Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds
Title: No Heroes Here
Character: Aporia
Word Count: 2,085
Genre: Angst||Rated: PG-13
Feedback: All forms eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Summary: Beware those who have nothing to lose. Because they will do anything. Even if they don't want to.

Hypocrites.

Not us. Them. Team 5Ds. Blazing hypocrites who claim to want to save the world. If they did, wouldn't they help us instead of being the ones who helped to destroy it in the first place?

If it weren't for them, none of this would've happened. If they weren't so wonderful at winning duels, then our future, this desolation and despair that will never end, that can't end until we're all dead, would not exist at all.

If it weren't for him.

Fudo Yuusei.

I hate him. I shouldn't, because he's also the reason we're able to do anything at all to save our world.

At least, if you look at it that way. I try not to. How much of that is true really depends on one's point of view and there's no point of view I want where I have to be grateful to Yuusei for anything. I will be grateful to Z-ONE. Who Z-ONE wants to be is no concern of mine.

But Fudo Yuusei is who is responsible for all of this. His legend encouraged the world to take up Synchro Summoning and that led to the Machine Emperors and that led to a world without life.

Sometimes I wonder how many of our problems could be solved by finding a point in time to change that involves him taking up knitting instead of dueling. I never would bring that up to the others. The idea of there not being a Fudo Yuusei to admire isn't one that sits well with the others.

I would say they needed lives, but we had them and lost them already.

Team 5Ds considers us evil. They think we want to destroy the world. What idiots. They'd never listen to us try to say otherwise. They believe what they choose to believe.

Destroy the world. How can you destroy what's already gone? So we have to wreck what exists here in the past to save what's going to happen in the future. They call us evil for what. As if they've never once in their lives done something wrong because it was the right thing to do.

Do they think we like this? Do they think we wake up every morning eager to cause more chaos and destruction for the sheer sake of it?

Do they have any idea of what it's like to spend one's entire life not even sure if morning is going to come in the first place?

Of course not. They have no idea of how good they have it. They can do anything, they've always been able to do anything. The little limitations they placed on themselves aren't nearly as confining as they think they are.

They have always been able to eat. They can breathe without fearing what might come into their lungs when they do.

They can talk freely and not fear that a monster will target them by the sound of their voice and kill them.

They can love and not lose it to disaster.

They have so much and they want to deny us the right to have it, just because for us to have it, for billions of other people to have it, a few people now have to die.

They think we don't care.

We care too much. Because if we didn't care, we'd just die and let the human race die with us.

Sometimes I think it has already. I'm not sure how much human is left in me. But I won't stop. None of us will. We just can't. It's the same reason we're doing this in the first place.

Because if we do nothing, then it is over.

This is the only hope that we have. I can't even always believe it will happen. In the middle of the night, I think this is some kind of dream that I have as I die. How can we change the future? How can just a few people, not even a hand's worth really, defy reality itself?

It has to be a fool's dream.

If that's true, then we'll all be fools. I've said it before. There is nothing else we can do, because doing nothing ends it all. If that's a crime, then so be it. If it would be right to lay down like a beaten dog and let the world die, then I don't want to be right.

If it's wrong to fight for one's life, then I will be wrong. We all will be.

What would they do, this wonderful team that claims they fight for Neo Domino City, if they had to make these choices? Could they deal with doing what we've done? Could they kill a million people so that a billion could live?

I don't think so. Not with how they've reacted to everything that's happened. They claim there are other ways. We've tried them all. They never work. This is the only way that stands a chance.

I wish it weren't.

I wish we didn't have to do this.

I wish I could not have to kill like this.

I would never tell anyone else that. They would never believe that, either. Anyone except the others. They know it because they're the same way. They don't want it any more than I do.

I think they're still trying to find other ways, though. It's like Z-ONE to have more than one plan going at the same time. He can multi-task better than anyone I've ever known. If this fails somehow, then perhaps one of the other ways can work.

Not that I expect this to fail. Because everything else we already tried has. This has lasted longer than any of the other ways so far. That has to mean something.

I want there to be meaning. We've seen time itself from the beginning to a thousand ends, all of which are the stuff of nightmares and if there's no meaning in any of it, then what is the point?

I defy any of Team 5Ds to stare into the end of the world a thousand times and still think there is nothing they wouldn't do to stop that from happening.

