Headcanon
THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FOR THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU
No seriously, spoilers. For like every part of the game. Also lots and lots of headcanon. This is a headcanon post, after all.
Disclaimer: Most of this hasn't been directly acted upon within Luceti, but has influenced the way I play Joshua. This is an interpretation, and there are others out there. I try to stay as true to the original game as I can manage, but as we are in fact given very little about Joshua or the mechanics of how the UG etc. work, I've found the need to make a lot of guesses.
All that being said, this is subject to change due to discussion with others or requests, particularly from canonmates.
This is a work in progress.
Table of Contents
Joshua's Life
His First Reaper's Game
Being a Reaper
Time as Composer (currently unwritten)
What Exactly a Composer Is
Imagination, "Rebooting", and What Would Have Happened After Neku's Game
Things That Have Happened in Luceti
- Betrayal
- Withdrawal
- Ascension
- De-Ascension
Miscellaneous
Joshua's Life
Yoshiya Kiryu was born in Kyoho 20 (1735) on a date that he has long since decided wasn't worth remembering. His parents were peasants who were surprisingly close to the local daimyo, considering their status. Yoshiya was often given the chance to roam the daimyo's residence. One day, soon after his fourteenth birthday, Yoshiya fell from a roof while playing, broke his neck, and died instantly.
He'd never been able to see the dead while he was still alive. The closest Yoshiya ever had to indicators that the UG even existed was occasional flickers he'd catch out of the corner of his eye: paintings that seemed to have a different shape when he wasn't focusing on them, odd occurrences during times of distress that were easy enough to call coincidence. His Soul had always been strong, but beyond that, he wasn't anyone special.
At least, that was before he died.
His First Reaper's Game
The very shape of the Reaper's Game was different back when Yoshiya was a Player. It was, in a way, more serious. There was no shopping, no pins. Players had to rely on the psychs they brought with them through their deaths, and if they couldn't find a suitable medium, they were as good as useless. There was no Player Pin, only a brand on the back of a Player's left hand. It was a skull back in those days, too; Joshua had wanted to keep it the same, but Hanekoma had managed to eventually talk him into something less realistic looking. Still, a few Players figured out the hint and discovered that psychs could be rigged up using designs inked directly onto ones' skin. Yoshiya's partner had been one of these. Yoshiya himself fell into a category he'd later find out was rare even among Reapers. He was psychokinetic with no medium: anything and everything was a weapon if it wasn't secured down.
To say he and his partner were on shaky grounds would be the understatement of the century. She took everything too seriously; he didn't take anything seriously enough. Despite the friction, it became a dynamic that worked. They didn't trust each other as individuals, but they trusted each others' strength. And maybe that was for the better. Years later, long after his partner was gone, when he had a better understanding of psychs and the Game itself, he'd learn that the psych she'd refused to let him draw on her would've indeed been powerful. Powerful enough to rend a Player's Soul in an instant and possibly take a good chunk of the UG with it. And that wasn't the only time he'd almost cost the two of them their existence.
Still, between the two of them, they stumbled along, narrowly avoiding Erasure. They survived the week along with two other pairs. Of the six, two were brought back to life: a pair that Yoshiya hadn't even met until the last day. One boy decided to play the Game again; he was erased on the second day. The remaining three, including Yoshiya and his partner, became Reapers.
Being a Reaper
The Reaper hierarchy is one thing that, in fact, varies little between different UGs. At the top is the Conductor, who is granted certain powers by the Composer. Conductors must be powerful enough to handle these powers, which are passed on to their successor with their Erasure. This method of passing on the title forces a Reaper to be at a certain level of power in order to receive the position. There are multiple other much less common ways of a Reaper reaching the seat of the Conductor, but more often than not, the title is won by Erasing the predecessor.
Beneath the Conductor are the Officers. These are the strongest of the Reapers, and tend to act as agents or advisers to the Conductor. Officers are usually allowed to serve as Game Masters, although depending upon the Conductor, this may be in name only. Under this system, the Conductor organizes and issues missions, while the Game Master observes the outcome and organizes the Reapers in the field. On Day 7, the Game Master is allowed to attack the Players, while the Players have the mission of defeating the Game Master. Defeat does not necessitate Erasure, but often entails it. This system is rather popular among UGs because it allows the Conductor control over the Game while placing other Reapers on the front lines. All the Conductor has to do is promote Reapers that they believe may prove a threat to their position, and sooner or later the Players will usually eliminate the risk for them without the need for them to get their own hands dirty.
This was the system in place when Yoshiya joined the ranks.
