On the Way to a Smile

by Regiss

Axel made a promise that he'd always be there to bring them back, but now Lea finds that he can't remember who one of "them" was. With his heart weighed down by guilt, Lea will do anything to get his friend back—and his memories with her. Part 3 of Remember the Tides.

12. The World Begins With You

Chapter 12: The World Begins With You

Hypocrite.

The voice in Neku's heart repeated itself over and over while he moved through Shibuya's crowds as just another faceless person in the mass. No matter how much he turned up the music blaring out of his headphones, he just kept hearing that instead. Hypocrite.

Neku snarled behind his the collar of his shirt. He turned the volume up to maximum and then shoved his hands into his pocket and moved across the crosswalk. The irony of this entire situation was not lost on Neku. He didn't need a little voice in his head telling him that he was a hypocrite. He knew damn well that he had not always been the most open person. Or open at all, really.

The sound of a train pulling into Shibuya Station caught Neku's attention, and he looked up for the first time in who knew how long. It took a moment to reorient himself, but it quickly registered to Neku that he had found himself at the West Exit bus terminal. Pretty far from Cat Street, and near where they'd run into Lea, Cissnei, and Aqua, in fact. Neku wasn't quite sure what it was that had brought him here, since he usually made his way to Udagawa when he was feeling down. But one empty little street corner caught Neku's eye, and he slowed to a stop. He blinked, trying to drudge up the memory, why this spot of everywhere in Shibuya called to him, and when it came up Neku grimaced. Now he wished he hadn't remembered.

Neku stared at Beat with a deadpan expression as the big idiot sputtered angrily, trying to put his thoughts into words. Neku could see why he was angry, but what he had said to get Beat acting like this was the truth, and even Rhyme had admitted it. Neku couldn't scan them with his Player Pin. They could be fellow Players, sure…Or they could be Reapers screwing with him, earning his trust and ready to get the drop on him when he was weak.

Eventually, Beat let out an angry roar and stomped his foot. "You piece a' DIRT! Screw you! We don't want your help! Le's bounce, Rhyme." Grabbing Rhyme by the hand, he flipped Neku off and marched off into the city.

"Wait, no! We're sorry!" Shiki called after the two's retreating figures, with only a brief glance back over her shoulder from Rhyme. "...They left." Shiki lowered the hand she'd been waving after them and let out a soft sigh, to which Neku rolled his eyes. But as if she had seen it Shiki immediately whirled on him, jabbing a finger into his chest. "Nice going, Neku! We should all stick together, and you know it!"

"Then why don't you go with them?"

Shiki let out a sigh and her face softened, but behind the concerned look she gave Neku he could still see sparks of anger. "Listen to yourself... We're partners, Neku. But I don't understand you! Let me in! Tell me what you're thinking!" She was clutching at her chest as she begged him. And tears welling in the corners of her eyes? How overdramatic.

Neku gestured at the Player Pin pinned to her hat. "Let yourself in. You can scan me."

"You know that's impossible! Besides, we're right here. Let's just talk to each other—"

"And say what? I'm not opening up to anyone. Ever. Other people just hold me back. I can do things my own way."

Not one of his proudest moments. Neku slowly turned away from the station underpass, his gaze lingering on the road where Beat and Rhyme had run off—because of him, his awful personality. He had been an absolute bastard and he knew it. But those three weeks had opened him up, made him realize that yeah, he could trust people. And then to have that trust thrown under the rug like Joshua had just done was just…

The worst part was it wasn't even the first time that had happened with Joshua.

Twister's lyrics blared in his headphones, but he didn't hear them. At least the voice calling him a hypocrite was gone, that was one upside. Neku continued through the streets with a slouch, thinking back not just on his argument with Beat now, but everything that had happened during his three weeks in the Reaper's Game. Opening up to Shiki, working with Beat to save her, learning to love Shibuya… Working with Joshua despite Joshua killing him. Trusting Joshua after that even if he didn't forgive him for it. Was that situation really so different to this one? Was it really? This time Joshua didn't kill him; hell, this time he didn't do anything bad. If anything he had helped.

Sure he could look at it logically like that, but for some reason it hurt so much more to learn that Joshua hadn't told him about this. He thought—he had really thought—that they had learned to lean on each other in that final game of theirs in the Shibuya River. To put lies behind them. Apparently they hadn't though, and sometimes a lie of omission hurt even more than a normal lie. Neku had really thought they were friends. He'd made a big deal about that in Traverse Town, even. He trusted Joshua with his life (there was that irony again), but it sure seemed like Joshua didn't feel the same if he hadn't even told Neku and the others what had happened to them.

Gone. Not even dead, just gone. Nothing but a living dream made out of pieces of memory. He couldn't even comprehend it. The thought made his gut twist. Something so important was something he had deserved know, damn it.

