition that she be allowed to properly say goodbye to Mendo.

While the completion of the anti-Shrike serum in 2097 destroyed the ability of Jefuty's consciousness to connect to Nirvana, and would do the same in 2084 after the plan was enacted, the presence of Nirvana-Lusica in Jefuty's body, and of the local Lusica in Lige's body, would allow them to form a connection, and enable Jefuty to transfer memories between timelines. By selectively transferring key information learned from failed timelines, the ideal timeline would eventually be reached.

While she would be sacrificing her own future, Jefuty agreed to the plan since it was the best outcome for mankind and her loved ones. It also preserved the ability of her alternate selves to make their own decisions, while also creating for herself a choice that won't end up in widespread death and destruction regardless of the path she takes. Lusica claimed she was in a similar situation.

To preserve the equity of Lusica's trial, Jefuty's memories of the plan were sealed. Shortly after Mendo and Jefuty left Hollow City, the present-Lusica launched the attack on the Antarctic Relic and activated it according to William's plan. Her true objective was to test the determination of the current version of Jefuty, and she attacked Mendo and her when they arrived to deactivate the relic. Both were mortally wounded, but their combined efforts and use of their anti-Shrike blood allowed them to kill present-Lusica. Nirvana-Lusica pulled present-Jefuty into the VCI, having observed that this Jefuty was a formidable enemy when she fought for Mendo's sake. Lusica showed her that her future would be doomed regardless of her efforts, and reminded her of the plan before realizing the body swap and starting the iterative process to the ideal timeline.

In timelines after the pact, Jefuty's consciousness in Lusica's body (Lige) would lose her memories during the transfer. Lusica would then inform the mirrored Jefuty that she is "a carrier before the shift in destinies" and urge her to play out her destiny. She recovered these memories from Nirvana after the timeline where Jefuty and Lige performed the anti-Shrike serum experiment, due to the intermixing of their bloods.

Chapter 3 and 4 timelines

At the start of the Chapter 3 timeline, after she has been blown up by the Svarog tank, Lige is contacted by Lusica, who offers to allow the Shrike Progenitor to take control over their body early so they can try to escape the URNC. Lige refuses, and Lusica continues to hide Lige's consciousness and her own from the Progenitor after it takes over their body later in William's lab. Lusica's objective at the time is to make sure Lige's consciousness is not discovered by the Progenitor, because she suspects the Progenitor and William can access high-dimensional memories and revealing themselves would ruin Lusica and Jefuty's plan in every subsequent timeline. When Jefuty later comes to the lab, Lusica prevents Lige from acting too soon by pulling her consciousness into the VCI, where she takes Jefuty's full appearance and invites Lige to have tea with her and their sisters Jessica and Lisa. Jefuty later aborts the timeline after the Progenitor took over Lige's consciousness and massacred the AU forces.

Jefuty's efforts eventually led to a timeline where operation Bakery was complete and Jefuty and Lige were exfiltrated from the Caucasus. However, this was not the ideal timeline because all of the other participants were killed. Lige (Nirvana-Jefuty's consciousness) explained the full plan to the local Jefuty so she would try to work out the last requirements for the pact to conclude. She also warned that at that point, Lusica's consciousness was beginning to retake control over her body.

Final timeline

As she was starting to recover control over her body, Lusica took part in the battle of Mineral Water City against Sugar Σ. She promised that Lige's memories and consciousness would be preserved somehow. During the fight at the airport, where Sugar turned into the Reflection of the Progenitor, Jefuty and Lusica entered the main hall that had become the Reflection's body to destroy it from the inside. The Progenitor attempted to take over Lusica's body despite her neural inhibitor.

After the Reflection was destroyed, Jefuty made her final farewell to Mendo and departed to Montonovka Town, where she set a last stand against the URNC forces before being captured by William. Jefuty warned Lusica that Mendo might one day find a way to rescue her consciousness from her own body.

Gallery

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  Lusica's appearance in the Virtual Cognition Image.

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  Lusica and Jefuty's first encounter in 2097.

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  Jefuty let Lusica take control of her body.

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  Lige's “Mirror Self” outfit is Lusica's true appearance.

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  Lusica appears in Jefuty's “Crimson Dress” outfit