(A/N): Alright, what's going on, Artie? What's the big idea, coming back after a long time of doing nothing and updating with something different from your usual?
Y'see, back in October, I wrote a series of scattered ficbits focused around a central idea: that Jose of the Three Tenors was perhaps some sort of Divine remnant-either Divine himself come back from the lizard's gullet, aged from the otherworldly encounter, or some sort of clone or the like. It was a crack theory shared by me and Immicolia over on LiveJournal, mostly due to the fact that we personally think the Three Tenors are boring, that Jose is the only interesting one out of the group, and that he does share a similar eye color and hairstyle. Soooo...yeah.
However, this crack theory led to a theory that...wasn't really so cracky and was more cracked, as it were. We saw the attention he paid to Aki when observing her skills as a Psychic Duelist, and thought perhaps he would do what Divine did back in Season Two-inexplicably come back and reactivate the Kurobara Majo (Black Rose Witch)...and send Aki on a murderous rampage. The first target of the Lady of Roses: her martyr. The one who successfully managed to turn her onto her current path. And she succeeded.
But...the Martyr came back...
So when I wrote this in October, why am I posting it now, in December? Because I'm a procrastinating prick? Because I'm an indecisive idiot?
Yeah, that sounds about right. That and I couldn't come up with a name for our resurrected Martyr. Icey-you all here know her as w nymph, helped me come up with a name after a while. She's written her own companionfic to this-the first oneshot of her own 5ds_100 challenge, the collection called Bonded by Crimson. If you haven't read that, you should!
Warning: This is darkfic. As expected, there is death, blood, etc. etc. Turn back if you don't like that sort of thing. This is a collection of scattered moments in the timeline, more me working out the story than anything. It's just highly unlikely that I'll ever write any further, so I'll post what I have.
Alright, enjoy!
Dying the Rose Red
She stood over her opponent, defeated, a long, bloody gash down the right side of his face that had cut through his eye. If he had lived, that eye would certainly been rendered useless.
The other eye remained open, already clouding over, looking up at her with a blank expression. Just mere seconds before, it had glinted a bright cobalt blue, a hue that could pierce the depths of one's soul near effortlessly. It had done so to hers on more than one occasion. Not this time. This time, her heart had been sealed shut, cemented by words whispered by that strange man in the white cloak.
Now that she was closed off, the Kurobara Majo had risen again, finally succeeding in killing one of the people that had held a tight grip on her heart.
The white robed man was next. And the others would follow.
She was intent on nothing more than leaving behind a crimson trail behind her.
---
"Who the hell are you?" she demanded.
A soft chuckle was her only answer. It was deep, and resonated throughout the blood-spattered room, almost as if it was filling the room up with it's presence.
"Come now, Kurobara Majo. Surely you can be politer than that. You must have learned the protocols for proper etiquette from inside the shell of a senator's daughter."
She only growled, incensed. This...person, whoever they were...had stolen her kill. Once she had her pleasure in tormenting the white-robed man, had riddled his body with scars and had been about to deal the final blow to the man who thought that by controlling her shell, he thought he could control her; his throat was slit by something rushing past. Something that seemed to have almost no presence-had appeared for that sole moment before disappearing into the shadows. She watched him struggle to breathe, choking and gurgling over the crimson liquid that gushed from his throat, and found herself feeling no pleasure at all because she hadn't been able to complete her vindictive slaughter.
Whoever this person was, they would pay.
"Your choice of words is rather ironic, isn't it? Isn't it considered rude to steal something that belongs to someone else?"
"Touché, little witch. I see your point. But, that is what I'm here for."
"To steal my kill? What a petty thief you are."
"No, Kurobara Majo. I am here for much more than your little chew toys."
"Oh?" This person was proving themselves to be an annoyance. She would take particular care in killing this one. An attack from Black Rose Dragon was sent into the shadowed corner of the room where that something seemed to have vanished to, decimating that portion of the room with a tornado of petals.