"But Neku, I thought you couldn't afford to lose."

Joshua's voice emanated through his memory, deafening all other sounds. Neku slowed to a stop as a fateful encounter with Sho Minamimoto replayed in his mind. The light of Level i Flare expanding toward them, painting the world white. The disorientation, and more predominately utter shock, as Neku felt himself shoved aside. His disbelief as the SOB—the one who had killed him, who had used him like a pawn and set the entire Game up—took the hit for him. His enraging smug grin as he looked back over his shoulder, arms defensively outstretched, while the Grim Heaper's supposed suicide attack enveloped him.

"Give up on yourself, and you give up on the world."

"Damn it, Josh."

Neku let out a sigh and turned off his music. He lowered his headphones from his ears, hanging them around his neck as he turned around and looked at the towering skyline of Shibuya. Cat Street was back there even if he couldn't see it. He needed to talk this out with Joshua, not sulk. Could he forgive him? Probably not. But he'd moved past unforgivable issues before. Yet as Neku began to make his way back to Mr. H's, something made him pause. There was some sort of shift in the air, something that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He couldn't quite place it, not just yet, but—

A scream broke his concentration. Neku's head swerved right and his eyes went wide as he watched a living shadow thrust its clawed arm elbow-deep into a man's chest and pull out a pink light. He felt his blood drain from his face. Heartless. Neku got into a fighting stance as more Heartless of all shapes and sizes began to emerge and attack, but he quickly faltered. This wasn't the Game. He wasn't in the UG and he didn't have any pins. He was completely powerless, and there was only one thing he could do.

Neku broke into a terrified run.

Unwittingly one more memory struck Neku, of running through Shibuya's streets away from monsters. Only this time he was hardly alone, surrounded by the fleeing masses—including some who couldn't get away in time. The Heartless may have had a lot of similarities to Noise, but their greater threat couldn't have been any clearer at that moment.

The twists and turns through the streets as he ran frantically from the shadows eventually brought Neku to a familiar dog statue near the train station. Against his better judgment and despite the situation, Neku found himself laughing dejectedly under his breath. Here he was dwelling on the past and trust, and he found himself alone at Hachiko.

I could really use a partner right now.

x-x-x

The cat was out of the bag. It was sooner than he'd have liked, but Joshua knew that sooner or later he'd be found out. Neku was going to learn eventually that Joshua wasn't dead at all. A living person playing the Reaper's Game—unheard of, impossible. And yet here he was.

Joshua flipped a strand of his hair. "Please, it's not a big deal. We formed a valid pact. We're just like any other pair, Neku."

Neku clenched his fists at his side as he stared down at his feet. "...No."

"Hmm? I didn't catch that."

Suddenly angry, Neku glared up at Joshua and raised his fist. "No, we're not, you punk! How can you say you're the same as us? You're alive! You're here 'cause you want to be! Not us! I don't want to be here! I'm not playing the Game for kicks, dammit!"

Joshua shrugged and shook his head. "No, you're playing because you want to live again. You still get something out of this."

"You little bastard... Only what you TOOK from me! YOU killed me!"

Ah. There it was. The bomb had dropped.

It was about time.

Joshua giggled, and he couldn't hide his smile. "Aww, Neku. You said you didn't remember! You sneaky little thing. So what if I did?"

"What!?"

Joshua smirked. "What if I am the one who killed you? You're going to do something about it?"

WildKat was deathly quiet but for the sound of Joshua's thoughts and Mr. H cleaning the counter. Neku's friends and the visitors from off-world had gone to go find Neku, as well as track down that Pete fellow. Lea hadn't been happy about the bombshell Joshua dropped on him, and the truth was Joshua couldn't really blame him for that, but his hands were tied on that matter. He really couldn't do anything to help Lea and Aqua's friends outside of Shibuya.

As for friends in Shibuya, well, Joshua's mind was currently focused on one in particular.

Neku storming out of the shop may have smelled slightly of an immature tantrum, but it was warranted. More than warranted, really. Joshua hadn't been honest with him, and while that wasn't entirely new, after their back and forth of trust and distrust during the Reaper's Game he understood that Neku would feel betrayed. Two of those three weeks had been spent opening Joshua's eyes, showing him that Shibuya as a place worth living in because the people were worth opening up to, and yet he hadn't taken that lesson to heart when Neku had perhaps needed it the most.

Joshua let out a loud sigh and rested his face in his hands. He heard footsteps and peered up for a moment to see Sanae Hanekoma looking down at him with an unreadable expression behind his sunglasses.

"Josh, you just gonna wallow around here all day?"

"Mr. H, have I been a poor friend?"

"I'd say so."

Joshua let out a short, humorless chuckle. "Could have put it a little sweeter."

"I'm just saying what you need to hear."

"Like Neku was?"

