Joshua leaned forward from his perch atop 104, watching the Wicked Twisters regroup and prepare to foil Kubo's plague-possessed army. His lips were now stuck in a dissatisfied frown as he considered his proxy's performance for the day. Especially judging by Rindo's previous performance, he could handle any simple trap once he broke reality to get an edge. The problem was that it was not the only issue they would be dealing with. On the other side of town, Sho Minamoto was already moving towards Udagawa. He had gotten annoyingly adept at capturing the remnant noise of each temporal break. And with today's quarry, Joshua had little doubt that he would begin trying to take on players himself. Sho had a habit of flexing his strength once he had obtained some ill-gotten power, after all. Unfortunately, that threatened to put an unsatisfying ending to a game that was years in the making.
Joshua sighed as he adjusted his frequency. The familiar embrace of scintilating currents formed from his skin, white threads of light enveloping his body until he was little more than an angellic silhouette. Even with the transformation complete, he didnt leave right away. Joshua despised playing out his hand before the final act. He hated not having an ace up his sleeve. But, he reasoned, it was quickly approaching the final hour. Even if Rindo couldn't manage to utilize even angel level abilities to gain victory, a little help should do the trick. Joshua rolled his eyes. Then again, his proxy had managed to avoid any doubly fatal mistakes within the same day until now. It was worth something. With a single thrust of his wings he rockets his way towards the pocket of space the lower world once knew as Shinjuku. To him, it looked like a looming dome, the surface stitched with crashing lines, weaves and noise. It was perfectly smooth despite the chaos roiling within, except for a single winding chain that ran out from it.
Even for a being moving among one of the more ethereal planes, crossing the border into Inverted space wasn't trivial. Such a thorough Inversion made the border between normal and compressed planes actively hostile to each other, attempting to assert completely incompatible physics and laws. It required some delicate tinkering to soothe the border between them enough to allow non-destructive transfer. This theoretically made it an ideal hiding place for those who could manage the crossing. Unfortunately for a certain Reaper, it only kept most people out. She really should have known better than to try to slip one by him so close to his home turf.
The change after crossing the barrier was immediate. There is a pleasant hum of energy that people who have never left a plane capable of generating Soul take for granted. Here that hum beats against the walls of the inverted zone like particularly agitated insects, drawn towards a void like water swirling into a drain, creating a droning cacophony that is inescapable. The air shimmered like it couldn't decide where it was supposed to be, creating an effect that made objects in the distance split like a mirage. There was no light- instead, the whole place had a dull red glow, the last remnants of the light trapped during the initial inversion now fully dispersed and randomized among the space.
Joshua spotted Neku on the overpass, sitting slumped against a guardrail. He might be interrupting his rest, Joshua realized. It was rather easy to forget day and night in a realm that never had more or less light than the constant droning static that made up this hellish sky. Joshua lands nearby, the swirling energy that made up his form tightening down until he was once again the Joshua that Neku recognized.
He was not interrupting any beauty sleep, as it happened. "Oh look. My white knight," Neku croaks out, managing a blithe sarcasm even through the strain of working a voice unused for weeks (or was it months?). Neku relaxes from his fetal position, stretching out and looking up at Joshua with a tired gaze. "Here to remind me about the virtues of patience again?"
"Well I certainly could, but I would hope that you wouldn't need reminding after… what was it? Two years?" Joshua muses, eyes staying on Neku and the corner of his lips pulled up into a smirk.
Neku didn't dignify that with a response, partly because he wasn't sure how long it had been himself. "Whatever it is, it's been too damn long. What do you want, Joshua? You being here makes my head hurt," Neku sighs, his brow scrunched up in annoyance and apparent discomfort.
Good, Joshua thought. He'd stayed potent through his time here. Beings in higher planes give off a constant low-level energy to every plane below them. In an Inversion, where multiple lower planes had been smashed together, that emanation layered over itself to those who could pick up on it. Plus, if his snark was anything to go by, his mind was still sharp too. "Well, as it happens, today is your lucky day," Joshua replies, lifting a hand towards Neku. "Your time has come."
Neku glances down at the offered hand, staring blankly for a second before returning his gaze with a flicker of… Annoyance? Couldn't be. "Great. Are you satisfied enough to let me out of time-out for ruining your Game?" he grunts, crossing his arms as he regards Joshua with a measured sternness.
