How to Quiet a Raging Storm

Author's Notes: This story is catharsis. Nothing else.

It's a selfish reason to write a fic, I know, but something in me wanted to capture this experience on paper, through the eyes of a third person observer instead of the victim in the thrall of the situation.

This was pretty much entirely inspired by the U2 album, 'How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb'. There's a story in all eleven songs and how they're strung together, each one representing, in my interpretation, a step on a transformative path. I won't give away the crux of the story; you'll probably figure it out along the way.

This whole fic is a sequel to 'Mysterious Ways' and the events of that evening; it's set sometime after the second season and sometime before the third. The same warnings of that fic apply here.

---

I'm at a place called vertigo

It's everything I wish I didn't know

But you give me something

I can feel

I can feel you teaching me

Your love is teaching me

How to kneel…

---

Every time he closed his eyes, the water rushed over his face again.

He felt the torrent roar into his ears. It raked into his hair and reduced it to a black, free-flowing mass. It splashed over his cheekbones, burned his eyes and left salt on his lips.

Manjoume kicked and arched his back, trying to claw his way back to oxygen. Strong arms held him under. His coat billowed in the water and he could feel his feet flail in the air just above the ocean uselessly.

The upset brine was a veil in front of his eyes. It warped his clouded, stinging vision.

But just beyond the water and tears, he thought he saw a smiling face, and all the fight in him left.

He drifted there in the dark, looking up.

---

Misawa and Juudai exchanged mildly concerned looks.

They'd been walking down the path to the Ra cafeteria, discussing dueling strategies – well, Misawa was, Juudai was mostly making explosion sound effects – when they noticed a black shape in the grass beside the path.

It was Manjoume, laid out on the ground with his arms stretched out, eyes locked on the sun. He looked deep in thought, his gaze and mind on something far away.

Misawa furrowed his brow. Manjoume's unpredictable and arguably unstable psyche had always made him uncomfortable. The boy struck him as irrational and indecisive. He was no one to criticize someone for having a thousand decks – but at least his deck choices were conscious. Manjoume's seemed to be based on whim.

As did all of his posturing and motions of grandeur.

But while Misawa had stood there, contemplating his sometimes rival, sometimes acquaintance, Juudai had run up to the dark-clad boy and started nudging him in the side with his foot to no avail.

"Come on, Manjoume! Jeeze! You've been like this for weeks!"

No immediate response. Juudai kicked him a little harder, and a pale hand shot up to grab the offending sneaker.

"…thunder."

Juudai and Misawa blinked down at the otherwise inert boy. His slanted gray eyes slowly regained their focus and flicked upwards towards them in a hateful glare.

Juudai grinned. "That's more like it!"

Manjoume closed his eyes in quiet but obvious irritation, but said nothing.

"C'mon, get up. Wanna duel?" Juudai offered, but a faint frown betrayed his concern.

The closed eyes shut a little tighter and Manjoume's lip twitched. "Leave, idiot. You're giving me a headache."

Juudai's hopeful grin dropped off his face. "You sound like Asuka when she gets moody."

Manjoume's eyebrows dipped down into a fearsome scowl.

"You have two seconds to get the hell away from me."

"Bah, Manjoume! Snap out of it!" Juudai was unperturbed, setting his arms akimbo and looming over the other boy, making a face at him and waving his disk-clad arm at him. "I bet you'll feel great after a few good duels!"

One of Manjoume's eyes opened by a sliver. "I'll shove that duel disk where the sun doesn't shine."

Manjoume's deadpanned threats seemed to fall on deaf ears, though. Juudai freed his foot from Manjoume's clutches and stood upright, shrugging at Misawa. Misawa sighed.

"He has a point, Manjoume," Misawa started cautiously, crouching by the still boy, "Understandably, the brainwashing left us all disoriented, but I can attest that I've made a full recovery, as has Asuka, and the other students that were taken by Saiou. Therefore, I must conclude that something additional is amiss in your case."

There was a long and uncomfortable silence.

"As far as we know you were also the first student to be taken by Saiou, so perhaps something else is different. You never told us, Manjoume, what exactly happened that night?"

The silence stretched on and became progressively tenser.