"Yes." Wow, blunt. "You may be thinking, 'what difference is there between not telling him I killed him and not telling him he's a dream'? Truth is, Josh—not a lot. The difference is that the two of you have already had this falling out before, and Neku thought that you had gotten past all of this just like he had." Mr. H rubbed his sunglasses on his shirt as he spoke. "You know, you and Phones are both way too much alike for your own good. You shut others out, and you grew not only more open as the Game went on but more toward becoming friends as well."

Joshua hated to admit it when Hanekoma was right. He sighed and spoke almost too quietly for even him to hear his own voice. "So what do I do now?"

"You look for Neku and make things right, because that's what friends do. I know you didn't realize Neku thought of you that way until he said it in Traverse Town, but it's something that had been building up for a lot longer than that. What you did—or didn't to, rather—hurt him a lot more than you realize."

But Mr. H was wrong there. No, Joshua had realized how Neku saw him quite some time before then.

Neku stared at Joshua with a mixture of sorrow and hatred. Mostly the latter. His breathing was heavy, and not just from the fight he'd just finished. It was no surprise. Joshua had returned the memories of Neku's death to him in full after all.

Neku shook as he spoke. "I thought... I thought I finally found a friend I could relate to... But it was YOU! You killed me!"

A friend? Joshua had to resist the urge to react to that. He hadn't ever thought of Neku as a friend, nor had he thought Neku considered him one. Neku was his proxy and pawn in this Reaper's Game, had been from the start. Joshua masked his surprise with a giggle. "Now, Neku, why don't we play one last Game?"

Neku didn't seem to hear him. "You tricked me..."

Fine then. If Neku wasn't going to respond, then Joshua wouldn't either. He dropped a familiar gun onto the ground between the two of them. "The winner gets to be the Composer, and do whatever he likes with Shibuya. If you win, you decide. If I win, I'll decide." At that, Joshua paused. He'd started this whole thing to fix Shibuya, but after his misadventures with Neku… "...Of course, I've already decided."

Neku stared at the gun, then at Joshua. "You're a monster..."

Monster. Joshua didn't let those words get to him, no matter how hard they tried. "Neku? You'd better pick up that gun. I mean, this IS going to be a duel. I'll keep the rules extremely basic. I'm going to count down from ten. On zero, we shoot. See? Easy."

"Don't screw with me, Joshua!" Neku screamed.

Joshua's mask almost faltered then and there. Don't screw with him? He'd been screwing with Neku for nearly a month by this point. Then why did it hurt to be called out on it now? Not that he was, but… Joshua shook his head. "I assure you, I'm not. Life's little crossroads are often as simple as the pull of a trigger."

He had known, and he had been happy in that knowledge, because it truly showed him what a wonderful world it was. It'd opened his eyes and convinced him to keep Shibuya as it was. To save the world the right way, not his way.

"And there's no use moping over this. Joshua, don't just sit here in self-pity. Enjoy every moment with all ya got," Mr. H quipped in a faux sagely voice.

Joshua gave a small smile at his old friend. "Quoting CAT on me now?"

"I don't know what those kids see in that loser," Mr. H replied with a mischievous gleam in his eye. "Listen, Josh. I'm not gonna give you that same speech I gave Neku back in the day. I'm not gonna because you don't need it. You don't need me to tell you to expand your horizons."

"'The world ends with you'," Joshua said, quoting another one of Hanekoma's oft-repeated words of wisdom. "Life is what we make it, and the world is a bright place if we make an effort to see that."

"Right. But there's a flip side to that whole thing, Josh. The world begins with you, too—you gotta be the one to take that first step. Trust is a two-way street. If you want Neku to trust you again, you've got to show that you're worth trusting."

"Easy enough to say it."

"Never said it'd be done in one day, my man. But take that first step."

"…Right." Joshua sighed. This whole thing was still new to him. But first thing first, he'd better get out there and find Neku—

Joshua nearly fell over as he stood up from his seat. There was something wrong in Shibuya, something that chilled him to his very core as Composer. And it was an all too familiar wrongness, as well. He shared a quick look with Mr. H. No words were exchanged, he could feel it too and both knew what it was.

I have to find Neku.

Without another word, Joshua broke into a run and made his way down the Heartless-filled streets of Shibuya.

x-x-x

"Hurry! Run!"

In the chaos of the fleeing crowds in near the Shibu Department Store, Shiki struggled to make her voice heard. Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. As the flow of people moved past her in a chaotic panic, Shiki had to resist the urge to follow after them herself. Biting her lip, she looked around the area one last time. Where in the world could Neku have run off to? The Heartless were attacking relentlessly and he knew just as well as she did that they couldn't do anything to fight them off outside the UG.

