Disclaimer: The World Ends With You is the property of Square Enix; all characters have been borrowed without permission.
A/N: Many thanks to those who reviewed last chapter! Reviews make my day. :)
-two: mixed messages-
Neku quickly realised that shouting at the air was not going to have much effect, and so, in a far gloomier mood than he had been for most of the day - or all week, for that matter - he headed for home at last. He tried to finish his burger on the way, but found that he suddenly did not have much appetite, and so the remainder of the thing was eventually deposited in a trashcan along with his soda.
"It was nice knowing you. Seriously."
Right up until that point, Neku might have been able to convince himself that he really had been overreacting to Joshua's vague remarks about Mr. Hanekoma; that there really was just some sort of odd protocol the UG was expected to follow after a Game of such magnitude; that Joshua had only been cryptic out of habit, or to annoy.
But if Mr. H was following protocol, then whose protocol was he following? As far as Neku's limited understanding of the subject ran, inside Shibuya's boundaries the Composer had total control, and Joshua was Shibuya's Composer. But Joshua hadn't looked or sounded too happy about this one: "He's decided to be boring and follow the rules."
And as for Joshua himself, in the last few seconds before he'd vanished, he had looked… strange. Not exactly worried - Neku wasn't sure he could even picture a worried Joshua - but definitely preoccupied, and Neku wondered what it was he had seen that had brought on the change in demeanour. "There are… other places I need to be."
Neku rubbed wearily at his forehead. If Joshua was in some sort of trouble, he reflected, then given that this was Joshua it was probably trouble of his own making. He'd get himself out of it, or not, but one way or the other it wasn't Neku's problem. Whatever was going on, it would be best by far not to get involved; Neku had just returned to life, and he wasn't in a hurry to get shot again.
If Mr. H was in some sort of trouble, though…
Neku stared up at the sky for a moment as he walked, remembering the day when the Reaper named Uzuki had tried to talk him into murdering Shiki. Ashamed as he was to admit it, she had nearly succeeded - and would have done, if not for Mr. Hanekoma's timely intervention.
Neku didn't think he knew too many people who could have put Uzuki in her place without violence ultimately being involved. Her partner Kariya, yes, but largely because the two were clearly good friends - and also, frankly, because Neku doubted that even Uzuki was quite stupid enough to pick a fight with Kariya. There was a difference between being bad-tempered and being suicidal.
By contrast, she hadn't known Sanae Hanekoma from a hole in the wall; she'd mistaken him for a Player, in fact. And yet in the space of a few minutes Mr. Hanekoma had sent her packing, and had barely raised his voice in the process.
Yeah. Neku still wasn't entirely clear on who or what the man really was, but Mr. H could probably take care of himself, if anyone could.
Still… Neku would have felt better about it if he'd just had someway to know what was actually going on in the UG. A part of him couldn't help laughing at that, a little bit - Figures. I spent three weeks trying to get out of the damn place, and now I'm annoyed because I'm not there? - but mostly the uncertainty of it was a dull, unpleasant weight in his stomach. I'm home. This is supposed to be over.
A sudden thought occurred to him, and his hand dove into his pocket to fish for his cell phone. Finding it, he snapped it open, scrolled through the list of calls received. There weren't many, and most of them had come from Shiki or Beat in the past week - but Mr. H had called him once during the first week of the Game, to tell him that Beat had disappeared, and Neku's phone might have recorded the number.
Yup, there it was. Had to be the one; it was the only phone call Neku had received in the course of the three weeks. Calls between the RG and the UG probably wouldn't work, weren't supposed to work, but it had to be worth a shot.
Beep. "The number you have dialed does not exist. Please tr-"
He snapped the phone shut, muttered, "Of… course it doesn't," and stuffed the thing back in his pocket. Oh well. He'd had to try.
He reached his apartment a few minutes later. His parents, unsurprisingly, weren't there; a note on the door informed him that they might not be back until very late, and he found he was obscurely glad of that. He had begun the day in an uncommonly good mood, elated at the prospect of an afternoon with his friends, and right now he didn't feel up to explaining why that mood had vanished.
Nothing much, Mom. Just, you know, had a chat with the ruler of Shibuya's afterlife, and he's really kind of an asshole. Also, he murdered me a month ago - you, um, probably wouldn't remember that, though. I'm told that according to your reality it didn't happen.
Yeah… no.
He retreated to his room and slumped onto his bed, where he lay still and closed his eyes for a while. It's been a long month.
What was really bothering him, though, he decided eventually, was not the hazy intimation that all was not well in the UG. It was the fact that Joshua had felt inclined to hint darkly about it at him.
