You should go away if you haven't gathered all the reports yet. This spoils the 21st report.
If you have, though, enjoy!

Anarchist, Egoist

*

Sanae tapped a cigarette out of the carton and lit up, staring out over the city he loved. The view from the roof of Pork City was incredible; though the sun had set nearly two hours ago, crowds still pushed their way through a bright maze of neon. Unfortunately, Sanae couldn't fully enjoy the view because of the cacophony of stray thoughts beating against his mind. For whatever reason, Pork City managed to collect and concentrate the worst of Shibuya, focusing it into an uneven flow of something halfway between sound and pressure. The chaos was so bad that most UG citizens shunned the building, and even normal humans were known to be put off by it.

Even so, amidst the screams of greedy self-assertion, there were a few pure thoughts that gleamed like gold dust in a muddy river. Sanae exhaled a long cloud of smoke in a sigh. How much good made something worth saving: that was where they disagreed.

Despite the headache it gave him, though, Pork City had its uses.

"Hey, can I get a light? Can't seem 2 find mine…"

"Sure thing."

The psychic turmoil made it impossible to focus any kind of second sight on the building, so it was the perfect spot for Sanae to have a smoke with his co-conspirator without fearing the eyes of the Higher Plane.

Sanae tossed his lighter over to the young Reaper, who caught it, used it, and then studied it by the glow of his cigarette. "Your work," he commented, admiring the gold leopard painted on it.

"Yep. It's from the Udagawa tag."

"I know." Sho handed the lighter back. "Always did like your stuff."

Sanae snorted.

"Something odd about that?"

"Nah, not really. I'm just surprised." Sanae sent him a crooked smirk. "It's nothing like your sculptures."

"Ha. No, it's zetta different all right." Sho took a long drag of his cigarette and exhaled. Some of the smoke drifted Sanae's way; it was more acrid than his preferred brand and made him wrinkle his nose.

"Still… something about it is equal," Sho continued. "The sincerity factor or something like that."

"Meaning?"

"You really mean what you put into your art. I really mean what I put into my art. I think it shows."

"Hm." Sanae, of course, did genuinely believe the messages he imprinted through his art. All he ever got from Sho's junk piles, though, was ego and a love for chaos. And if that was what he meant to share through his art… well, for one thing it would explain Sho's attraction to this building. To Shibuya in general.

For a minute, both Reaper and Angel gazed down at Shibuya in silence, immersed in its arrhythmia. As always, Sanae found himself almost hypnotized by the sensual cocktail unique to this city alone: the sounds, the smells, the patterns of lights and the pressure of ideal against ideal.

He looked then at Sho, out of the corners of his eyes. An excited lust glittered on the Reaper's face as he stared at the city he hoped to make his. In answer, Sanae's stomach shifted queasily. The same lust for power that had convinced Sanae that Sho was the perfect disruptor for the Composer's Game also made him wary for Shibuya's fate in Sho's hands. But it was too late to reconsider now, and if he turned back it would threaten what little hope he had created for the city's survival.

Sanae tossed his finished cigarette to the floor and ground the embers under his heel. As he readied a second, he spoke. "Got big plans for it?" He nodded down towards the city.

Sho gave a hissing laugh that sent demonic tendrils of smoke through his teeth. "Oh, do I," he said. And then, abruptly: "Fibonacci numbers."

Sanae raised an eyebrow, nonplussed.

"You know what those are, right? 0-1-1-2-3-5-8-13, et cetera? Each term is the sum of the two previous terms?"

"Yeah, what about them?"

Sho began to prowl back and forth. "You know they appear in nature? Tree branches, ferns… They're not following the sequence; they're just growing. The sequence follows them. Same with the spira mirabilis, the logarithmic spiral. As much as it may have interesting mathematical properties, the real trick to it is that it occurs all over in nature, from mollusk shells to the arms of galaxies. And both are connected to the golden ratio, a proportion that has long been considered aesthetically perfect and mathematically intriguing—and also appears in nature."

