Chapter 27

The six of us ran through Shibuya in the UG, thanks to Joshua. Mr. Hanekoma chose to stay back and read more in the books and adrenaline coursed through my veins as I thought about the two Reapers who were attacking an opponent who was going to be stronger than them. My worry grew with each passing second as Rhyme and Neku led the way to where Nikolai was last spotted by them. An explosion broke me out of my thoughts and I looked around, only noticing the people walking around, oblivious to the UG.

"Whoa," Shiki breathed out, panting slightly from all the running. "Did you guys hear that?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Most likely just Nikolai doing his thing," Joshua sighed.

"It's around here somewhere," Rhyme said as she turned a corner into the Station Underpass, just past the Moyai statue at the West Exit Bus Terminal.

"Lollipop said that he and Pinky were gonna take the fight 'round here," Beat added.

"I didn't know you liked to be so close to the Shibuya River, Neku. You really missed me huh?" Joshua said.

"Joshua," Neku warned, "now is not the time for your remarks. Although, I think that's them in the distance." I looked ahead and saw three people, all of them with wings. But only one had feathery wings. There was a blinding light up ahead as a female shouted out in pain. As we approached them, the first thing I noticed was the injuries Kariya and Yashiro had. Both were in an awful shape and looked as if they had reached their limit.

"Yo! We're back!" Beat shouted, gaining all of their attentions. The two Reapers took one look at Joshua as their eyes widened. A bead of sweat dripped off of Kariya's forehead as I had gasped at the damage Nikolai had done to them.

"You!" Yashiro shouted as she held up her arm, pointing directly at Joshua. She knelt down as she groaned slightly, holding her side as her face twisted into a grimace. "What are you doing here?! Y-You should've been Erased!"

"Well, I can't exactly Erase myself now can I? My Game, my rules, and I say, that I can play," Joshua said with a slight chuckle at the end.

"Finally a worthy opponent. Took you long enough, Composer. You and I have a score to settle," Nikolai hissed raising his hand, ready to summon another attack.

"Wait!" Yashiro shrieked looking back at Joshua. "You're the Composer?!" Kariya looked equally as surprised but regained his composure.

"The one and only. I would fall back for now. We've got it from here. You too Kariya. Both of you aren't in the best shape. On Cat Street there's a cafe at the end called WildKat. Go there and the owner will help you both." Joshua took his phone out of his pocket and pressed a button on it, causing a beam of light to rain down and strike near Nikolai, who jumped out of the way.

"Got it. Thanks. Be careful. He's a tough one," Kariya said, hiding his shock better than Yashiro who looked as if she was going to explode. He grabbed her arm as she pulled at her hair, scoffing as she was pulled out of the underground area.

"Well, they took that well," Neku muttered and felt the pins along his jacket. Nikolai laughed out loud, the sound echoing throughout the Shibuya River and out towards the Station Underpass and towards where Joshua usually resided. Nikolai was in worse shape than when Joshua last fought him, and his once slicked back hair was wild and his clothes were torn and dirty as sigils I saw in my mother's books were surrounding his body.

"Grim Heaper feelings right now," Beat said.

"I would prefer it if you all stayed out of this. He can wipe you all out with the snap of his fingers," Joshua said as he looked back towards Neku, Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme.

"Hell no!" Neku shouted. "You aren't going to fight alone on this. He tried attacking us first." Neku was about to take a step forward when Joshua held out his arm and stopped Neku in his tracks.

"Neku, I'm being serious."

"It's touching, really, how you care for your Conductor and even those measly Reapers. Just what do you plan to do? The Angels can't touch me right now. Isn't that right (Y/n)?" Nikolai asked. This caused everyone to turn towards me and I clenched my hand into a fist.

"Nikolai. Answer me something. What are the sigils appearing in the other UG's? You wouldn't create something like that without a reason," I said.

"Other UG's? You mean the sigil your mother created. She could harness those powers and bend the sigils to her will. How stupid and oblivious can you get? You have the books, clearly you haven't read them. Those sigils take the imagination from the Composer and Producer in an area and using them, I can take that imagination and use it to make my own power greater than ever!" The area around Nikolai seemed to increase in pressure as the rocks on the ground started to shake as a massive wind seemed to surround Nikolai.

"Take it from the surrounding area? But if you do that then the balance will collapse!" I gasped.

"OK, how would you know about the other UG areas? What's a Producer?" Neku asked. I looked off to the side and Nikolai smirked as Joshua's grip on his phone tightened.

"Oh? So you don't know?" Nikolai asked. "She's an Angel. Originally she was sent down to Shibuya to observe the UG and report on how it was doing, until she lost me my job-"

"You lost your job on your own! That had nothing to do with me! You kidnapped me to be exact," I said, remembering how he had kidnapped me. The thought caused anger to swell up inside of me. I took in a deep breath to calm myself down. "But I suppose since the secret is out, it will make it a little easier to fight you. I won't let you hurt anyone in Shibuya or the surrounding UG's."

"Wait! Back up a bit! (Y/n) is an Angel?!" Shiki said. I nodded and bit my lip. I could feel blood drip from my palm where my nails dug into my skin.

