If you give a man a gadget, he's going to want the leather case to go with it. [Complete]

[itsbeanpaste]

Character(s): Kariya, open
Content: Kariya, meet Paixao. Paixao, Kariya. How do you do.
Setting: Joutenheim Gate
Time: Afternoon
Warnings: WEWY spoilers.

Comments

[loserbuys]

By the time she arrived at the Joutenheim gate, it had stopped raining. She was still soaking wet, though, and none to happy about that. But at least Kariya was here, and that was something normal. Partway through her walk she'd stopped hiding her wings, and apparently Kariya had been right when he said they could be seen. Might as well leave them out, then, and be able to defend herself.

Kariya was easy enough to spot, an orange-haired man amongst an ocean of blonds. She approached.

"I didn't think you'd move much," she said with a smirk.

[itsbeanpaste]

Indeed he hadn't. Between his last message to her and now, he'd stayed almost exactly where he was, apart from moving from the wall to sitting on the back of a nearby bench. Upon hearing her, he flipped his free palmtop shut and looked up, though he had to raise an eyebrow at her bedraggled appearance. "You look like you got in a fight with a car wash," he said frankly, kind of amused.

[loserbuys]

"What's the point of building a dome if it's going to rain inside?" Uzuki grumbled, sitting beside Kariya. "I would have made you walk, but I didn't want to stand around in the rain."

Of course, now that they had met up, they were still no closer to getting home, or figuring out just what was going on. It certainly wasn't anywhere normal.

"I've talked to a rat today," she said, frustration leaking into her tone. "Nobody knows how to get back. Or why we're here. Or much of anything, really."

[itsbeanpaste]

Oh, that explained it. He'd been wondering why she'd let him wait around.

"Every place's got a few rats," he said with a slight shrug, taking her figuratively. Even Shibuya wasn't perfect, but that was part of its appeal. "Kind of a pain, though," he added, with a well-practiced weariness. "That means we're gonna have to go figure it out ourselves."

[loserbuys]

"I mean a real rat," Uzuki said. "Or--he called himself a meerkat. Whatever." She sighed.

"Well, someone must be in charge here," she continued. "We could start with that."

Of course, just who that was might not be so easy to figure out. Maybe a scan of the residents would help? It only took a moment to skim through a few thoughts. But these-- She frowned.

"Have you scanned anyone yet?" Uzuki said, her tone becoming far more serious. "There's... Something weird."

[itsbeanpaste]

So now she was talking to animals. He gave her a sort of look, but didn't press the possibility of that; after all, he'd just been texting a dream. "Meerkats aren't rats, they're mongooses," he said matter-of-factly.

Actually, he hadn't scanned the place; he'd been preoccupied enough with his new toy that it hadn't occurred to him. Curious what she meant, he gave it a try... and frowned.

It was different. Compared to the cacophony of minds he was used to, it was ... rhythmic. Orderly. Not exactly identical, but weirdly close. Just as homogeneous on the inside as they were on the outside.

".... Huh." He stuck his lollipop into his mouth for a moment, pondering. Something weird was a grave understatement. "Something wack is more like it," he said around the candy.

[loserbuys]

"Thanks for the info," she replied dryly, and waited for him to scan the citizens.

She nodded. It was unsettling. Perhaps she was more used to Shibuya than she thought. She didn't spend an unnatural amount of time reading minds (though she had gone through a phase of it that was apparently almost a Reaper initiation), but she knew how odd this was.

"It's like before," she said uneasily.

[itsbeanpaste]

That caught Kariya off guard; he couldn't recall having seen anything like this before, especially not since Uzuki had been a Reaper. He paused a second to rack his brain a little harder, but nothing came to mind. "Before when?" he asked.

[loserbuys]

Uzuki was getting frustrated now. "I know you couldn't just forget," she said thinly. "It was the third week we'd worked in a row. You said it'd never happened before. And everyone in Shibuya started thinking the same thing."

She affixed him with a stronger glare, as if that might help jog his memory.

[itsbeanpaste]

However, jogging memories that were not there was an effort doomed from the start. "That can't be right. I would remember getting scheduled for three weeks back to back."

This was really starting to get unnerving. He knew Uzuki wouldn't pull his leg so persistently over something like this, but he seriously could not remember, and it bugged him.

[loserbuys]

She stared openly now. "But--So what do you remember? Do you remember the first two weeks? That Neku brat? The Freshmeat newbie Reaper who went traitor? Anything?"

She wasn't sure if she should be worried or angry. This just made her angrier.

[itsbeanpaste]

"No." He shook his head; none of that was ringing a bell. "The last thing I remember was..." Damn, did he even have anything memorable to go on? It was just another week. "We just had two weeks off," he finally came up with. "And we made a bet coming back. Reaper Sport 3." Of course, given how often they did that, he wasn't sure it'd be any help, but it was the best he had off the top of his head.

[loserbuys]

Had it been a greater length of time, Uzuki might not have remembered. But given the situation...

"That sounds like just before the three games," she said incredulously. "But that's not possible."

She was silent for a while; she was even beyond anger in her confusion.

"What is going on here?"

The lack of Kariya's memories reminded her uneasily of Entry Fees, though she had no idea why those memories would be so important to him.

[itsbeanpaste]

If Uzuki was that confused, one could only imagine what must have been going through Kariya's mind. She knew when he was talking about, but it was three weeks ago for her...? That couldn't be right. It didn't add up.

But then, it wasn't nearly the first case of memories going missing. And a lot could go down in three weeks. Or more, for that matter.

"... Care to catch me up?" he asked eventually, still watching the wall behind the opposite sidewalk.