I'm alive. I'm home. I have actual friends now, you realise that? We all went out for ramen today. And Rhyme kicked my butt at Tin Pin, and Beat showed off on his skateboard and told stupid jokes, and Shiki dragged me into 104 and spent an hour making me try on clothes. And in the entire afternoon, nobody tried to kill us, or take anything from us, or make us play twisted, stupid games with other people's souls on the line if we lost.
If you think you're pulling me back into that, forget it.
Which was all well and good to say within the confines of his head, he thought reluctantly, but against someone who had twice had no qualms about shooting him, he doubted it would have much effect.
It didn't help that in the depths of his head, he could hear Joshua's voice, laughing:
Rethinking your trust in me so quickly, Neku?
He woke, to emptiness. Gray space stretched off in all directions, unbroken by any landmarks.
He turned around slowly, staring, as fear crept over him. This - this wasn't right. He was supposed to be in his room, in his apartment, in Shibuya. Home and safe. Not… whatever this was.
His mouth dry, he called out, "Hello? Is anyone-"
"Ah, Mr. Sakuraba."
He spun, and found himself face to face with a tall, dark-clad figure. Beyond that, little description could be given; Neku had a vague and confused impression of beauty, of a cold sort, but the being's features were somehow indistinct. They were there, but he could not quite focus on them properly.
The being nodded to him, and gave the faintest hint of a formal bow. "Welcome, Mr. Sakuraba, to what remains of Shibuya."
He froze, his breath catching in his throat as fear abruptly became terror. "What? No. No. That's not - that's not possible."
"On the contrary," the being said calmly. "Possible and, in light of your recent Games, inevitable."
"My recent..." Neku shook his head, fighting down the rising panic. "No. There's some - you've made some mistake. Joshua put everything back. He-"
"Joshua?" the being interrupted, frowning. "Oh, yes. The, ah, nickname which your Composer prefers. A strange informality, for one of his station. Very human." Distaste was evident in its tone. "He is being dealt with."
Neku stared numbly as the being continued, implacably, "But that is irrelevant. The fact is that you lost your final Game. In those circumstances-" It shrugged. " Your entry fee is non-refundable."
"My entry fee?" Neku repeated blankly.
"Shibuya, Mr. Sakuraba. Making the city's destruction… your fault."
And then he was back in the vast, dark throne room, where he had won Joshua's Game for him only to be shot for his troubles. This time, though, the throne was not empty.
"Dreaming? Really, Neku?" And the face, half-hidden in a shroud of shimmering light, might have been unrecognisable; the voice might have changed; but that damned laugh would have been hard to mistake, after it had spent a week setting his teeth on edge. "How boringly traditional. I suppose that's humanity all over, but I did expect better from you."
"Let me get this straight," Neku said shortly. "You've wandered into my dreams. To complain that my dreams are boring. Only you, Josh."
"Shush, and try to pay attention, will you? You never know where these things might be coming from." The grin, too, was the same, Neku thought, though it was difficult to see through the light. "Anyway, don't you have a mission to get to? Should be coming in at any moment now, I expect."
He was jolted awake by the sound of his cell phone beeping. The sound was half-woven in with disjointed nightmares, and for a brief, disoriented moment before the rest of his senses reasserted themselves, he was afraid he would open his eyes upon Scramble Crossing and yet another day in the Game. Eventually it sank in, however, that his bed was a good deal softer than the Crossing's pavement, and his eyes flickered open to pitch darkness.
Nightmares forgotten, he pushed himself groggily out of bed and went to retrieve the phone from his desk, stumbling over a chair in the process. He could swear his room had rearranged itself in his three-week absence, although it was no less of a mess than he had left it.
1 new text message. The glow of the cell phone's display was almost painfully bright in the darkness. Rubbing his eyes, Neku warily opened the message, wondering who could possibly think that this was a good time of night to chat.
He read the words that appeared on the screen, blinked a few times, and read them again, thinking that his tired eyes must have gotten it wrong the first time.
They hadn't. In its entirety, the message read:
You will refrain from all contact with the Underground. That is an order. Fail to comply, and there will be consequences.
The fates of fallen angels and over-confident Composers are not your concern.
There was no number, no form of identification.
Neku stared at it for several long seconds before sinking into his chair, leaning forward, and gently resting his forehead on his desk. Over. This… is supposed… to be… over.
Not your concern.
"Right up until you said that," he muttered, "I wasn't even completely sure there was anything to be concerned about. Thanks so much. Whoever the hell you are."
A minute or so later, he lifted his head and read the last sentence again. Fallen angels?
Do I know any fallen angels?
