Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters presented here and am not making any profit off of this whatsoever.
Title: Leave It To Me
Rated: PG-13
Word Count: 2,255
Focus: Yuuki Juudai
Notes: This takes place after episode 136 and before episode 138. Comments and criticism gratefully accepted.
Summary: Within, without. Juudai is Haou. Haou is Juudai. He made the mistakes. So he will fix them.
He opened his eyes, just a little. There were mirrors all around, and familiar faces were reflected from them all. Satou. Cobra. Johan. Asuka. Manjoume. Fubuki. Kenzan. They faded in and out, sometimes replaced by the images of Birdman or Brron. Sometimes there was nothing at all. Sometimes there was himself, in his ordinary clothes such as he wore now, and sometimes he was there in the armor of Haou.
He didn't say anything. There was nothing that he could say? What could he say or do to justify what he was doing now, that would make any difference?
He'd only wanted to enjoy dueling, the way that he always had. He hadn't wanted that to ever stop. Everything that had happened was because of him. Yubel. Yubel was his fault. He wasn't certain of how, only that he knew it in the deepest levels of his soul. If he hadn't…done something…then she wouldn't be angry at him now and she wouldn't have pulled them all into that world of sand and she wouldn't have dueled him and Johan wouldn't have needed to help him, and Johan wouldn't have been left behind, and it was all his fault!
He didn't scream. He didn't want to. He had no strength left for it. All of his strength was turned outwards, to accomplishing the one goal he had left that could mean something, anything.
Super Fusion. Their souls were encased within it, as were the souls of every other human and Duel Monster that he'd killed. The power pulsed like a living heartbeat. He couldn't see it in here, but he didn't need to. He could feel it no matter what.
He was going to change. He had changed. He would be something more than what Satou-sensei had described. He would no longer ignore the trash on the ground. This was the first step towards improving himself. If it meant pain, if it meant having to hurt people, then he was sorry…sort of…but it was for their own good in the end, and it wasn't his fault that they didn't understand that.
Maybe he couldn't enjoy dueling anymore. It was really just a tool anyway, now that he thought about it: a tool towards getting what he wanted in the end, a means to that end, and nothing more. Perhaps that was why the Neo-Spacians and Hane Kuriboh weren't talking to him anymore. They didn't like the way he was thinking. That was fine with him. He didn't need their help. All he needed were the Evil Heroes. They understood.
They were ready to fight for him no matter what, and he was quite certain that Evil Hero Inferno Wing enjoyed what she did every bit as much as he did.
Do you enjoy it? A part of him whispered and wondered. If he did, then why was he in here and not out there, taking pleasure in slaughter and destruction?
No, that wasn't what he enjoyed. It wasn't even enjoyment or pleasure. It was necessity. It was what had to be done, because no one else could or would do it. That was the way it always was, wasn't it? That was why he had dueled most of the Seven Stars. No one else could have done it, and those who had tried had failed.
That was why he had been the one to save both Manjoume and Asuka from the Society of Light.
In the mirrors, brief images of Fubuki, Ojama Yellow, Ojama Black, and Ojama Green flickered, but were gone before he even turned to look at them.
That was why he had been the one to save Saioh himself from the Light of Ruin. No one else could have done it. Mizuchi had said as much. Edo hadn't been able to do it, and he had tried. And he had known Saioh from when they were kids. It had all been on him.
It was always left to him, because he was the one who could do it. He didn't know why. Did it have something to do with being Haou now? Had this always been his destiny and was that why everything had happened? But wasn't he the one who was supposed to defy destiny?
Thinking about all of this made his head hurt, and he didn't wan to do it anymore. Shadows of reflections appeared in the mirrors once more, showing minor images, brief flashes of each of the Seven Stars and his duels against the ones that he had fought. Saioh and Mizuchi appeared as well, as did Edo and Hell Kaiser. Shou…Shou…
No. He was not going to let himself fall into despair. He had hope, as black and twisted as it could be. Hope that he was doing the right thing, because if he wasn't, then it was all for nothing, and he had never wanted to fight for nothing, once it had dawned on him that he should be fighting for something in the first place.
They were all out there somewhere. Shou. Jim. O'Brien. He didn't want them to look for him. They wouldn't understand. Shou especially wouldn't. Everything that Shou had said that last day…it burned into his brain and he jerked away from the memories, not wanting anything to do with them. How could Shou have hurt him like that? And he'd wanted to hurt him. He hadn't ever hurt Shou himself. He'd always tried to be his friend and support him in Shou's quest to grow stronger.
And now Shou had thrown him aside, declared that he was evil, and that he wanted nothing more to do with him. So be it, then. He didn't need Shou anyway. He never had. Just like he had never needed any of them. They'd been enjoyable to have around, but he hadn't needed them. It all came back to the fact that he was the one who had to do everything. What had any of them done?