As she expected, another chuckle echoed in the room. If this person was that easy to kill, he wouldn't have been such a pest.
"My, what a temper you have. Do keep it in check, at least, until you hear my proposition."
She raised an eyebrow.
"I won't accept anything of the sort unless you tell me who the hell you are."
"Now, now, wouldn't that take the fun out of it if I just came out and told you?"
This time the voice had been right behind her. She turned to find herself faced with someone leaning against the door frame, his pose relaxed. His face was hooded and covered in shadow, but she could make out a single glint of silver under the hood-an eye? She wasn't sure. The rest of his body was just as masked behind the black robe he wore, the design reminiscent of the white-robed man he had just killed. The most she could see of him at all was a shadow of his mouth, which was curled into a wry smirk, an almost mocking expression.
"I will tell you this, however, I am aiming at you for a reason."
"For my power?" she scoffed. "I've had people try to control me before. They're all dead, now. You won't end up that much different from there."
"Why would I want your power? My own is sufficient. In fact-" he leaned forward slightly, enough for that silver glint to appear again. "I have it in order to get my...ah, what's the word? The only one that comes to mind is revenge, but that's so...generic..."
He chuckled, more to himself than anyone else, but Aki saw the gesture as an affront to her, how dare he treat her so lightly!
"And what do you plan on doing? Killing me? You can try, but-"
"Ah-ah-ah. And this is where we differ, Kurobara Majo. Killing you would be too easy. No..."
He straightened himself, now standing at his full height. He was a bit taller than her, not an intimidating height, but he held himself with a sort of regal manner that had all but dispelled his almost playful air from before.
"I intend to erase you completely off the face of the Earth."
She snorted.
"And how is that any different from killing me?"
This time, he laughed outright, his amusement clear in his laughter, amused at how foolish this witch was.
"Your reputation precedes you, Kurobara Majo. Even if I killed you now, you would still be known to the others around you, your memory residing in every one who knew you as the most frightening killer known to the cities."
He leveled a gaze at her.
"I will erase this reputation from their minds. With my own abilities, I will surpass yours as the most terrifying killer, watching your fall from the top. Then, when your broken body lies at the bottom, I will crush you with my own two hands."
She chuckled, a low throaty sound that almost matched his. This man...he was amusing. He could prove to be some entertainment, at the very least.
"Fine then. How do you plan on doing that?"
She could see the shadow of a smile twist into a deranged smirk.
"How about we play a little game?"
---
She scanned the horizon astride her D-Wheel, searching for her first round of the game. What an...interesting...game he had proposed. It certainly turned out to be something she could enjoy doing. She would win this game before killing the bastard, showing him he had no right to challenge her might, that she would be victorious over him.
"What game?"
"Nothing too complicated. Just a simple hunting game. Whoever kills the most targets, wins."
A simple test of power. Right up her alley.
"The targets?"
"The remaining Signers that you held so dear."
She chuckled.
"You have a queer selection of targets there. Working off a grudge?"
"No, I simply thought those would make easy targets. Are you worried about killing them, then?" A wry smirk crossed his lips, a quirk of his that had been slowly grating on her nerves.
"Of course not. Are you?"
He chuckled.
"Not in the slightest."
She smirked. Foolish boy. He had forgotten that she was a Signer herself, and, more importantly, she had been close to them. She knew all their habits inside and out, knew where they'd generally be-especially since they had planned the assault on the Ylliaster headquarters that had started this. And even if she didn't find them exactly where she intended, she could always find them through the mark.
Aha. Not one, but two. They looked rather anxious, didn't they? Judging by the blood on them, they must have run into at least one of the two bloodied rooms she had left behind.
As they spotted her, and began to drive up to her on their D-Wheels, she adopted a tired, haggard position, bracing herself over the bike as if she had just been through a great ordeal, breathing heavily with her face hidden. Her D-Wheel's levels were set to the point where it looked like she had just stopped moments before, slowing down from a great speed-as if she had just been trying to escape something. The blood on her body helped with the image.
