JOSHUA TRIPS

CHAPTER FOUR: IN WHICH NEKU AND JOSHUA HAVE A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE, part 1

Summary: After a mishap involving Joshua's poor balance and Neku's nasal lining, our heroes find themselves stranded in an alternate dimension with no easy way to get home. After discovering that the dimension is essentially the Josh/Neku homeworld, things are getting a little uncomfortable for them...

Rating: T for yucky stuff and Neku's potty-mouthiness

OF NOTE IN THIS CHAPTER: Joshua realizes why Recepshua gave him the room for free. Also, Neku trips. That isn't much of a paradox, is it.

Genre: PARODY/adventure

Although it might change later on...

Joshua sneezed six more times that evening, and by eight o' clock his nose was running laps around his face. He rummaged around in the bathroom cupboard for some kind of medicine that would put a stop to it once and for all, but there was nothing. "Hmph! Another thing that proves this dimension is completely ass-backwards – I always have Smilinol in my cabinets!" Joshua huffed to himself. He sniffled and grabbed a (his?) toothbrush and squeezed some toothpaste on it. But then - "ACHOO! Gaaah, crimony..." His hand had jerked with the power of the sneeze and now there was a huge toothpaste snake coiled around his hand. Joshua muttered some choice words and messed with the faucet, trying to wash it off. "Yes... Completely ass-backwards... bonkers... absolutely bananas... wild nutty coco-loco explosion..."

"Uh-huh." Neku was laying on the bed, clicking through his music absently. It sounded like he was playing with a Geiger counter. After a while, though, he pushed his headphones off his head and sat up. "Hey, Josh? So if this is Gayworld, how come there's so many of us?"

"I told you, it's not Gayworld," Joshua spat savagely into the sink. "Ptui! It's like...the Joshes are programmed to seek out Nekus. They're like missiles. Nekusexual missiles."

"Yikes," Neku muttered, looking out the window, a bored look on his face. The little knot in his eyebrows betrayed his inner torment, however.

Joshua was still prattling on. "If they were legit homosexuals, I'd imagine I and the other males would be getting about as much, ahem, attention as you. No, the Joshes are after the Nekus specifically, and vice versa. Can't imagine why, though..."

"Maybe it's because Joshuas like to be the only Joshua around," Neku said after a minute. "Because, well, you know. Joshuas are jerks. Jerks that trap innocent bystanders in messed-up alternate realities."

Joshua picked at his teeth in the mirror, choosing to ignore that not-so-subtle dig. "Why do they fawn over you so lovingly, then?"

"Because I'm not Joshua," Neku said. "I'm not a jerk. I'm nice. It's a change of pace, I guess."

Joshua scoffed. And then sneezed.

"You okay in there?"

"Fine, fine, I'm fine..." Joshua mumbled, wiping his nose.

"See? I asked if you were okay. That's nice. If I were a Joshua, I would have made some rude, condescending comment about that sneeze or... something. Joshuas are not nice."

Joshua didn't really like that. "I am nice, Neku. I'm very nice. I make a point to be nice, whether I like somebody or not."

Neku frowned. "You're not nice to me."

"I am nice to you!"

"Are not!"

"Are too!"

"Are not!"

"Are too!"

"Are not!"

"Neku, are we going to squabble like toddlers or what?"

Neku flopped back on the bed and made faces at the ceiling. "I can't believe this," he growled after a while, clearly angry. Joshua kept flossing in silence. "This is just too much. Joshua, you had better figure out a way to get out of here, or I am gonna..." He made a violent gesture in midair. "...with hedge clippers, just watch."

Joshua had been chalk white for most of the afternoon, but if possible, he grew a shade paler. "That's a tad excessive, don't you think?"

"No, Joshua, you're excessive... every time you show up, I get dragged into some big huge thing and you just constantly bitch and whine and mock... argh! At the end of all this, if I find out this was all some sort of gambit of yours..." He rolled over, muttering darkly.

"Uh, good night, Neku," Joshua sniveled, wiping his streaming eyes.

"'Night..."

Joshua sighed. It was probably very hard for Neku right now.

Heck, it was hard on Joshua himself.