All Players, upon being turned in Reapers, start out as Harriers in the field. If one proved to be particularly unskilled, lazy, cowardly, or rule-breaking, they were demoted to Wall Reaper. Except in the case where it's used as a punishment, promotion back to Harrier is rare. Reapers gain points according to how many Players they erased; stronger Reapers can usually create and control stronger Noise. If a Reaper goes too long without erasing enough Players, they can be demoted, or erased themselves.
Yoshiya came into the UG during a volatile era: Edo was growing and expanding, and the present number of UGs was proving too small to handle this. His own Game, with its six survivors, had been one of the many signs of this. As such, it wasn't uncommon to hear about a new UG that had formed in another section of the city. Most of these vanished again within a few years: inexperienced Composers with no precedence to follow created shaky foundations which crumbled, stronger Composers erased the weaker and claimed the spaces as a part of their own UG, and some simply disappeared overnight without a trace. It was the time to grab for power if you were ever going to try, and Yoshiya simply continued his path as a Reaper, slowly but steadily gathering points, and watching as over half the Officers in his UG were erased as they reached for attempts to make it big.
In 1884 came a major shift throughout all of Tokyo. With the Yamanote Line about to be established, the air of every UG was practically bursting with the Potential of the looming change the city was about to undergo. This year began the most recent era of great change within Tokyo, and it was this year that Yoshiya finally moved his residence.
His old partner, now an Officer, had fled their UG at the beginning of the year, and by the end of the year, she had established another UG in a neighboring area. Even though Yoshiya had never met the Composer of his own UG, spending well over a century in it had given him a sense for picking up from the space around him just what the Composer was feeling, and it was easy enough to tell that they didn't like the new UG. It was likely that if Yoshiya and a few other Reapers hadn't changed residences, the new UG would've been overpowered within weeks. But all it took was one step into the new space for him to feel it; this place was biding its time. Though it lacked Imagination, the amount of Potential it contained was astounding. And soon it would grow. Fast.
Banking on that Pontential, a small group of Reapers took up the task of populating this UG. One of them was promoted to Conductor. Yoshiya was the only one made into an Officer.
It became a bit of an amusement to him, just how badly the Composer wanted him gone. He wasn't sure exactly where it came from, whether she thought he was a threat, or did she just still hold a grudge from their Game together all those years ago. There was only one other Reaper in the UG that had been around since then, and the rest had no idea of the history behind the lone Officer and the Composer. It was obvious what was going on. There was no way to miss it. But as years began to pass and no Players won the Reaper's Game, it became clear that the Composer's attempts at erasing Yoshiya were only hindering the growth of the UG, even as the town of Shibuya grew around them, invisibly choked by a force none of the living could perceive.
Then came that one Game. A single pair made it to Day 7, only to find themselves staring at a giant, white Noise that seemed to resemble a cross between a cat and a fox. Yoshiya barely had any trouble taking out the first of the two, leaving the other only minutes to live. The last Player made his final stand in a way no one had ever before: he pulled out the revolver that he'd been concealing the whole Game, and fired three shots. Two connected.
All Joshua could remember from that was being suddenly on the ground, his right side nearly paralyzed in pain as he watched the figure in front of him vanish, leaving behind a revolver to fall to the ground. No matter what he tried, he couldn't lift himself, and during the several minutes before he managed to revert back to his Reaper form, he was convinced that he would disappear at any moment. But with the pain abating as he healed himself, he pulled himself over to the gun and tucked it away. It was at that moment that he decided he was done with playing by other people's rules.
A week later, a bang and a ripple echoed through the Shibuya UG as the title of Composer shifted hands. Now it was Joshua who sat on the throne. He took the name of the boy who'd managed to shoot him, actually laughed when he first found it out, amused at how well it fit. Yoshiya Kiryu was his name, but Joshua became who he was. The one who, in a battle of the minds, pulled out a gun and shot with no hesitation.
Time as Composer
What Exactly a Composer Is
A Composer is not an Angel. A Composer is also not a Reaper. "Composer" is a separate entity from either of the two. Composer is a level between the two; higher, (usually) more refined than a Reaper, but not as pure as an Angel. It is not necessary for a Reaper to become a Composer before they fully Ascend to Angel, however it makes the change a less drastic one.
Composers do not have wings, in the traditional sense. The wings of a being house their power, but if there were to be wings for a Composer, it would be their very city. They lose tangible wings as they stay between Reaper and Angel. For a similar reason, Composers also do not have access to their Noise forms.
