Chapter 3: When Reality Sets In

Penerope had probably had the roughest day in her 15-year existence. She realized that yes, she was trapped in a video game, and her back hurt like hell. She wasn't adjusted to the Reaper wings that had aggressively came out of her back (upon her request to make it as painful as possible to wake her up). Now, Penerope liked video games a lot. She maybe wanted to visit a game world one day despite that was impossible.

She regretted that wish now and hated being trapped. The last world she wanted to be trapped in was the world of TWEWY though (for personal yet obvious reasons). She didn't know how long she was out, and despite having sent texts to her friends to describe the situation, getting out of here would be no easy task.

Her back still hurt like hell. Penerope wanted to rest so bad but didn't know where.

Three Reapers were still present in the room once Penerope woke up and once she was done texting her friends. Kana (of course) was still present and was probably the one who escorted her out of the Room of Reckoning; the candiest Reaper to ever walk the UG was still there and kept offering to take care of Penerope as she was injured; and Sho was silently observing the situation. Last she checked, Penerope was certain that Sho Minamimoto wasn't all that quiet. Uzuki and Kariya weren't present like they had been before.

The beige-haired reaper was getting upset by Penerope's constant denial. Puffing her cheeks, she looked at Kana. "Kanon! Why's this girl bein' so mean? She's hurt, and like, needs healing really bad."

"Ah, so she's the valley girl type. This'll be fun." Penerope thought to herself in complete dismay, flipping her hair. Her back acted up again, causing her to groan.

The valley-girl reaper stamped her foot. "Will ya' let me heal ya?! You're like, being so unagreeable and stubborn right now!"

"Good. Stubbornness and disagreeableness are some of my strong points."

Kana interfered in the arguing. "Penerope, be nice to Coco. She's offering to help you and you're denying her." Penerope huffed, sitting on the couch by Sho. However, she was on the opposite side to give the guy space.

Kana and Coco kept trying to insist on helping Penerope, but she ignored them to the point where she decided she was just going to sleep upright on the couch. She wasn't going to put up with their arguing. She set her 3DS's case on the table and squeezed on M'sieur Lapin, eventually falling asleep.

The two girls sighed in disbelief at Penerope's behavior and sat back down on the couch. Coco looked around. "Conductor, sir, do you know where Ms. Konishi is? She's been gone for a while." Coco asked, surprising Kana.

It was like she had forgotten this was a thing. "Wait. Mr. Minamimoto's the Conductor? When did that happen? I thought Ms. Konishi became the Conductor."

Coco frowned and tilted her head to the side. "Mr. Minamimoto's been the Conductor for a little bit now. The Composer promoted him to Conductor a while after the past Conductor was erased." She indicated before sighing and narrowing her eyes.

"Oh, and Conductor, sir? D'ya know where Ms. Konishi is?"

"Her Iron Frostiness?" Sho replied back, still not looking at Coco. She nodded, hoping he was paying attention. "Nope. She's been in and out for a while. I don't know and don't care where she is."

Coco sighed at Sho's apathy and stood up. "Aw. You're such a killjoy sometimes, y'know." She sighed and pulled Kana up. To kill some time, Coco decide to drag Kana along shopping.

The two of them didn't have much to do after all.

XxXxX

(Day 2)

It was the second day in hell for Penerope. She woke up in the same place where she fell asleep, which was fortunate, but someone had also given her a blanket. The girl stiffened up and let out a loud yawn and stretched her tired body.

She folded up the blanket in her lap and stood up, yawning again. However, she dropped M'sieur Lapin as she was setting the folded blanket on the couch. While she was kneeling down to get M'sieur Lapin, she bumped into the table.

Penerope kept bumping into everything while she was trying to get her things and determine a plan of how she was going to leave this joint and was making a lot of noise as a result. A blonde, secretary-like woman emerged from a hall alertedly, and adjusting her glasses, she observed upon the scene.

She was unimpressed with Penerope's behavior as well as her noise, but there was also the fact she didn't recognize Penerope despite her wings. Though the girl might've rang a bell from somewhere, she couldn't quite tell where.

Still, lower Reapers weren't supposed to be in this area unless they were given special permission or were called there. The woman adjusted her glasses and cleared her throat. Penerope paused and tiredly looked up at her, recognizing her to be Mitsuki Konishi.