For one thing, Joshua was not gay. He was asexual. But that's not really the point, since this fanfiction isn't about sexytimes anyway.

There was just a powerful, gut-twisting undercurrent of wrongness to the whole ordeal. His brain would simply not accept the "these Joshuas are just preposterously Nekusexual" theory – apart from the obvious reasons, there was something else. Something else was still bothering him; it was as if they weren't getting the whole picture, just small glimpses. The theory he had worked for now, but Joshua felt it was wrong.

Joshua supposed his brain was just too tired. And on top of everything, it sounded like he was coming down with something. These factors combined were enough to increase his natural paranoia, if only because Joshua never got sick. Not anymore, at least. His body repelled pathogens and rejected parasites. He did not condone sickness. It simply was not allowed.

So why was he still sniffling like a dopey fourth grader? Joshua dabbed at his nose in a futile attempt to stem the flow. It was all so irritating, and his back hurt, and his head hurt, and the bruises on his face hurt, and he wanted to go home.

He wanted to grumble, too, but he kept a respectful silence, because Neku was trying to sleep. Joshua didn't need to have pillows thrown at him in this state.

That was the other thing. Neku. Neku was the closest thing to a friend Joshua had ever had. And... that friendship, as flimsy and nonexistent as it was, was something important, not to be tarnished by sloppy makeouts and gross stuff like that.

And now, this. This whole ordeal would probably grind all hopes of friendship into atomic space dust under the heels of its campy Kickin' Shoes, and there was nothing Joshua could do to stop it.

Joshua finished up in the bathroom and then wandered out into the main space. Neku was snoring away, spreadeagled on the bed with his headphones vibrating gently with the faint sounds of New Age music, the kind that zaps your strength and drags you into unconsciousness within seconds. A gentle breeze wafted forth from the open window, stirring the curtains gently. Neku's rock-hard bangs remained perfectly unfettered despite this.

Joshua shook his head and trotted off to the closet, which was in the corner. Next to the door was the floor lamp and a rather squat armory. These are important.

He opened the door and sighed. Oh, brilliant, it was full of junk. Wedged in the tiny space like pieces of a puzzle someone had gotten very frustrated with, there was a vacuum cleaner, an ironing board, an iron, at least ten button-downs of varying degrees of blue, and about three identical pairs of jeans, and a stack of nice shoes in the back on top of a sky-high pile of cookbooks.

Joshua frowned. These cookbooks...it seemed like an excessive amount, since he was notoriously terrible at the culinary arts. The government could have used his spaghetti to defend the prime minister, and his steak sauce had a bad habit of setting off Geiger counters and metal detectors. But then again, maybe these books were full of cake recipes. Cake was about the only thing Joshua could make without destroying approximately two city blocks, a baby, a few nice old ladies and a couple of pigeons.

It didn't really matter what was inside the cookbooks, though. What mattered was that they were taking up ungodly amounts of space.

However, Joshua was tired, too tired to care that much; so, he just shuffled the vacuum cleaner around a little and wriggled in, and then he slammed the door.

Big mistake.

You know how when you leave the window open, and then you shut the door, but it shuts a little too hard? Normally, this does nothing but produce a slight tremor and an obnoxiously loud noise, right?

However, the floor lamp had a rather fragile sense of balance, and that slight tremor was all it took. It toppled over, but fell at such an angle that the top landed on the dresser, speared through the wood, and suddenly the lighting fixture effectively barred the door shut. It was a pretty heavy lamp, and Joshua was a frail little boy, and so it was abundantly clear to any onlooker that Joshua was as good as trapped.

Josh heard the thump and he felt an Ice Pillar stab at his diaphragm. He whirled around - or at least attempted to, sealed in the tight closet space - and tried to open the door, but it was no good. It wouldn't budge. Joshua immediately began banging on the door and shouting, "Neku! Neku!" But there was no answer. The Proxy was listening to New Age music, remember. Potent stuff.

Joshua slid to the floor, undead heart hammering in his narrow chest. Okay, so he was locked in. No biggie. He was planning to sleep in here anyway. Might as well get comfortable.

