so... uh... guess who was hospitalized three times? hint- me. it was me. i wanted this done before re:mind but eh. it's almost there, folks. i should have the last of this up by mid-feb. in the interum, i wrote some good omens fic if you're into that sort of thing while i was in a bit of a funk.

i'm mostly okay now, but i still have the dregs of a horrible whooping cough and its hard to sleep.

thanks for your patience.

The mass pressed forward, unrelenting, as the barrier buckled. Joshua and Uriel blessed the crowd as they shoved their way through, and Vanitas winced.

"Ow, that stung," he grumbled, before noticing everyone- humans and dead alike- had a timer on their foreheads; the 'you-can-leave-the-district' mark had been stamped on everyone.

At least it didn't give away their decoys.

"I'm right here," a voice said, sternly, out of his range.

Neku. Neku was walking near him.

"Right. You can see."

"Do you want a hand?"

"I'm assuming you mean literally. Yeah. Sure." Vanitas felt Neku grab his left elbow, pulling him along. He winced momentarily, but forced down the distaste for now. He had to rely on the living.

"Noise!" Neku hissed. "Big. Five paces forward. You want to fight it or no?"

"How 'bout it, Flood?"

Flood, gripping his forehead, chittered loudly.

"I can't fight with you, but I think he can," Neku said, as Vanitas was shoved a step forward.

Vanitas flopped unceremoniously into the Noise space. He stopped, blinked, and quickly realized he had no problem seeing; the street was completely devoid of the human wall pushing northward, but not for lack of visibility. Coco's influence didn't reach these pocket spaces, it seemed, and for that, Vanitas was grateful.

"Holy… what is this?" squawked a very familiar voice.

"This is Noise," Vanitas said with a smirk. "Think Heartless, but nastier." It didn't matter if he was talking to Roxas or Ventus; both of them had keyblades and magic, and both were currently flying green annoyances.

Vanitas winced as something invisible stabbed his left arm. "You get hit?"

"Yeah, this thing's too fast. How's you know?"

"We're linked. Hang on, there's nothing on my side so I'm coming over. Flood, stand guard. Squeak if you need me back."

Before Flood could agree, Vanitas slid himself into the duplicate pocket space holding what he now could confirm was Ventus. His pauldron was a dead giveaway.

Ventus cartwheeled out of the way of a massive spiked tentacle as Vanitas took stock of the black, pooling monstrosity before them.

That was new. Definitely not a Noise type he'd seen before, though he'd only been dealing with the things less than a week. It almost looked halfway between Noise and Heartless, if he squinted.

Vanitas cracked his knuckles and pulled his new Keyblade from the ether, leaving Ventus to stare and gape at it for a moment.

"The missing piece!" he cried, as the gargantuan Noise flung a giant ball of ink from a not-before noticed orifice, sending Ventus cartwheeling right against the solid wall edge of the pocket space.

"Look later, fight now," Vanitas growled as he charged for the isopod.

Riku almost twisted Kairi's arm as the zombie-esque mass pushed ever forward.

"Can't see," he hissed at her. "Guide us, but act like you can't ei-" he began suggesting as Kairi twisted her ankle in a piece of broken concrete sending the trio tumbling forward. The only reason they didn't fall was thanks to the human shield around them.

"That'll work," he grumbled.

"I'm sorry!" Kairi said with a wince. "Didn't mean to do that."

"Really, no worries," Sora said, smiling gently. "Just keep us moving forward."

"There's this weird floating symbol. That's the Noise stuff right?"

"Yeah," Riku grunted. "Steer us around it if you can." Riku hesitated before continuing. "You're bait for Coco."

"And Ventus just flew in it, anyway. Now it's pulsing."

"He'll be fine. Coco isn't going to kill a fairy," Riku acknowledged. "I hope, at least."

"We have to trust Joshua's judgement. If she could kill the living… she'd have already done it, right? Right?" Sora was trying to convince himself as much as his friends. Through a laced glove, Kairi squeezed his hand.