The mirrors showed brief glimpses of Asuka and Manjoume, dueling Titan and the Black Scorpions, images of Misawa against Taniya, Chronos and Kaiser against Camula, his first duel against Kaiser, an endless succession of classes with Chronos, study sessions with Misawa, Shou, sometimes Hayato, sometimes Kenzan, Kenzan dueling Saioh…
Other images, of Manjoume trying to get him to duel after he'd lost his cards…
His duel against Kenzan and Kenzan moving into Osiris Red to learn from him…
His duel against Edo and the destructive moment when all of his cards had faded to white…
His duel against the Alien, his meeting with Aqua Dolphin…
His second duel against Edo and unleashing the awesome power of his Neo-Spacians…
Again, all gone when he glanced towards them curiously, thinking that he saw something.
No. They were unnecessary. He had never needed them and they were all gone now. But for the memory of what they had once had, he would unleash all of this dark power within him. Because needed or not, they had been his, his friends, his rivals, and he was the only one who could do something like that! It was a thought he'd never had before, but this was a time of new thoughts.
Though, now that he thought about it more, perhaps he should have known better to have friends anyway. It always hurt to be his friend. Other people had learned that. It hadn't been that long ago. Only a few years. He'd been six or seven.
From the deepest depths of his mind, the memories flickered up one by one. Yubel, being given to him by his father. Yes. She'd been a gift, one he'd treasured and loved. His parents couldn't always be there, they had to work so much, but his mother had laughed and said perhaps Yubel could watch over him while they were gone. She hadn't meant it, he knew. He'd known that even then…
But that night, he had heard a whisper that was his name, and though she hadn't been able to appear then, as the weeks and months had rolled by, the whisper had grown stronger. Until the day had come when she had been able to appear before him, and he had never been alone again.
She had taught him how to play Duel Monsters. He had had cards beforehand, other than her, but none of it had made any sense to him. He was still just learning how to read, after all, but with her, he hadn't needed to. She told him what the cards were and taught him about strategy and planning. She hadn't used words like that, of course. He wouldn't have cared if she did, but he also wouldn't have understood them. She'd just shown him what to do.
And then he'd used what he could do to make friends. He'd wanted friends; while having Yubel around had never been boring, he still wanted other people to talk to, and his parents had kind of insisted that he get out and know people anyway. It had started with kids next door, and then spread up the street. Just talking, and then dueling. He didn't always win, but he did more than he didn't, eventually.
Then came a time when he had dueled someone much bigger and older than he was. He was seven by then, and the other boy was ten. When he had won the duel, the bigger boy had gotten mad and hit him…and then Yubel had been there. He didn't know what she did, but the boy had fallen down and hadn't gotten back up again.
From then on, it had been harder and harder to get anyone to play with him. Word had spread, slowly but surely, and he had realized only when she had struck down Osamu that it was Yubel doing it all. He'd known but he hadn't known until then.
So he'd sent her away, in the hopes that she would learn better, and his friends had stopped dying and being hurt, and he'd had to make new friends…
Who had been targeted for the Society of Light because they were his friends. Saioh had admitted that much before he'd left the previous year. Targeted in different ways and with different methods, but that had been the ultimate goal: to get his attention. It had been nothing much special for any of them, other than that.
Who had been targeted by Brron because they were his friends. Who had been killed by Brron because they were his friends, their souls sucked into Super Fusion.
And Johan…Johan…oh, Johan…Yubel's reasons for hating the North School champion made no sense to him; was there more that he'd forgotten? If there was…it would stay forgotten for now.
But one fact was crystal clear: it was all his fault. If he hadn't tried to make friends, if he hadn't wanted to be normal, then none of this would have happened. Whether he could avoid or change destiny wasn't the point. He was the one who had to do all of this, which meant he was not allowed to have friends. They would all be targets, and he could not allow that. If he could not escape having friends, then he would do everything that he could to make certain they were never hurt by anyone else ever again.
Even if that meant that he would have to hurt them along the way. They would not understand. Those who were left, that was. But they didn't have to, because he did. He understood everything now.
Super Fusion would be his memento of them. With their souls to power it, it would be as if they were helping him, and in a way that meant that they couldn't be hurt for it. That was what he wanted the most, something he'd always wanted: for no one to ever be hurt because they were his friend.
Now they never would be. They'd been hurt beyond the ability to hurt anymore, and were safe forever.
If Shou came along, he'd put him with the others. The same with Jim or O'Brien. It was the one act he could take that would mean they were safe.
But he could not tell them. They would not understand. They would not believe. He wasn't even certain if he fully understood it all himself. And there was a difference, small as it was, between himself as he was in this hall of mirrors and memory, and himself as he was as Haou. Haou did what he had to do and did not waste his time with reflection. That was what he was for. He thought. Haou acted.
Yet, they were still the same. Two sides of one coin. It had been flipped, and it would stay that way as long as necessary, which would likely enough be forever.
He was fine that it should be so. The part of him that was Haou would do what he had failed to do. The reasons behind that didn't matter.
This was his responsibility. His duty. Like everything else had always been.
It was Yuuki Juudai who had defeated the Seven Stars.
It was Yuuki Juudai who had been the champion of darkness and defeated the Light of Ruin.
It was Yuuki Juudai who had caused this entire mess with Yubel.
It was Haou who would end it all.
It was his mess. His trash on the floor. And he would clean it up.
They could leave it to him.
Again.
The End