"Izayoi! Izayoi! Things have all gone to hell here! We just found a room with Yuusei's D-Wheel all smashed up and blood all over-something's wrong!"
That was Crow, who had reached her first. He took in her appearance and seemed to immediately fall for it, adopting a worried expression. Jack drove up soon after, looking at her.
"Did you see it too...?" He asked, surprisingly subdued.
"...Guys...guys..." She made sure to make her voice sound broken, defeated, scared, and watched out of the corner of her eye with pleasure when they immediately began to let their guards down out of concern. Immediately, her finger pressed the button activating Speed World 2, forcing their D-Wheels into their Duel Modes.
She looked up at their dumbfounded expressions, and chuckled darkly when they shifted slowly into a sudden understanding, then, fear.
"You are so easy to fool."
They all started off in the forced duel, ignoring Crow's demands of "what the hell happened to you?!" in favor of staring at the duel screen.
There was a fourth player.
Looking around in surprise, she soon found the fourth person-that man himself riding on a ledge two stories above them.
"My goodness, Kurobara Majo! I didn't expect you to be so predictable!" he sneered down at her, causing her to growl back in reply. "It seems that the game has gotten off to an exciting start! A four-way Riding Duel!"
She glanced back down on the screen. Her opponent's name read "Yukuro."
Good, now she knew who he was. It was a delight to know the name of the fool she'd eventually kill.
---
The Kurobara Majo was surprised when the first of Crow's two attacks was blocked by Yukuro, of all people. She gave him a questioning look, to which he only replied with one of those queer smirks of his.
"You can't lose to him. I am the one who has to beat you. And, we can't finish our little game if you're put out of commission by one of the pawns, Kurubara Majo.
She frowned, but then only replied with a smirk of her own as she activated a trap, blocking the second attack that had been directed at him.
"Then I suppose I can't let you lose, either."
He only laughed.
---
"Goddammit!" Jack cursed as his life points took a blow. Dueling the two on their own had been tough enough. Now, they seemed to have made some sort of alliance, working together and becoming that much more powerful. "Are those two partners or something?"
His response was a dark chuckle from the male.
"Nothing of the sort. We just happen to have a similar way to handle dueling. After all-" and here a grin crossed his face, a smile that spoke of pure malice and disregard of the pain he was causing, "we do have to beat each other at our own game, after all."
-----
She stared in repressed anger at the bodies of the two duelists before her. The duel hadn't gone the way she wanted at all.
The man standing next to her chuckled as he picked up the duel disk from Jack's D-Wheel.
"This one is mine," he hissed. "I did land the final blow, after all. Are you taking the other? Your attack was the one that defeated him, after all."
She looked at Crow's fallen form a ways away, the bile rising in her throat at the way he had lost.
"No. He threw himself in the way of the attack meant for your trophy. It was a defeat of his own choosing. I didn't defeat him."
"Then I suppose this marks him off the board. The current score is one killed in my favor, one dead of his own choosing, and one little girl remaining..."
He grinned at her. "This makes it my win."
She glared back at him.
"How so? When I defeat her, it will be a tie."
His cynical laughter echoed in the battlefield.
"I said, the targets were the remaining Signers, little witch. Have you've forgotten that you're a Signer?"
He let out another mad-sounding giggle.
"This means, that, come time, I will defeat you. It's all part of the game, Kurobara Majo."
----
Ruka felt her heart stop at the sight before her. Her brother's body, bleeding and broken, flung down the stairs by a thorny vine. She had heard a snap as his neck hit the floor.
He was gone.
His last words shouted before the attack ht him still hung in the air between them. "R-Ruka! You should run! Aki-neechan is-she's really strong! Get out of here, Ruka!"
How had this happened? She had been separated from Rua for only a few minutes, when he had secretly taken an alternate path leading away from her. She had heard him complain about a "creepy feeling" inside the building, and indeed, she had felt it too-but they were in Ylliaster's headquarters. Of course there was a creepy feeling.
If she had known that what he was feeling wasn't the threat of their enemy, but their friend...
