A/N: Just a little intro to another story co-written with Shadgirl2! Enjoy! We don't own Yugioh GX or Yugioh 5D's.
WARNING: spoilers, angst
How did this happen? Seriously, how?
I was just a normal teenager, until that day. That day when my old friend turned on me. No, that's not quite right. She didn't turn on me—she went insane. I mean, you'd have to be insane to send a school full of students to another dimension just so you can show one of them your "love." I still say she was after revenge.
And she got it. When we beat her that first time, my friend Johan got left behind with her. I went to rescue him, and the others followed: Manjoume, Asuka, Sho, Kenzan, Fubuki-san...all of them. And four of those ones died later. My fault. That's what they said. It was all my fault.
That awoke Haou. The Supreme King. The Overlord. The fearful ruler of Dark World. My other half. Jim gave his all to stop him, only succeeding in ending his own life. That was my fault, too. O'Brien was terrified. Seriously, I didn't know the guy even knew the meaning of the word fear, but he ran for his life. I can't blame him, though—Haou was ruthless. I was ruthless.
He did come back later, and he challenged Haou. While he didn't lose, he didn't win, either. Another death, also my fault. It didn't matter that he had stopped Haou and released me from the monster's control. He was gone, and he was never coming back. Just like Jim, just like Fubuki-san, Kenzan, Manjoume...Asuka. Just like Johan.
Or so I thought. Soon after that, I found Johan. He was possessed by her—the maniac who had started all of this. Though that was my fault, too—I had sent her away, trying to help her. Well, that backfired pretty terribly, didn't it? Instead of being made pure and safe, she was made into a revenge-driven maniac bent on making my life hell.
I dueled her—her in Johan's body—trying to save the friend I had come for. The only friend I had left. Sure, there were still Misawa and Sho, but Misawa would be staying in Dark World, and I wasn't Sho's Aniki, was I? He had said so, that I would be willing to sacrifice everything to save the foreigner, the new kid, Sho's replacement as my best friend. Okay, that last part was my own invention, but I'm sure Sho thought it, at least.
Anyway, I managed to save Johan, and things were looking up for a moment. I went to duel her, to settle things once and for all, and I remembered a few things. A friendship, a sacrifice, a promise from a past life. I couldn't wipe her out, send her to the stars, destroy her, when her problems were my fault.
So I fused with her. Using Super Polymerization, the card that had led me to hell. The one my friends had all died for.
That stopped her. It also saved my friends, who hadn't really died but had been sent to a different dimension. Even I came back eventually, and things were pretty much back to normal. Well, except for the way I was acting. But that was easy enough to fix—Yugi-san did it. He just waited until I graduated. But, with that, everything was back to the way it should be: she was with me; my friends were alive and well, chasing their dreams; and I was traveling the world, helping people. I visited my friends when I was in their area, and I was bound to work up the guts to ask Asuka out eventually, right?
Wrong. After a few years, I noticed something—something terrible. Something I'd rather not think about. Something that made telling Asuka how I felt seem like a really stupid idea.
That fusion changed me. It gave me new powers, made me healthier, stronger, faster, maybe even smarter. But it came with some downsides, too. It gave me some of the powers of duel monsters, duel spirits. Key word being "spirits."
It's been two thousand years since that day, that day when I fused with Yubel. I've had thousands of friends I shouldn't have made, a gift for making friends turned into a curse. Now, soon, one I made two thousand years ago should be reappearing. I've been waiting for him.
I don't think I want to see him. If I don't know he's alive, I can't find out when he dies, and I won't lose him the way I've lost so many others.
