A/N: Back for more, I see? Well, the prologue was shorter than the chapters will be, so maybe you're expecting something better this time round... God, I hope not.

My self-insert is in search of a partner -- I wonder if he'll find one in this Shibuya? Also, will he start to realise why this Shibuya is even more of a strange town than the one he's used to?

As ever, I own only my self-insert out of this. Seriously, even his partner technically belongs to someone else.

DAY 1

I clambered up onto the raised wall surrounding the flowerbed next to Hachiko and used the higher ground to visually scan the crowd. I was looking for the telltale facial expression of someone out of their depth -- a pretty reliable way of spotting another Player, I thought.

However, the number of people present put the kibosh on that plan pretty darn quick. Taking a deep breath, I tried plan B. My hand touched the Player Pin and I braced myself.

"Open up…your senses…" I murmured under my breath. Dozens of thoughts buffeted against me like waves. It was worse than I had imagined. I focused, however, trying to find a mind my Pin bounced off of -- and sure enough, there one was. It was like white noise in the background. A kind of absence in the place where people's thoughts were, but still thought-shaped. I'm sorry, I don't have the words to describe it…

Returning to myself, I dropped down into the crowd and weaved in the general direction of the other Player. It wasn't hard to pick them out -- I doubt a sleeping teenager would be so roundly ignored in the Realground. As I approached them, I felt a certain confusion -- either this Player was a girlish-looking boy, or a boyish-looking girl. I shook my head ironically. After all, I wasn't going to ask for a date.

I leapt up onto the grass this person was lying on and walked softly towards them. Considering I was going to have to wake them up, it was strange how determined I was not to disturb them. As I knelt beside them, I noticed they had a plushie stuffed under one arm, snuggled safely against their chest.

"Hey," I said, feeling intensely awkward. "Hey. C'mon, wake up." No response. I reached out and gently laid a hand on their shoulder.

Big mistake.

A hand grasped my wrist securely and pulled me off-balance, while mismatched eyes glared fiercely into mine. One thing was sure, though -- now I knew this Player's sex. The way she'd pulled me over meant my forearm was pressed against her breasts.

"The hell're you?" she mumbled, her voice mirroring the look of tiredness, aggression and confusion on her face. Before I could say anything, she seemed to realise her surroundings and sat up, releasing her grip on my wrist. In response, I fell back on my ass.

"Holy fucking shit!" she gasped. "Why'm I in Shibuya!?" The plushie that had previously been tucked under her arm fell at my feet. I looked down to see a familiar and severely irked face looking back up at me.

'Heya, Vincent,' I thought to myself.

"I don't know that any more than I know why I'm here," I said, bringing her attention back to me for a minute. "However, since you can see me, I guess --"

"Wait," she said, her face pale with realisation. "Is this the Reapers' Game, like The World Ends With You? Are we…Players?"

"It seems so." Even to me, that sounded hopelessly pathetic and inadequate.

"See if you have a Player Pin and some form of psych," I suggested. Then, "You may be lucky and merely be observing the Game from the RG, and people are only ignoring you 'cause they think you're nuts." OK, what gives? Don't get me wrong, I quite often think such wiseass remarks, but actually making them is a whole different story.

She didn't seem to care, however, and had already found her Player Pin with a noticeable grimace. She was now industriously searching for a psych of some sort. Meanwhile, I retrieved Vincent from the ground. He didn't seem overly grateful, however.

"Nice plushie," I said conversationally, holding him by one hand facing her, while my other hand encouraged him to wave.

Bemusement and annoyance fought for dominance on her face. "Give that back," she said, a frown of resignation having conquered the other two emotions. As she took the plushie from my hand, she startled slightly, like someone getting an unexpectedly strong static shock.

"Oh," she said. "OK." She held the plushie up, looking the less threatening of the two. "This seems to be my psych." I looked doubtfully at the scowling plush ex-Turk. What would he do, fire little plush bullets? Mind you, I wouldn't start an argument with him, much less a fight.

"Hey, what's your name?" I asked, brining myself to my feet. I seemed to be at least half a foot taller than the young lady, but I've always been useless at estimating.

"Huh? Oh, uh… Kamui," she said. "Call me Kamui."

