ATUHOR'S NOSE: This chapter was delayed for several reasons. The one I'm gonna admit to is that I spent November focusing on this neat thing called - ("NaNoWriMo! Right?") ... no, actually. Something more in my capacity. Light Novelber! (Don't think too hard about how that's pronounced.) The results of this event can be found at itch dot io/jam/lightnovelber2018 . To find mine, just CTRL+F my penname... though I do recommend checking out the other entries as well! It's all a lot gayer than I've managed to get into this fic.

This chapter was unbeta'd, because I was in a hurry to get it out before the end of 2018... Listen, I totally have good priorities. Shut up.

"... silver lining, though, the devils won't want it now. I have a sneaking suspicion that the soul of a Keyblade user would normally be highly desirable, for its rarity if nothing else."

Luke raised an eyebrow. "You were there less than a day. Did the devils even become aware of your existence?"

I shrugged. "Aware enough at the least to draw up a contract for buying my soul," I said, reaching into my backpack and pulling out the roll of parchment in question. A bright "VOID" stamp was visible on it.

"You just... carry that around with you?" Sora asked, incredulous.

"I certainly don't wanna leave it lying around. It's got my deadname on it, for some reason."

"Oh, yikes," Luke said. "That's super needlessly petty of them."

"The weird part is, I don't even know how the devils know my deadname..." It briefly occurred to me that waving information they shouldn't have in front of my face immediately after I do the one thing they hate most might have been the devils way of proving some kind of point. Well, if that was it, it hadn't worked, because I hadn't learned a damn thing, har har.

"I impulsively shredded my ID and stuff from back home," I continued, "when I realized it wasn't gonna be any use out here. So for a brief, shining moment, there wasn't a single document in the entire multiverse with my deadname on it. I actually tried scribbling it out with a marker when I first realized that they'd ruined that, but the damn thing melted."

"The ink?" Sora asked.

"The marker," I said. "Which was particularly annoying because I only had the one, and the Echo Bazaar doesn't carry them because they're above that world's tech level. I imagine I can pick one up in Shibuya, though."

A thought occurred to me. "Actually, I might be able to pick up several things in Shibuya." I reached into my pocket to write a reminder on my phone and frowned when I found nothing. "Luke, did I do something weird with my phone while I was dissociating?"

"You lent it to Riku," he said. "Your logic was that our phones are more secure than their communicators, and we'll get more use out of that fact if they're on different teams. I'll let you decide for yourself if that qualifies as 'weird'."

"Hm," I hm'd. "Well, just to be sure, remind me before we leave..."

XXXXXXXXXX

Not too long after, we reached Shibuya. We landed in the Dead God's Pad, and after a disconcertingly quick conversation, Joshua shuffled us out into the station underpass.

After a brief pause to stand around awkwardly, I decided I had to break the silence. "What was that all about? He just shoved Player Pins into our hands without explaining why he thought we'd need them. And 'stay out of Shinjuku'? Even if I wanted to go to Shinjuku, I don't know how to get there. Uh, come to think of it, that means I don't know how to avoid going there either..."

Sora frowned. "Your Majesty, Joshua wasn't that short with you when you contacted him before, right?"

Mickey shook his head. "He wasn't. In fact, he was downright chatty. In other words, he was his completely typical self before. Something must have come up in a real hurry."

"In Shinjuku, I assume," I said. "Wonder if it's connected?"

"Joshua obviously doesn't think so," Luke pointed out. "Otherwise, he'd have told us to go there straight off, rather than to stay away."

"Well, there's obvious places to check," I ventured. "There's probably nothing at the Room of Reckoning, Joshua would have noticed for sure. Pork City is..." I thought about that for a moment, suddenly realizing that every in-game appearance of the location was under unusual circumstances. "... an unknown quantity, but worth checking out. We could go to Cat Street and ask Hanekoma for help."

"If Joshua's not available, we should get someone to help in his place," Sora said. "Do you know how to get around here?"

"Well, I memorized the in-game map over hundreds of hours of playtime," I said, shrugging, "but I'm only like 70% confident I can map that onto physical reality. And that's assuming there's no in-between bits the game abstracted out. Which probably there are."

