Play Carefully
By Otte, who gets inspiration from the most utterly bizarre things
He had to be cheating.
Neku was sure of it, Josh was cheating. He was asking for everything he had, and Neku wasn't getting anywhere. Every strategy he tried only lasted long enough to meet amused, pitying smiles and every card he asked for the response was for Joshua to give him an odd look and say, in his saccharine, sarcasm-loaded voice, that he didn't have it and why ever did he ask that was so silly.
Joshua and Mr H kept exchanging knowing, amused smirks at his every move and it was driving him crazy, because they had to be cheating.
"Your move, Phones," Mr H said, checking a card from Joshua. Neku sighed and picked up the dice, wondering how, exactly, he'd been roped into playing this stupid game. He wasn't exactly comfortable whenever the word "Game" and "Joshua" were anywhere near each other.
Especially when the game was about investigating a murder.
He could, at least, be grateful the murder wasn't his own this time.
The dice clattered against the board, two dots staring up at him mockingly as they came to rest. He scowled and picked up the tiny Professor Plum figurine and trotted it forward two spaces.
"Not having much luck, are you, Neku?" Josh cooed. He felt an old urge to strangle Joshua rising but he forced himself to ignore him, and looked sullenly down at the cards held in his hand.
Study, Ballroom, Mrs Peacock, Col Mustard, Wrench, Reverend Green.
None of which were very helpful. He could not get a hold of whatever Mr H and Josh had, or even put forward a decent guess. It was ridiculous - it was a children's board game and he, somehow, totally sucked at it.
He swore to god Mr H and Josh were conspiring against him. There was no way he could possibly be so clueless at a game like this, it was based around simple deduction but he still couldn't managed to pull a single win from his sleeve.
He stared down at the board, the three little pieces standing at various points of the mansion, and tried to predict where each piece would go. He couldn't – the board was too fluid, there were too many possible paths and combinations of choices. It was frustrating, and Josh seemed to know he found it frustrating. Miss Scarlet took great joy in wandering in random zigzags throughout the corridors, seemingly for no other reason than to just be irritating. Since 'just being irritating' was something Joshua specialised in, it only seemed appropriate.
Yet both Mr H and Josh seemed to be able to know perfectly well where Neku was going to go and what he was going to say. They snickered quietly between themselves wherever he went, and if they were trying to psych him out it was definitely working.
He stared down at the board, trying to see all these things Mr H and Josh had already seemed to figure out, wondering if they saw the secret arrows and lines that led him to the conclusion but all Neku could see was a cheap plastic board, tattered at the edges with little plastic pieces scattered across.
He bit his lip and tried to imagine it the way they saw it, but still only saw the gameboard.
Suddenly he wondered if this was exactly what they saw – only they were so used to watching Shibuya from above, this simply seemed like a simplified version. Perhaps Josh and Mr H just sat on their little clouds, pushing the pieces of him and his friends across, smirking and laughing between themselves as they went, just as they were here. It was an unnerving thought.
"A twelve, excellent. I can go wherever I want now," Josh said, smiling, "Not that it matters much, though."
"Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious by now," Mr H said, taking a sip of his coffee, "How 'bout you Phones? Got it sorted.
Neku folded his arms and glared across at them.
"Well yeah. Duh," he said.
"I'd expect nothing less from our little Game-Winner," Josh commented idly, and Neku took a deep gulp of coffee – scalding his tongue in the process – to stop himself trying to snap Josh's girly little neck
Josh leaned forward and turned Miss Scarlet abruptly around, hopping her across into the hall.
"Alright Neku, here's a request. Please don't hide any cards from me," he said, smiling sweetly and patiently, but his tone loaded with malice. He scowled as Joshua glanced down at his cards.
"Oh screw you, Josh," Neku muttered, becoming increasingly more frustrated with this game.
"Sorry, dear, what was that?" he responded coolly, he didn't even look up. Joshua simply continued to stare at his notes. Neku had initially thought it was ridiculous to be taking notes for a game, but he suddenly wished he had.
Neku counted to ten in his head.
Miss Scarlet came to rest in his hall, and Joshua picked up his pencil, twirling it lazily between his fingers.