That sounded like a net alias to me. Well, sauce for the goose… "Mantichorus. Call me Manti," I said, holding out a hand. She grabbed it and gave it a quick shake.

"Welp, Manti, we'd better Pact," Kamui sighed.

Is the prospect of being stuck with me for seven days really so bad? Don't answer that. "It'd be an idea," I said. "I'm surprised neither of us has been attacked by stray Chump Noise yet."

"Huh? Yeah, that is weird… Hmm…" she said. "Anyway: Pact?"

"Pact," I agreed. With that, a burst of white light blasted behind my eyes. It was…weird. It was like I could feel Kamui's presence like a phantom limb. I could fell an echo of her movements in my corresponding muscles. Thankfully, it faded swiftly. I guessed it was an initial side-effect of synchronisation.

"That was…trippy…" I said.

Kamui whimpered in reply. "It feels kinda like when I go without my -- holy crap!" she said, cutting herself off. She started patting herself down frantically. "Where are -- ? Ah, there they are! Phew!" She looked extremely relieved.

"…You were saying?" I asked.

"Huh? Oh," she said, looking guilty. "Nothin' important."

"…" Well, it would be for the best if I didn't push it, for now at least. "…Maybe we should get into a test battle to see how our psychs work," I suggested.

"But what about the mission?" she asked.

"It hasn't -- " I was interrupted by part of Nobuo Uematsu's score for Final Fantasy IX. Kamui looked at me oddly. "My phone's message alert," I explained, pulling the phone from my pocket. I read the message out loud: "Reach 104. You have sixty minutes. Incompletes will be erased. --The Reapers." Both Kamui and I gasped as the counter seared itself into our palms.

"So, one hour, from Hachiko to Ten-Four?" I asked her.

She nodded. "Yeah, you're right. We'd best get some practice in -- "

"You Players want some practice?" a feminine Eastern European voice quite literally purred. "Here -- let me help!" With that, a small pack of wolf Noise howled into existence and hurled themselves at us. Kamui strobed from my vision and vanished.

"Manti!? Where'd you go!?" Kamui said, her voice rebounding more in my head than my ears.

"It's the Stride Cross! Pacted Players fight the Noise in two zones, remember?" I said.

"Duh! You're right," she said, sounding a bit pissed off that she'd forgotten.

As my body pumped out more adrenaline, I felt my psychs come to mind. As each entered my awareness, it Imprinted its conditions of use on me and I instinctively knew how to use it.

One wolf simply froze ahead of me as the Doomed Mobility pin took affect. The others, however, kept coming. Another wolf jerked as if hit, and it took me a second to realise it was due to Kamui's attacks in the other zone. Time for me to lend a hand, and a quick 'tactic' formed in my mind.

With a cry, I focused my Imagination into the Earthquake pin. The ground shuddered beneath me and a crack appeared in the concrete. A yelp at the back of my head told me a corresponding fissure had formed in Kamui's zone. Next came the Grave Marker. With a leap into the air, I came crashing down into the wolves, hoping to hit the one Kamui had damaged earlier. However, a whoop of excitement and said wolf disappearing told me of its fate. Fortunately, I still landed atop one of the Noise which seemed surprised by this turn of events.

As the wolves began to react to my presence in their midst, I laid about myself wildly with the Shockwave psych, a ghostly (and strangely familiar) blade forming in my hand. I had no target in mind and was only aiming to do damage and drive them off. I gasped in shock as pain lanced through my arm -- the cry of agony in my head told me Kamui'd been bitten. The shock had thrown me off balance enough for a wolf in my zone to charge me, sending me flying. I gritted my teeth as my back slammed into the concrete hard enough to bring tears to my eyes.

I pulled myself to my feet as another -- or was it the same? -- wolf came howling towards me. With an insensible scream, I bought the Shockwave blade down hard and was rewarded with the erasure of the Noise. A pin rolled lazily to my feet. I quickly snatched it up and focused on the Healing psych. A slight breeze blew about me and I felt restored. The sigh of relief in my head told me Kamui felt better, too.

