Neku woke, disorientated, in Cadoi City. Odd: in the previous Games, he had started almost every day in Scramble Crossing. "Probably 'cause I was Joshua's Proxy," he muttered, rubbing at one eye. "Must've been one of the perks or something." He sat up straight and saw Kariya sleeping a little way off. Neku checked his cell phone: there was no mission, but the clock read 10:45. He got to his feet, grumbling; his legs were stiff from being still for so long. He shuffled over to Kariya and yawned widely before nudging him in the side with a foot.

"Up."

Kariya didn't move. Neku supposed that the Reapers were able to impose some kind of unshakeable sleep on the Players at the end of each day: the theory explained why none of Neku's previous Partners had woken him in the mornings. He gave Kariya up as useless and sat back down, out of the way of the RG shoppers and commuters, to think about the situation. What if his friends were no longer Players? Had Joshua let them return to the RG, or had he erased them? Neku felt a cold weight settle into the vicinity of his small intestine. Fear—but what was he afraid of? Being alone, he decided. He had been alone before the Game, and the thought of losing the people who had taught him about friendship was terrifying.

Stop thinking, he ordered himself. 'What if' isn't going to help you survive the week. In fact, thinking about his friends so much was proving to be an inconvenient distraction. He had been fidgeting with his headphones without noticing that he was doing so; now he saw that the cord was beginning to fall apart. Unsurprising, especially considering the number of nights he had slept with the headphones around his neck. He usually turned them off and removed them before going to bed in the RG. In fact, he was surprised that the battery hadn't drained from his mp3 player—he could understand his cellphone's staying charged, because receiving messages was an important part of the Game, but there was no reason for his mp3 player to keep working. Maybe all batteries had an indefinite life after their owner's death. The thought was ironic enough to merit a smirk.

"Someone's in a good mood this morning," Kariya observed. He was sitting up, looking at Neku. How long had he been awake? "Mission's here."

Startled, Neku checked his phone. The message tone had gone off while he had been thinking about Shiki and Beat. "Change Molco's polarity," it read. "You have 330 minutes. Fail, and face erasure. —The Reapers."

"The hell does that mean?" Neku asked.

Kariya shrugged. "Beats me. I don't know who the Game Master is, so I don't know what he wants."

"He or she," Neku said absently. He was studying the message.

"Meh. Details," Kariya said. "Most Reapers are male. Girls seem to prefer erasure for some reason."

"The alternative is winning the Game," someone said. Neku glanced up from his phone. It was the pink-haired Reaper whom Kariya had worked with during the previous Games.

"Uzuki," Kariya said. He didn't seem surprised to see her.

"If you win the Game, you can return to life, become a Reaper, or be erased," Uzuki told him. "Reincarnation or Reaperhood only sound like logical options if you've never had bad cramps." Kariya laughed. "Ugh! It's not funny!" Uzuki said. "I'm being serious!"

Neku decided that it was time to butt in before Kariya further provoked his former partner. "Are you this week's GM?" he asked.

Uzuki glared at him. "What an idiot. Only Officers are chosen for that role, and I still haven't been promoted." She turned back to Kariya. "How do you expect to get through the week with him?" she demanded. "You couldn't have picked a worse Partner. I need you to survive and lick boots to get your job back so I don't have to keep picking up all your slack!"

"Calm down," Kariya said mildly. "Did you want something in particular, or did you drop by just to nag at me? There must be something more productive to do."

Uzuki ground her teeth furiously. "Ugh! Shut up! I just wanted to remind you not to die before day seven! Besides, the GM's placed me on hold for today. I'm not some useless three-year-old kid, but it's not as if he cares!" She started to stomp off and turned back as if to add something else, but changed her mind again and stormed away.

"So how are we supposed to change Molco's polarity?" Kariya asked. He seemed to have already forgotten Uzuki's intrusion.

"I thought you might have an idea," Neku admitted.

"Nope. It's a little too vague for me. I prefer easy puzzles," Kariya said. He stretched out on the street. "Tell me if you come up with anything. If not, I'm sure someone else will solve it for us."

Neku glared at Kariya's prone form from the safety of his collar. It was true that only one pair of Players needed to complete the day's mission, but he hadn't actually seen any other Players yet. It would be just like Joshua to make Neku and his Partner play alone, as he had in the third week. Where was Joshua? Neku lowered his head farther into his collar, glowering darkly. It would also be like Joshua to anticipate Neku's desire for answers and hide himself in an inaccessible area of Shibuya.

However, these questions weren't solving any problems. Neku fully intended to carry out the mission, and Uzuki had taken away some of their precious time. Neku could see the timer counting down on Kariya's upturned palm: almost half an hour had passed, leaving them with five hours to complete the mission. There was probably some significance to the fact that they had woken in Cadoi City, he reasoned: it was right next to Molco. Polarity, though... hadn't he recently had a conversation about polarity? He thought for a second before the obvious answer occurred to him: Kariya had said something related the day before.

("We should probably go over my fighting style before we meet any Noise," Kariya says. "I use energy. A negative psych.")

Of course! Pins used to deal damage were associated with different psychs, which were in turn associated with affinities: positive, negative, or neutral. Neku was only concerned with the first two: positive and negative—opposing polarities, like the poles of a magnet. Tin Pin Slammer, as a plausible objective, was out of the question. Competitions were commonly held in Molco, and most useful pins had different affinities, but the game itself didn't directly affect the district. The only other connection that occurred to Neku was the favoured brand: trends in the area could be affected by fighting with different pin sets.

Neku's phone informed him that Natural Puppy was currently the most popular brand in Molco. He pulled a handful of Natural Puppy pins out of his pocket and turned them over. The vast majority of them were negative psychs. In fact, he couldn't find a single positive psych among them.

