Ok! For those of you who are currently reading Requiem, or to you people who dont want to slog through trying to find it, The Apollo Arc starts in chapter 14 and ends in chapter 32 of my story Rain's Requiem. Go read it then come back lol.
Disclaimer: I own Apollo but nothing else, I promise to give back the characters I'm using right after I BREAK THEM. Ahem...carry on!
Shibuya was crying.
The streets were wet from nonstop rain. Storms raged every other day. The people of the RG were angsty and depressed for a reason no one knew. Shops sold dull and muted trends, and the food all tasted the same. The district was also angry. There were accidents and shootings, muggings and crime running rampant even in broad daylight.
The UG was faring no better. Kariya was trying his best but the deaths were getting so numerous that he had to run a Game almost every week. Reapers were dropping like flies because of the increase in Players, and some of the Reapers were getting edgy and fighting over territory and points. Hanekoma had his wings and hands full making sure rules were followed, and he even had to temporarily close WildKat in order to do his job as rule enforcer.
All of this was happening because one spikey-haired orangette had made a wager...and had lost. Neku Sakuraba had been forced to concede a Battle of Wills...and the price was the freedom of the Composer himself, as well as his own.
This meant of course that said Composer couldn't compose, which left the city free to deteriorate, which is why he never was able to leave Shibuya or take a proper vacation. Because without him everything would go to hell.
Now he was in the clutches of a madman, unable to tend to his district and leaving his temporary Conductor to fill in the gaps. When said Conductor is lazy as a three-toed Sloth, one can imagine why things were so bad.
None of this mattered to one Neku Sakuraba as he wandered the dying streets of the district with his head down in his collar and his headphones cranked up to 11, trying to shut out the world while also drowning out the constant screaming in his head that the Partner link was blasting at him while he made his way to a shop to get medical supplies.
Having lost the bet he'd made with an asshole Higher Being that apparently knew nothing of fair play, the Proxy was essentially the pet sitter for the madman. His job was to feed, water, and medically tend to Apollo's pet Composer, as said ash-haired being was now unable to wipe his own ass let alone eat by himself, although sometimes he was able to crawl around on all fours with the will of a chimpanzee just for the bastard's amusement and to humiliate the already beaten ash-blond.
Neku felt pangs of guilt every time Joshua was made to suffer any type of humiliation. In the five days since his failure, he'd had to watch the Composer continue to fall. The three times he'd stepped in, he was punished by experiencing a physical psych that left his body twisted until it reverted. Like a struck dog, the Proxy soon was forced to step back even when his brain and body wanted to move. Trust your Partner...but now, his Partner couldn't rely on him.
Not to save him or defend him anyway. Neku was going to make damn sure Joshua was taken care of and not treated like a prisoner, even though ironicly...that's exactly what he was at the moment. The Proxy would make sure he was fed like a king, and given the best treatment when he wasn't in psych hell.
Although Neku also hadn't forgotten his other promise. He fingered the firearm in his pocket; ironicly the same revolver that had brought the prissy boy into his life to begin with, and grit his teeth before removing his hand from the awkward weight. Now was not the time.
He needed to be smart, or Apollo would become wise to his ploy early. That meant putting himself in a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, soul-crushing position a while longer.
"So be it."