Aka, one of Penerope's least favorite Reaper Officers to face off against and was-supposed-to-be-dead-but-isn't-now. Penerope didn't like Konishi, but she decided that she wasn't going to show it.

"Who are you and why are you in here?" Konishi asked, crossing her arms and glaring at Penerope.

"Oh look. It's the Iron Maiden. This is going to be fun." Penerope cleared her throat and flipped her hair. "Penerope Shiro; I ended up being dragged back in here after my back was assaulted and I went to sleep because I wasn't putting up with Kana or Coco."

Konishi stared at Penerope's wings and back at her. "…And when did you become a Reaper? Why are you still in here?"

"I became one yesterday, but I passed out when I got my wings." Penerope flipped her hair again and crossed her arms, glaring up at Konishi. "Why do you care whether or not I'm here though? From what I've heard, you tend to not be here very often. What, is it because you can't control everyone?"

Konishi looked irritated by the sass but tried to keep her cool. "I have my reasons for not being here. However, Reapers of lower rank aren't to be here in the Dead God's Pad."

Sho butted in out of nowhere. "By the way, Iron Frostiness, that kid is actually an Officer. Dunno when it happened, but she is."

Penerope was taken off guard, as was Konishi. This came out of nowhere! Besides, when the hell did Penerope become an Officer?!

"Wait, wait. Hold the phone. Did I get double-promoted or something when I became a Reaper yesterday thanks to my ESP'er rank?! All I knew is that I became a Reaper. I didn't know what rank of reaper I became."

Sho pointed in the direction of the Room of Reckoning. "Well, he told me that you were an officer. I still don't know why or how a new reaper got promoted so fast, but it happened."

Penerope was surprised that Sho was using no math terminology whatsoever. Unless he was banned from it or was too bored to use it. Or, he didn't know what to say for once (or didn't care. Sho was showing immense apathy to everything with his injury all of the sudden. Normally he was so driven, so it seemed a little out of character).

Once it was settled with Konishi and she left, Penerope proceeded to talk to Sho before he decided to slip out of her fingers. She caught his attention by taking his right hand, which was the non-injured one. There was a flash for a moment, but Penerope took no heed to it.

"So, Minamimoto. Where'd the math talk go?" Sho looked down at his hand, appearing somewhat shocked and then at Penerope in an annoyed fashion.

"My what talk?"

"Your math talk. Y'know, like calling people 'so zetta slow' and stuff like that."

Sho grumbled a math curse under his breath and glared at Penerope. "Look, fractal. I dunno what your deal is, or what you just did, or even how you know how I am despite how we've barely met, everything has been zetta slow lately."

"How? Has there not been any games? And there's also a lack of Reapers?"

"Yeah, that."

Penerope sighed, crossing her arms. "Well, you're not good at giving me answers. Anyway, I'm going to go eat. Bye, Conductor Minamimoto."

Now, Penerope couldn't just LEAVE Sho. It had nothing to do with the fact that Sho wanted to make a last word or anything, but it was actually do the fact Penerope had accidentally made a pact with him. Due to the nothingness remaining in the UG at the moment, there were few who actually made pacts. Usually, Reapers made pacts with their shadows (unless your names were Uzuki and Kariya, in which, they didn't). There was a case where a reaper made a pact, being the past Conductor, Megumi Kitaniji and a possessed Shiki.

Still, Penerope didn't even realize that she made a pact. She didn't realize that it was a thing. She didn't realize that she could even make a pact, especially noting the current circumstances.

So, when Sho followed her to get coffee and breakfast, it annoyed her (as she didn't realize what was going on). He kept tagging along behind her like he was some kind of lost puppy.

Honestly, Sho didn't like having to tag behind the new Reaper either. He felt like he was her babysitter. As the two of them remained unnoticed by society in the UG, Penerope stopped around the Pork City area and turned to face Sho. Her eye was twitching. "…Conductor Minamimoto."

"What."

"Why the hell have you been following me around all day?"

Sho didn't reply, causing Penerope to get even angrier. "…Do I need to #$ %# $ repeat myself. Why. The. Hell. Are. You. Following. Me?"

"…Because, fractal, you made a pact with me."

"I made a what?" As Penerope was getting flustered and upset with Sho, the two of them were suddenly attacked by taboo noise.

