Holy Field
Word Count: 1 586
Pairings: None.
Warning: Spoilers for the end of the game.

x x x

01. A lamenting goddess left this prophecy for the five warring kingdoms below: that their world would end in blackest sun-fire.

"Thanks, Boss," Hanekoma said, handing him the pin. "Come back any time, you hear? And look out for Joshua for me." He gave Neku a wink.

Joshua was waiting outside, fiddling with his cell phone when Neku emerged from the tiny café. He didn't look up until Neku sat down at the table, placing the coffee in front of him.

"Find anything interesting, Neku?" He took a long sip, enjoying the slight hint of charred angel feathers.

"Mm." Neku blew on a spoonful of pumpkin soup. "He had some pins lying around, so I bought this one. It looked weird." He held it out.

Joshua's eyebrows immediately went up. "Oh~?" He took it from Neku's outstretched hand. "I'm surprised, Neku. You have some taste after all."

Neku resisted the urge to flip him off.

"It's quite beautiful, isn't it." Joshua ran his fingers over the smooth surface before returning it. "I wonder about the inscription though, don't you?"

Of course he did, but he wasn't about to admit that. He pinned it on his lapel and tried to forget the strange airiness about it that had drawn him towards it in the first place.

x x x

02. Yet her prophecy held hope. The goddess promised to all living things, great and small, a saving Light to ward off their doom.

"Have you ever heard the story of the Five Nations Confederacy in North America, Neku?"

"What are you, thirty? Why the hell would I know about American history?"

"More along the lines of Canadian history, but that's beside the point. Five Iroquois- they were the indigenous peoples of North America- tribes got together, and their leaders made a confederacy in order to wage war on neighbouring tribes more efficiently."

"Look, Joshua. The mission isn't about-"

"-According to legend, their trickster goddess sent the Europeans as a punishment for such cruel war-making on their fellow people."

"Great to know. Now let's get the hell moving, Joshua!"

"You know, the Aztecs predicted that the world would end in one of four ways: an earthquake, a flood, a volcano, or jaguars raining from the sky."

Neku groaned.

x x x

03. But the five kings would not believe her. So one sought strength and found futility; so another sank in mindless wisdom.

But Neku found the pins oddly beautiful as they seemed to grow and change with him; he found himself back at the café again and again buying the same thing. He slept with them on, fought with them on, even though they did nothing. Soon he had the three of them pinned through the band of his headphones.

The Pact that Players make is, on a very basic level, the only viable option to survive against rampant Noise. It allows Players to occupy parallel planes of the same universe; otherwise, Noise simply shift up or down and strike from where they cannot be seen.

Like the charge on atoms the strength of the Pact wavers back and forth during battle, sometimes stronger on one end, sometimes stronger on the other. When the strange green light favoured Neku, the pins seemed to hum as though entranced by song.

x x x

04. In the end, the kings' delusions led them to a chamber of reckoning, where their unspent chaos brought fear and woe to all.

"Hey, Phones. What kinda pins'r those?"

"Oh, these?" He unclipped and held out the four pins. "No clue. Jo- someone told me that the inscriptions had something to do with an old myth about the destruction of the world, and stuff."

"Kinda like…Shibuya."

Neku's mouth went dry. He nodded slowly. "Kind of like Shibuya."

"'Cept Shibuya's not being destroyed. It's just being royally fucked up by th' Composer."

"Yeah." Six days they had spent in the futile search for Konishi, for the Composer, for everyone, as around them Shibuya slowed to a halt. It was as though the blood was being drained out of it.

In his pocket, the fifth pin vibrated angrily, reminding him that it would be fully grown soon. The world closed around them and they went to sleep.

x x x

05. Now, as the boy stands before Eden, the five kings in his wake, the goddess rewards his balanced judgment with her Light.

When he woke the morning of Day Seven, Beat was already beginning to disappear. Shibuya was still, the deafening silence more terrible than anything he had ever experienced before, more terrible than death. He was glad for the sound of the Shibuya River at the very least.

They did not talk as they ran; twenty-one days and two deaths was enough to remind them that survival comes first and the mission second. Neku felt what was almost something releasing a breath of air in his pocket and reached in, pulling out Eden's Door.

"Jump," he said, breathing hard from the running. "Jump, skip, hop, step. Now we're at Eden's door."

"What?" Beat looked towards him. "Is it finished?"

"Yeah." He stopped for a moment, Beat following him, to pin it next to his Step on his headphones.

There was a moment then, a moment of absolute clarity. In the space between seconds he saw it all- the kings, the goddess, the little boy carrying an olive branch as the green-eyed woman kissed him on the forehead and portioned him a small part of her power. He gave a small cry, eyes rolling up and slumped to the ground.

"Phones? Shit! Phones!" Beat knelt beside him, staring into the whites of his eyes. "Phones! The fuck happened?"

Neku blinked, his blue eyes suddenly a bright green. "For you, my friend," Neku said, in a voice that was both his and a woman's, "I grant my Holy Field. May the strength of your trust deliver you through this trial."

Neku's eyes closed then, and when he opened them he was once again his own person.

"Shit- I-" He tried to stand and wobbled, Beat catching him under the shoulders before he fell. "-There was a lady- something weird about these pins, Beat."

"Take 'em off," he said. "I don't trust those things."

But Neku left them on, the voice of the goddess soft in his head.

When Kitaniji appeared in front of them as the creator of Shibuya's doom she reminded him that the confidence of the kings created complacency and led to their doom. When Shiki lost herself to him and they prepared for the final confrontation she took his shoulders and asked for him to wait for the Pact.

And he did, for in the same way as he did Joshua he did not believe her but he trusted her.

"Why are you running?" Kitaniji barrelled towards him, striking out and landing a square hit that knocked Neku clear across the room. Neku barely had time to breathe before the man was standing over him, energy at his fingertips, ready to kill.

"Now, Player," he said, the slightest hint of a grin on his face, "We play for keeps."

In the moment before the strike hit, two things happened. The first was that Beat hit Shiki square in the face as he felt Neku waver, yelling his partner's name. The second was, perhaps as a result, that the Pact tipped down towards Neku's prone form and filled him with its green light.

"What the-" Kitaniji recoiled, taking two steps back as Neku stood, the light enveloping him, the holy field embracing him.

"Now," Neku said, his head tilted as though he was in agreement, "We play for keeps."

x x x

And Joshua lounged in a pocket of the Room of Reckoning, waiting to surprise both Megumi and his beloved proxy.

"Shibuya?" A woman cloaked in green light wavered towards him. "Is this your earthly form?"

"Yes it is," he said with a slight smile. "I see you've befriended my proxy."

"There is something charming about him," she said. "Very old and insightful. A bridge between this world and the next."

"A bridge between you and me," he added. "Like the bridge between Player and Player. A holiness made tangible."

x x x

A lamenting god left this prophecy for the city below: that their world would end in blackest sun-fire.