Shibuya Snapshots

Concerts

Taking place as a weird mix of the game and anime. Think anime events, but it's like the game where they don't come back to life.

But even so, when he sees Konishi approach from behind and he challenges her decision to focus on Beat and not the Taboo Noise and instantly realizes the unavoidable fate in store for him, he wishes he had the chance to put on one last concert.

-xXx-

He first meets BJ and Tenho when they're in high school. They meet through their school's band club. They all quickly become fast friends and bond over their love of music. Or, more specifically, their love for metal.

777 prefers singing, but his voice isn't quite the perfect fit for a high school band, much less choir. His voice is rougher and can't hit the high notes that are in popular demand for songs the school claims are appropriate. Even if his ability to speak quickly while enunciating every word correctly is widely uncommon and rare, his lack of range doesn't score him a spot as a lead singer, only back up.

Tenho is good at keeping pace with fast beats on the drums, but many of the songs that they practice in band are too slow to what he's used to, so he finds himself hitting notes too soon, or when he tries to slow down he ends up hitting notes late, too focused on not hitting notes early. Bandmates that are better at playing than he is are taking all the spots for performing and himself as a last-minute substitute.

BJ has a natural talent for guitar and has a bias for electric guitar. But bands are all trumpets, pianos, occasionally drums, choir, tubas... pretty much everything except guitars. Or, well, electric guitars.

The three love music, but don't have a place in the environment that supports them. So, the solution is simple.

They all leave band and start their own. 777 on vocals, BJ on guitar, and Tenho on drums.

And they do well. They start off with their own renditions of other songs released by bands they all enjoy until they transition into writing their own songs. They spend all of their time outside of school, during their lunch periods, and during their language classes writing lyrics or experimenting with different chords and progressions that they could use during songs.

After they all graduate from high school, they officially create their band, performing for free at different places throughout the city and renting out different cheap venues to perform live at. They end up having a decent following, their band slowly but surely becoming more and more well-known in the city.

And then on the way to one of their venues, they get into a car accident due to a speeding truck which seems almost anti-climactic at that point, die, and enter the UG.

BJ and Tenho partner up which, given the nature of the Reapers' Game, leaves 777 without a partner. Thankfully, he finds a boy a few years younger than them named Futoshi to partner up with.

The two teams make it through the Game, a few close calls nearly causing the end of the band, and defeat the GM on the last day, thanks to Futoshi's knowledge about circuitry and electricity.

They meet the Conductor, a man with black hair and red headphones that they all find sick to all hell, as he announces who's coming back to life. That stuns them, they had thought that everyone was going to have the chance to come back to life.

The Conductor announces Futoshi as the winner, due to his quick thinking, and asks the remaining three their thoughts for the future. The three of them decide to join the Reapers, none of them particularly wanting to play the Game again. So, they make a promise to go meet Futoshi at A-East as soon as possible and have him be their backstage man.

They fulfill the promise and the four of them work together as a band. 777 pitches an idea to add to the microphone, so Futoshi handmakes metal Reaper Wings that 777 sticks right onto their mic, creating a trademark for their group that serves to only bring in more fans.

They continue their concerts in the RG for a few years, watching Reapers come and go, venting out all of their frustrations into song, Futoshi having no choice but to watch in sadness as they have to watch Player after Player get erased. They were all there once, so they understand the struggle.

They encounter several different hardships as those in a band do. There's the time when their fuse breaks a few hours before one of their concerts begin and they have to rely on a pair of Players to track Futoshi down who had wandered off with a scattered brain earlier. Little did 777 know how important those two would be, especially the boy, if only he had lasted long enough to see it.

Then the following week their microphone gets stolen, Tenho having removed it to try and stop an argument between 777 and Tenho, not realizing that Minamimoto found it and took it to put in one of his "art pieces". They had only found out because the boy from earlier and another boy, different from the girl from before, had taken magic pictures that 777 didn't even bother asking about.

The lost mic is a blow to their pride, but it's fine. They have Minamimoto's trademark megaphone, so they'll simply perform using that instead. One trademark for another.

That same week is when everything goes to shit.

Taboo Noise fill the streets, killing everything in sight, be it Player or Reaper. They inform Futoshi who gives them all concerned looks, bless his alive heart, but is unable to assist them in any way.

The following night, BJ and Tenho are erased by the hands of a group of Taboo Noise, and 777 arrives too late, seeing them vanish into static, their hoodies left on the ground as the only evidence of their existence.

He takes them and ties them around his waist and tries not to feel like he's dying inside. It's funny, he's been dead for years, but he doesn't feel more unalive than he does right now.

Konishi issues an Emergency Call when Daisukenojo Bito defects from the Reapers to partner up with the only Player left. The same boy from the previous two weeks. It isn't lost on 777 the unfairness of the kid's situation, but he still finds himself challenging them anyway. It's two against one, and one of them has taken down GM's three times as strong as him.

It's a death wish, he realizes. Maybe he just wants to be put out of his misery. But the kids leave him alive anyway, and he regrets not being able to see BJ and Tenho again. After everything they've been through, every milestone, after their concert that was supposed to be the following day had completely sold out on tickets for the first time, everything had come crashing to a stop.

But even so, when he sees Konishi approach from behind and he challenges her decision to focus on Beat and not the Taboo Noise and instantly realizes the unavoidable fate in store for him, he wishes he had the chance to put on one last concert.

-xXx-

I got sad writing this, not gonna lie.