Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh GX
Title: Red To Black: Chapter 2: Empty Halls
Characters: Juudai
Word Count: chapter: 1,081||story: 2,106
Genre: Drama, Angst||Rated: PG-13
Challenge: Yu-Gi-Oh GX Non-Flash Bingo; Diversity Challenge, section I, #19, chapters between 1000-2000 words
Notes: This begins in episode 136, just after Jim and O'Brien leave to follow Shou. Juudai's mind did not fracture into Juudai & Haou and this will be a retelling of how he came to power. Summary: Juudai's always won before and it always fixed everything. But now that he's won and it's fixed nothing, what can he do?

Aside from not knowing what he was doing with Super Fusion, Juudai also had no idea of where he could go now. He glanced down to his deck; Super Fusion pulsed there, dormant but there. That more or less made up his mind for him. He needed to know what to do about that card.

So, I should either ask someone or find something that can tell me. Brron had known, but he wasn't around to ask anymore. Not that Juudai would've done a damn thing but kill him all over again if he had somehow come back.

Juudai stared at the castle surrounding the arena. So far as he could tell, he was the only one there now. Unless some cook or dishwasher hadn't yet heard the news.

His shoulders prickled a little at the thought of how terrified his last duel had made everyone here. He wasn't certain if he wanted people to fear him like that...

On the other hand, it wasn't such a bad thing, really. The amount of people in this world who were actually good people, the kind of people he didn't want to fear him, could be counted on the fingers of his hands. Everyone else, he didn't care if they were afraid of him. If they were, they'd leave him alone. They'd leave the people he cared about alone.

Juudai's heart wrenched just the tiniest bit at the thought of Shou, Jim, and O'Brien. How far...

His feet moved him without conscious thought. He walked back over the bridge and outside, looking around, hoping. Would they be there, still angry, but waiting for him to join them? He hadn't listened to anything that had happened afterward, being too wrapped up in his own hurt. Now his heart lodged in his throat, hoping beyond all hope...

No one was out there. The mad dash of all of Brron's troops to get away from his killer as fast as they could obliterated any tracks that might've been left behind. He couldn't even find a trace of the Sonic Duck he'd ridden here.

No one there. No one at all. Tears pricked at Juudai's eyes and he refused to let them fall. He set his jaw and turned back to the castle. He didn't think anyone was left in there, but it would be better to check and find out. There were other reasons too, as his grumbling stomach attempted to remind him. Brron couldn't do anything else to him or the people he loved, but Juudai wasn't averse to taking food from his defeated enemies.

It took him two hours to search the castle up and down. Doing do provided two finds that meant he hadn't wasted all of his time. One of those was the kitchen, where he feasted on what looked as if it had been meant to be Brron's dinner. Juudai made a good meal of it, though his appetite wasn't completely what it should've been. Despite how much his stomach growled, it was hard to feast properly knowing that most of his friends were dead and the ones who weren't hated him now.

The other find was the kind of place he'd never spent too much time in: a library. There he'd spent the majority of the time he wasn't eating searching for anything and everything he could find about Super Fusion, which turned out to be almost nothing at all.

It needs evil souls. That was the most he could dig up, and nothing more. It didn't completely make sense to him, and he wasn't sure if that was because he didn't know nearly enough - or anything at all - about magic and the creation of cards. He was pretty certain that neither Hayato nor President Pegasus used anything like this method to create them.

He also didn't understand how his friends could be considered evil at all. They were some of the best people he'd ever met.

That stinging in his eyes came again. He ignored it again.

He connected them to those Wicked Doctrine cards of his. I guess that qualified. Every moment of his duel against Brron blazed in his mind, and while he didn't understand everything that happened, he knew what had happened. He almost wished he could forget a few of those details.

But there wasn't anything else he could do here. Wicked souls, that was what he needed to find to bring Super Fusion into full life.

And why did he want to do that? Sure, it was powerful. He was a Fusion duelist and this card was the essence of fusion. So why did he want to know what could truly bring it into existence?

The answer presented itself, cold and clear and unyielding and twofold.

His friends had died for it. This card was all that he had left of them, that and his memories and their decks and duel disks. He couldn't carry those around with him. Already in the back of his mind he knew he needed to take care of them somehow.

But if this card existed in its full power, it would be as if they were there with him again. It wouldn't be enough. It couldn't ever be enough. But it might be all that he had to hold onto now.

And the other half of the answer: this world needed a ruler. Someone who could stomp out people like Brron and Zure and Scarr and all the rest, people who killed other people. People like them didn't deserve to live.

I...I need to look around. He hovered on the verge of that last step, not fully ready to take it yet. He needed, wanted, had to know if there could be someone else who would take on the reins of power. Someone who could rule this world the way that it should be, the way that any world should be, with justice.

He wasn't going to find such a person here in Brron's empty halls. He didn't know if this world had such a person at all. So he packed up his backpack with all the portable food he could find. Who knew when he'd run across a tavern or the like, and regardless of whether he wanted to or not, he had to eat. Not eating wouldn't bring anyone back.

If it had, he would've fasted until they did return.

As ready as he could be, he set off in search of a king.

To Be Continued