1. Tragoedia
The child's voice was so quiet, but at the first sound Aki opened her eyes, slowed her breathing even more and listened intently. Then she heard it again, a call of "papa" from the baby room next door. The call was neither a cry nor a scream, in fact it was a content baby murmur, but Aki sat up nonetheless.
"What's wrong, Aki?" Yusei half opened his eyes and asked blearily.
"Nothing wrong; the boy isn't crying, he just called for us," Aki's fingers swept over Yusei's forehead and eyes, her touch light as the kiss of rose petals in summer wind, "Go back to sleep; you need your rest."
Though still only half awake, Yusei looked at her tenderly, and answered, "Alright. But if he becomes a handful, wake me up so you can get some sleep too."
Aki draped her coat over her shoulders to ward off the night chill and walked over to the baby room. As soon as she stood at the door she noticed another presence, a person, standing in front of the crib. Her heart should have stopped by all right, but somehow she didn't feel threatened by this presence. But it still didn't mean she would be cordial towards a home intruder.
She turned on the lights abruptly, refrained from blinking at the sudden brightness, and said in the coldest voice possible, "Make one move and I will blow a hole in your head." After that she paused, staring at the strangely familiar figure as an eagle would its prey. That person standing in the baby room had black hair streaked with gold and was wearing a blue leather jacket.
"Mama! Mama, papa!"
Her child was standing in the crib, holding on to the railing and looking at her with the biggest smile ever. Then the strange intruder turned around as well, slowly and carefully. Even as he turned around Aki gasped and her knees suddenly felt weak.
Raven-black hair, and cobalt blue eyes, that serious yet delicate and beautiful face—it was none other than Yusei. Only this Yusei seemed much younger, only eighteen or nineteen, and he looked absolutely torn and defeated. His familiar jacket and gloves were decorated with countless cuts, with blood seeping through and dying the fabric red. There was blood on his face and matting his hair too. His blue eyes, always so full of the intensity of life, now seemed desperate, cold, and all but dead.
Upon seeing her, those eyes gained the slightest touch of warmth, and he smiled at her wanly. "Aki, Aki, you look so beautiful," He said with a sigh, "Is this your child? He is quite charming, and I thought, perhaps, he looks… Aki, is he my child also?"
Aki stared at him, her mind blank and heart racing. This could not be Yusei, it just couldn't be. Her Yusei was sleeping next door peacefully; she just spoke to him a minute ago.
"I know what you are thinking," Yusei said softly, "You are right, I am not your Yusei, and you are not my Aki. My Aki died. When I crashed to the ground, she ran up and stood before me. She tried to block Zone's last attack for me, and died there, right in front of my eyes. And then the Arc cradle came smashing down. Everything, everyone, Neo Domino, all turned to ash before my eyes."
Aki could not speak. She thought perhaps this whole thing was just a nightmare, and she could only stand there, staring.
"That last moment before death could claim me," Yusei continued, "I asked all the powers that be to show me light. I do not want to die with nothing but despair in my eyes! Somewhere, somewhere in this vast realm of possibilities, there must be a happy ending. I suppose the gods answered. Aki, Aki, I am so glad to see you; I am so glad you and the child will be my last memory before I die."
"Mama, Papa!" The ignored child called out once more.
Though Aki was still in a haze, a mother's instincts made her rush forward and pick up the child in her arms. But her child looked past her and stared at the strange yet familiar intruder. "Papa, sad, mama, make better!" The child exclaimed, in a typical baby manner incomprehensible to most. But Aki understood her child perfectly, and turned to look at the Yusei who was not her Yusei, following the little child's gaze. When her eyes fell on that torn and bloody face once more, she suddenly felt a pang of sorrow and pain stab through her chest like a red hot blade.
"You are alive, aren't you?" Aki still hadn't become very good at prep talk, but she dearly wanted to console this man before her, so she was trying, very hard, "Don't give up, don't despair, please. As long as you still draw breaths, you can always try just one more time. Believe, Yusei, there will always be some satisfying conclusion."
"I will not despair," Yusei answered with a peaceful smile, "That is what I asked to begin with, a vision of hope so I can die content. Thank you, Aki, for always standing beside me, there, and here."
Aki can't explain why she did it, but at that moment she suddenly perked up and said, "Won't you like to hold our child for a while, Yusei? His name is Yuma."