Once I thought like them. I might've been five or six at the time, full of ideals and honor and I'd never do what the 'bad guys' did. But then the world exploded around me and there was nothing else I could do.

It was either take up arms and fight or lay down and die and while I have given up many things in this world and will give up many more, I will never just give up my life. Whatever wants it will have to tear it from me and I may chase it down and take my life back.

Though in all truth, there is one of 5Ds who could understand about the hard choices we must make. Or he should. If he remembers. When he remembers.

Antinomy is, or was, the best choice to join with Yuusei, though I still don't know just what Z-ONE's plan is for that. He doesn't tell me everything. I'm not sure if he tells anyone anything at times. There are hints that he is moving this along in ways that he never told to any of us.

Such as Yuusei gaining the power to Accel Synchro. That was not part of the plan. That kind of power is reserved for us, for those who are truly trying to save the world. Z-ONE promised us that!

I wanted to kill Antinomy when I first saw him in this time. How could he? How could he want to defend Yuusei? How could he help Yuusei? That wasn't what he was there for. He shouldn't have attacked me because of that. That wasn't the Antinomy that I knew.

I didn't feel anything when he ran off the road. I was convinced he was dead.

Again.

Good. That was what I thought, what I believed. If he'd thrown his lot in with his hero and forgotten all that we had fought and struggled for together, then so be it.

Of all of us, he had the choicest assignment. Paradox wandered through time attempting to correct errors, to twist time to a better ending. I split into three to accomplish my tasks more easily. Where I lived was spartan, plain. It wasn't a home. I have never had a home.

That's something else 5Ds takes for granted. Homes. However small and disgusting it might be, each of them has one. The closest I have ever had became nothing more than rubble and ruin when I was little more than a child. I spent more than one night exposed to the elements. I hovered on the brink of death several times.

But Antinomy lived with Yuusei in this time. A comfortable place to live where he was sheltered from sun and rain on a regular basis.

Where he could eat.

I don't remember what food tastes like anymore. I haven't had working taste buds in longer than I can remember. I remember that I've eaten, but I don't remember anything else. It's a fact, nothing more.

Antinomy eats with Yuusei. I saw them once, sharing something from a sidewalk stand.

I wanted to kill them both, for so many reasons, but just the fact they could eat that and taste it was chief in my mind at that time.

I'm still not sure that Antinomy hasn't betrayed us. I don't intend to talk to him to find out, either. It's too late to talk about anything. I hope he's enjoyed all of the food and warmth and friendship he's had while here.

It won't last. It never does. Everything always ends. That is one of the many lessons life has taught me. Everything ends. The only question is how long it takes and how much pain one suffers along the way.

The answer in my case is 'a lot'. More than any human should have to.

Perhaps it's a good thing that I'm not all that human anymore. Perhaps it's an even better thing than I realized at first. Everything I've felt all this time has only brought me more pain. If I feel nothing, then there will be no pain, only the completion of the mission.

I don't know if that is what Z-ONE had in mind when he remade all of us. I don't even know if that's what I had in mind before I died. But I do know that it doesn't matter anymore. What matters is ending this nightmare farce of a life by ending the future that forged it in the first place.

Would this count as suicide? Not the right question to ask, I think. The right question is, do I care if it does.

The only answer to that is 'no'. Why should I? What has life given me that I'd want to do anything but change it in any way that I can?

If our plans work the way we want, or if they just work at all, then we might never exist the way that we do now. The Aporia who would grow up not fleeing from every noise in case it was something that meant to kill him would not be me.

Or he might never be born at all. Watching time the way we have, it's a little fascinating how the smallest of events can change everything.

In our attempts to save the world, we might change everything so that we're never born at all.

Not existing at all. I like how that sounds. To either be someone else who is so different from the me that I was or am or to just never exist...I don't care.

I'll fight to live but this is different. I'll only live for as long as it takes to be certain our future is going to be one worth having. A future where humanity doesn't have to hide in fear of the monsters spawned by Momentum and Synchro Summoning.

A future where Fudo Yuusei and his precious Team 5Ds never existed would be better, even if Z-ONE and Antinomy would protest. But a future of peace, whether they're there or not, is what we are fighting for.

Even if Yuusei doesn't believe us. He won't be able to stop us. He has no idea of what he faces when he faces us.

We've lost too much already.

We are going to win.

The End