The defining point of a Composer is their connection. Even if a city is not tangible, as long as there is a UG, there must be a connection to a Composer. This connection can be severed, and if it is, it then latches onto the one who broke it; thus creating the system where Erasing a Composer makes one the Composer themselves. A Composer cannot fully Ascend while they have this connection, but they can pass this connection on to others. If this is done during Ascension, the ex-Composer continues on to become an Angel; if done otherwise, they revert back to the form most suited to their Soul's level of refinement. This occasionally results in a corrupted Composer becoming Noise. Because of the connection, there is no base level of refinement necessary to become Composer, but UGs often fall apart when under the influence of lesser-refined beings. A connection cannot be passed on to a being that doesn't have an influence within a UG.
A Composer defines their UG, and under certain circumstances, the RG by extension. Normally, a Composer has comparatively little influence upon their RG. Unlike the UG, which is defined according to their will, they can only reach into the RG to change things. A UG relies on its RG for its power, but at the same time, it exerts an influence back against the RG.
Imagination, "Rebooting", and What Would Have Happened After Neku's Game
The two sources of power in a UG are Imagination and Potential. In simple terms, Imagination is just Potential realized, and there has long been debate over whether they are indeed two different forms of the same thing. For clarification purposes, I will refer to them separately, however Joshua is one who believes they are the same and thus never uses the word "Potential" to reference this force himself.
Potential makes itself known in the way of influence; UGs with higher Potential exert a stronger force upon their RGs and the UGs around them. Imagination consumes Potential, but Potential is primarily a self-generating force. It's this dynamic that allows strong UGs to build upon themselves, and makes UGs established in unsuitable locations eventually dry up and dissipate.
The eventual goal of the Higher Plane, as was conveyed to Joshua by Hanekoma, is to raise the amount of Imagination in the plane of the living to create a world where all Souls upon realization are pure enough to immediately accept the code of an Angel and Ascend. However, this is a slow process, as not even the UG, itself formed of Imagination harvested from the Potential of an RG, has reached anywhere near this point.
While Imagination is in a way quantifiable, Potential is always unknown, an unpredictable force. Since it has no individual tangibility until it becomes Imagination, it's hard to predict exactly what types of Potential any place has. This was the heart of the conflict over Shibuya.
At a greater and greater rate, the Imagination that Shibuya's RG converted of its own will was becoming sour. Though he'd never admit it to anyone, Joshua slowly began to blame himself for this; for using too much positive Imagination rather than balancing as he went. He was afraid that he'd ruined Shibuya's RG in the long run, and that his UG would be quick to follow. As he internalized that guilt, he become convinced of it, and convinced that Shibuya had no chance of a bright future. In order to prevent Shibuya from dragging down the rest of Tokyo (and indeed the entire world, given the amount of pure Potential Shibuya possessed), he was willing to accept the punishment of possibly losing his UG forever, and shut it down by his own hands.
In a way, Joshua wanted someone to prove him wrong. But he wasn't willing to take that risk himself. And so he accepted Megumi's proposal. If it worked, Shibuya would have been fixed. If it didn't, whatever damage his Conductor had wrought would be gone the moment the Game was over.
Rebooting a UG is no simple task with no guarantee to work. To do it, a Composer wipes out their entire space: UG, RG, and everything as high as they can reach. What exists when they're done is nothing more that an empty space. Anyone without a superb Imagination doesn't even notice the space exists and doesn't even realize the city is gone. All memories regarding it are wiped or falsified. It just ceases to be, and ceases to ever have been.
All the Soul, Imagination, and Potential that the Composer wiped is then used to rebuild the RG from scratch. It's a long, tedious, and necessary process. Every single strain needs to be rewritten. The city starts to come back, but it's an entirely different city from before. Even if the buildings are the same, the atmosphere is always completely different: no place evolves the same way twice. In order to reintroduce a new city to the outside world, the edges are slowly allowed to reintegrate with the space around them, a little bit at a time as a city revives its own energy. A newly-formed city draws its types of Potential from the area around it; another reason why Joshua was so worried about letting the damage spread.
Additionally, the risk is very high that a newly-formed RG doesn't have the resources to support a UG, and won't for even centuries after its creation. Often there is a length of time where all Potential and Imagination needs to be conserved just to merely keep itself going. In case the UG couldn't be reformed, after Joshua finished creating a new city, he would have lost his connection and lost his position as Composer. In this case, he was counting on his Ascension to keep him from reverting to a Reaper.
