"Oww!" Oh. Right. There was a wall here. He had forgotten about it. Now, where was that guy in the red hoodie...?
"Another wall?" Shiki moaned, before panic began to set in. "No... we'll never finish the mission now..."
Neku was reminded of why he'd agreed to erase her yesterday... today? She was annoying, she couldn't pull her own weight, and she couldn't just leave him alone and let him think. Of course, someone or something had already made it perfectly clear that he was stuck with her unless he wanted to spend the rest of existence repeating the same day over and over, so he supposed he'd just have to find some way to keep her from becoming too much of a pain in the ass. Now, about that wall...
"Neku! Neku!"
Is thirty seconds so much to ask for? Really? "What." In his best monotone voice. This was going to be a long day, he just knew it. Perhaps he could liberate some duct tape from a supply store or...
"There's a strange guy over there and he's been staring at us for the past two minutes!"
Right on schedule. Well, she was good for something, at the very least. "If he can see us, he probably has something to do with the Game. Which means..."
Shiki, oddly enough, caught on. "He made this wall!"
That seemed to prompt him to walk over. "You." Pointing at Neku, just like last time. "Scan and erase all the Noise in this area."
"What? But there aren't any Noise here!" Shiki again, protesting, because apparently miracles only happened once.
"Yes, there are." As though he was speaking to an elementary school child. "You have to scan for them."
Looking visibly affronted, Shiki reached for her Player Pin. "Well, you don't have to be so mean about it..." (What am I doing wrong? We're supposed to be working together, not at each other's throats...)
Neku paused before homing in on the first Noise. Knowing Shiki, she was going to whine and complain again about how he should try the other pins he should have. Experimentation during the first time they'd gone through this day had already proven he could use them all, but only four at a time would work in a Noise combat zone. He switched to the four pins he hadn't used yet today - Psychokinesis, Force Rounds, Thunderbolt and Shockwave - and with a confirmation from his nigh-useless partner that Yes, she could in fact handle this, he scanned and engaged the first of the Noise.
Three utterly tedious rounds with the Noise later, and the wall was gone.
"But that was weird..." Shiki muttered, and Neku decided to tune out the rest of her conversation with the Reaper. She'd turn her attention to him soon enough, anyway. He might as well use the few blessed moments of silence to -
"Well, anyway... You did great!" Exactly as fake-sounding as it was yesterday, Shiki 'complemented' him.
Oh, come on! You can't even try to make that sound genuine? "Yes, I know," he deadpanned, "I was able to use all of the pins and that makes me some kind of psych genius. Right?" Maybe now she'll stop trying to engage in conversation if she thinks I know what she's going to say...
"You did it again!" she exclaimed, and Neku winced. "You predicted what I was going to say! That's so cool!"
Well, at least that sounded genuine. Still annoying though. "Let's just go." Not waiting for a response, because he knew she was committed to this farce of a partnership and would just follow him anyway, he made his way out of the Underpass and into the Bus Terminal.
"H-hey... wait up, Neku!" And on that parting note, she ran after him.
"C'mon, Neku. You don't need to be so cold... I'm your partner! We're supposed to stick together! Could you at least slow down?" Shiki was practically gasping for breath when she managed to catch sight of Neku's headphones again. How can he possibly move so quickly?
"It seems like you're keeping up just fine." Neku intoned, choosing to ignore her short gasps for breath. Apparently, the 200 meter dash to catch up to him was well beyond her physical capacity. What, did she fail out of gym class or something? Besides, we need to get out of here quickly or we're going to run into...
"Gotchu puinks now!"
...him. Ugh. Here we go again... "Hello, Beat."
Whatever Beat was expecting, it certainly wasn't to be addressed by name by the orange-haired kid before him. "Wha- hey! Don't think saying my name is gonna throw me off! You Reapers may have gotten the drop on us yesterday, but this time I'mma drop you, yo!"
Before Neku could make any more comments - and likely start a fight with Beat - his partner appeared, coming to the rescue. "Beat, stop it! They're not Reapers! See, they've got Player Pins, just like us!"
"What? Oh... Yo, sorry I jumped to conclusions. I just figured that since I couldn't scan you guys..."
"Players probably aren't able to scan each other... remember, Beat? You couldn't scan me when you tried, yesterday."
Finally, someone with half a brain! It's like water in the desert! "That makes sense..." the orange-haired boy agreed, mostly to attempt to get off on a better foot with Beat and Rhyme. Granted, Beat was giving Shiki a fantastic contest for the 'Most Annoying Person' award in this messed up game, but Rhyme seemed to have a good head on her shoulders and he severely doubted his ability to go through a whole week of Shiki without any breaks.