"This way, please hurry! The Heartless aren't over here!" Among the cacophony of voices, Shiki could hear Rhyme and Beat trying their best as well. They may not have been able to fight without the powers that the Reaper's Game granted them, but they still knew more about what was going on than almost anyone else in the city. They had a duty to manage it as best as they could.

A loud scream from Rhyme, followed by an even louder string of swears from Beat, focused all of Shiki's attention on her friends. She whirled around just in time to see Beat punch a Shadow away from Rhyme, but the Heartless recovered quickly and leapt at the younger girl once again—with friends. Beat swore and readied his fist, but he couldn't handle more than one and the look on his face showed that he knew it. But just before the Heartless could dig their claws into the siblings' chest, a wall of fire erupted between the two of them.

Beat and Rhyme fell back onto the pavement with shock and relief painted on their faces. While the closest Shadows to Lea's barrier burst into flame that consumed their inky bodies, those further back were quickly taken out to the sound of gunshots. In one swift motion, Cissnei holstered her pistol and swung her large shuriken out behind her, its sharpened spikes digging into the body of a Soldier. When the Soldier's partner tried to get her from above, Cissnei didn't even need to look its way before a blue streak slammed into it and cut the Heartless in half with a Keyblade.

"Get back, you three!" Aqua commanded Shiki, Rhyme, and Beat. The area immediately around Shibu Department Store had been cleared out, giving Lea, Aqua, and Cissnei the freedom they needed to go all out on the Heartless. Shiki nodded and helped Beat and Rhyme to their feet before the three of them ran off to safety.

"Good luck!" she hollered over her shoulder.

"Give 'em hell, yo! Phones ain't gonna wait for us forever!" Beat added with a pump of his fist.

Lea smirked at the kids' words, but his attention quickly turned back to the Heartless, collapsing his flame wall and using the embers to burn a few more that were too close to civilians for comfort. That all these Heartless were popping up again had to mean that Pete was still in Shibuya somewhere, of that Lea had little doubt. He was after some sort of shard or something, right? But when they ran into him earlier he hadn't been wreaking havoc like this. Lea could only assume that the Heartless rampaging through the city meant one of two things: either Pete had found what he was looking for, or he realized it wasn't here and the world was useless for him. Lea dearly hoped it was the first one.

A whirling red blur shot in front of Lea's vision. He was snapped out of his thoughts and back to the battle as Cissnei's flying shuriken pierced a Heartless that had almost caught him off-guard. "Get your head in the game!" she called to him as she ran to retrieve her weapon.

"Right, sorry." Lea held his arms out and ignited his chakrams, then flung them forward. The twirling wheels of fire soared through the air, mowing down Heartless after Heartless until they reached Aqua. Aqua threw up a barrier around her that not only protected her from a group of Soldiers, but also deflected Lea's chakrams and sent them flying into even more Heartless. As soon as he recalled his weapons back into his hands, Lea spun around and let them fly, allowing them to spiral outward and catch the last of the Heartless near him.

Aqua moved like a dance as she weaved in and out of the battlefield with cartwheels and sidesteps. Her Keyblade swung through the air unhindered, slicing through any Heartless in range easily, while spears of ice and bolts of lightning struck those more distant. When a duo of Gargoyles struck Aqua from behind and then quickly swept too high for her to reach, she responded by jumping up toward a building and then, surrounding herself in magic she gained from Never Land long ago, jumped again in midair.

Still too short to strike the flying Heartless, Aqua directed her momentum toward the wall of a nearby building and then bounced off of it. Her Keyblade tore through the torso of the first Gargoyle, then magic burst out of the blade and froze the two halves of the Heartless solid. Spinning around, Aqua kicked one half and then knocked the other with the flat of her Keyblade, sending both of them colliding to the other Gargoyle. As it fell, Aqua double-jumped once more and then came down on the Gargoyle from above, piercing through it with Stormfall.

"Cissnei, coming your way!"

Cissnei glanced up as Aqua fell down to her. She cupped her hands while Aqua positioned herself to fall feet-first. Landing in Cissnei's hands, Cissnei then pushed upward and sent Aqua back into the air once more. She moved in a wide arc, leaving lances of conjured ice behind her every few feet. When Aqua landed back on the hard ground, she waved her Keyblade and sent the hovering ice down on the Heartless. Those that survived, whether through toughing it out or from avoiding the ice altogether, were picked off by shots from Cissnei's gun.

The Turk then tossed her shuriken once more, and after slicing through several of the stragglers it arced back toward her like a boomerang. Cissnei caught the weapon and swung it forward several times, knocking away Shadows and Soldiers and tearing at their skin with the weapon's blades. A movement of black just barely in the corner of her eye caught Cissnei's attention and she turned on it, sending the weapon flying—then dropping her composure entirely. Her shuriken hit the stone wall of a building as she stared at the black figure.

It wasn't a Heartless, it was someone in a black coat and hood.