Now, it may be questionable as to why taboo noise were still a thing. It would be expected that they would've been dealt with by now. Still, here's the thing.

With a lack of games and the fact that in Week 3, Neku and Beat had to take down a bunch of Reapers, it definitely lowered their population. The taboo noise also hadn't been fully dealt with.

So, that's probably why there are so few Reapers left. Sho wasn't even fazed by the fact that they were there, but at they were fighting in separate spaces, Penerope was.

And that was when she realized that she had to fight more in this world in order to save her skin. If Sho went down (which was unlikely. Trust me, noting his health, it was unlikely he'd go down), she'd go down. However, Penerope was frailer than Sho, so if she went down…

Well, out went the Conductor and a Reaper Officer in one fell swoop!

And obviously, neither of them wanted to die. Especially Penerope. Penerope wasn't from this reality.

Think of this situation as "if you die in the game, you die in real life". Like, a literal situation of it. Another example could be in the anime "Sword Art Online" in two cases, where if you died in the game, you actually did die in real life or if you were killed by a certain person in game, you also died in real life. Of course, the two games mentioned in this anime aren't the same one, but this is also the fact that this is an anime.

Penerope's whole existence was sucked into this game and she was trapped in this world. If she did get erased, her existence would fade from both worlds in its entirety. Unless Joshua revived her, but Penerope was unsure if Joshua would be able to do that since Penerope was technically from a completely different reality.

Then again, even if Joshua could bring Penerope back from the dead or not, Penerope would rather die permanently than let him bring her back. Though… that would upset all of her friends in the real world. She didn't want to upset any of them. She knew that Mayu would be devastated if she was gone.

And Rin would probably hunt down whoever killed Penerope and give them the biggest ass-whooping they would ever experience in their life.

So, when Penerope saw a kangaroo taboo noise, she understandably freaked out. From what she knew, she didn't have any weapons on her. Unless M'sieur Lapin was her weapon, but she didn't know if she had the Groove Pawn psyche.

She stared at the kangaroo like a deer in the headlights. She was clueless and had no idea what she was supposed to do. There was also a crab and a porcupine, but the Reaper Officer just stared at them like she had no idea what to do.

And then, M'sieur Lapin hopped out of her arms (like he was living) and acted like some kind of rabbit Mr. Mew. This was probably one of the Psyches that Penerope had access to. She jumped up, M'sieur Lapin jumped. She'd punch, M'sieur Lapin would punch. She kicked, M'sieur Lapin would kick. And if she did a headbutt or flipped her hair, M'sieur Lapin would do a headbutt, and with the hair flip he'd whip with his ears.

Now, that wasn't what was intended, but hey. It was something. Penerope proceeded to attack with M'sieur Lapin, ordering what to do through her motions. It wasn't entirely like Shiki's psyche, but it was similar to the Groove Pawn psyche. The problem was, when M'sieur Lapin was knocked back, he was basically knocked out, and now, Penerope had to use another alternative.

She wondered what the hell Sho was doing in the other space, because GOD, fighting noise was harder to actually do instead of play it in a game. She dodged and pulled out her 3DS. She wondered if putting in a game would do anything.

So, she put in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance to test it, the Keyblade she had equipped on the character she had last played (being Sora) appeared. It was the Ultima Weapon that she gained from hours of grinding and finally defeating a secret boss. The Noise stared at it a moment, unsure what it was. Penerope decided to attack with it and helped take down the Noise. She didn't know if it was doing much, but when she was passed the light puck, she was able to deal more damage.

Then again, the Ultima Weapon was a powerful Keyblade, but less damage was done to Taboo Noise due to their resistances. Still, they were eventually erased at one point, and it was probably from Sho doing more damage than she did (due to not being used to this situation). The Ultima Weapon turned back into Penerope's 3DS and she put it back in her case, zipping it back up. She also went over and picked up M'sieur Lapin.

Upon getting back into the same space, Penerope noticed that Sho was basically untouched from what happened. Penerope was slightly roughed up from tangling with the noise, but this idea was minor. They'd be healed up before they got into a fight again. Sho seemed a little unamused by Penerope's performance. "You need to pick up the pace. That was slow."

"Look, I didn't expect to be dragged into this mess and be thrown into a fight. Besides, why hasn't that seal been dealt with? Wasn't the Taboo noise seal deactivated?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't mean there aren't any left. There's still some here."