"Yo, by the way, Phones..." Neku repressed a sigh, he didn't need to be a psychic (and he wasn't, no matter how many times Shiki protested to the contrary) to know what was coming next. "How'd chu know my name? I don't remember sayin' it..."
"Neku's some kind of psychic!" Shiki declared, with genuine enthusiasm. Apparently, she had a crush on all psychics or something because it seemed to Neku that this was the only time she ever sounded genuine. "Between us, there's not a pin he can't use and he's even had visions!"
"Really? Woah. That's intense, yo."
Now there's two of them, great. Just great. "I already told you already, there's no such thing as psychics."
"Yeah?" Shiki responded, sarcasm laced in her voice. "Alright then, Mister Not-Psychic, how do YOU explain what you can do?"
"Nngh..." We got erased and then I got sent back in time because not even being erased is going to get me out of this stupid game. Yeah, that's much more believable... "I don't know. But I can't possibly be psychic. There's no way."
"Oh, I getchu." Clearly, some higher power - probably whoever was in charge of this freaky game - had it out for him. "Right then, you're not psychic." Now Beat was in on the act, and it was probably too late to turn tail and run. "Yo, lemme make it up to you guys for jumpin' the gun like dat, alright? If there's anything you need to know, just ask Rhyme and me here."
"Hmm... I have a few questions..."
Neku was stubbornly refusing to look up from his timer, watching the seconds tick by as Shiki persisted with her litany of questions. Finally, however, Shiki seemed to run out of things to ask.
"If that's everything, don't you think it's about time we got back to the mission?" Neku held up his hand for emphasis, the emblazoned timer reading 98:42 and counting down.
"Yo, he's right! Let's bounce!"
With no further prompting, the four were off, Neku falling to the back of the group even before the red-clad Reaper came into view. Rhyme joined him quickly once she spotted the Reaper, leaving Beat and Shiki to jog ahead obliviously...
"Oww! Yo, who put dis wall here!?"
Try as she might, Rhyme couldn't keep from giggling a little.
Neku had much better control over his emotions, however. "I would imagine... that guy." Pointing at the Reaper for emphasis.
"So we just have to beat some more Noise, right?"
Don't be stupid, they're not all going to demand the same thing. Turning to the Reaper, Neku asked "What are your terms?"
"Terms...?" Shiki queried, and Neku had to work hard to bite back his sarcastic remark. He really didn't want to ruin a potential friendship with what was likely the only intelligent Player in this game. One small jab was definitely not worth being sentenced to a week of non-stop Shiki, no way.
"My terms," the Reaper began when he decided that nobody else was going to speak, "Lift the statue's curse."
"Yo, whatchu tryin' to pull!" Beat yelled, "The statue's past this wall!"
"I don't get paid to chit-chat. Play the Game."
Solve the riddle for them and deal with another 'You're psychic!!' outburst from Stalker and Beat, or waste more time and stay silent... Decisions, decisions.
Neku was, however, saved from having to make that decision by the timely intervention of Rhyme. "Look! There's another statue over there!"
"Huh? Oh yeah... that's one of 'dem Moai statues, ain't it?"
"Mo-YAI statue. But, yes, it is... that's odd. What's it doing there...?"
"I'd say the bigger issue is all those noise floating around it." Without waiting for a response, Neku moved to engage the Noise hanging ominously around the moyai, his irritating partner and their two... comrades? allies? associates? moving to cover him. Irritating as Shiki and Beat were, at least they could pull their own weight in a fight.
When the rush of light Neku had by now associated with entering a Noise fight had subsided, his gaze fell upon...
Rhyme? What's she...
"Good luck, Neku!" Spoken with a smile. Neku didn't smile back, mildly irritated that he now had to worry about friendly fire as well.
Of course, it could have been worse. He could've ended up in the same zone as Beat.
The Noise attacking them both prevented Neku from thinking about it any further, as he went to work erasing the group of frog noise "cursing" the moyai statue.
Two noise sigils later, and the moyai statue seemed just a little bit brighter... although it could have been a trick of the light.
"Awright! That was easy!" Beat couldn't resist ending his sentence with a fist pump.
"I imagine it's only going to get harder from here, Beat." was Rhyme's response, while Neku simply turned to the Reaper standing vigil by the wall and gave a pointed stare.
"Objective met. Wall clear."
And with over an hour to spare. I can handle this, easy.
"Then, onwards to Hachiko! Let's wrap this up quick! We might even have time to go shopping, afterwards!"
Neku, however, was concerned with things more important than potential time for shopping. "Listen. Be on your guard. They've probably got something a bit more dangerous than those frogs 'cursing' Hachiko."
