So...yeah, we got an epilogue now! Honestly I'd had toyed with the idea for a while, since this fic ends at such an odd, bitter place. When I couldn't come up with anything, though, and new fics came and went, I had given up on the idea. However, when I watched footage on the New Day (can't afford a Switch right now), it gave me just what I needed to finally write a proper epilogue. So here I am!

Also, since this is based on some New Day stuff, go check that out first if you haven't already. It's only a half-hour amount of cutscenes on youtube. This chapter contains some spoilers for it, and will just make more sense in general if you've seen the New Day stuff.

Enjoy!

"The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art." - Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Scale 4: Junk Hybrid

She felt so fake. She was someone who shouldn't exist, the product of a brutal ritual done for the greater good. As much as she despised Joshua, she couldn't argue with his icy logic. Beat could ignore logic and rant all he wanted, in his peculiar half-thought, half-emotion way.

This's wrong! This's wrong! Everything's wrong!

But that didn't change anything. Rhyme and Beat were fated to become terrible creatures regardless. Let bygones be bygones.

But...who or what was she now? Was "she" even the right pronoun? Could she really call herself...Rhyme?

She spoke like her brother, or at least tried to, but it always felt wrong. Was it because of Rhyme's more naturally restrained speech? She persisted anyway, and sometimes it almost felt correct, especially if Beat was assisting (Drop those g's, yo!). Still, it was a performance. Although Rhyme's own unfiltered dialectic was feeling less natural too...

"You'll get used to it," Sho Minamimoto claimed with a toothy grin. "Eventually the you plus I equals we, which is then crunched into a new I altogether. Just as one thug and one nerd equals me."

That frightened Rhyme. For her and Beat to both lose themselves and become a different person...neither of them wanted that. Rhyme wouldn't let that happen. Beat wouldn't either. Birds of a feather flock together, side by side. They didn't fuse and become a new bird.

...Did that old saying make any sense, when it was applied like that? Maybe not...

So many things were confusing, like trying to interact with old friends. Should she act like Rhyme or Beat? She looked mostly like Rhyme, but Beat wanted to hang out with them too. Often, Rhyme let him take over for a while. But there was always this awkward silence when she acted more like Beat than Rhyme. It always made Beat sad, reminding him of his strange new existence.

Look at me! See me as me! Hey!

Yet the others couldn't be blamed. Especially poor Neku and Shiki. For them, their consciousness during those incident months had spiraled into insane nightmares. When Neku and Shiki woke up, they found out that not only were those nightmares real, but they were even worse than they realized. They had temporarily been Noise, Kariya had permanently become a Noise, and their two best friends had been combined through a horrible supernatural event. It was little wonder they were shaken and had no clue how to act around Rhyme. Still, they tried to understand as best they could. But humans could never grasp the issues or depths of an evolved Reaper.

Her human friends...already she thought of herself as something else. Even if that was true...

At least the Reapers understood, but even then Rhyme and even Beat didn't know much about Reaper culture. Yet here they were as Conductor, the second-highest Reaper position. It was no wonder other Reapers, including Uzuki, were jealous. Though it seemed like Uzuki cared less about climbing the ranks these days, spending time looking after the Progfox that was once Kariya. It seemed to appreciate the attention and lollipops.

How odd that the Reaper closest to Rhyme was Minamimoto. At least, in the privacy of Doi's restaurant after-hours: even Minamimoto wasn't about to showcase this kind of insanity in public. Maybe because it was too...honest? A (somewhat) regular conversation with him would become a five-way free-for-all, as Beat and even the Grim Heaper's former personalities joined in. Doi only shook his head at the madness, as he served them both hot cocoa. It was not a regular menu item, but a hoard Minamimoto kept stashed behind the counter for his frequent visits. Who knew the Grim Heaper had a sweet tooth along with Rhyme?

Even when they were forced to behave outside, Minamimoto was nice to run into. He didn't care if she acted like Beat or Rhyme, since he hadn't been close to either of them before. He did, however, respect them for saving him. It helped that Rhyme actually understood some of his mathematical jargon, and didn't mind learning more. In eager delight the Grim Heaper would ramble on with lessons of geometry and imaginary numbers. Poor Beat was bored silly, but Rhyme actually found it interesting. They usually ended the lesson with a battle anyway, so her brother's patience would be rewarded.

Among all the baffling and uncomfortable questions of her new state of being, one thing remained understandable: they were going to bring Joshua down. His heartless rule had almost brought Shibuya to ruin twice, and he showed little regret. He fiddled while Rome-Shibuya burned. If Joshua remained in power, his selfish and out-of-touch treatment of Shibuya may destroy it yet.

