Difference between revisions of "Cutscene - Day ???"

Revision as of 10:30, 17 September 2012

"That's the first time you used my name!"

"Oh...really?" "Neku...? ...see you on the other side. You know the meeting place, Hachiko!"

"Heh... it's a date."

And the light enveloped Shiki Misaki, winner of the Reaper's Game, with the assistance of her partner Neku Sakuraba. Together, they'd overcome danger, Noise, threats to their partnership and the Reapers, in order to win their second chance at life. And she realized she actually /liked/ Neku. So, it was a date, huh? Tee hee. She'd hold him to that, Shiki thought... just meet him at Ha

And then she landed face-down on the concrete. Ugh. You couldn't have a nicer landing back in the world of...

And then Shiki looked up, and actually realized what was happening. This wasn't the realground. Or at least, she dearly hoped it wasn't.

The sky above her had turned an unnatural shade of lightning-streaked purple that was casting everything in a horrible shade. Buildings- /entire buildings/- were broken clean in half or peeling apart into material exactly the same shade of the sky. There were tiny things- dozens of tiny things in the air... and crawling on things... and on the ground. Swirling, tattoo-coloured Noise, everywhere. And... other things. Dark animals and bizarre flying machines with piercing yellow eyes.

The ground shook under her feet with a crack like a tombstone breaking, and when Shiki looked down she realized the streets were /swarming/ with things. Noise, these strange creatures and things that looked like a combination of the two- shadow-dark animals with a terrible malice to them.

There were Players there, desperately fighting them with psychs, and human civilians too- and both of them were being stuck down by the monsters, disappearing in pink flashes of light wreathed in black flames. Shiki's mind reeled. What was happening? WHAT WAS HAPPENING?!

She hugged Mr. Mew and began to run, not even knowing where or why. Her mind was reeling. She was supposed to be alive now, wasn't she? Wasn't she? What was happening? She'd beaten the reapers, hadn't she? She'd done everything they told her, everything right... hadn't she? What was going on?

The ground bulged and CRUNCHED a few yards away. Shiki fell to the ground, which seemed to be turning into some sort of yielding, soft substance beneath her feet. Someone offered a hand, thrust out to her--

And she looked up into Neku's eyes once again. She rose to her feet, looking around, and saw others picking themselves up- Beat, Joshua, and-- wait-- was that Rhyme? But-

And then the bulge in the ground exploded entirely, and a massive humanoid figure began to stand up. Shiki blinked and saw two Reapers she didn't recognize riding on each shoulder. It was a horrifying, muscular thing in pure black, with waving tendrils of hair and a scarf covering its mouth, and--

And a gigantic heart-shaped hole in its torso. Something completely Heartless.

Shiki was falling. Everything had collapsed- even the ground underneath them, as she realised she was standing on a mere chunk of asphalt over a lump of purple stuff. She wobbled, saw a bigger piece with the others falling in the other direction--

And the darkness enveloped Shiki Misaki.

"Yo? Hey, hello, are you comin' around? Say something?"

Shiki's eyelids hurt. Her /everything/ hurt. For a moment, her head swum- what mission happened yesterday to tire her out so much...? Then she realised she was lying on some sort of leather... couch? She blinked.

She was inside WildKat, far as she could tell... and standing over her was... Hanekoma?

And then suddenly everything came flooding back to Shiki. She shot up, the owner of the shop shooting forward to steady her as she wobbled and almost fell right back down again. She coughed, once or twice. What was going on? She--

"What- what?! We-- Higashizawa, and, the Game- me and Neku were- but then the, the whole world- there were so many- what WAS th- what's going on? What's going on? WHAT'S GOING ON?!"

"Hey, hey!" Hanekoma said, trying to stop her from getting up. She panicked and swung a hand out, and with a crack, Shiki knocked the glasses right off his face. She stopped and gasped, realizing what she just did, and there was silence in the room for a moment.

Hanekoma slowly picked his glasses back up and put them back on once again.

"...sorry."

"Easy there, girl. Take it slow, right? Ease it up a little," Hanekoma said, rubbing the side of his face. He grabbed a wooden chair, spun it around the wrong way and sat down on it, resting on the back side. Shiki blinked, and looked around him. It was definitely WildKat alright, but it was evening outside, with warm orange streetlamps outside. There didn't seem to be anyone else in the store aside from them, and the sign on the inside read 'OPEN'- so obviously, CLOSED on the other side.

Shiki slowly sat up.

"You feeling OK? No broken bones? No ripped seams?"

She checked herself over, feeling her face first for her glasses. Except they weren't... there. She grabbed a lock of hair, pulling it in front of her face.

Red. Red hair. And a hat. And green boots, and shorts, and... Eri. She looked like Eri. Still looked like Eri. Shiki looked at Hanekoma, completely terrified.

"What happened?" she said, voice as thin as a reed.

"Weeeellll," Hanekoma replied. Then he kicked himself up and left the chair, beginning to walk a short distance away from Shiki. Then back, and then he began to meander through the tables. "Little difficult to summarize, in fairness. There's the 'what happened to me', could be the 'what happened to my lovely store', 'what happened to everything'-"

"Everything!" Shiki said quickly. "Every/one/. We'd just won the game, and then I just appeared back in the Underground, and there were these... these /things/ everywhere, not just Noise, and everything was falling apart, and people were..."

"Well," Hanekoma said. "Yes, that's basically correct. Everything falling apart, that is. That's a very good way of summing things up in less than ten words."