"Neku…do you have the hall, Mrs White, or the revolver?" he asked. Neku shook his head. Mr H made a small sound that sounded like "ah" and nodded, noting something down. Neku rapped his fingers against the desk and he felt his hand reaching to adjust the headphones on his head – the ones he'd so recently abandoned. He still wasn't used to their absence, and sometimes he still struggled with himself without them.
A wide smile spread across Joshua face and he noted something down.
"Interesting," he murmured and Neku sat up, his frustration tightening around his chest like a sharp wire.
"What? What the hell could you possibly get from that?" he snapped. Joshua sighed and shook his head in despair at him, tutting softly.
"Relax, Phones. Maybe make that next coffee of yours a decaf, huh?" Mr H interrupted before Neku could make any sort of snarky response. Mr H laughed at his own joke, and picked up the dice.
"There's no way I'm buying any more anyway. Not while I've still got taste-buds left," Neku murmured to himself sulkily. Neither of his fellow players made any indication that they'd heard him or that they at all cared as Mr H threw the dice again.
The dice rattled against the board, finally resting on seven. Mr H sent a quick, scrutinising glance at Joshua and he picked up his piece and moved it towards the attic in the centre of the board.
He stopped a few paces away from it and Neku snatched up the dice, just trying to get his turn over with as quickly as he could, whilst trying to seem as though he was as bored with the game as he possibly could be.
"So you're going for the final move next turn?" Mr H asked Joshua as he watched with amusement as the dice bounced off the table and disappeared across the floor. Neku swore and got up to retrieve them, hiding his embarrassment with his irritation.
"Of course. I like to think I'm the type who plays to win," Joshua replied, as Neku scooped up the dice and sat back on his chair again, shuffling in with a squeak of plastic again linoleum. He rolled the dice and pushed Professor Plum in a meaningless pattern across the board, having quickly given up on beating them.
"Unlike some people," Joshua added snidely, taking up the dice and rattling them in his hands, taking as much time as possible and savouring every second of Neku's quickly waning temper.
Neku folded his arms and leaned back on his chair, the soles of his boots against the edge of the table. Whatever Josh, he thought to himself, seething, have your stupid little game, you ass.
It wouldn't annoy him to lose – Neku wasn't the type of person who would tip over the board if the end didn't favour him – it did, however, annoy him to lose to Joshua. It especially annoyed him to lose to Joshua, when he was cheating. He didn't know how the hell Josh was cheating, but he couldn't be making so many lucky guesses and throws without some sort of intervention. Neku suddenly had the mental image of invisible Players, standing behind him and muttering whatever cards he held to Joshua, manipulating the dice as they fell to land on double sixes each time.
He wouldn't put it past him to make that some kind of insane mission for the day.
"Help the Composer annoy the hell out of Neku.
Fail and face erasure,
The Reapers"
Neku could imagine it easily enough.
Josh just wasn't the type of person who played a game – even his own – by very strict rules. Neku still wasn't clear on what his motivations had been to let him come back to life – it wasn't something that had been explained to him and he, admittedly, hadn't pursued it much further. The Game, in the end, had proved to be a good experience for him so he had to trust that Joshua had some idea of what he was doing or how his own system worked.
It just wasn't something he would ever want to relive; not in a million years. If Josh ever shot him again, Neku would tear him limb from limb. Somehow.
Miss Scarlet came to rest on the attic, and Joshua picked up the sealed pack of cards in the middle of the board.
"I'm predicting…Miss Scarlet with the revolver in the hall," he said, and slipped the cards out of the packet.
He smilled and scattered the cards across the board – Miss Scarlet, the revolver, the hall.
"Hm, guess I somewhat uncovered myself though," he said, "Suppose I'll just have to do away with the witnesses as well."
Mr H laughed as Neku scowled at the cards.
"You are so messing with me," Neku said as Joshua made shooting gestures at the Professor Plum on the board.
"It's only a game Neku," Joshua said, flicking over the Professor Plum figure and putting the Miss Scarlet figure into various pseudo-lewd positions, prompting more laughter from Mr H, "You think too much. It's just a game."
Neku folded his arms and leaned forward on the table, glancing back and wondered when somebody had painted over the decal at the front of the café.