It's just about impossible to go anywhere without getting inundated with the new singles, and J is sick and tired of it. (Sick and tired of music. That's when you know something is wrong.) His only respite tends to be when he passes by someplace that's temporarily passed up on the singles in favor of press about said new singles. Well, it's better to hear about them than actually hear them again for the umpteenth time. J usually takes his time passing by these, letting the lull in the poison on the airwaves settle. He can pick up musician tunes as he passes: some of them he's managed to fix, but others still need work. He'd stop and take care of them himself if the threat of those singles coming back over the air wasn't always at the back of his mind.
Today's different. Today he stops cold near where Defying Atmosphere's latest publicity stop is. Today, something is wrong, more so than usual. Today, he hears Blanche there.
But that can't be - Blanche never leaves the tower, and the bass he's hearing is bad, but it's not enough to shake him apart from the inside out. It's not Blanche himself, he realizes slowly - it must be someone heavy under his influence. He leans against a wall, casual as he can manage, and sifts through the Music. Reimu and Marty are exhausted, still suffering from brainwashing damage, but steady. Meril is cold, somehow, but not suffused with the bass he's hearing. Greg-
There's nothing left of Greg.
His eyes widen slowly with that realization. That acoustic guitar he knows to be Greg's tune - the tune he memorized, the tune he fixed himself only a few weeks back - is gone. There's no trace of it. In its place is that awful static and warping and Blanche's bass-
He'd heard the new Defying Atmosphere single more times than he'd like to think about. It hadn't sounded anything like them, but he'd thought it was just a media stunt. Now, if Blanche has torn Greg's tune up so badly that he's not even Greg anymore...
What else can Blanche do that J doesn't know about? How bad does it get? He can help with brainwashing, yes, but he can't fix this - there's nothing there to fix. There's nothing left of the simple, sweet acoustic guitar that was the expression of everything that made Greg, Greg. There's nothing left of Greg's soul-
J doesn't know when he started shaking. All he knows is he has to get out of there, away from the label-produced music that drags at him and the tune he can't touch. He has enough of his wits about him to sneak out, keep his head low until he gets back to the apartment, but aside from that...
C: Don't mind him; just passing through. No, seriously, please don't mind him
Today's different. Today he stops cold near where Defying Atmosphere's latest publicity stop is. Today, something is wrong, more so than usual. Today, he hears Blanche there.
But that can't be - Blanche never leaves the tower, and the bass he's hearing is bad, but it's not enough to shake him apart from the inside out. It's not Blanche himself, he realizes slowly - it must be someone heavy under his influence. He leans against a wall, casual as he can manage, and sifts through the Music. Reimu and Marty are exhausted, still suffering from brainwashing damage, but steady. Meril is cold, somehow, but not suffused with the bass he's hearing. Greg-
There's nothing left of Greg.
His eyes widen slowly with that realization. That acoustic guitar he knows to be Greg's tune - the tune he memorized, the tune he fixed himself only a few weeks back - is gone. There's no trace of it. In its place is that awful static and warping and Blanche's bass-
He'd heard the new Defying Atmosphere single more times than he'd like to think about. It hadn't sounded anything like them, but he'd thought it was just a media stunt. Now, if Blanche has torn Greg's tune up so badly that he's not even Greg anymore...
What else can Blanche do that J doesn't know about? How bad does it get? He can help with brainwashing, yes, but he can't fix this - there's nothing there to fix. There's nothing left of the simple, sweet acoustic guitar that was the expression of everything that made Greg, Greg. There's nothing left of Greg's soul-
J doesn't know when he started shaking. All he knows is he has to get out of there, away from the label-produced music that drags at him and the tune he can't touch. He has enough of his wits about him to sneak out, keep his head low until he gets back to the apartment, but aside from that...
He doesn't know what to do. Not anymore.