"D'y'know," Luke spoke up suddenly, "this world has a working 3G network, and my phone can connect to it?"

"Really?" I said, intrigued. My first instinct would have been to check with my own phone, but that obviously wasn't an option at the moment. "How does that work, I wonder? Shouldn't it -"

"Focus, Tem." Luke said.

"Right, right," I said, shaking my head, "we have a task at hand. I guess, download a map if that's somehow not the first thing you thought of. And then... uh... that's all I can think of. Man, on-demand access to a complete database of all a world's knowledge seems like it should be more useful than that..."

"Well," he said, "it's not like it's going anywhere. Just tell me if you think of something. And in the meantime, let's start with Cat Street."

XXXXXXXXXX

We didn't start with Cat Street.

I don't mean anything nefarious happened. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Since we were on the entire other side of the city from our destination, we were of course going to pass by several major landmarks on the way, Not long after we left, we passed the statue of Hachiko, and...

"Sora?!"

"Wh- " Sora looked over to the source of the voice. "Rhyme! And..." Sora's head tilted in thought. "I don't think I've met your friend."

I stifled a giggle. Next to Rhyme was a slightly mousy-looking girl, with round glasses and a plain green shirtdress. Of course I recognized Shiki's real form, but it seemed nobody had gotten around to informing Sora.

"You suuuuure we haven't met, Sora?" she teased, lifting a familiar feline plush and waving its paw at them.

Sora looked back at me in bewilderment, apparently hoping I'd have a hint to give from my extra-universal knowledge.

"You're smart, Sora," I said in my best faux-innocent voice, "I'm sure you can figure this out."

Sora frowned very loudly at me. "Are you messing with me?"

"Maybe," I admitted. "But come on, surely you recognize that cute pig doll -"

"He's a cat!" Shiki interrupted. "His name is Mr. Mew and he's a cat!"

Sora blinked. "... Shiki? You, uh, look different."

"Yeah, it's a long story," she said. "Basically, um..." She glanced at the rest of us. "It's a long story," she repeated.

"We all know about the Reapers' Game already," I volunteered. "If that's the thing you're concerned about." (Which I knew it was, of course, but I was hedging on purpose to avoid making that obvious.)

"Oh! Well, if you already know about that, then the short explanation is..." (gloss gloss gloss, you all know this bit already) "...and that's why I didn't say anything in Traverse Town. It's too bad Eri's busy today, though... but speaking of friends, who are yours?"

"Oh! This is King Mickey," ("Hiya!") "Tempest, and her brother Luke."

"Are Neku and Beat busy too?" I wondered idly.

"Little bit," Shiki said. "They said they would be able to meet us, but they'd be late. Rhyme and I just got here a minute ago, so I'm not worried yet."

I nodded. "As for what brings us to Shibuya today, we're looking for a black-cloaked troublemaker who may or may not have kidnapped one of our friends."

Rhyme started. "Black cloak? Does your troublemaker have pink hair, by any chance?"

"One of them does. Marluxia." He was on the short list of Organization members we hadn't encountered yet, so that made sense. "Did you see him?"

"Yeah, in Dogenzaka a few hours ago. I thought he was a Reaper - they visit the RG on occasion, after all, so I noticed, but didn't think much of it. I couldn't tell you where he was going or what he was doing, unfortunately."

"It's all right," I said, "it's enough to know he's here." And so is the Point, I thought. It won't be in a conveniently deserted location this time...

"So," Sora said, "shall we start our investigation there? Marluxia's probably long gone, himself, but I bet the shopkeepers in the area remember him."

XXXXXXXXXX

After an hour or so of investigation, we had determined the following few facts:

Marluxia was largely hanging around in or near Dogenzaka; sightings dropped off sharply on leaving the area.

"So, Pork City," Luke concluded. "Another Day aside, Ramen Don's is not a hideout, and he's certainly not gonna be hiding in Cosmic Corner."

"That grumpy shopkeeper would rat him out, if nothing else," Sora muttered.

The Point of Shadow was not in or near Dogenzaka.