There were three -- no, four, I'd forgotten the immobilised one -- wolves left. I felt something click in my mind. The Flame Blast had finally booted. I focused my Imagination into it and felt the psych begin to react, as four wolves became three, two of which were bearing down on me.

"Nice of you to leave me some," I muttered.

"Oh, shut up!" Kamui snapped.

The Flame Blast psych…did not behave as I expected it to. Instead of a small flare forming, a rolling wall of fire blasted away from me. The two wolves charging at me were engulfed, brief bursts of static marking their demise and one more pin rolling to my feet. The fire died out just before it reached the wolf that had been immobilised at the beginning of the battle.

"Oh, for…" I said, just before Kamui erased it. "…Thanks."

"You're welcome," Kamui said, fading into view smiling. I noticed she had some pins in her hand. "All yen," she said. I checked my two pins. Yep, both yen, too. At least we wouldn't go hungry. My train of thought was derailed by a banshee scream of frustration.

"You're both new Players! How do you fight that well!?" the same voice from before yelled. A woman dropped into view. Two things struck me immediately -- no, not THOSE two things -- for one, the Reaper wings. But the first thing I noticed was clearly recognised by Kamui too, by the way she gasped. Interesting… it seemed we had a similar taste in games. That would have to wait, however, as there was an enraged Rosso the Crimson standing before us!

When the hell did she make Reaper?

"You fight like this… on Day One?" Rosso said, obviously surprised. "Still, the fact that you're both green shows by your obvious exhaustion." OK, now she was gloating. "Hmm… maybe I should finish you off now…save us further headaches down the line. Yes…but which Noise…?"

I glanced at the counter imprinted on my palm to see how long we had left.

"Huh!?" I gasped. "The, the counter's… gone…"

"WHAT!?" Rosso snarled.

Kamui grinned. "Ha! Another Player must have made it to Ten-Four already!"

"That's…that's… ArrrARGH!" Rosso screamed. "Did some idiot let them start in Dogenzaka!? Rrrrgh… No matter," she said, suddenly smiling. "I shall erase you two myself!"

Kamui and I froze at that. My mind went into hyper drive, but went nowhere. Thankfully, for once my mouth was quicker than my brain.

"Ahh, no. No, you won't. It's illegal for a Reaper to directly attack a Player, excepting the GM on Day Seven, or if the UG is on Emergency Call. If you were to attack us directly -- or even set a Noise on us now today's Mission has been completed, I'd wager -- and your superiors were to find out, well…"

"Ha. The young man's got a point, sister," a man who must have come up behind Kamui and myself said. "It's all over for today. You should run along now."

"Tch, you again?" Rosso said, the disgust plain in her voice. "I don't know who you are…or how you know so much, Player," -- that last bit was said glaring at me -- "But, very well. You two children had better pray we do not meet again later in the week." With that, Rosso skulked off. She didn't take to the sky, but walked away like a big cat stalking its prey. Phew.

YUFFIE: "Once again, it's time for..."

RENO: "Reno..."

YUFFIE: "And Yuffie's..."

RENO + YUFFIE: "Strange Town preview!"

RENO: "Still getting better feedback than the main fic itself."

MANTI: "One: this was posted at the same time as the prologue, so no feedback yet... two: I thought I told you guys to leave... three: guys, you do realise..."

YUFFIE: "Who is this mysterious stranger who intervenes to save the Players?"

MANTI: "Uh, guys...?"

RENO: "Well, perhaps we'll find out next time, Yuff. What I want to know is when DID Rosso make --"

MANTI: "HEY! GUYS!"

RENO + YUFFIE: "What!?"

MANTI: "This chapter isn't over yet!"

RENO + YUFFIE: "WHAT!?"

"Thanks for your help, Mister -- ?" Kamui said, before gasping in shock. I turned to see who our saviour was. On some level, I was expecting to see Sanae Hanekoma, but it wasn't him. The man was dressed the same, though, and still had stubble along his jaw, but said jaw was more square-set than Hanekoma's.

"Hewley, Angeal Hewley," the man introduced himself. "I'm sort of a…guardian. But, all the kids who frequent my café call me Mr H." Angeal laughed.

"Totally hip, right?"

DAY 1: RULEZ MAID 2B BROKEN, ~FIN.