Lea noticed him too. "HEY!" With a wave of his hand, Lea conjured fires that quickly dispatched what few Heartless remained. The figure said nothing, but his hood shifted in Lea's direction. "Yeah, I'm talking to you! It's about time we found you, too. Who do you think you are going around dressed like that?"

Aqua glanced between Cissnei and Lea with a worried and confused expression, while Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme crept out of their hiding placed now that the immediate danger seemed to have passed. Organization XIII's impostor—or revivalist, or whatever he was—kept his vision trained on Lea. Then, without warning, he broke into a sprint and moved down a nearby alley.

"You won't get away from me!" Lea shouted as he took off after him.

"Lea, wait!" Cissnei followed in third, and she could hear the others behind her. As they moved through the maze of Shibuya's back streets, Aqua caught up and gave Cissnei a pointed look.

"I thought Organization XIII was gone."

"It is—or should be. Lea and I don't know who that is either."

"Lea looked like he'd met him before."

Beside herself, Cissnei let out a dry laugh as they continued to run. "Lea told me he had a dream where he met two people in black coats in a rainy city. He feels like they're connected to his missing friend somehow. Maybe that they have her."

"Isn't that only a dream though?" Cissnei heard Shiki ask behind the two women.

"Dreams can be more important than you think," Rhyme chimed in. Cissnei caught Aqua smile at that.

Beat spoke up. "Yo, we only had one o' those Organizers drop by this world before, but from what I hear he was bad enough. Don't need to know who Hoodie is to know he's bad news just for wearin' that coat."

Cissnei pursed her lips but said nothing more. The black coat turned a corner, followed immediately after by Lea. But as the others came around, they found the area they had emerged in—near that dog statue once again—was void of any hooded figures. Not to say that it was empty at all, though. Near Hachiko, a crowd of people including a familiar redhead in orange was surrounded by a dangerously close circle of Heartless.

"Neku!" Shiki shouted, catching his attention just as a Neoshadow leaped at him from behind. Cissnei took the initiative and darted forward, swinging her shuriken in a wide arc to take out not only that Neoshadow but most of its neighbors as well.

"Everyone get out of here!" she shouted as she pointed toward the street they had come down. "The Heartless aren't down there, get to safety!"

The crowd largely departed, save for Neku who found himself squeezed in a tight hug by Shiki. As the faceless masses moved past Lea, he snarled and looked around for the boy in the black hood. No sign of him. "Where the hell did he go?"

"Look!" Aqua pointed at the top of a nearby building. Lea's heart skipped a beat at her shout and his vision followed her finger, but it wasn't the black coat that she was pointing at. Lea narrowed his eyes at the person Aqua had called out.

"Pete."

Maleficent's lackey looked down at them with an annoyed expression on his face. "Oh, you guys are still here, eh? Oh well, I won't be stickin' 'round for much longer anyway, since the shard ain't in this world after all."

"Just what is this shard you're looking for?" Aqua demanded. A fireball ignited in her hand and she held it out toward Pete with a silent threat.

Pete let out a mighty guffaw. "Oh no, we learned all about being too loose with our plans! None o' that this time, missy. I'll just leave you with a parting gift. Grim Reaper, deal with Sora's friends!" Pete snapped his fingers and a storm of darkness appeared down on the ground before Hachiko, black and purple wisps conjuring together into the form of a large Heartless. Behind the chaos, Pete slipped away into a corridor of darkness.

The Heartless that Pete had summoned was a humanoid monster colored in greyish blue and dull purple. It looked thin, emaciated even, and lacked legs completely. The Heartless's weapon, and evidently the source of the name Pete had given it, looked something like a cross between a scythe and a pendulum as it swung back and forth in its hand.

Lea rolled his eyes. "Fine then, have it your way."

Cissnei stepped up beside Lea. "We'll have to get answers later. I'm sure we'll run into him again."

Aqua got into her combat stance as she held her Keyblade and fire spell. "We can handle this Heartless. We've handled far worse."

Without waiting another moment Aqua struck out, sending her fireball right at the Heartless and hitting it dead on in the emblem on its chest. Before the explosion had faded jumped through the billowing flames and brought her Keyblade down on it, slicing across the Grim Reaper at an angle and sending it spinning like a top around the area. But the Heartless took advantage of the momentum she had given it and held out its weapon as it spun. With this simple action it quickly became a deadly whirlwind.

Aqua threw up a barrier around her as the Heartless came toward her and it rebounded off of it, sending it hurtling toward Cissnei and Lea. The two of them jumped out of the way and then tossed their own weapons at it, the blades slicing at its hide. The Heartless stopped spinning and moved to swing its weapon in a wide arc, hard enough to have sent anyone hit by it flying if it hadn't choreographed its movements so obviously. Calling his chakrams back into his hands, Lea pressed them together and then slammed them onto the ground. A pillar of flame erupted out of the earth right under the Grim Reaper, surrounding it in flame that sent it reeling. Before the flames died down Aqua and Cissnei made their move from afar, Aqua shooting Blizzara lances at it while Cissnei fired her pistol.