"Trust. And let's move forward."

"Fuuuuuuuuuuck!"

"Vanitas! Language!"

"I don't fucking care," Vanitas hollered, dodging sideways. "The only other person who can hear us is Flood."

"Flood is a person?" Ventus asked, panting, as he dodged a swipe of one of the massive oozing tentacles.

"Well, he's more a cast off piece of me, it's kind of hard to- ugh!"

Vanitas took a tentacle Sean straight to the chest, flinging him right into the barrier at the edge of the pocket dimension, snapping something and kicking the wind out of him. His left arm was dead.

With his right, he pulled out one of the curative drinks from a pouch in his jodhpurs, ripping the cap off with his teeth and downing it.

He screamed as the bone reset, but he had feeling in his arm again it felt a bit like the way Xe- the way he used to heal Vanitas, but right now he was too focused on fighting to really process it beyond pain. He tossed the bottle aside, shattering the glass, giving his wings a good flap to help right himself.

Vanitas doubled over again, and so did Ventus, both surpassingly winded as Vanitas heard a familiar shriek.

"TOUCH FLOOD AND I MURDER YOU," he roared.

"Va… Vanitas?"

"Aqua!" Ventus piped up. "You're on the other side?!"

"Where are we?" Aqua asked, as Vanitas felt a wave of calm wash over him.

Aqua had healed Flood.

Vanitas did stop this time to process the thought, ducking as the Noise thrashed.

Aqua had healed Flood. He didn't know if she'd been the reason it got hit in the first place, but…

"What do you see?" Vanitas growled out. "The four of us are split into two parallel pocket dimensions. Any damage we take, you feel. And vice versa."

"Oh." That was Terra's voice, small and concerned.

"Five of us, then," Vanitas snarled. "Stay sharp. The creature can jump between dimensions."

"Like the Demon Tower!" Ventus cried. "The one in Haven!"

"Haven is part of this planet," Aqua reminded him, grunting. "And we're being assaulted by these black tentacles coming from nowhere."

Vanitas looked more closely. The creature was in their half of the pocket universe, but the number of limbs seemed to shift by the second.

"Its body is on this side! It can extend its arms to yours."

"Great," Aqua's voice huffed. "Any way to predict where they'll pop out would be real useful right now, boys. Flood's biting, but it can only attack one at a time and this thing's smart. It's sending two or three now."

Vanitas frowned. None of the Noise he'd fought this far were smart enough to adapt. This was closer to… to fighting a high ranking Heartless or Nobody.

Vanitas bit his thumb. "I've got an idea. But you're going to have to trust me."

"Trust you?" Aqua was practically laughing.

"Let's hear it," Terra boomed, cutting Aqua off.

"I can't tell you out loud. I think this one understands us. Now, you going to follow my lead or not?"

There was a moments silence where the only sound was the exertion of the five of them, and the scraping of Keyblade on pavement and mollusk shell.

"Let's do it," Aqua said through gritted teeth. "If I die, I'm haunting you for eternity, Vanitas."

"How you holdin' up, kiddo?" Lea let his eyes flick to the right, holding Komaeda's hand. He was guiding them through the mass while also pretending he couldn't see. It wasn't hard. All he had to think of was how it felt to traverse the bleak corridors between the worlds. Up, down, left and right had no meaning there. You just needed to trust your feet that you'd end up where you needed to go, since that's how they worked, anyway.

Roxas buzzed low, like a man possessed. His eyes even looked completely glazed over, but Lea knew he was scanning for anything unusual from the air. The only small solace was the feeling that his being bait meant Roxas wasn't. Not that he could, anyway. It was too hard to fake a non-human being a Reaper.

"My brother's nearby," Komaeda said quietly. "I know it."

"What does he look like?"

"What I did before I put on this stupid dress," Komaeda hissed back.