"You want to know what was different?" Manjoume finally hissed and tightened his shoulders, "He asked me. Saiou didn't do anything by force, he asked me and I said yes."

"That isn't so strange. I admit, he tempted me with promises of glory and recognition and I fell victim to them as well," Misawa countered.

"No, he didn't give me visions," Manjoume sat up, digging his fingers into the grass, "He didn't hypnotize me or trick me. He told me I was stagnant, and that he could help me rise to glory again…"

More silence. Juudai scowled slightly and prepared to nudge Manjoume in the side again, but Misawa halted him with a wave of his hand.

"I see," Misawa looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded, "I think I understand now. You carry around guilt for starting the whole fiasco, simply because of your petty rivalry with Juudai here."

"No!" Manjoume bristled and turned to glare at him, looked over his shoulder to Juudai to give him a thorough glaring as well, then shook his head quickly, "Forget it. Don't even pretend to understand."

"Come on, now." Misawa sighed. "We – your friends – are concerned about you. What's really bothering you?"

Manjoume sank into his coat, hunching his shoulders. "Two things."

Misawa and Juudai cocked their heads attentively and waited for him to continue.

"Two things that insist on harassing me," Manjoume narrowed his eyes at them pointedly, "Is it so much to ask for a minute of silence to think?"

But by this point, Misawa and Juudai had known Manjoume for two years, and were unruffled him, especially Juudai. The boy in red sat down in the grass beside his brooding peer.

"Whatcha thinkin' about?"

"That doesn't concern you."

"Sure it does," Juudai grinned, "Lemme guess, last night?"

Manjoume flinched faintly and Juudai puffed up in victory.

"Hmm," Misawa held his chin thoughtfully, "What exactly happened last night, anyway?"

"Manjoume came into the Red dorm all wet and angry," Juudai piped up, "and said Fubuki tried to drown him, but Fubuki was there the whole—"

Misawa grimaced. "I know that part, Juudai, I was there when—"

"It wasn't drowning."

Manjoume's abrupt interjection seemed to leave all three of them surprised. Even he was blinking dumbly, and for a moment, his defensive anger was replaced with genuine confusion.

"What happened, then?" Misawa encouraged him.

Manjoume shut his eyes again, visibly fighting back crude and dismissive comments with every breath. "I don't even know what that was."

Juudai set his chin in his hands. "Why were you all wet?"

"Because!" Manjoume snarled, balling his fists, "I don't care what he says, I don't care what any of you say, he was out there on that beach with me last night, and he tried to—"

"Tried to what?"

"He grabbed me and picked me up," Manjoume mimicked this with his hands, "And walked straight into the damn ocean and just dropped me in."

"Momentarily discounting the fact Fubuki was at the Osiris dorm while all this was happening… As if he was roughhousing?"

"No," Manjoume leered at the distant ocean, "He told me to trust him, and after he dropped me in the water… he held me under."

Juudai and Misawa exchanged another uncertain glance.

"Sounds dreadful," Misawa started sympathetically, then furrowed his brow. "Though – pray tell – if forcibly holding someone else under water isn't an attempted drowning, what is it?"

But Manjoume was done talking to them. The boy stood up abruptly.

"I don't care." Manjoume pushed his bangs out of his face, "I'm sick of being harassed by things that aren't real."

He started walking way. Juudai scrambled to his feet and waved, "Wait! Manjoume!"

"Don't bother, Juudai," Misawa stood up and brushed off his knees. "It's no use."

They watched Manjoume's dark form disappear down the path, and Misawa resigned himself to his previous assertion.

The boy that called himself Thunder would always be as predictable as his namesake.

---

It was a dream.

It was a hallucination.

Manjoume had decided this after several minutes of angry walking.

It had to be – when he thought about it, reality allowed for no other possibilities. He had almost settled on this conclusion when Misawa and Juudai had descended from nowhere to interrogate him.

Unless…

The boy stopped dead in his tracks when he reached his empty room. He waited in stony silence, keen to the currents of the air and its movement around him.

Twitch.

His hand shot out and clamped down tight on what passed for Ojama Yellow's ethereal neck. The spirit sputtered and flailed.

"Explain."