A gust of wind blew over the area and the Heartless seemed to vanish, before reappearing in the direction the wind had blown. Oh, so it did have some tricks up its sleeve. Not enough, though. As the Heartless tried to conjure a small tornado, Aqua hit it while it was vulnerable. A series of quick Keyblade strikes interrupted its casting and seemed to hurt it a surprising amount. Aqua jumped away from her foe and fired a Shotlock at it before returning to Lea and Cissnei, the former of which was growing annoyed.

"Is Pete kidding with this?" Lea asked. "This guy is too wimpy!"

As if in response, the Heartless's body began to shake. Its colors to a more purple palette and dark flames sprouted from its body. "It didn't like you insulting it," Cissnei quipped.

"Well, let's see if it changed more than just its looks!" Lea lit his chakrams aflame and sent both of them flying right at the Grim Reaper—which they passed through as if it weren't there. "What the—"

Lea couldn't even finish his question before another gust of wind, this time more powerful, blew through and the Heartless vanished. An instant later it appeared right in front of the trio and brought its weapon down on them. Cries of pain rang out around Hachiko from all three fighters as they were knocked back and scattered. Aqua righted herself in midair and fired another Shotlock before she landed, giving her the opportunity to run back at the Heartless. But Lea's bad luck wasn't just a fluke; neither the Shotlock nor the leaping strike Aqua made with her Keyblade hit the Heartless either.

The Heartless conjured a tornado and sent it flying. The razor winds picked up Cissnei and Aqua and assaulted them from all sides while also sending them high into the sky. Cissnei took what opportunity she could and tossed her shuriken at the monster, but she now expected what she saw as it phased through the Heartless and lodged itself into the ground behind it. Before both women crashed into the ground Aqua cast an Aero spell of her own, slowing their fall.

"Fine, so you stepped up your game. But you're still just a Heartless!" Lea spun his chakrams around in his hands and shot forward.

Aqua shouted after him. "Lea, wait! We need to try a different approach!"

He paid her no mind. A ring of fire burst to life around Lea, trapping the Heartless before lighting the ground beneath Lea's feet aflame. Lea jumped backwards and passed through the flames unharmed, then moved quickly along them and shot back inside from another angle, ready to hit the Grim Reaper with both of his weapons at once. But the Heartless not only wasn't hurt by the attack, it saw him coming and slammed the shaft of its weapon into his gut. Time briefly seemed to slow for Lea as he felt the breath leave his lungs before the Heartless sent him crashing into Hachiko's statue.

"What…the hell…" Lea grumbled as he climbed to his feet. Absently, he felt a Cure spell wash over him. Aqua and Cissnei were running his way, one eye on the Heartless at all times. "What now?"

x-x-x

Some distance away Rhyme nervously took a step backwards, her eyes wide. Beat wrapped his hands around her protectively. "What's going on? Why can't they hurt that thing anymore?"

"It looks like it changed somehow…" Shiki said.

"It's become invulnerable, I'd say." The four friends turned toward the road, where Joshua was hurryingly running toward them.

"Joshua…" Neku's words caught in his throat. He sighed and shook his head, not sure where he was going with it.

Luckily, Joshua did seem to know. "Let me do the talking. By the look of things we don't have a lot of time for this anyway." He looked over to the Grim Reaper as it brushed aside Lea's flames like nothing, grimaced, and then turned back to the others. "I've been an awful friend, and I'm here to apologize to all of you."

Neku heard Shiki suck in a breath, but said nothing himself, so she took it to speak instead. "Joshua—"

Joshua held a hand up. "Please Shiki, let me finish. A lot of stuff happened in the past and we moved past it all the same. You trusted me after everything I put you all through in the Reaper's Game, and I took that trust for granted. I…took that friendship for granted. I thought I was keeping you all safe by not telling you what had happened when we were in Traverse Town. Blissfully unaware, you know? But I understand now that was a mistake, and you deserved to know."

"We've had a back and forth like this one before," Neku said softly. "I don't think I can forgive you for lying to us like this, Joshua."

"We have. And I'm not here to ask you to forgive me, because I know I don't deserve it. All I'm asking is that you trust me again, and I know that will be hard. I don't know that I deserve it, either. I've played with lives for so long, I don't know what I'm doing, how to really interact with-with friends, I just push people away, but that's because I've never—"

Damn it, they were too alike for their own good. "Joshua." Neku's voice cut Joshua off. He looked up at the other boy, who gave him a long, hard look. "Stop talking like that, that's not the person you are. Give up on yourself, and you give up on the world."

