Anna, Takt, and Destiny’s road trip takes through the South, passing larges swaths of recent D2 destruction. Once they reach a larger city (Charlotte, North Carolina, I believe) they find it full of refugees living in shanty towns in the park. Takt has also developed the annoying habit of tapping his finger constantly, rather than only most of the time. No wonder Anna puts him in a seperate hotel room!
With Anna about to snap, Destiny nearly snaps Takt’s neck, then insists he tell them what’s going on. Turns out he’s composing a song, but can’t get it on to the page. While he composes in his head night and day, his eye bags growing larger and darker, Destiny drives off some D2s on her own. WHen she mentions “very important plans”, he can’t help but follow her.
What he discovers is shocking: Destiny doing something other than simply fighting D2s. She buys groceries for a refugee and her baby son, and sweets for the displaced little ones. Just little things you woldn’t expect something that is supposedly just a weapon to do. Anna sidles up to Takt and tells him this is nothing new: Destiny hasn’t just improved as a Musicart, she’s evolving as a person.
Anna also tells Takt that the one who found a musical instrument for him—a melodica to aid with his composing—was Destiny. She even waited outside his hotel room, looking nervous. It’s enough to make Anna wonder out loud…what if their Cosette is still in there somewhere, gradually adding humanity to the anti-D2-weapon that is Destiny?
The show’s “rules” may have already established that the Musicart replaces the person who used to own the body…but who’s to say Cosette/Destiny aren’t different? Grand Maestro Sagan himself is so certain of Takt and Destiny’s uniqueness and potential that he orders Schindler to leave them alone and let them do their thing.
In what initially looked like (owing in part to the dramatic lighting) what was going to be a groundbreaking conversation between Destiny and Takt is suddenly cut short, if only because Destiny asks too many sensitive questions too quickly and directly, and the memories that dredges up in Takt makes him shut down.
Even so, it wasn’t a matter of Takt not wanting to talk about Cosette at all, just the curt manner in which Destiny was trying to extract biological information about the original occupant of her body. It’s pretty clear that the intended audience for his new piece is Cosette, but Destiny (and Anna) will have to do.
In the meantime, sirens blare outside, indicating a D2 attack in progress. Thankfully it’s only one small unit that Cosette is able to deal with swiftly…but due to Takt’s sleep deprivation even this amount of fighting takes him close to his usual limit. Things get worse when Destiny detects a whole herd of D2 up in the forested mountains.
Once there, they both hear a clear and unnerving tone, which turns out to be the tuning fork of Hell. Apparently Schindler has gone completely off the reservation, and not just in terms of disobeying the Grand Maestro’s orders to leave Takt and Destiny alone.
No, Schindler has decided it’s up to him and Hell to attract D2s in order to get rid of the lower-class, lower-income human “garbage” who in his twisted mind are consuming too much of the world’s very limited resources. He’s trying to make a new world of just the “chosen”—i.e. 1%—with obviously himself being the sole judge of who is worthy of continuing to live or not.
Oh, and he attracted the D2s that interrupted the Symphonica roadshow…and resulted in the death of Cosette. It’s clear that this show has decided to make Schindler (which it’s clear now is not the best name for this guy, considering the reputation of the most famous figure with that name) the Evilest Evil Guy Who Ever Eviled, and while Hell at least looks cool when she’s kicking ass, the pair of them are pretty dull and one-dimensional as villains go.
It remains to be seen if there’s any redeeming them at this point, but Takt and Destiny are in uncharted territory: they’ve only killed D2s…never people, and as angry as Takt is, killing anyone for any reason changes you forever. I imagine Lenny and Titan will make it there in time before Takt has to decide if the Cosette he knew and loved would really want him to kill, even if Schindler deserves it.