He wriggled around a bit, like a caterpillar wrapped in a chrysalis, trying to find a more relaxing position. He only succeeded in barking his shins and knocking the vacuum over so that he was crushed rather painfully into a sharp-cornered cookbook. Joshua resisted the urge to whimper. He was just having a bad, bad day. He had screwed up relations with the enemy party he'd been trying to forge an alliance with, teleported them into some crackpot dimension full of perverted, Neku-licking weirdos abusing his identity, received a number of direct hits to the face, squabbled with a rude receptionist, slipped in the shower, and locked himself in a closet. ("ACHOO!") And he had a cold. Things couldn't possibly get any worse, could they?

Right about then, he saw the spiders.

"Oh, no," Joshua moaned. "I should have seen that coming, I should have seen that coming..."

At first, there was only one. It was one of those big, ugly black ones, about an inch or so in diameter, and it was creeping around the vacuum handle. It looked like it was sniffing around for some soft pink fingers to sink its ugly fangs into. Joshua supposed he had disturbed it when he knocked the vacuum over - but knowing that did nothing to change the fact that he couldn't move right now and there was a big, pissed-off spider inches from his soft, pink fingers.

Joshua really did not care for spiders, frankly.

"Go away, go away now, shoo...!" Joshua moaned softly, wincing and twisting away from the hideous creature. "Oh, don't you dare bite... gyUH?"

He had just discovered another spider, crawling around on a nearby cookbook spine. It was just as big and black as the first one, if not even more so. Joshua cringed. He did not like spiders. As his eyes adjusted to the blackness, he – ohh, there was another – and, ugh, another – and another – and – and – and –

Joshua thought his eyes might pop out of their sockets. No, no, no... There were about twenty spiders, all crawling around in the shadows, coming out of their little secret places and looking for boys to bite... Ohhh, no, there were more, and the more Joshua looked, the more he saw...his gaze roved up over the shirts hanging in the gloom, covered with tiny black spiders and big black spiders, and up to the hangers, which were dusted faintly with cobwebs, and then the... the...

If he hadn't been paralyzed with fear before, he was now.

For up in the corner of the ceiling, there was a sort of spider hell. It could have passed for a patch of black paint, if it had not been shivering and jittering and moving. They were everywhere – god, oh, there were hundreds of them... crawling all over each other... a massive, writhing, filthy swarm... but then, Joshua's heart stopped completely. Because there, perched on a stretch of cobweb so thick it looked like fabric, was the single largest, most revolting spider Joshua had ever seen - if that ghastly thing could legally be called a spider, that is.

The vile creature was maybe a foot long – Joshua couldn't really give precise measurements at the moment, but it dwarfed all the other spiders; it was a hideous, knotty behemoth of a spider, a demonic, positively evil-looking monster, with eyes that shone and glittered strangely and horribly in the darkness. That has to be fake, Joshua thought. It has to...

He saw its leg twitch ever so slightly, and he thought he might faint.

It hunched over a faint puffy lump that vaguely registered in the back of his head as an egg sac, just hanging there, frightfully still... waiting... searching...

Joshua's stomach clenched and tried to escape through his mouth. It was looking for him. ...Ah – when he knocked over the vacuum, he had probably disturbed the spider nest, maybe even nearly knocked the spider's puffy, pus-colored egg sac clear off the wall... Joshua's heart leapt into his throat, shoving his stomach out of the way and sending it plummeting into a frigid abyss.

If he moved – if he made the slightest, faintest movement – the spider would see him. It would see him, and it would get him. Oh, sweet, merciful gods, it would get him. It would probably jump off the ceiling and land on his face and – and – and – no, Josh, don't think about it, don't think about it, just relax and do not move, do not move...

He suddenly became aware of a crushing pressure building in his nose. Oh, god, no, not now, not – he tried to quell it, but it was absolutely no good and – his face exploded with the most violent sneeze of the day.

"KWAAH-CHOOOOOFH!"

And then –

"KWAAH-CHOOOOOAAAUUGHHF—HAAA—HAA—KWACHOOOOOOOAAAUGHRFLARLFLG!"

There were three. Three body-wracking, back-breaking, soul-crushingly enormous and just plain loud sneezes.