"Yes, yes, please."
The young and defeated Yusei looked so peaceful holding the child in his arms—the child he could have had, if only history were kinder. His eyes were half closed, and his pale and weary face now wore a tranquil smile, and he seemed positively glowing, as if he was already before the Pearly Gate. The light around him brightened, strengthened… Suddenly Yusei's eyes snapped open.
"Take the child, get away from me!" He cried, pushing the child back into Aki's arms.
But he still wasn't fast enough. Light exploded around him, and swallowed all of them with a hungry vengeance.
Yusei had just gotten up and came to the baby room then. He arrived at the door, just in time to see a person who looked remarkably like himself and his wife and child disappearing in a flash of blinding light. He felt a pull from inside the room, as if a giant vacuum was sucking him in. Before he could panic, the light and the pulling sensation were all gone. The baby room was completely empty; his wife, his child, all gone. Without a trace.
Yusei paused the video, rewound it and started playing again at December 13th, 1:13:11 am. He stared the large screen intently, as if trying to carve every detail onto his memory. He saw himself, or at least a younger and beaten version of himself suddenly appear in the baby room in a flash of blinding light; he saw the young man smiling at the child, while the now awake and alert baby stood up and called out; he saw Aki walking into the room, throwing on the light and staring ahead coldly, until the intruder's face rendered her absolutely petrified and speechless.
That's all he had now: soundless, blurry footage from a security camera. He had replayed the footage too many times to count in the past few days, hoping to find some answers for the disappearance of Aki and his baby. Indeed, there was a possible explanation, though that explanation was no better than having none.
"Yusei, as crazy as this particular hypothesis sounds, I do think it's the most likely answer," Doctor Charles Graham, world-renowned particle physicist and Yusei's advisor, said quietly, "That flash of light shown on your security camera footage corresponds exactly with the energy anomaly we recorded. The location matches too. In fact, after we located the first energy spike, we thought it was you doing some crazy experiments at home. And the second energy anomaly of course matched too. You ran through the numbers we recorded yourself…"
Yusei clicked "pause" on his remote control, then "rewind", watching his wife consoling the bloodied version of himself on screen. Pause, and rewind again. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, he finally replied, "Yes, I have gone through the numbers myself. Yes, that energy spike looks like a wormhole; in fact it looks like nothing except a wormhole. Yes, as crazy as that sounds, that young man on screen must be some less fortunate version of me from an alternate universe, and my wife and child are in his world now, or his time. If, if his world still exists…" He drew a staggering breath, unable to speak.
Charles eyed him, asking with some trepidation, "Yusei, since that person does look remarkably like you, and as you say is an alternate version of you, do you have a guess… Can you guess anything about him, or his world?"
Yusei did not answer, only rewound the tape once more, watching with a pair of eyes so intense they seemed to be on fire. In his heart he knew the answer. That Yusei Fudo on screen looked eighteen or nineteen, wearing the blue leather jacket from his turbo dueling days, with the mark of the Crimson Dragon still faintly glowing on his arm. Yet that Yusei Fudo looked so worn and defeated, so passive and peaceful, as if one who had lost everything and ready to die. That Yusei Fudo looked like he lost the world-defining battle against Zone.
Which would mean, as that Yusei's death drew near, and as the Arc Cradle destroyed Neo Domino, world changed and history rewrote itself; Aki and baby Yuma, they might have simply disappeared, wiped out alongside the defeated Yusei and all the people of that unfortunate world, erased like a mistaken calculation on a child's homework book… Yusei felt a searing pain burn through his head, nearly driving him to tears. No, no, he would not think like this. Aki and Yuma are still out there, waiting for him.
Yusei stood up abruptly and was about to walk out of the lab room.
"Yusei?" Charles asked.
"I need a drink," Yusei murmured, "Do you have anything stronger than black coffee, Charles?"
Charles sighed. "There is Scotch in the cupboard. Though, Yusei, I wish you would not…"
"No, I don't need Scotch," Yusei said swiftly with his usual iron resolve, "Alcohol would only muddle my head. I was hoping you have Red Bull in the lab somewhere, or some kind of energy drink. I want to go through the numbers one more time, and then see if we can use these observations to model the whole event, and perhaps calculate the coordinates for that damned wormhole."
