Well, as I said in the description:

SPOILERS TO 145 + ahead!

This will be a piece similar to Mistakes (for those who have read that) as in I will be posting a chapter before each new episode, so I won't know what's happening other than Janime descriptions. Basically, it's my take on what I think will happen, or more accurately, what I'd like to happen.

It won't be very long, or if there are several chapters, it is likely they will be split up in this size... but it's me, famous for looooooong chapters, so we'll see.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Yugioh 5ds.

Chapter 2: Love

Planetary Particle

Yusei's POV

"Hope, was it?"

There was something amiss in this entire chaotic, self-serving, sacrificial act playing out before me. Aporia's change of heart (did memory-based machines have such?) was unsettling, but a welcome one, and although it was strange for my friends to call out for him as he was assaulted in this duel, one villain turned good was not the source of the problem. Perhaps it was in the way Zone spoke, that nearly mocking tone tainting the edges of his words, undetected by the others but kept Aporia and I hanging on his every syllable.

No, not mocking, that wasn't the right word for it. It was a heavy pressure masked by the light trill of amusement, it sent the hair on my arms standing on end for reasons I couldn't (didn't want to) fathom, and it rubbed me the wrong way entirely, but did not leave me swelling in anger like Jack, but drowning in a useless sense of something so wrong that I couldn't comprehend which way was up or down.

And Aporia just kept taking it.

He was terribly wounded now—Zone was ruthless in his betrayal, needing no motivation to attack a friend unlike Bruno and I.

Did Zone distance himself enough so that his ideals were all that mattered?

But his ideals were for his friends and for the world… for redemption and for life.

Had Goodwin not said the same thing?

Didn't I say I would chase down Goodwin's path?

Chasing down endless circles in my mind would do nothing to help anyone, so instead I returned my focus towards Aporia, who was still lying in the stern piles of junk, struggling to stand. Somewhere in Zone's last assault on Grounel and Wisel, a part of me had shrunk away from his plight, and now what I saw left me sick and drowning in the despair he was trying to save me from.

The two Momentum guards on his shoulders had shattered, leaving the rainbow colors of my father's energy to shine randomly, electricity sparked from every artificial pore in his body, chunks had been torn out of him, and when Rua advanced in concern he waved him down with a cracked hand. "This is nothing compared to what you have given me!"

Nothing? Can a machine even feel pain?

It shouldn't matter—Aporia is still the memory of Zone's dear friend—he shouldn't act like he was artificial intelligence that was malfunctioning and needed to be disposed of!

But could it be just that—a malfunction that caused his change?

"Please stop this Aporia." Zone had not moved from his throne other than to hover ten feet above it, and his mechanical arms remained idle beside him. Without body language, all I had to rely on to read the man within was his tone, and it was not out of kindness that he suggested this. It was a threat disguised as concern, perhaps even from Zone himself.

Would he not know how far he has fallen or is he trying to conceal his own despair—like Goodwin and his brother?

"There is no hope for their future," he continued, dropping bombs with hardly a care for where they landed or whom they hit. "They have nothing but despair—we know that. We've lived that. Do you really wish to create more with the end of this duel?"

Despair in its wake; does that mean you do not want to do this, Zone?

Even in opposition, the sound of his God of Destiny's voice flooded strength into his circuits, and Aporia stood. A brief glance back at us, Team 5ds, seemed to solidify him, and the stern grin appeared on his sparking face at the dark, conflicted message my mind was crying out.

"I will fight on for hope Zone, for what they have given me and what needs to be received!"

"Aporia…" I muttered, the weight I had always carried suddenly threatening to crush me with his name. Zone paused as well, almost as if struck or remembering something unpleasant, before vowing in a growl easy to make out, "Allow me to remind you what true despair feels like!"

True… despair?

Aporia's POV

"Allow me to remind you what true despair feels like!"

Behind my worried features, a smile hid. Thank you, Zone.

I needed to feel his anger as much as he needed to release it, and if that meant I had to become a target for him and bear his cross, if only for another turn, then I would. I would catch whatever he dished out, and leave the rest for Yusei.

