splinteredstar | Fic: "Of Music"

The World Ends With You

PG

...Most of the cast, at least. Chronological order, at least roughly, spread out over the whole canon.

Neku-

-shield insulation armor – he’d bought the biggest headphones he could find, strapping them on and using them as a warning sign – like spikes or bright colored frogs, barbed wire or crime scene tape wrapped around his soul –

- he doesn’t want friends (burdens) or companionship (awkward stifling) or understanding (pity) - poison scrapes at his throat, anger because he’s not weak, he doesn’t need any of them-

-so music to block out the drowning crowds, noise to kill the feeling of saltwater in his lungs, trance into techno into pop into rock into house into emocore –

-until he echoes into himself, a single note in the silence.

Megumi

-he steps in time to music not his own – the Composer vibrates through him as noise and light and sensation and the taste of color and gunpowder on his tongue – he swallows it down, tasting power and majesty and something near divinity –

-swallows it down and lets it flow out again, resonating down his violin-string tendons and out his piano-wire vocal cords. He is an empty vessel – a speaker for the Music of his composer to be expressed through.

-the Music colors the city bright and twisting, like a mirage over water, like shards of glass caught in the wind and the city has grown even more beautiful in his composter’s hands –

-he does not know if he loves his city or his composer more, and it is his joy that he has not been asked to chose.

Beat –

-he goes loud and simple and angry, the sound like his skateboard on the sidewalk – kachunk kachunk kachunk – or the screech of tires from cars as they slam on their brakes when he zooms past –

- until the one time the car doesn’t –

-his parents hate it which makes him blast it louder, makes him crawl rhymes in his notebooks instead of homework, until he throws it across his bedroom in frustration because the words don’t work, he can’t shove them into the right shape –

-‘till his little sis picks up the notebook and looks at it for a second, and then smiles and makes the words work, moves the thoughts around until they flow,

-and that’s the night he names her Rhyme and she names him Beat.

Rhyme

She listens to everything, because everything is so interesting – the ringing of bells against the backdrop of the city, her brother’s skateboard and the birds at the park that he takes her to after school sometimes.

-she even listened to some of Beat’s music once, until he glanced at the track name and yanked the headphones off of her, muttering something about “innocent ears” –

-but she wants to hear that too, the bad parts and the good, because it all works together somehow, she’s sure of it, like a painting or a symphony or a cake, like rhythm and music, like Beat and Rhyme –

- and she wants to know it all.

Konishi

The UG lives by imagination, by sparks to start forest fires of ideas, by the sorts of souls that glow so brightly their Music infects others, every word and note they spill starting a chain reaction of creativity.

Konishi is not one of those people. Her music, according to others, is subdued and sharp-edged, a melody that should be calming but somehow isn’t. Kitanji transcribed an approximation once, because he’d said it was interesting. Showed promise, he’d said, and he hadn’t meant that she could become a composer.

No, she hasn’t the temperament for that, and her strength was that she knows it. But power is where she finds it, power is the hands of the organizer, the one who keeps it running smoothly. Composers can do nothing without Conductors – artists burn out without people keeping them alive.

Konishi smiles as she hums her music and reorganizes files.

Shiki

Eri likes to have music on while they work, background noise, the radio flipped to whatever hits radio station is the clearest – Shiki lets her pick, because Shiki’s music doesn’t play the Prince as often – even if does play def Märch –

-and Shiki’s music doesn’t make Eri stop and go, oh wait, that song gives me an idea! and drop whatever she’s doing to sketch out some pop-sensation-masterpiece slammed into her head by the song – and it’ll be amazing, because it *always* is, and –

-Shiki never feels that glow, the inspiration blooming in her mind, even when def Märch plays her favorite song, and is there just something wrong with her –

Sho

-they’re derivatives of each other, math and art – sine and cosine reflecting each other over and over, combing with perfect symmetry –

-sound is just math, each song just layers upon layers of sinusoidal curves against the x² function of the eardrums – music is numbers that add up to = art, numbers are art in its purest, realist form –

-music is sculpture is painting is writing because they’re all numbers, all different ways of looking at the same equation, transformations of the same graph

Kariya

The rhythm of the city – footsteps on rooftops commercials singing the wind in his wings – it’s a comforting thrum in the back of his mind After, but –

-it takes him a moment, a little bit longer than he likes, to realize it – something sounds off – but no, that’s not it is it –

-like a song he’d been mishearing for years – a wrong so old it had started to feel right – he pauses and lets the city’s music surround him, watching each string of notes flitter by and thinking, “Yeah, okay, maybe this is-”

Maybe that kid pulled something off after all.

Mr. H

Joshua sighs and the other Angels don’t get it – but he listens to a little bit of everything, whatever's new and honest and native – little indie-rock bands on the streets and wannabe soul princesses in coffee shops – because he can’t help it, a moth to a flame of Imagination, and besides –

-each artist or singer or writer or dj adds another layer of Harmony to the Music, to the twisting ocean of sound, and it’s his job – his passion – to take the layers apart and look at them, scour them for sour notes that throw it off and for the parts that make him stop and stare and go, “Yeah, like that, but *more*”

It’s art, remixing the world into something new and brilliant, and he loves it and he loves his city and that’s something Joshua gets even if the angels don’t –

-because ascension or no, neither of them will ever want to leave.

Joshua –

he needs no musicians to spark a flare of light in his mind – he doesn’t need speakers (he is the noise) or sheet music (a road map will do, or better yet a map of minds with thoughts sparking from soul to soul to soul to soul-) because

-his city sings and each note glows with power and inspiration and even out of tune it was beautiful, so heartbreakingly close to perfect, but even more so now as he slowly retunes it, repairs warped wood and split strings –

-he resonates in time with his city, and the sound of its heartbeat is the sweetest music of all.