Charles looked at his partner, shocked. "Yusei, you don't mean to say…"
"I never let fortune and chance have the last laugh," Yusei said with a steely glint in his cobalt eyes, a familiar glint that was seen when he rode his duel runner from the shadowy Satellite into the forbidden Tops, when he raced onto the track ready to settle life and death, and when he swept up into the sky before Zone, upon the Crimson Dragon's wings, with the world on his shoulders. Yusei Fudo was never one to give in.
"I will find them, my Aki and my little boy; I will find them and I will bring them home."
"System online; all detectors online; current particle velocity, 92% of speed of light…"
Yusei listened intently as his research assistant read out basic system stats to him, blue eyes gleaming behind shaded visor. No lab coat for him today, rather he sat atop his finely tuned duel runner, wearing his old leather jacket, with long suede gloves and boots—full riding gear. He was not here as a scientist; he was here as an adventurer, and he waited for the moment when he could speed away to another world, to his missing wife and child.
Thirteen years, it had been thirteen long and painful years. Some had expected him to let go and move on, perhaps going to another city, or remarrying and fathering a few more children. But for Yusei such things were out of the question. His friends knew him well enough that none ever persuaded him to give up the search; they only stood behind him, ready to answer any and all of his requests, be it attending some fundraising event or establishing one more contact for him. There was only this once when Mikage, out of duty and concern, asked Yusei if he would like to have the legal matters of marital status sorted out. Yusei had no response for that question, only a quiet thanks for her concern and something about being busy, which cut the conversation very short. Yusei Fudo would never simply let it go.
In the thirteen years since Aki and the one-year old Yuma disappeared, he worked tirelessly and relentlessly. He poured through data, formulated theories, created model after model, and conducted countless experiments. In those thirteen years he had created a comprehensive and accurate mathematical model of the whole incident; he had built equipment that can survey the fabric of multiple universes and scan for disruptions and intrusions; he even designed and built his own time machine—an extension to the existing particle collider that could create a momentary wormhole to another world.
And in those thirteen years, Yusei Fudo has become a respected name in the field of high-energy physics. Yusei never felt great about taking time away from his mission to write papers, attend conferences, and accept awards, but he also knew that he needed to act like a proper academic in order to attract the research funding he so desperately needed for his expensive mission. With the Crimson Dragon returned to its millennial slumber, he could only rely on mankind's own power to accomplish this seemingly impossible task of overcoming the barrier between worlds.
But he was almost there now.
"97% speed of light; 99% speed of light; 99.9% speed of light." Then a long pause, and, "99.99994% speed of light, stabilizing, stabilizing at 99.99994 speed of light.
99.99994% speed of light; that is a bit better than most particle colliders and probably enough to shower the detectors with data on Higgs boson, but not quite enough for a wormhole. His tricks still fell short, but he was so very close. Yusei gritted his teeth in frustration, rapidly running through all things he could attempt now in his head.
Suddenly he whipped out a card from his pocket and slapped it down on the duel disk underneath the dashboard. This was his most prized possession now, and an emblem of all his hopes.
"Gathering hearts will bring a new dawn," Yusei chanted quietly, "Become the path its light shines upon! Fusion summon, unfold your wings, Rose Nebula Dragon!"
What he did not say out loud was a beseeching prayer to one far, far away: Aki, Aki, I know you are out there. Lend me your power, let me come to you; please, lend me your power…
At first Yusei's duel-disk only read his card as a proper game program would, with solid vision hologram and programmed game sounds. But suddenly, light exploded and the beautiful red-white dragon with rose-petal wings hovering above Yusei's duel runner seemed to come alive. It shone like a star as it slithered about, filling the laboratory space with an iridescence flowing like water.
"Aki," Yusei murmured, "You answered. Aki, I am coming, Aki!"
"99.99997% speed of light!" The lab assistant exclaimed with awe, "Still accelerating! 99.99999% speed of light; 99.999999% speed of light. We are approaching the threshold, Dr. Fudo. Now one millionth of a percent away from speed of light! Detector spiked; space-time distortion increasing…"
Vroom, the engine of Yusei's duel-runner roared like a dragon woken from slumber. Just then another light appeared in the lab space, a shimmering veil of white and blue, tantalizingly beautiful. That's all Yusei needed. He stepped on the accelerator full force, and disappeared behind the veil of light like an arrow released from the bowstring.