"Gotcha… oh. Yeah. I see him. He's… he just jumped in that Noise thing I saw Kairi do last night."

"Noise?" Komaeda cried out, quietly. "Coco will kill him. Dead for real. He can't fight alone. Someone has to partner with him. All he could do by himself is bide time. Steer me there."

"I'm not-"

"Lea, if you don't, he is dead. Forever." Komaeda's voice cracked. "Noise has to be fought from two dimensions together."

"I'll go."

"You're bait."

"I-"

"No." Komaeda was firm, and Lea saw a determination in their eyes. One that reminded him so, so much of Roxas.

Lea sighed and listed left, pushing sideways against the sea of people.

"Right in front of you, kid. Do not die."

"I won't."

And Komaeda stepped forward until the world cleared in their vision.

"Your plan is for us to get thrashed?" Aqua asked in disbelief at the air. After all, that's all that was really happening. Vanitas's little Flood was biting at the tentacle most poised to actually do damage whenever a few of them popped into existence, but still. Aqua was too small in her elven form to really dodge the way she wanted, and Terra kept tripping over his tail. They still had their magic, at least, and Terra's demon skin was so tough he didn't seem phased by any of the direct blows to his torso.

"I… need… more… time…" complained Vanitas from the ether.

Why was Aqua even trusting him, anyway?

Suddenly, something that both was and wasn't pain seared from her hip, where she kept her Wayfinder.

It was glowing bluish white, and burned to the touch, when she opened the pouch.

Terra yelped, and she knew the same was happening to him.

On the other side, Vanitas grinned as the white pin attached to his waistcoat began to fill in, though a bit different than the way it looked the night before with Sora.

A blue wayfinder- Vanitas laughed that Aqua's color filled in first- then orange, then green.

And finally, red. The pin almost burned under his touch as he tapped it, sending time to a standstill.

The ground beneath them became a patchwork of wayfinders in their colors. Vanitas stepped forward on a green one, and the whole piece of the ground gave way to nothingness.

Great. He jumped back on a blue, then another green, and both disappeared. Thank goodness he could fly, or this would be a disaster. He landed on a blue, and it held. Maybe…

He snorted out his nose and hopped to an orange. It held, and both parts of the floor began to glow brightly.

"There's an order!" Vanitas shouted triumphantly. "Blue, orange, green, red. If you do it right they glow. Screw up and the floor goes buh-bye."

"Great," Aqua hissed. "Im too short for- ack! Terra, put me down!"

"You can't even take a meter wide step, just hang on," Terra insisted.

Ventus started cracking up, bawling with laughter. Vanitas kept jumping, feeling his magic well up within him waiting for the breaking point to let time flow again as their attack exploded out. He still smirked at the thought of Aqua being carried like an angry blue sack of potatoes though.

"Oh come on!" Aqua complained. "Even this stupid Unversed can jump between these tiles."

"Do you want to win or do you want to be right?" Terra reminded her.

"….nghhh." Aqua stayed silent as Terra danced around the ever-brightening floor below them.

"On my count, jump hard on your next tile," Vanitas demanded. "One. Two. NOW!"

Ventus, Vanitas, Terra, and Flood screamed as they slammed down on their next tiles. The light, too strong to withstand, blinded them all as the wayfinders peeled off the floor and began converging on the Noise.

Time restarted, and the creature howled in pain one last time.

"Okay. Fine," Aqua huffed as the pocket dimension collapsed and Vanitas was deposited back in the mass of moving zombies.

Flood snapped back to Vanitas's shadow before lunging out of it to perch on his shoulder as he kept pressing northbound.

"I win."

"Ichi? Ichi it's me. Your twin."

Komaeda felt the silence ripple over them like a crashing wave. Their brother couldn't be gone; the Noise would have dissipated. It was likely he was unconscious though. And Komaeda couldn't reach him. Not unless there was another person who could stay on the side of the dimension they were occupying.