Shiki looked at him blankly. Hanekoma looked back at her, and started walking first.

"What you have to understand," he said, pacing. "Is that a little more time has passed than you might have expected since you finished the Higashizawa main course. Little more, maybe a few days, relatively speaking, not counting the amount of time you've been vegging out on that sofa. Speaking of which..."

He walked over to the chiller and tossed a muffin into her hands. "On the house, you need something to eat."

Shiki unwrapped the muffin and bit into it, chewing slowly and looking grateful as Hanekoma continued. "It's been a few days, like I said. For reasons beyond our understanding, your good friend was put into, ah, I suppose you could call it 'our returning champion back for another game'. Well, another Game. And since he was your /very/ good friend, he didn't have anything much more precious, and, well, you know how entry fees work."

Shiki swallowed the bite of muffin, hard, and digested the information as well. "Neku was sent into another Reaper's Game. His entry fee..."

"Was you, yes," Hanekoma continued. "Because of that, handing out of prizes and clearing up loose ends have sort of... gone amiss. After that, things get a little fuzzy. I think someone went fiddling around with those forces beyond their control, which is always a fast track to getting your head kicked in, except they ended up calling in a lot of things with a lot of boots."

"There were monsters everywhere."

"Monsters, yes. Some of them I'm sure were familiar to you, some not. The Noise, that's the familiar ones; their ugly twin brothers, the Taboo Noise, and... let's say their estranged, nasty cousins nobody talks about who never visit because they always show up and eat everything you've got lying around. Those..."

"Would be the Heartless," Hanekoma continued, and Shiki realized he was looking out of the window, walking towards it. Slowly, she got up and followed him, and looked outside. Rather than Cat Street, there was an assortment of homely, brown-brick buildings huddled together, with European design and an... overall cartoony feel, almost.

"They are the reason we are here now. This is Traverse Town. It's a nice little place, really, for what it is. Cozy. Lots of nice people. Not a familiar neighborhood by any means, but it's good enough, I mean, I got used to it quickly enough..."

"Why aren't we in Shibuya?" Shiki asked. Hanekoma looked awkward. Again, she asked the same question.

Hanekoma sighed, and sat down again. He played with some sugar packets, Shiki asked him again.

Hanekoma stood up.

"Shibuya's gone, kid. When I said 'show up and eat everything you have lying around', I didn't mean the contents of your fridge. Total wipeout, basically. Someone screwing around let the Heartless in- those ugly little shadows with the yellow eyes. They're not a pleasant bunch, but they're pretty hungry. And unfortunately, only Hearts will do, as you might guess from the name, I suppose. Peoples' hearts. Whole worlds' hearts."

"That's what happened to Shibuya. What happened to a lot of places in Traverse Town, actually. It's all made of little bits and pieces of other worlds. The Heartless show up, they go hog wild all over a place, and when they crack into the creamy centre, everything on the outside gets tossed like a muffin wrapper."

Shiki looked at the piece of plastic she'd shredded apart to get at her food. She looked a little qeasy all of a sudden.

`"Sorry, bad example."

"So," she said. "Shibuya is gone."

"Ol' WildKat's all that's left, yeah."

"The Game never ended."

"Nope."

"I'm still dead."

"...yep."

"And everyone else?"

"..."

Shiki stared at Higashizawa for a good, long thirty seconds.

More or less after that, she lost it, and started bawling on the spot. She couldn't take it all in. She'd gone from a hair's breadth away from being alive again to... not. And alone. And Shibuya was gone. And Neku was gone. And Neku was gone. And, and, and...

Hanekoma winced and looked at a painting on the wall as Shiki stood there in front of him, wailing like a baby. He panicked for a second, then gave her a napkin and Mr Mew, to which the teenager clung like it was a life preserver.

"Hey, hey now. Hey. Don't. Uh, hey. Easy there, Shiki. Actually, you know what, no, screw it."

"Let it all out."

It was half an hour later. Shiki had eaten another muffin and some coffee, gathered her wits, and even stepped outside the cafe to look around a little. She basically had no idea what was going on, still, but Hanekoma had been as understanding as possible under the circumstances.

` "Hey, look on the bright side. You survived, right? I don't doubt that Phones and the others were tough enough to make it, too. Maybe if you go outside and have a wander around you might find 'em, huh?"

"But what then? What am I going to do?" Shiki asked.

"...I don't really know. I know the Noise are out there, and the Heartless maybe, as well. You might be able to take them on without a Partner, you might not. I haven't tried it. You can go out and explore if you want, just don't go too far."

"OK."

"And Shiki, uh..."

"Huh?"

Hanekoma sighed. He was sitting on an easy chair himself now, adjusting the cushion he was on. "...you can come back here, if you want. Hey, if you find any of the other Players, you can bring 'em back here too. I guess if this is the only place we've got left now, you... you guys can crash here if you need it. No falling asleep when a Reaper snaps his fingers any more, after all. So... come back here if you need to, ok? Any time."

Shiki looked at the man. So, this was the second time he's bailed her out of a terrible situation, she guessed. She thought about it for a second, and ran over, gave him a quick hug on the shoulders, then back to the doorway.

"Thank you, Mr. Hanekoma."

"Don't mention it, kid. Guess we gotta stick together from here on out."

"Yeah."

"...yeah."

And before she became too afraid to, Shiki Misaki stepped out into the streets of Traverse Town, and the new world that spread out before her.