Story: Mind the Gaps (French version available : "Intervalles")

Date: posted the 10 of July 2023

Beta: None

Fandom: The World End With You

Disclaimer: No, I don't own TWEWY, and I'm not making any profit from this story.

Summary: Just after the Long Game, Joshua saved and resurrected the rest of the Hashiko gang but was condemned by the Angels for his actions: He is confined to Shibuya and half of his powers have been sealed. Neku dies again, but without his powers, Joshua cannot resurrect him. He takes him to safety anyway, which leads to M.H being banished by the Angels. Joshua is left alone to manage Shibuya, well not quite since he's got Shinjuku's scum on his hands. Months pass, Joshua is struggling to manage the UG without Sanae and Kitaniji and Shiki and the other reach out with an offer of friendship. But Shinjuku's Reaper strike a coup and Joshua loose a lot of powers. He still tries his best to make the city survive.

Trigger of this chapter: None I can think of


Enjoy your reading!


The week had started peacefully. Well, peacefully, given the current situation, i.e. a complex and fragile balance between the Shinjuku Reapers, the Shibuya Reapers, the Executor and, of course, Joshua. It had been a few months since Matsunae had managed to break her hold and, as a result, she had more or less acclimatised to her little comrades. Well, given that she was nothing more than a doll at the time, it was more the others who had become unhappily accustomed to her. Not that they treated her as one of their own, of course. After her first explosion, which had decimated all the players and a sizeable proportion of the Reapers, all the attempts to reconnect with her and wake her up that the Shinjuku Reapers had previously made in secret had come to a complete halt. Now they simply treated her like an attack dog: powerful, useful, but to be kept at a distance and not to become emotionally attached to.

So yes, the week had started rather peacefully except that Joshua was in an even worse mood than usual. He'd had to spend his weekend resurrecting the five winners of the last game, despite his absolute revulsion. Not one of them deserved to come back to life in his opinion. Of course, he knew that the shape of the current Game didn't allow them to improve much and, if anything, made them worse, but still... One of the guy in the team had been playing for four weeks when, in the last one, he had pushed his then captain straight into the Noise, replacing him and becoming Leader the following week. With his new status as Chief and two former colleagues convinced by his Machiavellian ideology, they had recruited two new players and set about destroying as many teams as possible by means of traps and treachery. Well, yes, it's easier to win when you have no more opponents, isn't it? Their enterprise had worked incredibly well thanks to the happy coincidence that one of the new players recruited, as well as being a behemoth who wasn't afraid of a fight, had developed the strange latent ability to make himself forgotten. A deadly cocktail when his opponents didn't notice him until he used his wind psych to pierce their hearts.

At least they'd put on a good show and the Reapers were having fun betting on their next betrayal. The problem was that they had run out of players. After he resurrected them, there were only two teams of three left in the competition and one, by Shinjuku rules, was eliminated as the team with the fewest points left that week.

So six out of seven teams had disappeared in as many days, leaving Joshua with an awful lot of paperwork. That, and Mother's impromptu visit, had kept him from leaving the Reckoning room all weekend, either to see the Hachiko Crew or Neku. And, of course, the rules had to be relaxed once again to replenish the pool of players. Accepting more souls for sorting, limiting the number of people per team, ordering the Reapers to exterminate even more Noises than usual... everything to reconstitute the sheep herd.

All this had come together, preventing Joshua from spotting The Executioner's latest trick before it was too late. Not that he could have done anything to prevent it, but it was still an unpleasant surprise he could have done without.

As it turned out, the Executor had been incredibly intrigued by this player with the latent ability and had undertaken an experiment. Given that they were short of players, instead of losing out on quality, why not recruit them directly from the living? Joshua could hardly scoff: that's exactly what he'd done with Neku. Carefully chosen from among thousands of other souls, already possessing a strong imagination and link with death, having an affinity with psychs and being able to manipulate two of them at the same time from his first day, regardless of the type... a soul made for the UG.

It was a lot less impressive and a lot more worrying when Kubo did the same, though. The theory was easy, putting it into practice was more complicated, but it couldn't be said that the Executor lacked resources. Especially as Joshua was doing his best to stop the Game collapsing in on itself, The Executor had plenty of time to carefully choose his sheep one by one. So, in addition to their usual deaths, The Executor slipped a living soul into the Game, forcing their Vibe to climb until he was trapped in the UG. He wasn't technically dead and if this had been a normal Game, it would have been a simple matter of lowering his Stamp and erasing a few traumatic memories. It happened regularly, after all, that living people with a little too much imagination, a little too close to death or unfortunate witnesses to a UG explosion found themselves plunged into it. It was even one of the Producer's duties to send these lost living people back to their world.

He was in a good position to know: that was how Joshua had met Sanae, after all.

It was a long time ago now... Joshua had been so young the first time it had happened to him, still in single digits. He barely remembered that time, in fact, he shouldn't have.