Komaeda pulled on the hem of the ridiculously poofy dress and shook their shoulders. Their wig had enough Bobby pins to put an entire army of Noise's eyes out, and the thing stayed firmly in place.

"Ichi."

"S-someone t-t-there?"

Hurriedly, Komaeda grabbed a cure potion from their pouch and downed it. They were together on the Noise plane. Even if they hadn't made an explicit pact, they were together. This should work.

It had to work.

"Ko?"

Komaeda let out a breath. Their twin's voice wasn't shaking anymore.

"On your feet, dipshit?" Komaeda asked him, a hint of sarcasm in their voice.

"Oh, it's on, asswipe," Ichimaru replied, cocky in a way that let them know he was just fine.

Komaeda heard their twin crack his knuckles. "Try and keep up," they both shouted at each other, and laughed.

With a feral scream that both would later swear was their own, they plunged into combat.

Coco sat atop Square Enix's Shinjuku headquarters, head tilted back in a laugh.

"Love a good joke as much as the next guy, but what's so funny, sugar?"

Coco bit down on the goo-coated stick that was the remnant of a lollipop, before hurling it down to the mass below, aiming for someone in gothic Lolita attire. The reaper fireballed it out of midair, and she pouted.

"They're fish in a barrel like this," she said, joyfully. "Except sharks are fish too. I should defang a few of 'em. Wait… did they… fairies."

The Master of Masters peered over the edge as he followed Coco's thrust finger, pointing at a creature ambling among the humans in blistering red skin.

"I think you 'n I have very different opinions on what a fairy is, kiddo."

"'s a Goblin. And I could've sworn I saw some sprites flying earlier," Coco pouted. "So either the Underground People are in cahoots or that idiot angel somehow managed to kidnap some fairies." One of the Noise symbols rippled and ruptured, and four people- well, one person and three decidedly non-human entities were thrust back into the mass.

"Butts. See? Fairies. An elf, a sprite, and a demon. And that idiot Reaper kid with the emo look."

The Master of Masters crossed his arms. "That's an Unversed on the kid's head," he grumbled. "What's he doing helping? Kid's one of Zey-no-heart's lackeys. Should be trying to bite the other ones like an annoying chihuahua."

"Should I take him out? I'm not touching the Fair Folk with a fifty-meter pole but he's fair game to slaughter."

"Stick to the plan, Coco. I made it for a reason."

"You are no fun, you know that?"

"Excuse me, but I wrote the book on fun. Two, actually, and a comic when I got bored. I invented fun."

"You invented being boring," Coco whined. "I'll stick to the plan, sure, but I wanna torture my prey first before I actually rip something to shreds. Come on, Nighty-Night." Coco shook a heavy chain attached to a body bag wriggling on the roof behind her, grinned, and walked right off the edge of the roof, laughing hysterically all the way to ground level.

Thud.

"What was that?" Artemis demanded, adjusting his mirror-lined sunglasses.

"That was our van shutting down," Toshi groaned, thunking his head against the steering wheel. "Either we stay in here and ride out whatever's going on, or we hoof it. Er, no offense, centaurs."

"Foaly."

"Ienzo."

"Foaly and Ienzo. So unless you can-" Tosahi started to say, as the younger looking of the two four-legged creatures closed his eyes to concentrate, before hissing "Thundara" , pointing at the hood of the car. In a moment, the monitors blinked back to life, though the engine only stalled.

Toshi looked dumbstruck. "You can use pins outside of combat?"

"What's a pin?" Ienzo asked. "Also I've never been able to cast any Thunder spells successfully since… well. In a while. So that's a first."

"Wouldn't that be more lightning than thunder?" Artemis asked, chuffed.

"Hush it, mudboy, we don't have time for this. You wanna do that trick again, kiddo?" Foaly looked fondly at Ienzo as if he'd gained a nephew.

Ienzo focused, sparks dancing on his fingers. He felt electricity jolt through the two nubs on his head that were a poor excuse for horns, immediately followed by a searing sensation as his hair stood on end.