Joshua continued to stare wordlessly at Neku. Neku himself felt kind of embarrassed for saying something so cheesy, but it seemed to do the trick.

"You're an absolute bastard, you know that?" Neku asked with a grin hidden behind his collar. "I don't know that I can forgive you for treating us like toys again, but damn it, I also know the number one rule is to trust your partner. If nothing else, I do trust you to have our best interests at heart, Joshua."

"Neku…" Joshua shut his eyes and exhaled softly through his nose. "Thanks. And…don't tell Mr. H about how I acted here, alright?"

"You kidding? This is just the juicy kind of blackmail I look for to rub in your smug face."

Then, Beat shoved his way between the two of them. "Yo, I'm glad we had this heart to heart an' all, but we've still got a bigass monster on our hands that those guys can't even hurt. What we gonna do about this?"

Joshua looked over to the battle as the Grim Reaper brought its weapon down on Aqua, knocking her to the ground. Cissnei ran over and helped her up just before the Heartless attacked again. "…I think I may know a way we can fight it."

Neku raised an eyebrow. "Uh Josh, maybe you haven't noticed, but we can't exactly do anything outside of the Game."

Joshua allowed himself a sly grin. "Oh Neku, have you forgotten? I'm the one who controls Shibuya and the Game." A billowing white aura began to appear around Joshua's body and it extended out toward the others. "I can give you the powers you'd normally have in the Underground, but only for a brief time. And I think fighting together, the way you did there, may just be the key to hurting this Heartless."

Shiki frowned. "If you could do this before, why didn't you do it last time the Heartless attacked?"

"That was a situation nobody was expecting. And…my outlook was a tad different as well." As the aura grew brighter, Joshua looked to each of them. "Now, do you trust me?"

Neku took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and nodded. "Go for it, Josh."

Immediately Joshua's aura pulsed outward. As the wave of light washed over him, Neku felt a searing pain on the palm of his hand as if someone had taken hot iron and pressed it to his skin. He let out a hiss and gripped his arm, then slowly unfurled his fingers to see glowing red numbers burned into his skin and actively counting down. They didn't have a lot of time.

x-x-x

Lea grimaced as he watched his chakrams once more fly harmlessly through the Grim Reaper's body. He'd heard Neku and the others chatting away, but hadn't had any time to focus on what they were saying. "Whatever you kids are doing, do it quick. We can't exactly handle this!"

"We got it!" A flash of green burst behind Lea and then flew upward. Glancing up at the sky, Lea caught sight of Neku surrounded in a green ball of light. He waved his hand and sent a shockwave through the air that, wonder of wonders, actually managed to cause the Heartless to flinch. Neku landed on the ground and held a hand to his headphones; a moment later, bikes, trash cans, and even a car flew off the ground as if propelled by some psychic force and crashed into the Heartless.

Lea let out an impressed whistle and ran out of the way of the Heartless's next attack. "How the hell are you hurting this?"

"What do you know, the light puck bypasses its immunity." Neku said to himself. Then he looked up to Lea and grinned. "Just watch and learn, alright? Shiki!" Neku called out to his friend, who stood across the battlefield. In response to his voice, the green light fled from his body and flew toward her. Shiki was already running toward it, and when she and the light met halfway a brilliant white flash erupted from both Shiki and Neku.

"Neku, come on!"

"Right behind you!"

The two moved at supersonic speeds, so fast that Lea couldn't even keep up with them—or perhaps it was teleportation? Whatever the case, Shiki and Neku moved all around the Grim Reaper, there one minute and gone the next, too quickly for it to strike back. And for every fraction of a second that they were visible, they tossed bolts of red and blue energy at it from their hands. As Neku's attack had before, this one was able to break through the invulnerability that the Grim Reaper held. Was this the power of that green light being passed around?

Beat rolled past Lea on his skateboard, meeting Shiki and Neku when they finished their attack, but only for a moment as he snagged the light puck from Shiki and became enveloped in the green light himself. "The Beat is on!" he roared.

"Bring it!" Neku added in, running after him.

The earth rumbled as chains broke out of the street and walls of surrounding buildings. They crisscrossed over the entire area, forming an intricate web that kept the Grim Reaper restrained while also providing Beat with just the path he needed. Still moving on his skateboard, Beat jumped up onto the nearest chain and began to grind on it while wrapped in not only the light puck but a fiery red aura as well. Neku followed suit, a blue aura surrounding him while he dashed through the air along a different chain than Beat, propelled by the same psychic power that had lifted the objects before. Beat and Neku dashed past the Heartless, striking it with invisible force and then continuing on as if it hadn't been there. They moved to more chains and shot at it again, then another chain and again, repeat and repeat until the chains vanished. Still on his board, Beat spun through the air and the light puck flew from his body—right into Joshua's outstretched hand.