"What, did the Composer want new Reapers to die?"

"There have been no games lately, fractal, meaning there's been no new players." Sho corrected her. Penerope huffed, flipping her hair and sighing. She decided to send a quick group text to her friends to better explain the situation today before putting her phone away. The Officer continued her route to Pork City, and Sho followed her.

Penerope went up the floors to the rooftop, and gazed out upon the game-world Shibuya before her. She completely forgot about getting breakfast, but she was amazed at the hell that she was currently in. It looked a lot like home, yet so different at the same time.

If Penerope wasn't aware of the situation she was in, she'd probably mistake this as home.

It didn't matter right now though. She had to focus on getting out.

Breakfast also bubbled up as a reminder to Penerope, but she was unsure of any café's in the area…

Upon thinking 'café', she thought that she might've known a place. But she didn't know if it was still open. If it had been a few weeks since the last game had ended, it was likely that WildKat wasn't open. It seemed to be implied that Mr. Hanekoma wouldn't be there running it from the nature of the secret reports.

She didn't know, but it was worth at least checking. She spread her wings and flapped them, before looking back at Sho (who was still tagging behind her). "Hey Sho, is it possible to fly with these wings or are they just for decoration?"

"What do you think? Figure it out yourself." Penerope sighed at the Conductor's unhelpful comment and took a deep breath. She flapped her wings, wondering if it would do anything, but it surprised her when she started lifting off the ground. She started to feel like a bird and was impressed with her newfound ability.

Penerope wondered if she could hop off the building to fly to WildKat. It would be much easier than walking. However, she was a little hesitant since it would kind of being like committing suicide in a game world, so she went against it.

Sho, who was watching his partner, didn't understand what Penerope was doing. She seemed to be trying to decide whether or not she wanted to hop off the building and fly or run down to the first floor and fly. She seemed to be hesitating on both of the ideas.

"Flight isn't that hard. What, are you afraid of flight or something?"

"No, I'm not. I'm worried about dying in this world. If I die in the game, I'll die in real life." Sho didn't get what Penerope was saying about dying here and dying in real life, but it wasn't as much of a concern to him. He was more concerned about Penerope dying because of her incompetence, as she'd kill him if they were to both die.

Penerope made the executive decision to go down to the first floor and try to start flying to see if would do anything. Sho followed along, wondering why he was stuck with this. He watched Penerope flap her wings and start lifting off when she got back outside past the first floor until she stopped again. "Eh. I have legs. I can walk."

Sho's eye twitched. Why did she bother going through all of that effort just to waste it in the end?! Penerope could sense his anger, and boredly looked back at her partner. "Ay, Minamimoto. You're gonna need to work on your anger if we're gonna be partners. I know that social interaction isn't your strong suit."

Sho trudged along behind Penerope as they were going to WildKat.

XxXxX

(Reality- Penerope's House)

While Penerope was heading along to WildKat in the TWEWY world, Akira and the others went to Penerope's House to see if they could get a better grip on what was going on. They tended to go to Penerope's House often, so Yuri was used to seeing them around. Akira knocked on the door, causing the elderly woman to come in and open it. Yuri was somewhat surprised to see Akira, as his visits were rare and few in-between. In fact, Penerope was commonly the one who visited Akira at his home.

She allowed the four of them in and closed the door behind them. Akira looked up the stairs. "Do you know where Penelope is?" He asked, looking back at Yuri. She shrugged.

"Eh. The kid's probably up in her room having a long game session again. I haven't seen her much since yesterday." Yuri explained dismissively and started heading towards the stove. "She'll probably let you all in her room though. Let me know if you need anything."

Akira and the others went up the stairs. Rin was the one who knocked, only for the door to open up. The light wasn't on, and only sunlight peeked into the room. There was also no trace of Penerope whatsoever. The only thing that WAS there was Penerope's black Nintendo DS Lite. It was closed, but it didn't appear to be on. Mayu frowned and proceeded to go over to Penerope's bookshelf/one of her game storage departments and looked through one of the drawers. She found a dark gray charger which she hooked up into the wall and plugged into Penerope's DS.

"Why'd ya do that, Mayu?" Rin asked as she sat on the bed while Makoto and Akira took a seat on the beanbags in Penerope's room. Mayu ran a head through her hair.