However, Rhyme was not strong enough yet. That was painfully obvious when she first attacked Joshua after the consumption was complete. All he had to do was unleash his true, blinding form to stop her in her tracks. She couldn't even get near him, much less strike. Even in her righteous fury she knew better: his Noise form was much, much stronger than hers. She backed off.

The fight swiftly concluding with minuscule effort, Joshua returned to regular form with a regular smile. "Don't worry, I won't erase you this time. All good Conductors challenge their Composers at least once or twice. Welcome to Reaperhood, by the way. Would you like some curry or some Souls?"

With that humiliating loss, Rhyme knew she needed more time to prepare. She needed to learn and hone her abilities, for one. The mixing of the sibling powers, combined with Rhyme's renewed passion, had led to unusual effects. Destruction and neutralization came naturally, like flipping switches, but they weren't as potent as before. Perhaps the two negative powers were canceling each other out to some extent? Or maybe because her Noise was more stable now, and therefore less likely to have drastic effects on reality? This downgrade of absurd power might have been another reason Joshua wanted them to consume each other, rather than just having them consume other people. He did say he wanted to keep things under control...

The other odd part came when they tried to make chump Noise. Their minds, filled with passionate ideas, spawned all kinds of creatures, yet these creatures lacked "reality". Though Noise were never stable creatures, their Noise were closer to illusions than real beasts. Joshua blamed their 100% destructive nature on both sides: how could someone with no creation energy whatsoever be able to conjure fully realized creatures?

This greatly disappointed them. Rhyme had hoped that maybe she could create separate Noise bodies for herself and Beat. That way they could take turns with the real body, and retain their identities better. Maybe even make a pet Noise. Beat loved animals, even he refused to admit it, even now. But these fake Noise had no personalities of their own, even if they could manipulate how it acted. Beat knew better. So did Rhyme. They knew all about fakeness.

What use were Noise that were only mirages? Well, besides playing pranks on the other Reapers.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

At least she could rant to Minamimoto about it over curry and cocoa.

IIIIII

Rhyme had always enjoyed spending some time taking online, though this was mostly new for Beat. Once Beat stopped being paranoid about every single person Rhyme talked to online, they had fun with it. They each made their own accounts to put up their own posts on forums or chatrooms. It was nice to talk to other people anonymously once in a while. No one expected them to be anyone but themselves.

They talked to their real-life friends online too. It often helped remove some of the unnatural awkwardness, since Rhyme and Beat had their own accounts. It made it hard for both of them to talk at the same time though. Other than that it was almost normal. Except for Minamimoto, who would post in codes of equations. They had to solve the equations, and then put the answers through a provided cipher.

When no friends were online, sometimes Rhyme and Beat would "argue" with each other, swapping accounts back and forth to reply. Other times Rhyme tried to write in the most ridiculous ways possible, like with all emoticons or all memes, just to stymie her brother. Rhyme would get Beat caught up on all the internet culture he missed, so that he would finally get all the jokes. It might have annoyed other people, but they didn't care. It was dumb and pointless, and that's why they loved it.

When life gives you lemons, make grape juice, and let everyone wonder how you did it.

Though, after a while, they got bored with the fake debates. Their opinions were getting too similar.

IIIIII

While playing around with their powers, Rhyme accidentally discovered that they could make tears in space-time. This allowed them passage into other timelines. They had once heard Joshua hinting that he had a similar ability. Maybe they would run into him spoiling some other world's life? Partly to spite Joshua, but mostly out of curiosity, they left to explore this timeline.

It was a lot funnier than they expected. Everyone was obsessed with Tin Pin, and no one was tied to the Reaper's Game. It was so nice, seeing everyone happy, including this Beat and Rhyme. It wasn't nostalgic exactly – this was a world too different from their own – but it filled them with a peculiar wistfulness. If only their own world had been so peaceful...

They visited that world regularly, whenever they desired solace. Then they began they began joining in on the foreign group's misadventures, even if it made one thing painfully clear.

"Yo, stop copyin' Rhyme's style," said that world's Beat, upon noticing their near-identical outfit. "You ain't Rhyme. Only Rhyme's Rhyme."

This made her angry at first. Of course she looked like Rhyme, because she was Rhyme! Not even a Beat could be this dumb. But...

...But she wasn't Rhyme anymore. She wasn't Beat either. She had blended into someone new, and she needed to accept that. She wondered when that happened...but it had happened, just like the other Reapers said it would. Either way, there was no going back to being two people in one soul, much less two people in separate bodies.