Areas where Potential has completely dried up often become wastelands: completely abandoned by humans, or a haven for dirty Souls: slums, places rife with crime or corruption. The very worst case is when an area becomes parasitic and feeds off the spaces around it, spreading faster and faster as more and more space dries up and spreads. These sorts of places are often completely and permanently shut down and cut off from the rest of the world, and if the edges are let back in it's at an incredibly slow rate. Sometimes as slow as less than an inch in half a millennium.
Things That Have Happened in Luceti
Betrayal
Joshua had never gotten close to anyone before Sanae. The immediate of discovering the identity of the Fallen Angel has created two conflicting sets of emotions within him: the pain of betrayal and the desire to never let anyone get close enough to him to hurt him every again, and the ache of a loneliness he only knows now because he actually had someone he trusted. He has primarily focused on the former as a defense mechanism.
His immediate reaction was to hide from Hanekoma and wait until his emotions cooled off and he collected his head. This had the result of him knowing exactly what he wanted to say to Sanae when they finally met again. Unfortunately, every interaction couldn't go quite as smoothly. As much as Joshua never wants to admit it, when he's hurt, he tends to get emotional. Usually he mitigates this by cutting off his emotions, but because of just how much being betrayed hurt him, this defense often doesn't work around Sanae anymore. He gets angry and he gets childish, though with passing time he's been able to get himself more under control, little by little.
At the same time, he's seeking to slowly erase his loneliness with the only person he trusts: Neku. He knows it's a dangerous balancing act; the more he opens up to Neku, the more he pulls him back to the world of the UG, a world that's no longer his place. However, he misses having someone to just be friends with. He's still keeping Neku at arm's length. He knows how highly the other reveres Hanekoma, even with all that's happened... probably because Neku doesn't know all that's happened, and for the boy's own sake, Joshua would like to keep it that way.
Withdrawal
As a Composer, Joshua is constantly in touch with Shibuya. However, by coming to Luceti, he's been cut off from the energy he normally has access to through his city, thereby nerfing his power even more than the Malnosso's restrictions. Composers are able to survive away from their cities for lengths of time which vary depending on the circumstances. Because Josh didn't use his powers very often, spent almost all his time in a lower form, and had access to two to three residents of his Shibuya (Neku, Shiki, and Sho before he disappeared and came back corrupted), he was able to last a decent length of time without feeling the heavy effects of no longer staying in Shibuya. However, after six months, his luck ran out and he was hit with withdrawal.
The effects of withdrawal are twofold: the immediate, strong fit of physical symptoms, and the longer, more drawn-out process of disconnection. Fits tend to be sudden, and can include many symptoms similar to withdrawal from drugs. In Joshua's case, it was mainly nausea and fatigue, along with paranoia when provoked. A fit generally signals an incubation period where a Composer will lose any power derived from a UG for a period of time following it. The higher the form the Composer is in, the longer this period lasts, and even once they regain their power they are physically unable to raise their vibe to reach a higher form unless they've waited out the incubation period for that form. If in a higher form during a fit, they remain stuck in that form until their power returns; because they don't have access to their powers, they don't have the ability to lower their own vibe. However, someone else can still force their vibe lower to shorten the incubation. Additionally, if a Composer returns to their city, they will immediately regain all their powers, though they may have a fit or two while adjusting back. For this reason, partial exposure (such as exposure to the Music, as Sanae and Neku did for Joshua) shortens the incubation as well.
The second effect is much more subtle. After long enough, usually soon following a Composer's first fit, the strain of being away from their city begins to manifest itself physically. Because the city is acting as a Composer's wings, the Composer's back starts to show the strain. What this means is the area of skin that represents the attachment point of wings, a physical location on Angels and Reapers, begins to become discolored, similar to a bruise. It's possible for there to be bleeding, decay, puss, or even scabs without any prior wound, but these tend not to occur without something to trigger them. It's usually about this time that a UG itself will show a similar sort of decay, but as Shibuya is effectively frozen in time while Joshua is in Luceti, the actual effects are currently unknown. This same pollution disrupts the Composer's power, making their control over their strength occasionally tenuous at best, but the effect of this waxes and wanes, though it overall will grow as the damage increases and spreads.
Prior to now, there have been no known cases of a Composer surviving with this sort of decay spreading farther than beyond the small of the back. Upon the date of his one-year anniversary of coming to Luceti, Joshua was struck by a sudden fit that completely destroyed his Music and damaged his code. This was supposed to have killed him; however, with Sanae's help and by forcibly cutting off his own Noise form, leaving him with only one stable code configuration and thus making cross-corruption much more difficult to occur spontaneously, Joshua managed to survive. The decay currently reaches all the way down his back, and it's unknown if it will progress further, regress, or remain as it is. It's also unknown if he will have a similar fit in the future.