Joshua's smile fades, and after a few more seconds he lowers his hand, stuffing it in his pocket. "I told you already, Neku. This… holding is as much for the sake of Shibuya as it is for your own safety," Joshua sighs, head tilting down disapprovingly. This had been a constant topic of conversations whenever he visited. His insistence was becoming annoying.
Neku lets out a huff through his nose, mouth hidden behind the signature oversized collar of his top. "Sure. You've certainly managed to convince me that my little vacation in this damn purgatory is worth it," he spits back, glancing at the cityscape.
Joshua couldn't help but follow his gaze. The structures flickered in their tenuous reality, fading and popping back in slow, untimed cycles. And the people- or more accurately, what was left of their souls- wandered among the shifting streets, emitting a stream of haunted babble everywhere they went. The noise was even more maddening than the low-level electric hum that seemed to pulse everywhere here. Joshua looks back in time to see Neku reaching up to his ear, fingers subconsciously searching for something at his neck. Then Neku catches him staring, and his eyes glare back in preparation of the next practiced tirade the two tended to share whenever they met nowadays.
"You have to admit its at least amusing, Neku. You spent years never letting those headphones out of arms reach, and you manage to abandon them right before you could *really* use something to muffle the noise."
"It was cathartic!" Neku growls back, throwing his hands up in exasperation and turning away. "I was finally comfortable listening to people, connecting with them, expanding my horizons. I didn't need them anymore!"
Joshua smirks. "And look at you now. The picture of personal growth, aren't you? Why would you ever need those silly headphones back."
"Because someone threw me into the noisiest fucking plane they could find!" Neku growls, storming back up in Joshua's face, fists clenched in barely restrained anger.
"I told you, I had nothing to do with your kidnapping. That wa-"
"Bullshit. Even if you didn't pull the strings you certainly loved letting the wrench in your immaculate plan rust in the worst corner you knew of."
Joshua's brow furrowed. "This isn't some petty act of vengeance, Neku. Sequestering an individual with Imagination like yours would be, simply put, needlessly wasteful. You are not the only person under my watch, Neku. The world doesn't revolve around you."
"Newsflash! It doesn't revolve around you either!" Neku jabs an accusing finger towards him. "Live up to your own high opinion of yourself for once."
"Really. And sparing Shibuya doesn't factor into this at all? I was sure you'd forgiven me not long after you got your precious little life back." Joshua shot back, his voice tipped with more venom than he had expected.
"Oh, I had. But you didn't do it out of the goodness of your heart, did you?" Neku accuses, eyes boring into his. "You didn't spare Shibuya out of the goodness of your heart. You were playing another game. That final test. I kill you, you win. I don't, I win. All it would have taken was me pulling that trigger. Erase us all off the face of the earth. Probably with that same bullet, knowing your sick humor! But I didn't. I couldn't snuff out anyone I'd learned to trust with my life. And you just don't know why, do you? You never figured it out. You get to watch and seeth about how you lost. And oh! Look at this! That pesky little player that beat you at your own game and ruined your sadistic fun just happens to find himself stuck in static hell. What a happy, evil little coincidence for you. Mr. H should be ashamed of you!"
Neku's words rang out in the air, beating back the drone of the Inverted plane with the force of its delivery. His chest heaved, teeth gritting as he glared at Joshua.
In return, Joshua's gaze went cold. Not like ice. Like the frigid emptiness of the void. He doesn't answer, letting the drivelling ambiance of the plane return before uttering a single sound.
"You were never even a player in that Game, Neku," Joshua spits back. "Just a proxy. Like you always were."
Neku narrowed his eyes. "Then who-" He started, before a wave of a hand began to disintegrate his body, enveloping it in a packet of light before shooting it out of the prison Neku had occupied for so long. But still, the unfinished question hung in the air.
Joshua stayed there, jaw clenched as he mulled over Neku's words. He really wasn't used to the boiling heat of anger that swelled in his chest, and not even unmaking the overpass and the surrounding blocks with a single divine blast managed to quell it.
Joshua looks away, towards Shibuya, towards the one anomaly he didn't understand about this place. A chain that spiraled out of the dome, connected to the entity that had broken the wall of warring code that made up this plane's border. A child's soul, coalescing the fears and sorrows of so very many people, infused and spurred and driven by them to break an impossible barrier. How could such a phantom exist? What could possibly drive it to continue existing? Why couldn't he just figure it out?
"Damn you, Hanekoma. Why did you resist me? I should have ascended. I earned it."
Joshua curses into the new scar below him. He glows and flexes his wings once more, and follows his old proxy out of Shinjuku.