The order was issued from between Manjoume's clenched teeth, and his stormy gray eyes narrowed to slits. Ojama Yellow shrunk down and trembled in his grasp.

"E-explain what, boss?"

"You know damn well what I mean."

Yellow stared, his stalk eyes blinking and drooping slightly in bewilderment.

"The spirit last night!" Manjoume flung the alien-beast into a wall. Yellow squealed and passed right through it, only to meekly re-emerge from wood paneling momentarily.

"Boss, I don't—"

"Was it Copycat?" Manjoume narrowed his eyes, looming over the Ojama. The yellow alien squeaked and cowered behind a picture frame, one eyestalk peeking out from behind it. "Why the hell was it pretending to be Fubuki?"

"I don't think any monster—"

"Was it something using a spell card? Can they even do that?" Manjoume considered a moment, then tore one of his drawers open, taking out his boxes of cards. He dumped them out across the floor without hesitation and started shuffling through them obsessively, looking for any potential culprits.

Yellow gave him a wide berth, drawing his hands into balls and biting his oversized lip. The little duel spirit wasn't sure if he should say anything or not.

"Boss…"

"Metamorphosis? Physical Double?" Manjoume rifled through his rainbow of cards, "Which one of you bastards did it?"

"Boss…"

"It's bad enough you peons keep me up all night! You better hope I don't find you, I'm tearing your card in half!" Manjoume snarled and shoved one pile of cards aside to attack another, sending some flying. Yellow dodged as best as he could and winced when one card passed through him.

"Boss, please…"

"Don't interrupt me, you useless little small-fry, I'll tear you up too," Manjoume uttered darkly, otherwise paying the hovering little alien no heed. His eyes fell on one stray card, suspiciously separate from the rest. Manjoume zeroed in on it, coiling.

He pounced on the card, coming down on it with enough enthusiasm to send it skidding across the floor and well out of his reach. Determined and furious, he tried to follow it, but his knee was on a pile of slick cards and slipped out from under him, sending the boy face first into his floor. He swore violently, and Yellow covered his ears.

The duel spirit cautiously unplugged his ears after a deathly quiet had fallen over the room, and frowned down at his master. Manjoume hadn't moved from where he'd fallen.

The fall had rattled Manjoume's brain and in that moment of clarity, he realized the inanity of what he was doing. Cards were scattered across the floor and over his bed, and a few far-flung ones had landed on his windowsill and in discarded piles of clothes. His room was in general disarray, and he was sprawled out like a fool in the middle of the senseless destruction. His pride stung, badly.

What the hell…

Manjoume closed his eyes and his frame slumped into a defeated prostrate position on the floor.

"Boss, you okay down there?" Yellow came to rest on Manjoume's shoulder, concern in his nasally voice.

"…always one or the other…" Manjoume muttered into the floorboards.

Ojama Yellow scratched his head. "Huh?"

"I'm either on top of the whole damn world," Manjoume hissed softly, lifting his head with what seemed like monumental effort. "…or at the very bottom. Either I'm winning or it is…"

He stared at the errant card that had bested him, just out of his grasp.

Then he saw a pair of sandals standing beside the card.

Sandals with feet in them.

A hand reached down from somewhere outside his range of vision, scooped up the card that had so spectacularly evaded him, and handed it to him in friendly offering. Manjoume's eyes followed the arm up its length and saw a familiar smiling face.

He felt a chill.

Still, Fubuki's smile was warm. "You could always just stop fighting, Manjoume-kun."

Manjoume stared.

"If you try and take on the world, the world will always win," the surfer idol spoke, crouching down and peering at Manjoume over his knees.

"F-fubuki?," Manjoume manage to wheeze and flinched at the sound of his own voice. "I…"

"You're not failing, Manjoume-kun."

"Everything's out of control," Manjoume hunched and mumbled, covering his head with his arms.

"No," Fubuki's voice seemed cheerful while Manjoume's was afraid his own would crack, "Nothing was ever really in your control."

Manjoume recoiled and hid deeper in his own arms.

"All you can worry about is yourself, Manjoume. Not Juudai. Not Saiou. Not what other people think. Not your victories. Not your past. Not your brothers. Not luck. Not fate. Not destiny. Not power. Not glory. These things come and go. Crushing them, controlling them, gaining them – it won't sustain you in the long run."

