Rashomon
Author's Note: Set during episode 147, when Judai and co. first run into Yubel-possessed Johan. Titled after Chaos Phantom – Armityle's card effect in the anime and namesake psychological principle and film. A spiritual successor to "Schadenfreude", which I wrote over ten years ago (see my profile for the link to my old Darkrealmist account if you want to read it). Shout-out to the Law Mark Kee (羅麥記) restaurant, where I was holed up while brainstorming this. Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX series.
Summary:
Yubel speaks through Johan Andersen, and hoards seven dark hearts like the gemstone palette of a blackened rainbow.
On a house of sand, beneath the penumbral stalactites of an infernal archway, and ringed by a glyph-adorned torus of advancing darkness, stands Johan Andersen. His leer is a livid titian, his voice is thrown back in dual tenor, and his muscles crease against the restraints lashing his arms and chest. Though engaged with an opponent in a heated Duel, his thoughts are elsewhere, pinned not on the underworld emperor come to take his life, but on a watcher of the deadly game. They are another's thoughts altogether.
"Judai, at last we meet again. I'll be sure to show you my love ever so slowly."
His words punctuate the air – here, in battle at the borderline of twelve worlds, where doing so actually kicks up a gale. In each present, he gauges a different response, whiffs a different scent of darkness. Contempt. Relief. Worry. Surprise. Abeyance. Acceptance. Guilt.
Marufuji Sho sees the impact zone, the reason for his doubt. For his former aniki, everything began and ended with Johan. Sho was the survivor of Judai's single-minded obsession to save Johan from the depths of a dimensional prison. The teenager's reckless drive had corrupted him, infecting his mentality and radicalizing his sense of justice. Nearly everyone in their orbit was killed, but all Judai could do now was remain paralyzed at the monster he had become. Judai wasn't even convinced his actions were his own, rationalizing his atrocities as an external personality. Sho hated Johan for putting Judai on this path, and hated him for depriving him of the sunny big brother Judai once was.
Ojama Yellow sees the carefree hero du jour through noodle eyestalks, the lost companion they have been searching for in these disparate realities like rungs on a step ladder. While their ranks have tragically thinned, he is just happy to receive a shred of good news and confirmation that Johan is alive.
Cronos de Medici sees a lose-lose scenario. His students are neck and neck, Signor Johan not acting like himself, and Signor Ryo on his last legs, in no condition to fight. Both are intent on slaying the other in what Cronos believes an unnecessary tiff. Irrespective of result, this bout promised fatality upon its contestants. Why not retreat?
Misawa Daichi sees a belated, if not confusing reunion. Johan professing his love for Judai was unexpected. Apparently relegated the role of the raving sane man of the bunch, he felt they walked in on a quarrel that was perhaps private.
Tania sees a potential threat. She is sharp and stoic. A warrior whose language is combat itself, she is poised to strike at the sign of an attack. This is not the missing wanderer her compatriots seek. He is their true enemy, the puppet master pulling neon strings above.
Hell Kaiser Ryo sees no eleventh-hour contender more deserving defeat. He doesn't care if the entity in front of him is Johan or not. As long as the impostor wears Johan's skin and channels his strength, the illusion is enough. Futureless, Kaiser's lust to consecrate his shining legacy will be answered. Before Ryo's heart overloads, using the combined resentment of his unshakable fortress, the fullest roar of his artillery, he swears he will exterminate the wicked geist dominating Johan. This will be Kaiser's moment, his final fusion.
Yuki Judai sees a friend and sometimes lover, the man he sacrificed everything for. The blood on his hands is seeping candle wax, slime moulded in alchemic kettle fires by a malicious prodigy from the charnel-piled bone meal of his forsaken allies and hundreds of slaughtered innocents. Irreplaceable lives and precepts sundered, all in the name of the person who meant the most to him.
Winged Kuriboh appeared and coddled his partner. So burdened was the mighty.
"This Duel, Judai, is for you," Johan purred.
"What?"
"Pain and sadness born of loneliness. That is the shape of love you have taught me."
"Y-you're Yubel!"
The claws of a reared amethystine feline decussate, heavy as a morning star. Her cries for recognition go unheeded, veiled behind reciprocal glass.
A cobalt-inset raptor takes flight to squawks of deplumation, talons stretched beyond the far-off welkin.
The horn of a chained sapphire stallion calls. Trammelled, his hooves clink within studded bracers.
A carbuncle's wrought ruby is a beacon for the heliotropic deceased. She glimmers to beckon the fettered dark.
The shell of an emerald-encrusted tortoise offers shelter. He girds his plastron to weather the rage of twin serpents.
A pachyderm preserved in amber trumpets refuge, trampled underfoot an animal of prey.
The throttle force of a topaz wildcat bars evolution. He wounds himself on a hallowed barrier, suffering cutting recompense for his insubordination.
Seven lights tear upwards, focalizing, a lurid circular rainbow. They emerge a lumbering beast crested with sequentially charged crystals, jet-black pinions, and forked tail, a refraction of myth.
The gathered coterie sees what it wants to see, but only Yubel knows the truth. Johan is but a body, the third in a line of disposable husks. Prior to Johan, there had been a withdrawn gamin, and prior to him, a childsick snake of a father. Yubel even had a would-be monarch in reserve. Rations to whet a sorrowful dragon's appetite. The fact that Johan was Yubel's preeminent rival for Judai's attention, however, provided the greatest salt to this homecoming dish. Johan had tasted Judai's touch and shared his spirit. Occupying Johan's soulless flesh, hurting Judai with his beloved and in turn hurt the same, such was unbridled satisfaction, the best show of affection.
Yubel sees the piercing yellow gaze of a merciless ruler. Buttressed obsidian plate armour trailing a carpet thick and red, he is a three-faced demon breathing soot, liege to a bishop of skulls, a sorcerer of disorder, divaricating pundits of Armageddon, and a guardian of an evil-collapsing flamberge. Abject terror incarnate, a trinity of phantasms rides abreast him in the crackling chaos.
In a river delta's triangle, a lava column spouts a coiling salamander on leathery membranous bat wings that swallows itself in its own jaws. The sacred flame extends four-fingered paws, sweltering the earth, dissolving rock and subsuming pitfalls in molten heat.
Here the leafless desiccated branches of a hollow tree that bore but one fruit wilt. The sky is parched by cerulean thunderclap, attracted to the skeletal rod of a webbed crown. Pronged lightning descends, punishing atoners in the fallen paradise.
To the threefold gunpowder pow of doublet muskets, mock-priests prostrate themselves at their philistine god's throne. A shadow that devours infinity, he infuses power into a spectra-singing sabre, and murders martyrs by divine sword.
You are the Supreme King! The being I have yearned for, for all eternity! I love you! I love you, Judai!
Erstwhile soulmates, lord and squire, conjoined across the unforgiving cosmic wastes. Ten thousand deaths and transmigrations.
Seven witnesses. Seven gems. Seven keys to an approaching apocalypse.