"Uh-huh." Sanae took a puff of his cigarette. "…Are you actually answering my question?"

Sho stopped for a moment to fix him with a look—serious, confident, almost haughty. "Order," he said clearly, "is garbage."

A warning chill went through Sanae.

Returning to his pacing, Sho continued, "I like mathematics because they describe, not impose. Nature has its own order that emerges from chaos, and trying to control that ruins it, subtracts from it. The world's zetta beautiful and fascinating as it is, without people trying to cram it into false formulas by brute force."

Sanae tapped the ashes off the end of his cigarette and asked the safe question first: "So that's what your sculptures mean. You're some kind of Dadaist?"

Sniffing in contempt, Sho replied, "I'm not joining some other hectopascal's movement to express my own ideas. No, I'm a Minamimotoist."

An anarchist and egoist, Sanae translated mentally. Then: "So, your plans for the Game…?"

"No rules," Sho answered readily. "No missions. None of this Game Master or officer garbage. I'll let natural selection run the equation."

"And you'll sit back admiring the patterns that emerge in the chaos?"

Sho nodded, and Sanae tried not to look as sick as he felt. The Reaper's theory was interesting but ignorant and wholly flawed. The Game existed precisely so that such chaos wouldn't. Without the guidance of a firm-handed Composer, the UG's energy would doubtlessly overflow into the RG, wreaking havoc and confusion on the living and tearing chunks out of Shibuya's already not-always-stable foundation. It terrified Sanae to think of his city being wounded that way.

He took a deep breath, tried to keep his cigarette from shaking between his fingertips. The Angels, he reminded himself, were dedicated to the creation of the future. If Sho really ran such a destructive, counterproductive Game, They—he doubted he would still be among the Angelic "We" by that point—would depose Sho and hand-pick a new Composer. That new Composer probably wouldn't be as strong and skilled as Joshua, but neither would he be as capricious. The Angels and Their puppet Composer would remold Shibuya; They would stifle it, possibly cripple it, but They would not destroy it.

No amount of self-delusion could make that scenario seem ideal, but Sanae told himself again that he had no choice, no time. It was preferable to Shibuya's destruction, the mere thought of which carved an empty ache into Sanae's heart. He would buy the city some time, at whatever cost, and hope that its resilience would save it.

"My turn to ask a question." Sho's voice cut into Sanae's thoughts suddenly. "What's the origin of your sudden betrayal of that hectopascal?"

For a moment, Sanae teetered on the edge of telling Sho about the Game between the Composer and the Conductor and its likely outcome. He held back, though, for two reasons: first, because he found Sho hard enough to predict without adding any new factors; and second, because their Game was meant to be kept secret. Not for the first time, Sanae silently mocked himself for his arbitrary observation of some rules as he answered Sho, "He's been kinda pissing me off lately."

It was true enough. As Producer, Sanae was allowed to express no more than irritation at the Composer's haste and folly, was allowed to do no more than beg the boy to reconsider. Fully aware of that fact, confident in his own superiority, and stubborn beyond belief, Joshua had smiled patronizingly and barely condescended to listen to him. It was then that Sanae—first in bitter resentment and then in strategy—had turned to thoughts of treason.

Sho knew none of the details and so chuckled at the reason Sanae gave. "Wow."

"What?"

"If you go out for blood when you're 'kinda pissed off,' I'd hate to get you really angry."

Sanae laughed hollowly in return. He let his cigarette, half-finished, drop to the floor because it was making him sick—that, or Pork City was, or speaking to Sho. He could no longer tell which.

"It'd be dangerous, all right."

It was a very stupid idea to decide to write Sho's philosphizing. Really. I'm a liberal arts major. (It shows, doesn't it? It does. I apologize.)
Also. This may stop being available if I decide it's too emo. We shall see.