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| The Return of Rhyme(?) |
| (2012-11-05 - 2012-11-05) |
| One of the players who was Erased during the Reaper's game showing back up in sleepy Traverse Town. |
| Rhyme | Traverse Town, in all its being huge and impossible to define easily aside from calling it a massive pile of themes smashed together with RAD ARCHITECTURE and sweet kickflippable lampposts, is home to many people. Refugees, even, from across the many worlds swallowed by darkness. One such 'refugee' has been seperated from her friends for what seems like an eternity, but really it was only about a week. A mysterious girl with a skull-themed baggy shirt and a black beanie wanders the outskirts of Traverse aimlessly, looking very lost. And, surprising to all that know her, very not-Erased. |
| Neku Sakuraba | It seems that refugees are starting to pile up in Traverse Town. The worlds are caving in on themselves; the Heartless are devouring everything they can get their hands on, like a swarm of evil locusts made of darkness-swallowed hearts. There is no end to their hunger, no pause to their destructive nature; countless worlds are being swallowed up. Among them, the world of the Game...the greatest Game in history, the Reaper's Game...SHIBUYA. And of those refugees from SHIBUYA, one in particular has been lurking around Traverse Town these last couple days. A very important refugee, in fact - the Conductor's own proxy in the Reaper's Game, the unwilling amnesiac Pin Genius shut-in Neku Sakuraba. He's been having a...a rough couple of days. The partial loss of memories he knows he has, Shiki showing up with some other guy (who immediately managed to piss him off in a most spectacular manner)...the world's been pretty annoying lately for Neku. But at least right now, as he walks through the outskirts of Traverse Town, he has his peace. Or so he thought. Neku passes by the girl without recognizing her. It's only once he's well and truly walked past her - once his feet have passed hers - that the memory leaps to him unbidden, the memory of that girl's erasure, of her death, of...of... Neku whirls. He grabs at Rhyme's shoulder. "Why...why are you...?" "Why are you...alive...?" |
| Rhyme | When you're walking down the street with nowhere to go, one can settle into a sort of trance. With your hands back behind your head, and not a care in the world, you sort of drift into a state of contentedness, being alive, with nothing really to do. Many people would turn about with their idle hands and find something, anything to do, to occupy themselves, to feel useful. Rhyme just likes walking around on her own again, without the pressures of timers or noise or the constant threat of death and erasure. And then her shoulder is grabbed. She spins, one foot going up as she pivots around akwardly to face Neku. "Wh... Oh! It's... Um... Headphones guy!" She beams. "Sorry, I... Forgot your name. I forgot a lot of things!" Her beaming smile dims a bit as she scratches the side of her head with a finger. "Um... I don't really know. I was in a dark place, and then... Well, I got better! Isn't that great? Every cloud /does/ have a silver lining, you know!" She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a pin. "I think I lost my Player Pin, too. All I have is this thing. Crazy, right?" It is her Noise pin. |
| Neku Sakuraba | Neku just...stares at her for a really, really long time. He's frozen, his a look of horror on his face. Because he remembers that. He remembers that moment. It's surrounded by shadows, by all-consuming darkness, but that moment is there, burned into his mind forever. That moment is seared into his skull, watching Rhyme's face as she was removed from existence, as her soul was extinguished and cast into nothingness by those two... He will never forget that moment. Not ever. Just like he won't forget Shiki, vanishing into the... ...Shiki vanished...? ... Neku's hand trembles as he pulls out his phone. He raises it to Rhyme's face and takes a picture of her. Ostensibly, it is to send to Shiki, to show her proof that he is not going insane. In reality, it is so that he knows that this meeting happened, and that he has not gone insane. He dials Shiki. He holds his phone up to his ear. It goes to voicemail; the phone falls to his side, his hand swinging limply as he stares at her. It is impossible. It is categorically impossible. Everything in his mind tells him that this cannot be, that SHE cannot be, that something is wrong, wrong, wrong, but no, there she is, standing there, without her Player Pin, bound to the Noise Pin that he had seen when Hanekoma had done...something, some magic, some trick... "But...you can't..." Neku stumbles a little, still holding her arm in shock. "You can't be here...I watched you, I watched them Erase you...I watched Hanekoma bind...I..." "...what's going on? What's...what's happening?" |
| Rhyme | Through the staring at, Rhyme just happily smiles. She even gives a little V-for-victory sign for the camera shot, like ANY self-respecting Japanese girl would do when confronted with random friends taking their picture. The whole time she remains smiling and silent, though she looks a little confused at his stuttering objections. "Of course I can. There was some darkness, really dark place, and then there was a light, and I went to the light, and I ended up here. I feel a litte funny though, I guess, but I mean... Glass half full!" She tilts her head. "Hanekoma? Bind? Nothing's going on, just... calm down. Cooler heads prevail!" "I don't know why you're so worried, you're sort of worrying me, too!" |