When life gives you lemons...

Yet this didn't scare her like it used to. It wasn't like losing them. It was more like she inherited their memories, beliefs and personalities, which were then woven into her current being. She wasn't them, but she remembered being them, and knew exactly how they would think. Of course she felt fake, if she kept pretending to be something she no longer was...

With that liberating realization, she began trying to figure out exactly who she was. She experimented with many fashions, accents and personas, discarding ill-suited names and wordings as easily as ill-suited clothes. If only she could toss away her sadness so casually. She wasn't Rhyme or Beat, though she could act like them. She hadn't been either of them for a long time. Minamimoto knew that. Uzuki knew that. Probably Joshua did too, even though she didn't see him that much. Mr. H knew everything anyway. But how to explain her new self to her human friends...

To avoid that, she mostly dressed and acted the same in her own world. Even around her Reaper friends, even around Minamimoto, she couldn't help but feel constrained. For those reasons, she could only attempt to find her true self online or in the other timeline. In those worlds, there were no preset expectations of who she should be. She was just another quirky friend who stopped in to say hi every now and then. There, her lack of constant identity became her identity. How ironic. Fakeness could be an identity?

IIIIII

Her human friends weren't fooled long. Neku and Shiki met her one cold day at Doi's ramen shop, holding hands. They continued hanging on to each other even as they say down and talked to her. There was sadness in their words, but not anger. She continued sipping her third cup of hot cocoa, or was it her fourth? She had already finished her curry.

"I...know what it's like to be in a body that's not yours...literally," said Shiki. "I know what it's like to not know what's going on, or what you're supposed to do...from the...uh, incident..."

"Last time we saw Beat, he was a half-Noise falling through the ground," Neku went on. "Last time we saw...Rhyme, she was running past us to find her brother. Then there was you, who was somehow both of them, and neither of them..."

"Hey hey, it's fine," she reassured. "We were all totally confused. I'm still totally confused about, like, who I am. So, well, give me awhile, okay?"

"What should we call you now?" asked Shiki.

"Dunno," she said. "Been trying loads of names. I'll get back to you on that."

"We need to call you something," Neku insisted. "I think that'll help us all...move on..." His eyes saddened, before he let out a groan of resigned frustration. "Why did any of this have to happen? The Game ended, and everyone was happy...I thought we did everything right..."

"Neku..." Shiki said, also looking sorrowful.

"But you guys did do everything right," she said. "Everything else...it was so unfair to everyone..." She downed the rest of her hot cocoa, and asked for another.

"Sorry, that's the end of Shota's stash," said Doi. Sometimes he still called Minamimoto by his "thug" personality. That was the boy Doi had been partners with long ago, after all, before that boy chose Reaperhood instead of life."Probably just as well. If you drank any more, you'd become a walking chocolate bar."

"Aww..." That meant Sho would demand she replace how much she drank down to the decimals. "But when life gives you lemons, you should drink hot cocoa."

"That...doesn't make any sense," said Neku.

She smiled. "It's not supposed to."

"You're a real cocoa freak, huh?" asked Neku. He paused. "Hey, let's call you that."

"Cocoa freak?"

"Coco," said Neku. "That's a name right?"

"Aww, that's cute Neku!" replied Shiki with a giggle.

"...Thanks?" Neku replied with a slight blush, rubbing the back of his head.

"Sounds like what you'd call a cat or dog," she said. She grinned. "I like it. I may not keep it forever, but I like it."

IIIIII

Coco soon explored other timelines. At first, she was just searching for new places to escape to. Home felt less and less like home, despite everything. However, as Coco hopped from world to world, she saw chances. Chances to stop Beat and Rhyme from dying. Chances to stop Rhyme or Beat from getting erased. Chances to keep Joshua or Megumi from carrying out their deadly plans. Coco jumped at every one, either charging in like a meathead or summoning an illusion. Sometimes it made no difference, but sometimes it did. Sometimes, Beat and Rhyme got to live happy, normal lives after the Game. Sometimes everybody else did too. Even when Coco failed, she at least learned one new way of how not to do things.

Coco had found her purpose. With that purpose, she found herself.

With Coco's newfound determination and passion bloomed more power. Now that she knew what to do with herself, she knew how to shape her ability. Her illusions – her dreams – needed to be as vivid as possible. Coco's creations may only have been so real, but that was their strength. It was hard to beat up Imagination. But her creations still needed to look realistic, especially if she was mimicking a person or building. She needed to simulate perfect proportion and geometry, with required perfect calculation. Sho's lessons had paid off, and sometimes she brought him in to inspect her work.