"There isn't anything else," Manjoume squeezed his head defensively.

"Okay, suppose you had that. Suppose you defeated Juudai. That you rose back to the ranks of Obelisk Blue, and you were undefeatable. Suppose you graduated with the highest honors and greatest record of anyone in Duel Academy's history."

Manjoume started to lift his head with interest.

"You proved yourself to everyone. You had the respect and adoration of everyone around you. You go on to rock the pro leagues and become nothing less than the worldwide champion. You have all the glory and fame in the world."

"How?" Manjoume stared up at what he was almost positive wasn't Fubuki, but at the moment he didn't care, "How would I do that?"

Fubuki frowned. The faintest sign of disappointment creased his brow, and Manjoume felt struck. He shrunk back into his coat.

"Manjoume-kun," Fubuki started, reaching out. The younger boy tried to duck his head away, but could not completely evade the big warm hand that came to rest on the top of his head.

"That's what Saiou offered you. Didn't you learn from that?"

"Saiou – he – if Juudai hadn't – maybe…"

"If you win everything – if you gain everything – then what?"

"…Eh?"

"Then what?"

"I… I'd be happy," Manjoume admitted quietly. The warm weight of Fubuki's hand on his head was oddly comforting.

"How long do you think it'd last?"

Manjoume blinked.

"You know how much the pro-leagues churn. How long do you think it'd be until someone better than you finally came along? Till your luck ran out and gave someone else a shot?"

"I—"

"You'd be back here again." Fubuki's fingers gently sank into his hair as if Manjoume were some kind of housecat. "That's the problem with fighting your way to the top. In the end, someone else will always have more fight in them than you."

"So," Manjoume's voice lost its life, and he shook his head half heartedly, dislodging Fubuki's hand. "You're saying I'll never be happy."

"You'll be happy someday, Manjoume-kun. But no one comes to joy through fighting."

Manjoume squinted at him, waiting. "What then?"

"The greatest of all things."

"Don't talk in riddles."

"Love, Manjoume."

"…"

"You can win every duel as long as you live, but without love, what do you have but more trophies and prize money?"

"…"

"You can be rich enough to hire both your brothers as your personal servants, but without love, will any amount ever buy them back as your brothers?"

"…"

"You can have Asuka and any other woman you ever wanted, but without love, what would you have? A harem?"

Manjoume's squint became a scowl. "…What kind of hippy new age crap is this?"

Fubuki chuckled. "You'll see what I mean."

Manjoume was about to argue, when he noticed Fubuki was still holding out the card for him to take. He snatched it out of the older boy's hand.

It was only then he realized which card it was.

The faintly smiling face of Change of Heart stared up at him, half shadowed, half illuminated.

If he dwelt on it, he might've let that strike him as significant, but he didn't allow himself the indulgence. Instead, he started to make a comment, but a quick glance upwards told him Fubuki was gone.

"Uh… boss?"

He turned his attention to the duel spirit on his shoulder, who looked disturbed.

Manjoume huffed. "That's what I was talking about. I know it has to be one of you doing it, so spill."

"W-who? Your bed?"

"Eh?"

Yellow looked back and forth, following Manjoume's previous line of sight. Indeed, directly before him was his bed, and nothing else.

"Uh… what's... what's your bed saying?"

"…"

"I'm really sorry boss, but I'm confused… Who you were talking to?"

"You little idiot, he was right in front—"

"We were watchin' the whole time, boss," Black suddenly spoke up, appearing on the other side of Manjoume's head. "None of us saw anything. You feelin' okay?"

Manjoume turned his head to look back at his room. Dozens of duel spirits were staring at him, sitting on his furniture or hovering in the air, and each looked as concerned as their respective features would allow. They were just as perplexed as Misawa and Juudai.

Not even his old delusions believed him anymore.

Manjoume's head and shoulders sank back down onto the floor. His shoulders shook. Sheer frustration had put knots in his chest and throat.

He was sick of fighting.

The Ojamas, more perceptive than he'd give them credit for, collectively took the hint and started waving the other spirits back into their cards silently, and then made themselves scarce before any of them could see him break down.