A/N: Written for the Green Room 2015 (Rlt), Challenge #7 – The Not So Dark Side Challenge, and for the ZEXAL non-flash bingo, #020 – Kamishiro Ryouga. And, funnily enough, there's exactly as many words in the fic as the year I was born.
And finding a title for this fic was hard for some reason. The one I originally came up with unfortunately wasn't G rated. :D
Past Chains and Fate
If he won the right to the Numeron Code, he was going to do something about fate. It was downright cruel, making the person who'd destroyed his life thrice over his ally and the person who'd dragged him out of darkness that last his enemy. It was downright cruel in that it made him mourn for his little sister six times that he could recall – and then she'd be returned to him, only to be snatched away as though she were the carrot to be dangled in his face and he the donkey that could do nothing else but chase after it.
And now he had to fight his best friend for that right. But he knew Yuuma wouldn't use the Numeron Code like that if he won. He mightn't even use it at all, not even to bring back all the friends he'd lost. He was just that sort of person, the sort who couldn't be chained by the past, who'd learn and march on with his head held high.
Nasch on the other hand was a man destined to be forever caught in the chains of his past. He had things, and he couldn't lose them. His sister was the most precious of all and he'd already lost her too many times. When she'd sacrificed her soul to cleanse the dark spirit of Abyss. When Vector had tossed her off the cliff. When the car had hit – but that didn't really count, did it? Since they'd entered the bodies of Kamishiro Ryouga and Rio after that accident, and cut off their souls in the process.
Essentially they'd murdered two children on their death beds to get a third chance at life. Even if they might have died anyway. Their parents had after all. And that freak jellyfish who'd hit the Kamishiro's car seemed to think so as well. But Nasch wouldn't trust a word out of that slimy mouth. He'd poisoned both him and his sister.
And it was because of him that he and IV had gotten a tag duel out of the mess, and a long overdue friendship as a result. A friendship that had an end almost as sticky as his friendship with Yuuma would, even if it had skipped over some of the drama in the middle. They'd fought against each other so many times with at least half (and that was being a wee bit on the generous side) being because of misunderstandings. Sure, IV was to blame for the incident that had landed Rio – Merag, in truth – in the hospital for months. IV was to blame for his disqualification from the championship match and barring from the competitive stage. And what was he supposed to do with his life without that, huh? That's what he'd thought at the time.
Turned out he wasn't some prodigy duellist after all, but a reborn king. So it was only natural he was a good duellist. It was only natural he was some sort of leader, though evidently not a good one. He'd lost his sister to the enemy. He'd lost his entire army to the enemy, and a little girl he'd thought he'd saved. His kingdom had been destroyed beyond saving before the so-called Prince of Madness had taken his own life and ended the nightmare.
Not that the nightmare really had an end. It was still going now.
He still didn't know how King Nasch of the United Poseidon Lands had died. He didn't even know if he had died. Maybe he'd transcended death instead, passing into the Barian World. Maybe that's why he was the leader of the Barians, instead of the other king amongst them. Instead of Vector, the Prince of Madness – and that name had stuck even after he became king. Really, once he saw the past in its glorified truth, he realised it should have been king of madness all along. He hadn't been mad at all as prince, but kind and noble and unwarped.
But all of them were warped, and therein lay the twisting factor of all of their destinies. Because Vector had orchestrated his sister's death, by summoning that God from the ocean and leading her to sacrifice her priestess self in order to purify it and stay its destructive hand. Because Vector had caused his army's deck, by playing that move that destroyed every monster in his deck. What did it matter that he won in the end? What did it matter that Vector died in the end? It hadn't even been by his hand. The Prince of Madness took his own life, in his own kingdom. He left the world on his own terms and Nasch didn't even have enough pieces to pick up his life or duty.
And then there was the Barian world. Their memories of the past were locked away for a time. Forgotten. Nasch was the leader of the Barians and Vector was number four, but there was a mutual hatred between the two of them neither could explain. They hated each other, and eventually Vector acted on it. He grabbed precious Merag by the neck and dropped her off the cliff. Because that was another thing that hadn't changed. Nasch and Merag were siblings, and closer than anything or anyone else.
And then there were their lives as Kamishiro Ryouga, and Kamishiro Rio. Two children suddenly orphaned in a car crash, and the man responsible was a criminal who'd be in jail for the rest of his life and still not be able to pay for his crimes. Who'd died in jail, to be precise, and then had been reborn in the Barian world as a jellyfish and come back to haunt him. And be defeated by him. And unlock the cascade that led him to learn the details of his previous lives, his true lives. That led him to realise the past of Kamishiro Ryouga before that car accident wasn't his at all, and that it was the same for Rio.