"Yes. I'm originally from a plane above the UG called the Higher Plane, where all Angels reside, but now is not the time to be asking questions! Our main focus is to defeat Nikolai before he sucks up all the imagination in the UG. If he succeeds, all the planes will fall on top of each other from the lack of balance and destroy one another, and if the UG is destroyed, Noise will roam from the Noise Plane and attack all people in the RG," I said, causing Shiki and the other teen's eyes to widen. "Composers help maintain that balance and also maintain the proper flow of imagination throughout their city. That's why when a Composer is defeated, another must be placed immediately, as to not cause the planes to fall. And Neku, if you want my complete honesty, all the Angels were counting on you and anyone else to stop Joshua from destroying Shibuya. If he did, then chaos would've appeared to put it bluntly," I said and took in a deep breath. I focused on my frequency deep inside of my body and imagined my wings on my back, adding the weight onto my person. I tuned my frequency higher while staying in the UG, causing my wings to appear in a flurry of white light, that nearly blinded everyone in the area.

"That's better. Give me a challenge will you," Nikolai said. He held his hand out to the side as the shadows melted from the wall and surrounded his arm like armor as he eyes shown like red rubies in the shadows of the walls. They flashed dangerously with malice and amusement.

"How would dat give you a challenge? Yo, your challenge is right here!" Beat said as he gestured to himself. Rhyme placed a hand on his arm and shook her head as she said, "Beat, you need to calm down."

"The reason he says that is because her powers are hidden when her frequency is tuned down, not that you would understand what that is. To put it simply, Angels are said to have a higher power than a Composer, such as myself. I would like to say Nikolai and her are almost evenly matched, but I fear this isn't the case," Joshua answered as he stared on ahead at Nikolai. "Technically, either myself or she will have to erase that memory from you all since average people aren't supposed to know about the existence of Angels."

Nikolai put his hand to the floor and raised it up so suddenly causing spikes created by the darkness to be raised from the ground directly at all of us. I jumped to the side and jumped off the ground and flapped my wings to avoid the boomerang of darkness that flew at me. I raised my hand and focused my imagination to my hand as my hand became encased in a brilliant white light. Raising my other hand, I held them out in front of me as a ball of light appeared in my hands. I brought them to my side and swung them like a baseball bat as light shot out from my hands like a wave and Nikolai disappeared in a cloud of black smoke, only to reappear near Joshua. My previous attack hit the wall and exploded as light shot out from it in all directions and Neku and Shiki had to jump back to avoid it. Joshua clicked a button on his phone as a beam of light shot down where he was previously standing as he jumped back as Nikolai rushed at him.

Neku pressed his fingers to one of his pins a flame encircled his hand and he sliced his arm horizontally as a wall of flames appeared next to Joshua's beam attack and forced Nikolai to dash left towards me, where I flapped my wings quickly and flew at Nikolai like a bullet as light encased my body. I let out a battle cry as I released the light from around me and towards Nikolai, who flew into the air, his foot singed from the light. I stopped and swiped downwards and mumbled some words under my breath as I held out my hand as a white sigil appeared in front of it. A stuffed cat ran across my face as Shiki had her hand outstretched. Nikolai easily raised his hand and wrapped the shadows around the stuffed animal and crushed it beneath him as he slammed it into the ground. Rhyme rushed over and grabbed it as light almost radiated around her feet as she sped away as fast as I blinked. Beat ran over and cried out as he raised his hand to punch Nikolai who raised his hand up to Beat and grabbed his hand and twisted his arm. I raised my other hand and shot as a ball of light flew at Nikolai who released Beat to dodge it. Instead, he flew towards me, his wings flapping angrily.

Another beam of light hit the ground near me as Joshua ran over to my side and clicked more buttons on his phone causing random objects like cars and vending machines to appear out of thin air where Nikolai was flying in the air, causing him to zip around trying to dodge them, and moved backwards instead of at me. I placed the sigil on the ground and held my hand out towards the objects Joshua had spawned in as my hand started to glow with a white color again. The objects began to glow and the sigil evaporated into thin air as it did. I flew backwards, grabbing Joshua's arm as I did as the shadows caused by the objects began to bend to Nikolai's will. The shadows shot themselves like bullets at us and I held up my hand as a white, transparent shield appeared between the bullets and Joshua and me. I flew over to the side, flying around the objects as Neku used another pin on his jacket to send them flying across the room. The shield I made collapsed and one bullet hit my leg causing immense pain to pass through it, but the adrenaline quickly overcame it as I flew over to Nikolai and landed on my feet, seeing him raise shadows from the ground to block them, but even he was being pushed back.

Suddenly, he shouted out and raised his hand as a a beam of darkness much like Joshua's light one shot out from his hand and through the ceiling above us and most likely into the air. He shouted and a sigil appeared from under his feet and expanded as I felt the massive amounts of imagination be pulled into the small area we were in, causing my ears to ring from the sudden change in frequency and the massive amounts of imagination that now dripped off of Nikolai. I raised my hand as a white beams of light shot out of my fingertips and towards Nikolai who faded into the air, appearing beside me. I jumped backwards as he threw his hands to the ground as an explosion appeared between us causing us both to be thrown back. The ground beneath cracked and split apart as a crack ran up the wall.

My eyes widened at the damage.

"But we're in the UG," I said in disbelief, not wanting to believe what I was seeing. In the UG, you can't harm the ground or anyone in the RG, so the ground shouldn't be breaking. Nikolai focused a ball of darkness into his hand that crackled as it absorbed the imagination in the air.

"Everyone!" I shouted. "Get back! and behind something!" Nikolai's laughter rang out from above the crackling and hissing of the darkness as it sounded like a bomb ready to explode at any given moment.

"This is what true power is like. Get ready to die Composer."

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