...he wouldn't have...he wouldn't have...
"Why?! Why did you do this?! He cared, he cared a lot-he...he called you Aki-neechan!" She felt tears in her eyes threatening to spill over.
"He got in my way," the Kurobara Majo replied coldly. "Going on and on about protecting you. If he had kept quiet, he would have lived..."
"You-!" Ruka prepared her duel disk, ready to fight. She didn't have to be coerced into this duel.
Her brother was dead. She was coming for her next. And then there were more people behind her that would die if she wasn't stopped here.
Ruka had to stop her, now. She had to.
----
"Thorn Whip One!" One monster down, the vine then reaching forward, striking the frail young girl and driving her into the wall.
"Thorn Whip Two!" Another down. Her life points dropped further as the second vine burrowed itself into her leg.
This was...it couldn't be...
"Thorn Whip Three!" This one struck her across her face, leaving a bloodied gash.
This was the same way her brother had...
"Last Thorn Whip!"
The fourth and final one burrowed through her stomach, driving her through the wall. Her lips were extended in a silent cry, her hands reaching out in stunned shock. The vine shook her loose, letting her fall to the floor below.
"Rua!" she thought frantically. "Rua! RUA!!!"
She felt her body hit the bottom and knew nothing more.
----
She drove on her own, intent on getting to the agreed rendezvous with that man and finish the score. She, at this point, didn't give a damn that the score was tied. Killing him would automatically win her the game.
She found herself infuriated when a familiar D-Wheel blocked her path.
"Sherry," she growled out. The woman that had inspired her shell to start Riding Duels in the first place, her current teammate in the World Cup Grand Prix.
"There you are," she responded, her tone surprisingly cold. "I had wondered where you had gone, partner. It seems you haven't come back yet."
"No, she hasn't. And she won't be."
"I doubt it," the woman bit back. "Aki would be horrified to find out what she had been doing with the speed she had come to enjoy."
"Out of my way," Kurobara Majo growled. "Unless you want to die."
"I'm not here for that. I'm here to remind Aki what she came to learn Riding Duel for."
"And that is?" sneered the witch.
"To be able to know what's inside others' hearts-including her own."
----
Aki froze when Rose Tentacles' attack struck her opponent across his face, taking half of his helmet off in one clean strike-she hadn't meant to put that much force into the attack; she had let his taunting get to her, let herself lose control of her powers. That exact same problem that had started this whole mess...
"Aki..."
The voice was as cold as always, but it seemed to have momentarily lost it's taunting playfulness, the quirk that had always intimidated her, as much as she hated to admit it. She then nearly stopped her D-Wheel on realizing that he had called her Aki, not Kurobara Majo, as he had condescendingly addressed her the whole time she had known him. And that tone of voice...only one person...
"I did say that I wouldn't reveal my identity to you until after this game was over..."
He turned his partially revealed face to her, and she couldn't hold back the gasp she saw after seeing the familiar shock of black and yellow hair, the cobalt eye, now rimmed with silver, and that gash along it that she had inflicted the last time they had met...
No...it couldn't be...
"...I suppose this means I'll have to end it, then."
-----
Aki's D-Wheel nearly flipped as she struggled to regain control after she had barely managed to escape that last attack. Despite her managing to escape some of the damage, her life points were dangerously low, and her hand was empty. She was at a clear disadvantage after that strong blow he had unleashed.
"This game is over!"
She growled.
"It is not over!" Something flashed into her mind. "You're still a Signer! If I do beat you, then I will win your twisted little game, whether you like it or not!"
He was silent. Then, slowly, chilling Aki to the bone, that dark smirk that had been missing for some time crawled back onto his face, an amused, sardonic chuckle escaping his lips.
"Still fixated on our little game, are you?"
His colbalt eyes met her amber ones, and she shivered.
"You really are the Kurobara Majo."
Aki felt the rage bursting inside of her and she struggled to check it.
"Shut-SHUT-UP! My turn, Draw!"
(A/N): Review please?