Joshua had often wondered if he'd been there several times before this one, and that's why Sanae, realising that he wasn't going to stop stumbling around in the world of the dead, had ended up leaving him his memories. But Joshua had never asked him. Perhaps Sanae had hoped, at least at first, that if Joshua knew what was going on, he would try to consciously stay out of the UG? Ha! Considering the Composer's hard throne under his thighs, it couldn't be said that it had worked all that well in the end...

Joshua shook his head to distract himself from these memories. In any case, he was certainly the first living person to be dragged into the Game by the Executor, but he certainly wouldn't be the last. By the following week, there were two more, including a popular young model. And then a TV chef the week after that. And a famous blogger the third. Kubo had a type. Well, it was true that it was easier to go straight to the famous artists if you wanted to find people with great imagination. The only thing Joshua hoped was that Kubo wouldn't notice that some humans were already doing it without him.

Because if it was true that humans regularly rose up into the UG, usually because of a moment of passion a little too intense, the 'zone' as it was sometimes called, it was temporary. They would stay there for a few seconds, maybe minutes if they were really concentrated, but that was it. Once their passion had subsided a little, they would naturally leave the zone and their frequencies would drop back down to the RG norm. Usually they couldn't even get as high as the UG before they came back down. That was for normal humans, i.e. not his partners, it would seem.

He could hardly blame Beat for being so passionate about skateboarding that he climbed without realising it, but it was beginning to be a little too regular an occurrence for the Composer's comfort. It had already happened twice this month and he seemed to get higher and higher each time if that was possible. The girls weren't as much of a problem, but it was difficult to argue that their Vibe fluctuated far more than average, even for former players. And all three had the same problem: they went up, but didn't come down by themselves. Or not often. Joshua had a slight idea of what might be the cause, but he was reluctant to accept it. Because, as usual, it always came back to his terrible decisions. The first hypothesis was the pact: it tended to make the partners want to get closer, to be together. It was subtle, and easily overcome, but as the others weren't aware of this little effect, it wouldn't surprise Joshua if they were subconsciously being guided by it. And, well, since Neku and Joshua were in the UG most of the time... they were bound to be drawn there. Another possibility was that because Joshua had left them their memories, they were fully aware of other planes and so their souls knew there were other places they could go. It was probably a bit of both, and maybe other reasons too. But, whatever the case, it was an added source of stress because as soon as it happened, Joshua had to hurry to get them back down before they, or worse, Kubo, noticed. Fortunately, Shibuya was very helpful in this matter, ringing the equivalent of a million bells every time one of his partners strayed a little too far from the RG frequencies.

So yes, not the best month for Joshua, even just compared to the last three years. It hadn't helped that an old acquaintance had dared to show up. While Coco Atarashi had been smart enough not to try and cross the borders of Shibuya again, not from Shinjuku anyway, Sho Minamimoto had.

Under cover of night, he had crossed the invisible border with Megure, slipping noiselessly through the busy streets. He had made a remarkable effort to hide his Vibe, wrapping it so tightly around him even as he roamed the RG that Joshua knew none of his Reapers had noticed him. It was no use against Joshua, though. As connected with Shibuya as he was, it was rare that something could sneak in without him knowing, especially if it was a threat. Well... His idea of what a nuisance was differed greatly from the city's. While Joshua had greeted Minamimoto's sudden arrival with a grunt and a little misplaced anger, Shibuya had happily lit up at the return of one of its own. It wasn't obvious to everyone, of course, but even an average RG resident might have thought that the shop lights seemed even brighter than usual. She'd done the mental equivalent of repeatedly flicked at Joshua until he deigned to finish his meeting and give her his attention.

So yes, Joshua was aware that Minamimoto was in his district but the thing was, he wasn't too sure what to make of it. As has been the case more and more recently, the Composer's logic was clashing with Joshua's emotions.

On the one hand, even though he was aware that Minamimoto couldn't realistically have saved Neku and that, in any case, even if he had, it was already too late to resurrect him, he still felt deeply annoyed about him. On the other hand, Minamimoto had a knack for spicing things up and it wasn't for nothing that Joshua had greatly favoured him when he was in his ranks. In all seriousness, the current game could do with a little spice. Especially if it was The Executor's plate that was getting a double dose. Fortunately, he was spared having to make a choice when, after a good hour of watching Minamimoto roam the streets, the latter turned around and crossed the border with Megure again.

Hu.

A scouting trip?

Hmmmm... maybe. The whole of the UG knew that Shibuya had welcomed the survivors of Shinjuku and, having taken part in their last Game, it was clearly not in his interest to be noticed by them. He probably also knew that Joshua was still there, but hopefully not necessarily that he'd lost any of his powers. Joshua made a mental note of the event on his very long list of things to keep in mind and then turned away. He had more pressing things to worry about... Not least, the fact that Beat had once again pushed his own Vibe to the limit of the UG. Again. For the third time this month.

Joshua sighed and set off.


Think about letting a review on your way out, and see you the 20th for the continuation!