"I guess, in retrospect, it makes sense that the Point isn't there," I admitted. "If the... waves and stuff, and the imaginary number planes, didn't mess with it, the battle between Neku and Sho would have, and it didn't. What I don't get is why Marluxia isn't camping next to the Point, since their plans were explicitly to do that."

"We'll check out the Point afterward and see if we can figure out why," Mickey said. "Marluxia being away from the Point will make our job much easier, so we need to act before it occurs to him to change that."

The most annoying thing we had discovered, though, was that the walls on Pork City's elevators existed in the RG.

"And no, I haven't seen your pink-haired miscreant," grumbled a bored-looking Support Reaper. "Either do the mission, or if you have no business here, take a hike."

"So... not Pork City?" Luke mused.

"No, it makes too much sense for him to be here," I insisted, "but... if the Reaper hasn't seen him, that throws a wrench into things."

"Let's just do the mission," Sora said. "Joshua did give us these Player Pins, maybe this is what he had in mind."

I considered this. "That seems... barely plausible... What the heck, I'm out of ideas, let's try it." I turned to Luke. "Pact?"

"Pact," he said, nodding. Obligatory light show, and we were official Reapers' Game partners... despite both of us being alive. I decided to look into how that could work when I got some time.

Sora and Mickey, needing no explanation, were already following our lead and forming their own pact. The four of us made quick work of the Noise scattered about the floor.

"... Okay, mission complete. Wall clear." They turned to leave, but paused. "... Are you guys the real deal?"

I glanced at the others, whose looks of confusion perfectly reflected how I felt about that question.

"No clue," I told the Reaper, "I don't even know what those words mean in this context."

They pondered my non-response for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, we'll see, one way or the other." And with that, they faded out of sight, presumably into the UG.

When we got into the now-accessible elevator, we immediately noticed that most buttons were disabled. If it had been just 1F and 2F, that would have been expected, but to my surprise 13F was enabled as well.

But there were dozens of possible reasonable explanations for this. The really weird part was that the second floor was entirely empty.

"So, why is it enabled at all?" I mused. "Who has control over where the elevator is allowed to stop, anyway?"

"Support Reapers, I imagine," Luke said. "At least, that would fit with everything else we know. Regardless, it looks like the only way up is all the way up."

I wasn't gonna complain about that. Burning through thirteen floors of chump Noise, even if I was bypassing the pin brand restriction by fighting with a Keyblade, had always been my least favorite part of this game.

There was nothing on the thirteenth floor except an exit to the roof. We carefully trode up, hoping but not expecting to find Roxas conveniently left unguarded. We were not pleasantly surprised.

Marluxia was looking out over the city, looking almost wistful. Actually, since Nobodies can grow new hearts, maybe he really was wistful. "Tell me, miss Tempest. What purpose does Roxas serve to your plans?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Bold of you to assume I have plans. My style has always ever been improvisation. Even if I had bothered to create a plan, I'd probably just forget it. And anyway - rescuing Roxas isn't because it serves my purposes, it's because he deserves better than being ensnared in your grip to serve your purposes."

"Truly?" he retorted. "But all we want is to recover our hearts." Something about that pinged as strange, but I ignored it for the moment.

"Uh, are you aware that you can just grow a new one?" I said. "It's literally as simple as being a person on purpose. You don't have to get roped into whatever hypercomplicated bullshit Xemnas is feeding you."

"Don't I? I'm afraid I don't see the reason in your claims."

And then I realized. "Wait a sec... didn't you actively betray Xemnas and the rest of the Organization? Why are you going along with him so readily now?"

"Perhaps, in another lifetime." He turned around and I realized what was wrong as I saw his eyes were Xehanort yellow. "But in this one, I'm rather too entangled in the Superior's plans to take another path."

Marluxia held out a pin and a Noise insignia formed on it. "These creatures... so like the Heartless, and yet subtly different. They might have served our purposes, but try as I might, it seems they simply can't exist outside this world. But in the end, all we truly need is seven lights and thirteen darknesses... as we currently find ourselves with an abundance of both, the Noise will at least serve to prune the excess!"