| Neku Sakuraba | Neku shakes his head. Okay, so...so she was alive, and apparently no different than the day she vanished. That's...unnerving. He's trying very hard to maintain his cool, very very hard to maintain what little he had. Okay. Think. Think, Neku. The world is coming to pieces. Darkness is engulfing everything that exists. Maybe...maybe Rhyme was engulfed and spat out by the darkness, too? Maybe she doesn't remember things, either...that would kind of make sense. Maybe when she was Erased was the point of consumption, and that's why he doesn't remember... No, that didn't make sense...did it? Who else was there when Rhyme died...? "I...Rhyme...you're not even a little..." "Not even a little concerned?" |
| Rhyme | Rhyme looks confused, though relatively unphased by all this logic and facts being thrown her way. More, she just seems worried that Neku is FREAKING THE FSK OUT, or at least, looking distressed. She grabs the whippish boy by the shoulders and smiles, FORCING her smile towards him, SMILING SO HARD AT THE DISTRESSED NEKU. "Everything will be okay. Some stuff happened, and then I got better! It's all a little fuzzy. But ignorance is bliss! And... and..." She frowns, a hand going to her chin as she taps her lips and turns away. "Well I'm sure there was one I haven't used..." She shrugs. "But I'm not concerned at all. I'm alive, you're alive, everything's gravy." She smiles. "Even if I feel a little funny. Do you feel funny?" |
| Neku Sakuraba | Ignorance is bliss? Not knowing how someone could be alive, then dead, then alive again is a good thing? Neku stares at Rhyme like she's crazy. Like she is literally straight up insane. Neku grabs her shoulders with both hands, straightening her to look at her face. "No. I don't feel funny. But you do...and you're not even a little bit concerned about it. Not even kind of curious." "..." And then he releases her, his arms dropping to his sides. Why did he /care/? Why did it matter what she did with her own body and her own life? She'd gotten a new life...great, good for her. She was alive now, instead of being...that Pin, that Noise thing. Good. Cool. Not his problem anymore. Neku turns away from her, his hands sliding into his pockets. He'd tell Shiki. Shiki'd deal with it, when she found out; she was annoying, this was annoying, maybe the two problems would annoy each other out of existence or something. "...fine. Do whatever. It doesn't concern me." |
| Rhyme | "I'm a little bit concerned about it, sure. But that doesn't have to consume me. Just walking around is nice, without those weird-winged people and those horrible monsters after us. I'll trade feeling funny for being alive. I'll trade crazy... death-game for this. Something /good/ has happened, or, at least, I think has happened." She pulls out her Noise pin, and looks at it in her hand as he releases her and turns away. She frowns slightly. "Are we still... dead? I mean, not dead-dead, but... Doesn't this pin mean something? Do you still have your skull-pin? And have you seen my partner? You know... The guy who sort of dressed like me? I haven't found him yet. Actually, you're the first person I found." |
| Neku Sakuraba | "I'm still a Player. I don't know about you." Neku flashes his skull pin over his shoulder. The truth is, he's already tried his Noise Detection technique, as Rhyme was talking to him just now; he closed his eyes and reached out with his pin, and what he saw was...wrong. Very, very wrong. Strange. Demented. Distorted. Disjointed. He shakes his head. "I haven't seen your Partner. He's..." He's a Reaper. The truth is that he's a Reaper. The truth is that he became a Reaper to protect you and...and what? There's no more memory there. Just flashes. Just a face, an event, disjointed and disconnected like all the others. Meaningless without context. Everything's meaningless without context. Just scribbles on the pavement. No heart. "Shiki's somewhere. With some annoying guy." Why did that make him mad? Why did it make him angry? Nothing. Meaningless. Without context...meaningless. "I don't know what that pin is." |
| Rhyme | "Don't know? I..." Rhyme starts, frowning. Before smiling again. "Well, I guess that's fair. I'm a little confused myself." She follows along after Neku, palming her pin as she throws her hands behind her head again, walking along. "Oh. Well." She skips ahead of Neku before turning, and walking backwards. "Do you know anyone who /would/ know? I mean, you're basically the Pin Master! If... I remember correctly." She wonders, tilting her head a bit. She does sort of feel funny all over, and she can't do a lot of things she once could as a player. None of the psychic tricks of before... And no partner. She also couldn't defend herself, unless her one pin had an attack. "Hey, um... Does that mean the Game's off? Because otherwise you'd need to stick with her?" |
| Neku Sakuraba | "Game's still on. There's a new Gamemaster. Sho Minamimoto...he's a psychopath. Find a partner and stay with them or you're going to die." Neku shakes his head. "Hanekoma might know. He's it. He made...a pin like that. It might be the same pin. WildKat is here in Traverse Town. He'll...take care of you." |
| Rhyme | "Oh. Okay. Thanks for the tips!" She nods, before turning back around to walk forward, slowing so she remains abreast of Neku for a few more moments. "WildKat is in Traverse Town? Why not Shibuya? I..." She grins. "I guess I have some exploring to do. Hey, tell me if you see my partner, okay?" She calls, before splitting off, to mosey around the city at her own pace, and to leave poor Neku alone. "Thanks for everything!" She calls as she disappears into a side-street. |