Reunion

Hey y'all it's been a hot minute since I've posted anything, huh? Where did I go? What happened? Well uh I played TWEWY for the first time and I've been gone ever since. Yes I've been hyperfixated on it for that long. Even more since they recently announced a sequel and an anime. I lost my absolute shit when they showed Neku at the end of the most recent trailer. What did Coco do to my boy :(

The idea of this particular one-shot possessed me in the middle of my first class today, based on the idea of "wait if Neo takes place 3 years after the original, and Neku died in front of Beat at the end of AND, does that mean they haven't seen him since??" and I thought about how a reunion would go and voila this fic was born. 

Anyways I'll catch y'all at the end of the chapter. Leave a comment if you like TWEWY, want to know what it is and what it's about, or harass me about update for The Fairy Hero, go right ahead I won't stop you. Feel free to DM me if you want, too.

The media image is the Neo: The World Ends With You box art with a vibrant filter. 

The World Ends With You and Neo: The World Ends With You is owned by Square Enix.

-xXx-

Neku wakes up in the Scramble. He's not surprised whenever that happens anymore. This time is different, though. He wakes up with the crowd moving around him, some passerbys shooting him a weird look, most likely due to still being on the ground. The ever-present pressure of the UG and anxiety the game emits are gone. Neku isn't sure if the feeling that something is amiss is because of the lack of pressure or relief that everything is finally over.

He gets to his feet and makes his way towards Hachiko. A ritual that he does every time he wakes up in the Scramble. He sits down on the railing, clasps his hands together, and recounts what happened in the game. The Wicked Twisters and Ruinbringers tied for first place in the game, and both teams were released instead of there being a tie-breaker, something that Neku had feared would happen but never did.

The Wicked Twisters had been in last place the majority of the game, only rising in ranks near the end of the game when more players had been erased by the reapers. He assumed it had to do with Rindo's powers that had to do with time. Rindo never spoke or told anyone about it, but it made sense how they got pins and items there was no real way of knowing that they would need. Nagi once told him about how Rindo would suddenly insist they needed something like a pin or need to go somewhere, dragging along with them. Fret was always supportive of his best friend, and Nagi didn't really feel like resisting, but whenever she had asked why all Rindo had said was "Trust me," or "Just a hunch." Even with that, she said she "trusted Lord Rindo's judgement."

Neku was once part of team Ruinbringers, back when he first got to the game 3 years before. He had sought out Tsugumi since she had been present in his visions before he died. She had somehow slipped into the UG during Shinjuku's inversion. Neku thought that she would have been erased during the inversion, but, according to her, she had miraculously survived and slipped into the UG during the brief period between inversion and recreation of the city. She had been seeking him out too, explaining that she had seen visions of him fighting with Beat before the Inversion occurred.

They worked together for about a year before Neku left, slowly getting tired of other people as much as he knew he needed to trust them. Neku hadn't officially defected from the team, probably why he had been revived with the rest of the others. He was surprised he was in the game to begin with, considering that he had been disqualified from competing in any and all games after his last one. Perhaps that was why he had been targeted by some of the Shinjuku reapers and players. Tsugumi had attacked him during an encounter between her and the majority of the Wicked Twisters.