Neku landed by the blond coated in the telltale green sphere, who gave his familiar cocky grin to him. Both of them looked to the Grim Reaper, which charged toward them, its weapon primed. Neku held his hand out toward it. "Another world awaits."

Joshua crossed his arms out in front of him. "And you're going."

The light puck flashed and duplicated itself, a second one moving to surround Neku while linked to Joshua's own aura by a sparkling green chain. The two of them, levitating a few inches off of the ground, held their hands out to their sides, and suddenly the sky turned orange.

Lea glanced up to see an enormous meteor barreling down toward them, the heat of its flames doing nothing to him but visibly making Aqua and Cissnei uncomfortable. "Are you planning to bring down the entire city?!"

Neither Joshua nor Neku answered as the meteor came down on Shibuya, centered perfectly on the Grim Reaper. Lea barely had time to scream, let alone run, as the meteor made impact and he was blinded by all-consuming white…

…For only a moment. Slowly, blinking as his vision cleared, Lea looked around to see that Shibuya was still intact. He was alive, as were Cissnei, Aqua, the kids…in fact, the only one who wasn't was the Heartless, its body fading away into darkness as it contorted painfully. Behind it, the light puck faded from both Neku and Joshua as Shiki and Beat joined them and Rhyme came out from wherever she'd been hiding. When Lea finally found his voice he wanted to scream his confusion to the heavens, but all he could manage was. "What the hell was that?"

Cissnei looked almost as shocked as he did, but when she realized he was watching her for a reaction she quickly composed herself. "I guess it's what the power of bonds between hearts is capable of."

"These kids could not do that five minutes ago!"

Aqua shook her head and put a hand on Lea's shoulder. "It was certainly flashy, but then we've had some pretty flashy fights too."

"Well yeah, but they could have lent us a hand earlier, you know?"

Shiki giggled. "We'd have loved to, but like you said we couldn't do that five minutes ago; we normally can only fight like that in the Reaper's Game."

Neku looked down at his hand as he slowly clenched and unclenched his fist. "It's already gone, too." He looked to his side. "Thanks a ton, Josh. You know, for everything."

Joshua smiled—not his usual smirk, but a warm, genuine smile—but then turned his head as if avoiding showing that smile. He coughed once into his fist. "Well, I suppose there's only one thing left to do to make sure this doesn't happen again." He turned to Aqua. "Think you could loan me that key of yours?"

x-x-x

A bright blue-white light illuminated the massive room Joshua had led them to at the end of the Shibuya River. As Aqua held her Keyblade out before her with both hands, a wind whipped up around her and she gazed upward at the source of the light: a glowing Keyhole on the middle of three massive pillars, one that had been locked before only to be unlocked again. Wisps of light matching the color of the Keyhole's radiance swirled around Stormfall's tip, and once concentrated together a beam fired from the Keyblade up to the Keyhole. The Keyhole flashed brightly before fading as if it had never been.

"Is that it?" Cissnei asked behind her.

Aqua dismissed her Keyblade and turned to face the others. "Yup," she nodded. "Shibuya should be safe from the Heartless once again."

"That's a relief." Neku let out a breath and slipped his hands into his pockets. "So, guys, where to next?"

Lea slumped. "Good question. Now not only do we need to keep an eye out for the freaks in black, but Maleficent's gang is apparently getting up to no good too."

Aqua shook her head with a smile. "When are they ever not? But that's just something we'll have to deal with, isn't it?"

Lea, who'd been stretching an arm above his head, stopped mid-stretch. "'We'? You coming along, Aqua?"

"Er, if that's alright, anyway."

"Hey, I don't have a problem with it. The more the merrier."

Cissnei nodded and crossed her arms. "Yeah, it'd be nice to have someone more experienced with world travel around. Though…we have kind of used up all of our leads now. Not exactly a lot to go on." Her gaze flickered over to Joshua for a split second before returning to the others, but Joshua caught it nonetheless.

The kid in question brushed some hair out of his eyes. "Aqua, Lea. I want to apologize again for not being able to help your friends since they're not in Shibuya. But you wouldn't need me even if I were able to."

"How do you mean?" Aqua asked.

"It's a matter of heart. You, as friends and loved ones to those two, are the only ones who can make them exist again—who can give them another chance. Listen to me, this is something I realized back in Traverse Town: By ourselves, we're no one. People need to see others, and interact with others, to truly exist. To get your friends back isn't something an outside force can do. You need to connect with them." He cast a glance at Neku. "The world begins with you. You have to make that step forward."

Lea took in a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair. He'd had enough of enigmatic explanations from this boy and for once wanted something concrete. "Joshua, just who are you?"

Neku answered Lea's question, as he looked over to Joshua by his side with a smile on his face. "Let's just say, a friend."