Foaly winced. "You okay there, Ienzo?"

"I… I can't focus!"

Artemis looked at Ienzo. "Calm. Take a deep breath. We've got our equipment online at least, that's more than we could have said a moment ago."

Ienzo breathed out, shakily. "Yes. Yes, you're right, Artemis."

"What is that?" Butler asked, pointing at a floating sigil in the sky on one of the screens.

"What's what?" Toshi unbuckled himself and squeezed into the cramped rear of the cab. "I don't see anything."

"Must be something dead then," Artemis muttered. "Here." Artemis passes their driver his set of goggles.

"Shiiiit. Noise. Big Noise."

"That's what they look like?" Ienzo asked, peering at the screen, having seen one of the symbols the night prior on the walk over to the Underground.

"Well, more like… that's a portal to the dimension they live in. You get too close and it pulls you in."

Ienzo frowned. "Question. What happens if two of these dimensions meet?"

"Makes one bigger dimension, all the Noise from both come inside to one larger mass- a whole lot of them could converge like that- more than ten at a time."

"And Coco won't kill someone alive…" Ienzo said aloud.

"You've got a plan," Artemis said matter of factly.

"A third, maybe."

"Let's hear it, then."

Toshi groaned, pulling himself up the side of the news van. Streams of people pushed around him, only barely parting around the vehicle. "Cor, those Reapers said they had a good reason for doing this, but.." he muttered, annoyed as he heaved and pulled himself up to the satellite dish on top. "Just doing repairs, me, that's all this a live, non-zombified human, still in Shinjuku, doing repairs to their news van. The only news van in the entire blasted ward that has anything functioning at all… If I die again I am sohaunting you lot."

One Noise symbol, then another, and then a third floated away from the mass and straight towards the van. Toshi pretended to ignore them and work on repairing his antenna, as the mass of Noise Coco had created was slowly drawn to the van. Two symbols bumped into each other, merging into a larger, angrier one.

Soon, every Noise was slowly floating towards the van.

Inside, Ienzo tapped on the metal of the cab below him with a hoof, in concentration, as he cycled through every spell he knew- both in practice, and only in theory and memory as Zexion.

He didn't need to cast them, just draw out his innate magic like a homing beacon, making the van his bait.

A van, that, for all intents and purposes, only had one annoyed human newscaster in it, seemingly oblivious to the supernatural and fixing his vehicle out there in the open.

"Hiya."

Toshi screamed, and fell on his butt, almost on top of a piece of the satellite dish he'd taken apart. A young girl in sweet Lolita and pastel high-top sneakers cocked her head and looked at him. He lifted up his goggles. "Y-you're not one of the zombies, kid? You wanna hide in my truck 'till this blows over?"

"You gonna offer me free candy next? Yuck, no thanks," Coco snarled, sizing up the man as the Noise converged near the truck. Making more was going to be a massive waste of energy, energy she was running short on as her human battery was actually showing signs of fatigue. Unlimited, her ass.

"I… what? No, kid, I'm a reporter for the NHK, I saw this," he said, sweeping his hand as the last trickle of the mass of people kept moving northward, "and you think I'm not gonna follow?"

Coco eyed him. He wasn't wearing a pin, and he had no trace of magical influence. She grinned, and peeked her third eye into his mind.

'If I don't get this dish fixed soon, HQ is gonna kill me. I'm the only one on this story,' his mind whined.

It helped he'd been dead once, and knew Reapers could read minds, so he let the very human worry be at the forefront. It didn't hurt that he really didn't know what Joshua was doing, so if Coco did manage to get past his base thoughts of getting his feed back online she wouldn't get much more than abject confusion.

"You wanna hide in the truck or what?" he offered again. "I'd really rather you not step all over my shit. It's unlocked, just shut it behind you so the- can't believe I'm saying this- the zombies don't get in."