"Um… I was guessing Pen might've ran out of battery on her DS. She forgot where she put the charger. Last time I was over, she put it there, but probably forgot about it." She meekly answered. The others shrugged, finding it understandable. Mayu was the one who ended up loading Penerope's DS. So far, everything seemed normal.

TWEWY was in Penerope's DS at the time, which was understandable. Penerope wanted to complete the game, after all. Mayu loaded up The World Ends With You from the start screen and waited. Akira was somewhat anxious about what was going on, impatiently tapping his finger on his arm. "How's the game loading going?" He asked seconds later, looking back at Mayu.

She didn't seem to find anything wrong. The start screen was normal. Penerope's save file also appeared to be there, loading up as normal when Mayu hit load. It said that Penerope was on Week 3, Day 7. That was exactly where she was when she played last and was going to play Another Day. So, Mayu loaded up the game.

Here's the thing they were unaware of, however. When Penerope played the game, nothing loaded whatsoever when she attempted to load it up. However, when Mayu loaded it up, nothing seemed to load despite the fact it should've. Mayu tried to get it to work, but nothing seemed to work.

Akira sighed again and looked back at Mayu. "How's it loading now, Mayu?" She frowned and shook her head. She seemed pretty upset by what was going on. Her eyes looked pathetic.

"…Akira, it's not working! I don't know why…" Akira, getting fussy out of impatience with this game, stood up and decided he was going to make this game work. They had to see whether or not Penerope was truly trapped or if this was an elaborate prank. Of course, ¾ of Penerope's friend group were fairly certain that Penerope was trapped, and Akira was almost 100% certain but still. They needed to know.

Akira aggressively made the game work by shaking Penelope's DS and nearly removing the game to see if it did anything. However, when Akira touched the game cartridge, the screen flashed an eerie white, and then the player pin appeared on the bottom screen for a moment.

So, from there, TWEWY loaded.

The graphics, the music and the atmosphere seemed to be normal.

Until… well…

Well, something was horribly wrong when they saw a sprite of Penerope moving on the bottom screen with what appeared to be a sprite of Sho Minamimoto hesitantly following Penerope around. Also, the game was working on its own.

This wasn't even a hallucination. This was reality.

Naturally, Penerope's friends freaked out. Mayu looked like she was going to faint ("Oh… I'm starting to feel a little light-headed, guys…" she whimpered); Akira was in utter disbelief as he turned even paler than he already was; Makoto shrieked and Rin.

Rin couldn't even restrain her panic and her bubbling anger. Suddenly, and over everyone else as they started panicking, Rin proceeded to yell, "HOLY SHIT, THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?! OH MY GOD!"

Fairly alarmed, Yuri came up the stairs to check on Penerope's friends. The sounds they were making bothered her. Upon hobbling up the stairs and into Penerope's room, she saw that 1), her granddaughter wasn't there and 2), her friends were there and all of them looked freaked out and like they had seen a ghost.

Yuri sighed and frowned at the children. "Alright. What's wrong. Why did Rin curse her vocal cords out?" She asked, causing the four to whisper amongst themselves. Well, three. Akira immediately got up, carrying Penerope's DS and showing her grandmother what happened to be wrong. The elderly woman adjusted her eyeglasses and stared at the screen. She recognized what was supposed to be Penerope.

Instead of nearly having a heartattack/panicking and going to call the police, Yuri frowned and stared at the screen. "My, my. I most certainly didn't expect that. My little Penerope is stuck in a video game. I knew it was going to happen eventually, but not literally." She stated as she stared at the screen. Akira looked upset at what was happening and the fact that someone had actually went and locked Penerope in a game against her will.

How and why did this happen?

Still, there was pure amazement hidden amongst the shock. Makoto was especially amazed. When Penerope had said that "something was wrong with her game", she was serious when she said something was wrong with her game. This had to be some kind of possessed or overly-self-aware copy of TWEWY or else this could have never happened.

Despite this, nobody knew what they were supposed to do. They couldn't call the cops on a fictional character or bring a DS in for interrogation over a kidnapped person. They also couldn't free Penerope because none of them knew how.

However, one thing was for certain—being that now, Penerope's friends were determined. They were going to help get their friend out of there, no matter what.

Especially as they couldn't allow for Penerope in this place for longer than she had to.