Joshua sat there for a second, stunned, nauseous with fear. He had whacked his head on the ironing board and knocked a few cookbooks down with the sheer force of the sneeze, but those were trifle matters. He kept his gaze pinned on the giant gargoyle of a spider in the corner. It hung there for another second, and then – and then – it –

It moved, so suddenly, so quickly, it was like a jolt of electricity, and it was fast, and it was huge, and it just didn't seem right for something so sickeningly huge to be so terrifyingly fast, and it just kind of dashed out and -

And about then, Joshua passed out.

The second Neku's New Age playlist ended, Neku awoke. He sat up, yawned a little, and vaguely wondered where he was. Someone had replaced his desk with a big ugly air conditioning thingy... probably Joshua... but those chiffon curtains were a bit too disgusting, even for him... and why was Ramen Don outside his window...?

It all came back quickly. The hopscotch, the sneeze, the teleporting...the clones... Neku groaned. "Fuq yoo, Joshooa..." he mumbled groggily and pulled his headphones down. His ears were starting to hurt.

He glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table, which read 3:14 AM. Neku had grown to hate that number, but he figured it was about time for a midnight snack, anyway. That was what he usually did at home when his playlist ended in the middle of the night.

Home. With a pang, Neku thought of Shiki, and his mom, and Beat and Rhyme and his cat, Jeanne, and... he made a funny little noise in his throat, a choked little moan of despair. Despair... hopscotch has left me in despair...

Oh, well. Thinking about snacks had made him hungry, and sitting around in his despair never did any good. Neku kind of fell out of the bed and staggered to his feet, stumbling over to the door through the thick, early-morning darkness. Well, at least this crazy place had an all-hours cafeteria. Maybe he could get his hands on some of that french toast. After a moment's hesitation, he put his shirt on, and then left the motel room. He really didn't want to get jumped by those Joshes again; who knew what they'd do to him when everyone was asleep?

He wandered down the hallway, rubbing his eyes. He had taken a shower, so most of his hair had come ungelled and was hanging down to his shoulders, making him look rather girlish - from the back, at least. The complex chemical formulas gluing his bangs together had yet to dissolve.

Anyway, he shuffled down to the landing and plodded down the stairs, feeling rather fuzzy and thick from sleep. This fuzzy thickness led to him falling down the stairs, rebounding off the wall, falling down the stairs again, coming to a stop, spitting curses as he staggered to his feet, tripping, rolling down the last flight of stairs and colliding with a potted plant.

Neku proceeded to shout the worst words in his vocabulary, which, while making him feel delightfully naughty, seemed to nearly wake up Recepshua, who was apparently living at his desk now. As it happened, Recepshua shifted in his chair and mumbled something about cheeks. Neku tiptoed past him as quietly as he could – he needn't have, since everyone knows Joshua sleeps like a dead man (HAR!) - and crept into the cafeteria.

Like the rest of the motel, the cafeteria was completely dark. Well, not completely, as there was a light coming from the kitchen. Hopefully that meant the cook was awake, and not that a colony of Joshes were plotting something that no doubt involved aphrodisiac and french toast. They're all a bunch of goddamn creepers. I wouldn't put it past 'em, Neku decided crossly, but he staggered drunkenly up to the door anyway and peeked inside.

There were no diabolical Joshes pouring Shakespearean love-lily nectar in the syrup. Instead, there was a quivering mound of gray flesh, heaped on a tiny, plastic, miserable-looking chair that looked close to snapping at any moment. Neku stared at the vibrating mound for a second until the realization dawned that he was staring at someone's back. Neku gulped and tried to sneak back out, but the door creaked obnoxiously loud at the worst possible moment and the enormous person turned around.

Aw, damn. It was the sheep reaper.

Oh jeez, not this guy, Neku groaned inwardly. He was trapped now, anyway. Yodai Higashizawa beamed at him.

"Greetings!" he boomed heartily, scaring the skittles out of poor Neku. "WELCOME TO MY KITCHEN!"

Neku jumped about three feet in the air. "Sh-shhhhh!" he hissed. "Dude, not so loud! They'll hear you...!"

"Who? Those pasty parfaits?" Yodai snorted. "No need to worry about the Joshua units, my friend. They're on the night cycle."