"You would know, wouldn't you?" with a smug grin, as though what Neku had just said could be construed as an admittance of having psychic powers - and that said 'victory' was something for Shiki to celebrate.
"Well, looks like it's about that time again... better go head things off before Phones does something rash."
Flipping the sign on WildKat's front door back to the 'Closed' position, a man known fondly by some as 'Mr. H' adjusted his shades and set off to meet with a very important Player.
"I don't know what you were so worried about, Neku! Those things went down easy. And look! The timer's gone! So I guess we've got some free time now, right?"
Shiki was positively beaming, cheerful enough for both her and her partner. Which may or may not have been a good thing, as Neku was dreading what was about to come.
That pink-haired Reaper... she only let up last time because she tricked me into offing my partner. I'm not about to try that again, getting erased once is enough, but... how do I stop her?
As though summoned by Neku's thoughts, the pink-haired Reaper appeared, muttering about 'how infuriating' them completing the mission was... she probably wouldn't have even noticed them this time around were it not for Beat.
"Gotchu cornered this time! Time to pay you back for yesterday, yo!"
Nice, Beat. She might have even passed us by this time, and then you had to go and draw attention to us...
"Yesterday? Hmmm... what happened yesterday?" the pink-haired Reaper pondered aloud, just a hint of mockery in her voice.
"Don't play dumb with me! You dropped all those Noise on us!" Beat practically roared.
"Well, ex-cuuuuuuse me for doing my job! You know, because the group of you didn't disappear like you were supposed to, I lost my bet with Kariya... you all owe me a bowl of ramen for that."
"Well this time we brought friends, yo! We're takin' you down, Pinky!"
That got a reaction from the Reaper. "Leave my hair out of this, Skulls! Talking a big game like you're all that... this oughta shut you up quick!"
I'm dead. Again. I'm going to have to go through this entire day, again. This sucks.
SECRET REPORT 2 – Version 2
I must revise the daily report I had previously penned.
This is because an unprecedented event has occurred.
An unstable temporal shift has caused the UG's Day cycle to reverse itself.
This means that the events of this Day as they once were have been completely undone.
Any Players who had been erased have been restored to existence, and their entry fees are still refundable.
No Players or Reapers will remember the events of the previous version of this day.
However, as an Angel, I enjoy all the benefits of Our kind, which include the ability to remember events as they originally occurred even if a temporal shift should cause those events to change.
I can only speculate as to the reason for the shift. However, it is safe to assume that the proxy is involved in some way.
This merits further observation.
And lo, does Axnyr force you all to suffer through the first ever cliffhanger! Ain't I a stinker?
The astute among you (all 59 of you unique visitors, two of whom came back a second time for some reason or other) may notice that I cut this right before a battle, and that I also cut around any noise battles before Metal Corehog. The reason for this is two-fold: one, I didn't want to keep this waiting while I figured out how to address battles (The World Ends With You does, after all, have a very interesting battle system that I'd like to avoid making seem... well, dumb) and two, I haven't yet decided whether or not a) Uzuki's noise barrage sends Neku careening back to the start of the day, b) Beat and Neku decide that the only way to stop the barrage is to knock off the source (and, if so, whether or not they drive Uzuki into falling back or not), or c) Mr. H shows up to save the day. Anyone reviewing can vote, and I might tally those votes and act upon them.
You may be interested to know that 15% of the time between this chapter and the previous one was figuring out how thick to lay on Beat's accent, and another 75% deciding if I liked Secret Report 2 Version 2 as it is. This is the original version of it - I finally decided to leave it as is, because that's just like Mr. H to know exactly what happened. Doesn't mean that I didn't go back and forth on my decision to leave it as-is about 12 times, let me tell you.
As for why Neku hasn't had a violent outburst yet this time around... well, he might be incredibly anti-social at this point in the Game but he's, at the very least, able to learn from his mistakes.
And he figures that alienating the siblings Bito the last time he went through this day was a mistake - after all, they provide an all too welcome distraction from Shiki (whom he's failed to warm up to yet.) And besides, I defy you to hate Rhyme. Have you tried hating on Rhyme? It's impossible. Even for Jerk!Neku.
Yes, Rhyme showing up with Neku in a combat zone is somewhat important. This is my personal opinion as to what would happen if multiple sets of players attempted to engage the same Noise/Reaper/GM. As you know, such a situation never happened in-game and is therefore open to executive/editorial interpretation.
I really hope I didn't mess this one up, since apparently I've got people who like the idea and want to see where it goes. Let me know at any time if I need to fix something.
Special thanks to Silvaria, Enigmatic Igor, Inspiration of Imagination, and mcdoomburger for approving of this story. You guys are responsible for this next chapter, not me. Please don't kill me if I wrecked it with this next chapter!