The only person in all of this that he was really concerned about was Mr. H-
He stopped and thought this over for a few seconds, then shook his head. Mr. Hanekoma was - well - Mr. Hanekoma. That he was somebody special, yes, there was no question; there was a kind of… aura about him that could make a person want to listen when he spoke, even when said person was as sullenly self-absorbed and disinterested in the world as Neku had been at the start of his Game. And his artwork - CAT's artwork; though it'd had a couple weeks to sink in now, Neku still couldn't help grinning at the fact that he'd met CAT - had the same effect.
And… all right, he could make cell phone cameras take pictures of things that had happened days earlier. And he'd somehow gathered up Rhyme's soul, when she was erased, and sealed it in a pin for safe keeping and to keep Beat alive. And he watched over the Game, and could tell a Reaper - even one as persistent as Uzuki - to take a hike. And he was on a first-name basis with the Composer.
Special didn't begin to cover it - but Neku found it very difficult, somehow, to imagine Mr. H was an angel. He just had trouble picturing an angel who charged quite so much for one damn cup of coffee, and who clearly did not know the meaning of the words on the house.
Anyway, a fallen angel? Coffee prices aside, he couldn't picture that, either. Neku had never met anyone else whom he'd come to trust quite so quickly or easily as Sanae Hanekoma.
But aside from Joshua - who Neku wasn't particularly concerned about anyway - there wasn't anyone else, and the note had said 'fallen angels and foolish Composers' as if they were different people. So it wasn't Joshua. So… it had to be Mr. H.
Of course, barely more than a week ago he'd been convinced Mr. H had to be the Composer, though he hadn't wanted to believe it. If he'd tried to think of people he knew who mighthave been the Composer, Joshua wouldn't even have occurred to him. But that had only been because Joshua was Joshua, and - in Neku's limited experience - never took a straight and simple route when a complicated and seriously screwy one would do.
On which subject, Joshua might have sent the message himself, just for the sake of winding Neku up. Neku wouldn't have put it past him.
Hanekoma and fallen angels temporarily forgotten, Neku considered this.
It was possible. He hadn't wanted to think so earlier, but he'd been fresh out of an incredibly aggravating conversation with Joshua then, and had been feeling a little uncertain about things. But Joshua was the Composer. If anyone in the past month had ever had any kind of a chance against him - and Neku wasn't entirely sure about that - it was probably only because he had found it amusing to let them.
The whole thing might just be one more weird, stupid, made-up game on Joshua's part, his way of saying: Oh, you really think you trust me, do you? He might have gotten bored and decided that messing with Neku's head looked like a good way of passing the time for a few hours. Mr. H might just be busy, not stuck in the UG at all. WildKat Café might be open for business as normal in a few days.
And, well, Joshua's sense of humor was demonstrably… skewed. It was not hard for Neku to imagine that another text message would show up in a day or two, this one reading: You know, Neku, your face really is priceless right about now.
It was much simpler than thinking that someone who actually had the power to rival the Composer had shown up, and Neku would really, really have liked to believe it.
Yeah. But there's only one way to survive in this Shibuya, remember?
He got back into bed and lay awake, staring at the ceiling, almost until dawn.
Eventually, however, he slept… and, eventually, woke.
…To a very hard and uncomfortable surface beneath him, and the noise of a crowd all around. What the-?
But even before he opened his eyes, he knew, with a too-familiar sinking in his stomach, exactly where he was. After a while, one started to recognize the symptoms.
You know, Joshua, you're starting to make an incredibly compelling case for why I should have shot you when I had the chance.
Resignedly, Neku opened his eyes and pushed himself to his feet, looking around, though he suspected that by now he could have pointed out most of Scramble Crossing's landmarks while blindfolded. To his complete and utter lack of surprise, nobody seemed to notice a kid regaining consciousness in the middle of the street. Just to be entirely certain, though, he reached out and tried to tap someone on the shoulder; his hand passed straight through the man's arm, and he nodded glumly.
Aloud, he called, "All right. Unless I died in my sleep, would anybody care to tell me why the hell I'm here this time?"
An instant later, he yelped in surprise as a too-familiar pain seared itself into his right hand, and he shut his eyes. Oh, no. No, no, no. You have got to be kidding me. This is a nightmare, right?
Dreading what he would see, Neku cautiously unclenched his fist and opened his eyes - but no timer, counting down the seconds he had left to live, met his sight. Instead, a line of kanji and kana, written in a small, neat, careful hand, was working its way across his palm:
Meet me past the Acheron.
A/N: I'm less fond of this chapter than I was of the last one… but I vowed to have it up by today, so here it is. Next chapter Joshua will be back, and life will be much more fun.
At least for the people who aren't stuck putting up with him. :)