"Er, yeah, most people are," Neku mumbled, attempting to picture Joshua as a parfait and having a little trouble. "'Cause it's kinda, y'know, nighttime?"

"HO HO HO! I've always liked you Nekus more, anyway." Yodai patted a chair in front of him. "Go on, have a seat. Something troubling you, my little string bean?"

"I kind of just wanted a snack," said the little string bean as he settled awkwardly into the chair. Well, at least the Game Master didn't seem like he wanted to eat his jealous heart, or whatever. Then again, this meating - er, meeting - was a little out of Reaper context.

Yodai snorted again. "Baah! And rightfully so! You Nekus are all so frightfully thin." The huge man shook his head. "Ought to put some meat on those bones, you really should...well, you came to the right place, as I am the head chef of this establishment. What would you like?"

"...Got any french toast?" Neku asked.

A moment later Neku had been stuffed with powdered sugar and syrup and toast of the European persuasion. The author wishes they knew a different term for french toast, but they don't.

Anyway. Neku got to the second landing and realized something was wrong.

He heard voices. And scraping.

Neku looked up and squinted into the gloom of the hallway, a prickle of fear coming to life like a spider in the back of his brain.

Those voices sounded like... Joshuas. Yes, there was that distinctive, creaky rasp he knew and hated. That didn't seem to fit, given what Higashizawa had told him - they should have been asleep.

Frowning, Neku crept down the hallway, cautiously padding along until he found the door that the faint voices were coming from behind. With a strange sense of anxiety gripping him, he carefully pressed his ear to the wood and listened.

He heard himself – no, a Neku – saying something, he wasn't quite sure what. And then a Joshua. The thick wood of the door muffled everything beyond coherence, but Neku knew that reedy, eternally pubescent voice anywhere. It sounded like there was more than one of them, too, unless that particular Joshua was a systemic otherkin and referred to himself as "we" or whatever. Suddenly, there was the sound of something large scraping against the door, and Neku flinched away.

After a tense moment, Neku realized that they had dragged something in front of the thing to barricade it – at least, that's what it sounded like. He got down on his knees, really curious now, and put his ear to the crack between the door and the carpet.

"I assume you know why we called you here?" That was a Josh.

"I'm not ready," whimpered the Neku. Our Neku wrinkled his nose; he sounded so...unmanly, and we're talking about someone with Jesse David Corte's voice actor here. Hard to girl that up.

"Oh, believe me, you're ready." Another Josh? Or the same? Neku assumed it was another one, because he knew if he was ever not ready for something and he was being cornered by a lone Josh, that lone Josh was going comatose. Two...well, maybe not. Neku had never fought a Josh before, he didn't know if they were that strong, but...they were definitely heavier than he was, and maybe if one sat on him while the other went in for the kill...Neku nodded thoughtfully. Two Joshes.

"Hee hee, I suggest you get comfortable on that bed, Ne~kun..." Yeah, two Joshes...WAIT.

WAIT.

WAIT.

WAIT.

"I'm not ready! G-give me some more time, I'm just..."

"Fair's fair, Ne~kun."

"We gave you what you wanted, now you give us what we want..."

"No! No! I didn't want it! I didn't-"

"Oh, don't kid yourself."

"You loved it, and you know it. Now it's time to pay up."

"No! No, please..."

"Think of it this way: we're simply taking back what is ours."

"You came to us willingly, and you know the rules of the game..."

"No! Hey! Hey, wait! Wait! Just...NO! NO NO NO NO! PUT THAT AWAY, NO, NO, NONONONONONO-"

"Muffle him."

"Gladly."

"HEY, HEY WHAT ARE YOU – mrrghf! MMRR! MMMMMRRRRGH!"

"Ugh... Stop twisting, you'll only make it worse for yourself..."

"Just close your eyes and relax, Ne~kun..."

"MMMMMRRRGH!"

Our Neku backed away from the door as quickly as possible. He didn't need to hear any more of that.

So of course, he missed the part where the muffled screaming mysteriously stopped, and the soft, wet noises began. He was running up the stairs as fast as he could, heart hammering in his throat and knees shaking like an acrophobic giraffe.

This place was insane.

A/N: fuck me I write shitty endnotes

dicky donkey doo wah, seriously