She also had brought Sho in to inspect her latest outfit. ("Huh...Hot pink, plus ice blue, plus frills, plus teddy hoodie, equals...infinite garish girlishness! I like it!")

Which was perfect. Everyone would notice her in such outlandish clothes. No one could not look at her.

Could Coco beat her Joshua now? Nope. But by interfering with other Joshua's plans over several timelines, she had found another,more productive way to screw him over. Plus, there were quite a few times where she got to see him in his pre-Composer form. Oh, how deliciously pathetic he was then. She did nothing to these losers, except preventing them from dying and entering the Game. If only she could do it to her own Joshua...nah, that wouldn't be enough. She wanted to destroy her Joshua. She only needed a little more power before she could crunch him and add him to the heap.

And then...well, Coco had no interest in being Composer herself...but as much as she liked Sho, she doubted he would be a fitting Composer either. She saw him as Composer in another timeline, and that timeline ended badly. Maybe she could keep him in line by being his Conductor, but she doubted it. They would probably fight over the Composer's seat once Joshua was reduced to static. Coco knew this, and Sho knew this, but somehow that only made their bond stronger. Perhaps they looked forward to a serious fight, like most Reapers did.

Maybe it would even be a consumption battle.

IIIIII

Coco constructed her most ambitious Noise yet in a separate plane of existence. She didn't want any Joshuas or Mr. Hs finding this new creature. It was a surprisingly docile being, dozing in its dimension until she summoned it for bigger jobs.

And this looked like it was gonna be one of those jobs. In this latest world, the Game was already over. That Joshua was going to restore everything, ignorant of the disaster coming. Perhaps he was already considering what to do with the Beat and Rhyme of that world. They were already totally unstable. Even if she interrupted Joshua's plans, could they still be saved?

Of course they could be saved. Coco had already saved many of them in all kinds of awful circumstances. A new day, a new challenge. Timelines blurred in her head like smeared paint. It had been awhile since she had come home.

So she sent down her Dissonance Tapir, and the whole of Shibuya was cloaked in her dreams. Her targets: Beat and Neku. Neku was the only one with the potential to stand up to the Composer, with the assistance of this world's Sho. Beat was Beat. Rhyme wasn't in danger, at least not yet.

Coco let herself slip into her dream, giving herself tiny Reaper wings instead of her huge ones. There stood Beat and Neku. So confused. So cute.

"Hey hey heyyy!" she shouted happily.

Both boys yelped and jumped. Even cuter.

"Hahaha! Good one, guys. Your faces are, like totez hilar," she said with a wink and a grin. C'mon – it's me, Coco! Remember?" Of course they didn't, but that was part of the joke. Existence was so much more fun if you didn't take things too seriously. No one got out of life alive anyway. "Like, the cutest little Reaper around?"Yes, look at me. Notice me.

"...Who?" asked Neku, now even more confused.

"Don't ring no bells," admitted Beat.

Oh the irony. She still had her bell. It was just packed tight under her bright clothing. "Um, are you for realz? Did you, like, seriously forget about me?" She put on a fake pout. "That's sooo rude! After everything I've done for you, too..."

"Straight up, yo? I dunno whatchu done for us before," insisted Beat. Though he seemed to be trying really hard to remember things that didn't happen.

At least, things that didn't happen to him. And, if all went well, never would.

IIIIII

After watching New Day I was thinking "Y'know, it'd be nice to finally do that Krick-KRACK epilogue. Coco kinda reminds of that end version of Rhyme, minus the internet speak...in fact she even kinda...looks like Rhyme...Wait a minute..." And so this weird idea was born XD.

I know it's an especially outlandish concept, but does it make sense the way I wrote it? It was also an interesting study on the aftermath of consumption, and the new person born from that. This was something that was hinted at in some of my other TWEWY fics, but never really delved into like this.

Here's hoping this is a more satisfying ending. It's still not sunshine and rainbows, but people are moving forward and it connects back to the New Day in the games.

Speaking of New Day, I do suspect Coco is actually a Rhyme from another timeline. Alternate timelines are a canon thing in this universe, and she looks a lot like Rhyme under all the eye-searing clothes. Obviously not quite like in Krick-KRACK, but maybe as a Rhyme who lost her Beat, or a Rhyme with a Beat-like personality (considering everyone's personalities seemed swapped around in her dream world). But we'll have to see whenever the sequel comes out...which will probably still be awhile...

Anyway, thanks for reading the whole way through! Now the story really is complete!