"Kariya," he said.

Kariya rolled over. "What? Did you figure it out?"

"We're supposed to fight Noise in Molco with a pin brand that only includes positive psychs. Or at least has the most positive psychs in its collection." The idea sounded implausible, but there was no better explanation.

"Okay," Kariya said. "So... what brand is that?"

Shit. Neku had no idea, and he hadn't collected enough pins to find out right away. "We'll have to do some research," he said. "We can exclude unbranded pins and Natural Puppy. We can probably exclude Gatito, too." Gatito was an exclusive brand with no official store and few offensive pins. The Game Master couldn't possibly expect Players to own enough Gatito pins to complete the mission. "I collected all of the Jupiter of the Monkey pins during the last Game, but we still have to look for stats from the pins I'm missing. There are ten brands."

"You're kidding," Kariya groaned. "This GM is legitimately evil."

"Sheep Heavenly, Tigre Punks, and D+B all have stores in Molco," Neku said, ignoring him, "which is probably why the mission is set there. Mus Rattus and Pavo Real pins are both sold here in Cadoi City. The rest of the brands are scattered all over the city. We'll have to hurry to find them all."

"I call talking to the shopkeepers," Kariya said promptly. "You can record whatever stats we're looking for."

"Fine," Neku agreed. He stood, and Kariya followed suit after a moment. "Let's start here and work our way back to Molco."

Pavo Real had no positive pins, and Mus Rattus only had one, so those brands were immediately ruled out. Hip Snake, Dragon Couture, and Pegaso were all likewise disqualified. Lapin Angelique had two positive pins, and Wild Boar had five.

Finally in Molco, Neku and Kariya checked the shops. Sheep Heavenly had two positive pins, Tigre Punks had six, and D+B had one. After the better part of three hours, Tigre Punks' pin collection was the only contender against...

"You have got to be kidding," Kariya said. "Jupiter of the Monkey has eighteen frickin' positive pins, and we've had that brand all along. We didn't even buy anything new. Why didn't we just start with erasing the Noise?"

"Just shut up and get ready," Neku said irritably. "There are Noise possessing that girl over there. We'll start with them."

The pointless search for pins had put both Neku and Kariya in a bad mood, which did nothing to improve their sync rate. As a result, the light puck was difficult to use and often slow. On the bright side, Neku was used to using Jupiter of the Monkey pins in battle, and slashed at the Noise with a little more enthusiasm than strictly necessary.

Finally, the Noise had been eliminated from both planes, and Kariya joined Neku again. "So much for reduction one," he said. "Ready to clock out?" He grinned. "Just kidding. Where's the next batch?"

Neku was staring at the lack of numbers on his palm. "The timer's gone," he said.

"What? But Natural Puppy's still the most popular brand! Did we run out of time?"

Neku shook his head, staring at a couple near the phone booth down the street. The couple was staring back, and after a moment, the woman waved at him. "Thanks for taking out those last Noise," she called. "We thought we'd have to complete the mission alone."

Kariya strode toward them. "Wait a minute," he said. "We didn't change the district brand. What was the mission supposed to be?"

The man laughed. "Didn't you get it? 'Change the polarity.' There were Noise possessing almost every person in this area. It was quite a negative atmosphere." He waved a hand at the inhabitants of the RG. "Look at it now." Neku glanced around. Molco looked quite peaceful, far removed from its normally rushed and competitive atmosphere. That probably had more to do with the unusual lack of Tin Pin fans than the lack of Noise, but if the mission was complete, Neku wasn't going to complain.

Kariya was regarding Neku with a suspiciously disgruntled expression, so Neku changed the subject. "Good thing it's over. Hey, look, have you seen any Players besides us around?"

The man nodded. "Sure. We woke up in the park today. I think there were one or two others with us."

Neku wasn't sure whether or not he wanted a definitive answer, but the fear for Beat and Shiki hadn't entirely dissipated from his abdomen. "Did you ask... Were either of them named Beat or Shiki? They would probably be Partners." If they had been able to find each other before the Noise found them, he added silently. If they were in the UG at all.

"I don't recall, but those names don't sound familiar," the man said. The woman beside him was shaking her head. "One was a tall fellow—I think he was called Yoru; something like that. The other was a dark-haired young lady. I didn't catch her name."

Neku's heart lept. "Was she carrying a stuffed pig?" he asked. It was a cat, he reminded himself. She was always so upset when he called it a pig.

The man was regarding him with something like pity. He had probably jumped to the conclusion that Shiki was Neku's baby sister or something; not many older girls carried stuffed animals around in public. Neku shrank into his collar, disgusted with himself. Of course it wasn't Shiki. Joshua wouldn't have given Neku such easy access to his friends. If he was going to find Shiki and Beat, he would have to find them alone.

"I didn't see a pig on her, but I'll keep an eye out," the man promised. Neku nodded his thanks, but didn't wave as the couple walked away. It would do no good to rely on other Players. In fact, he knew from past experience that he might not see the couple again. Better to continue his search without their help.

Kariya was staring at him, too. "Look," he said, "if finding your friends is really so important, we can skip out on tomorrow's mission. We'll find Uzuki or something, ask her to look for them. Maybe the wall to the Dead God's Pad has been taken down. We'll take a look, all right?"

Neku almost laughed at the impossibility of the suggestion, but managed a strangled sort of noise instead. Ugh, how embarrassing. It was definitely for the best that he'd avoided friendships in the past. He quickly struck that thought from his mind. "Thanks," he muttered, and turned his music up before Kariya could suggest anything else. It was a while before he realized that he was crying.

AN: What a dumb mission! I certainly wouldn't have been able to figure it out. What did you think Neku and Kariya were supposed to do? Leave a review and let me know!