Moneytory stepped into a world that looked almost exactly like his own—
but wrong.
Too clean.
Too perfect.
Skyscrapers rose like glass knives.
Streets buzzed with silence.
People moved like synchronized puppets, smiling, working, existing.
But no one laughed.
No one cried.
No one lived.
And waiting for him, at the center of the polished world,
stood a man wearing his own face.
"Welcome," the other said, arms spread wide.
"Welcome to the world you could have had."
Moneytory’s jaw tightened.
"You built a graveyard," he said.
"A museum of obedience."
The other—the Mirror Moneytory—smiled thinly.
"No sickness. No war. No chaos.
Only harmony.
And you call that a graveyard?"
The words stung, not because they were wrong—
but because they were almost right.
Almost.
"Where’s the laughter?" Moneytory demanded.
"The arguments? The dreams?
Where’s the choice?"
The Mirror shrugged.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
"Dreams create disappointment.
Laughter leads to sorrow.
Arguments spawn hate.
I removed the disease."
Moneytory looked around again.
No love.
No grief.
No freedom.
Just... existence.
Empty.
"You call that living?" he said.
"I call it surrender."
The air between them thickened.
The Mirror raised his Thought Converter.
"Let’s settle it, then.
Not with fists.
With truth."
[Commencing Mental Battlefield: Thought War Initiated]
The world melted.
Moneytory found himself standing in a void made of swirling memories.
Each of them reached into their core—
and pulled out their weapons.
Mirror Moneytory summoned visions of perfect, utopian cities:
towers that never fell, streets that never flooded, smiles that never broke.
Moneytory summoned something messier:
nights spent crying.
fists slammed into walls.
hands held tight in the dark.
Laughter, not because life was easy—
but because it was hard.
Their memories crashed together.
The utopias shattered into fragments against the chaos of real emotions.
The rawness of dreams unmet.
The beauty of flawed existence.
"You think pain makes you strong?" the Mirror sneered.
"No," Moneytory said quietly.
"I think surviving it does."
The Mirror struck, hurling a memory spear made of sterilized hope.
Moneytory countered with a shield woven from every small act of love he had ever witnessed.
They fought.
Not with steel.
Not with fire.
With who they were.
And slowly, the Mirror began to crack.
Cracks spiderwebbed across his perfect composure.
Across his pristine world.
Because for all his control,
for all his calculations—
He had forgotten how to bleed.
"You can build a perfect world," Moneytory said,
"but if no one can cry there—
it’s not a world worth saving."
With one final surge, Moneytory released everything—
grief, rage, hope, fear, joy—
and the mirror shattered.
When the light faded, he stood alone, breathing hard.
The perfect world was gone.
Only fragments of dreams floated around him.
But for the first time, he smiled.
"Perfect isn't living.
Feeling is."
To be continued...