The single, massive Noise- comprised of all of Coco and the Master's hard work- continued to languidly float towards the truck.

Coco hissed under her breath, jumped off the side, and flung open the back of the cab.

Two Westerners in suits shrieked as she did so, a giant of a man, and a tiny kid who looked roughly her presumed age.

There was no-one else in the truck. No angels, no Reapers, no Players, and certainly no angelic jerry-rigged contraptions drawing the Noise towards the van. Just two scared tourists clinging to each other. Probably a father and son. Coco screamed, and slammed the cab doors shut.

Ienzo was never more glad to be out of the last drops of his magic in his life. Foaly gripped him tightly under the cam-foil that was keeping them cloaked and smirked. "Angels and Reapers can sense magic. Be glad us centaurs don't have a lick of the stuff, hm? Unless you consider my amazing brain and my inventions magic."

"Hush, Foaly," Artemis hissed, completely collected and unfazed now that the girl had shut the rear doors. "She might come back."

But Coco had other things on her mind. Namely, that the gargantuan Noise was meters from swallowing the oblivious human on the news van whole. He was definitely a human, as were the two in the truck. There was no Angelic or Reaper influence, just an idiot mortal and his idiot life-risking job.

Emphasis on the life risking. Double emphasis on the idiot.

With a sigh and a wave of her hand, Coco sent a shudder through the remaining pocket Noise dimension, hardly half a meter from the mortal before it swallowed him whole. She didn't need to alert Upstairs. She had a nice, cushy position. Murdering Players was encouraged, Reapers were collateral damage.

But the living? Touch one of those and a Throne or a Power would be on her ass in seconds.

She'd have a word with her Producer soon enough. With a flap, she shot back up to the roof where he awaited her.

Butler pounded on the roof of the vehicle, and Toshi quickly snapped the not-broken dish back into place, sliding off the roof and back into the cab.

"It worked?" he asked as he flung his pair of goggles back to Artemis, who smudged them on his Armani sport coat before pulling them back on over his mirrored sunglasses. Toshi wanted to tell the kid he looked like an actual prat, goggles over sunglasses, indoors, but if the goggles were designed to see the world of the Underground, the kid's sunglasses probably served a practical function, too.

"Mhmmm," Ienzo said, peeling off the cam-foil. "It was a hunch, but I eas right. When my magic ran out, Foaly and I weren't detected by her. And she's a reaper. I think that was Coco, actually. Matched the picture Joshua showed us yesterday, I think."

"You…what." Foaly's voice was flat. "She's the sociopath we're after! You're nuts, kid!"

Artemis just laughed. "You're crazy, Ienzo, you know that, right?"

"Nah, that's my dad," Ienzo said with a shrug.

"If that's sane compared to him," Artemis said, brow raised, "I'd really enjoy picking his brain sometime."

"You cheat." It wasn't a question, it was an accusation. Coco pointed a tiny finger at the Master up on the roof of the Square Enix building, hand on a hip. Below them, the red haze was beginning to fade. Coco's borrowed powers were fading. She still had her own, of course, but it was nothing like the unlimited drip from the teen in the body bag. Coco stomped over to it, and pressed, before unzipping it partway. The teen inside, ash-black hair and rumpled open hoodie, was at death's door. Using him any more, at least for now, would result in killing him. And again, Coco didn't want to be snatched away by the Powers that Be. She was enjoying her queendom too much to give it up so willingly.

"Not a cheat," he said, with an exaggerated show of his arms. "Just enjoying watching the show."

"Then hide me," she hissed. "At least for a half hour until I can recharge."

"Baaaaah, where's the fun in that?"

"Me not being pulverized to dust is pretty fun, just saying."

"Yeah, yeah, fine," he muttered. "I'll make a distraction. But only because I like you, ya hear? You've got fifteen minutes before your big entrance or I move on to the finale. With or without you." He tossed her a can, leapt up to the ledge to look at the masses below him, and walked right off.