Ascension
Joshua's Soul had been at a high level of refinement for a while, but there were several things that wound up holding him back from Ascending. The most prominent one was the barrier he'd built around his heart separating him and Hanekoma since discovering the man's secret. Not only did he act in the name of self-preservation, he went beyond that: going so far as to pass an unstated judgment himself on Sanae's crimes and lashing out at him for it, two things which were selfish and not his place.
He refused to allow himself the possibility of granting Hanekoma forgiveness, recoiling and reject him whenever a situation arose that pushed him in that direction. Joshua wanted to remain selfish, and in doing so, willingly held himself back.
It took a huge display of trust on Hanekoma's part to finally begin the disruption of this barrier. Joshua hates when his enemies trust him, because it makes him second-guess himself. It happened when Neku was unable to fire back in a simple Game of kill-or-be-killed, and it happened again when Hanekoma all but painted a bull's-eye on his heart and stood still with it.
It was something he tried not to think about, but after one too many reminders, he was finally unable to ignore it. So Joshua finally admitted to himself that there was a possibility that Hanekoma might eventually deserve forgiveness, and with this allowance, his Soul passed the tipping point and he began to Ascend.
In the current situation, it is physically impossible for Josh to fully Ascend. In order to do so, he would have to revoke his position as Composer and pass it on to another. The connection needs to go to someone from his own world, which at the time of his Ascension numbered three within Luceti besides himself: Hanekoma, who cannot receive the connection due to being an Angel, and Shiki and Neku, both of whom are alive and with no place in the Reaper's Game or the UG. Thus, he was stuck in a form that is part Composer, part Angel, with elements of both beings.
Since he was partially an Angel, Joshua's physical age no longer decreased with the lowering of his vibe. He had retractable white wings, as well as regained access to his Noise form. His vibe reached higher than it did as a Composer, but it was still limited by his connection. It's a set limitation that a being cannot change the code of one higher than themselves. Paradoxically, for this power, Joshua's code was higher than his strength, so he was unable to change his own code, meaning it was impossible for him to physically revert himself back to being a Composer. Were he in Shibuya, this would not be the case, as the strength of the ties of his own city would override this barrier, but Luceti is not Shibuya.
Unfortunately, the form Joshua was stuck in was designed to be unpleasant. The position of Composer is the best way to make a highly-refined Soul do the most good while inching a little bit better at a time, so having a fully-refined being occupying the position is a waste. Thus, the Higher Plane wants Ascending Composers to pass on their connection; so the form of part-Composer, part-Angel has drawbacks. Physical pain is constant, though not overwhelming, and it's impossible to get full control over one's Angel powers. A being's Music is disrupted, although this generally only has the effect of disturbing the city under a part-Composer's control.
De-Ascension
Once more, Joshua was forced to rely upon Hanekoma's help. After spending over half a year in a partially-Ascended state, he finally grew to trust Sanae enough to allow the man to directly manipulate his Soul.
In order to come back from the state he had reached, two things needed to happen. Joshua's code had to be reset to that of a pure Composer, a change which he lacked the power and control to do himself. Additionally, the more difficult and dangerous of the two involved reducing the level of refinement of Joshua's Soul. If his code were reverted without changing his Soul, he would simply restart the process of Ascension. If his Soul were reduced without a change in his code, he would remain in his partially-Ascended form, as it takes a much greater decrease in the purity of one's Soul to revert a being's code spontaneously.
There are multiple methods of reducing a Soul's level of refinement, and none of them are pleasant. The method that Sanae took was to fracture a small portion of Joshua's Soul and remove it, thus both damaging his Soul and reducing its size. This is one of few ways to not change the purity of a Soul and still reduce its level of refinement. The excess Soul became a pin that takes the shape of Joshua's Noise form, though greatly reduced in size and strength.
The damage on Joshua's Soul has lowered it to a point below what he was when he first came to Luceti, though the only obvious manifestations of this are occasional changes in his actions, and an increased difficulty in him trusting Hanekoma again.
Miscellaneous
- The Noise form of Joshua's partner was a bird, similar to a heron.
- Joshua doesn't remember his partner's name, or if he does, he pretends he's forgotten.
- There were two outbreaks of Taboo Noise in his time as a Reaper: once a decade after he first became one, and another half a century before he left his first UG. Until Neku's Game, there had never been Taboo Noise in Shibuya.