At least Rio – Merag – was his sister in all of those. That was something he wouldn't have to lose. Until Vector killed her a third time.
And Yuuma… Yuuma was originally just the idiotic kid who'd challenged a duellist far out of his league for a stupid thing like friendship. And somehow managed to unlock the power he'd needed to pull out a win. Granted, that had involved Astral and Number 17: Leviath Dragon and Number 39: Kibou ou Hope and those three had made it far more…supernatural than the duel was original meant to be, but regardless, Yuuma won and Nasch – Ryouga then, or Shark as he was known as – lost.
And with that one duel, he lost the little gang he'd built. Hence why he said he wasn't much of a leader before the whose past life and Barian mess came in to it.
So he lost. And started looking for a hole to crawl in to because what was left? His sister still hadn't woken up, too, and now he was the ridicule of the school in more ways than one. He sunk like a rot. He never expected someone to go in and drag him out, but he did. Yuuma did, and stubbornly, he wormed himself into Ryouga's heart.
They fought together. Many times. For the same goals. For other things. Against common enemies. Yuuma gave him a Number even. A part of Astral's memories: his soul, his life. A part of them…and a part of the Numeron Code as well. That's how close they'd come, and they only got closer.
And then the Barians. Learning each of their legends, their memories. Finding his own. Finding the truth about his existence, how he didn't belong on earth at all, how he couldn't be fighting the Barians with Yuuma and the others because he was a Barian. And worse, he was their leader. Nasch of the seven Barian Emperors. It was a joke. A really cruel joke. But it was the truth. He was the guy Yuuma would have to take down eventually to save Astral, after the bonds they'd built together.
And of course IV was going to fight to save his best friend, not caring that his best friend didn't technically exist. He could have kicked destiny in the face, said he wouldn't partake in those games, in that fight, that he wouldn't be the enemy he'd spent so long fighting –
But he didn't. Instead, he killed the guy who'd thought of him as his best friend and buried Kamishiro Ryouga along with him. And meanwhile, Vector did away with Merag for the final time.
Funnily enough, he'd wound up fighting Vector anyway. Maybe that was fate's way of being nice, or extra cruel. Because that fight revealed where the blame truly lay. Not with Vector after all, even though there was so much blood between them. But between Don Thousand who was the God of the Barians and how were they supposed to slip out from under that thumb?
Even when he was defeated – and fate decided to be cruel again by throwing him together with Yuuma before the final fight – he inherited the duty of the Barians. He was the last of them after all. The last of the Emperors. Don Thousand's successor, even if he'd never asked for the role. He had the rest of the Numbers, the ones still out of Astral's hands. He was the only other person who could, and had to, fight for the Numeron Code.
Yuuma was his best friend…but Yuuma stood against the Barian World, against the chains of his past, against a world that collected those chains of his past because that was what it did and the Astral world simply cast them adrift. It wasn't Yuuma's fault. Yuuma was just the lucky one to get Astral. It wasn't his fault either. He couldn't control his destiny. Turning from the path would have meant abandoning thousands of people who'd trusted his life to him. Would have meant abandoning an entire world that had put their faith in him.
And so here they were, fighting for the right to the Numeron Code. It would be the last battle. If he lost, he would die. If he won, he'd have the Numeron Code and one wish to be granted by it. To alter the course of fate, so that all the tragedies they'd had to bear wouldn't occur. He imagined they'd be back in the Poseidon Lands in that case, King and Priestess and not at war because Vector won't be manipulated by Don Thousand into madness and lay siege on the kingdom across his sea… It would mean losing Yuuma, losing IV – but he'd lost everything so many times it just didn't matter anymore. He regretted it. He did. But he'd lost things too many times to fate and he was going to lose Yuuma here as well, no matter what the outcome of the duel would be.
Unless Yuuma was an idiot and used the Numeron Code to bring him back to life or something. In which case, he'd kill the boy himself if he didn't bring Merag back as well.
Which Yuuma just might do, he realised. Yuuma wasn't the type of guy to be chained by his past but he might just bring back the ones who'd lost their lives in the final day and there were a lot of them and mostly his friends. He really just might…
But his eyes met Astral's and it suddenly occurred to him that Yuuma wouldn't necessarily have a say in what happened with the Numeron Code either way, because technically it was Astral had the Numbers.
Not that it mattered. He wasn't fighting to give the win to someone else, even it was them. He was fighting to win. He was fighting for the Barian World, and for the kingdom of long ago, both he'd failed.