His ace came quickly, followed shortly by an epiphany in Yusei's eyes and fear in the others. Time Machine Deity Metaeon, an incredibly creepy card by all standards, but one that had proven itself time and time again in the wars against the Machine Emperors. There was little to nothing I could do about this ace, it could not be destroyed by monsters, magic, or trap cards, and although it returned back to him at the end phase of a turn, Zone had many tricks in his hand left to play.

No Synchros though, only Antinomy played those cards still, clinging onto his Accel and Delta cards as if they were sent from the Messiah himself. Zone's silent objection to them, and the fact that he had this present's demise be through them, made me wonder if that were true, if he had a hand in their creation as well…

It was a pity I had never paid attention to the game before I became an elder. Perhaps if I had, before history, past, and future were destroyed in one fell swoop, I could have known the man Zone was before destruction defined us.

Like Antinomy had.

I spared Yusei another glance.

Like Bruno had.

"Time Machine Deity Metaeon attacks Machine Emperor Grounel (1)," Zone announced, followed by the general stunned calls of the peanut gallery.

"What kind of effect…?" Yusei wondered, bringing me relief that he wouldn't get caught up in the sheer stupidity of the zero attack point façade. I knew there was little I could do against it, so I would continue to play my own act.

"Attack, Grounel!" Easily, my monster destroyed the weak blast Metaeon sent my way, and I bid it a bitter farewell as Zone explained the invincibility of his card to the confused members of Team 5ds. The blonde woman and Yusei seemed to be the only two keeping pace, and her green gaze on the side of his face made me uneasy. She had no history of his life ringing in her ears to stop her from realizing what was happening, and it was likely she already suspected regardless…

Zone had told her to kill Fudo Yusei for a reason.

Yusei's POV

Aporia only had 500 lifepoints left, and I was no closer to figuring out what he wanted me to learn. If he had wanted to warn me about Zone's ruthless brilliance on the dueling field and his Ace Monster, he had achieved that already, and it was obvious he did not have an answer to it. So why did he keep giving me meaningful glances and dropping ambiguous hints?

While turning towards Zone, I noticed Sherry's intense gaze for the first time and had to repress the urge to jump. Her guard was up, making it nearly impossible for me to guess what she was thinking, and it struck me that Aporia might have been looking at her instead—that faint sense of dread on his face would make more sense then. "Sherry?" I wondered, but she backed down, still eyeing me in the corner of his lashes.

"The conclusion of this duel will decide it," she replied vaguely, leaving us all in the dark with enough skill to outfox Aporia and Zone. Aki shifted towards me, coming between us and giving the woman a hard look, protecting me and reminding Sherry what she and Crow had done for her in their duel. The French duelist smirked and turned towards Zone, resuming her stare down with no shame.

What has she…?

"I summon Skiel Carrier!"

What…? In the brief lapse of our attention, Aporia's face had smoothed from troubled and fragmented to sparking with determination, red eyes set firmly on his idol. Frowning a more natural expression to think with, I let myself put Sherry on the backburner to the duel before me, scraping up the haphazard strategy Aporia must have pulled with his drawn card.

Summoning Skiel will get him nowhere in this duel—Time Machine Deity Metaeon will destroy it and deal 1500 points of damage, eliminating his life points.

The terse silence from the man in the machine revealed his plotting as well, and I let the discomfort slide with a shift of my eyes towards Aporia's tightly clenched fists.

Perhaps he has something to gain from destroying Skiel himself then—a card effect? If he activates it's effect, he will get to draw 1 card for every two monsters destroyed… 2 more cards… could his strategy lie in those draws?

"Zone!" The timbre in his voice betrayed nothing of his damaged body. It was final, clinging onto the last hope his deck had left to offer, perhaps what he had been intending to show me all along. "Zone, these last turns mark the end of this duel!"

His God said nothing.

Growling out displeasure and desperation, "I will not allow you to carry on with your plans like this Zone! It is as Yusei and Team 5ds have said—your methods are dirty and they have poisoned you! You used to believe in the same hope that I do—you believed in the Signers and a new future! I don't know what's changed you, but I will make you see the truth—make your eyes see!"

Our gaze met over the battlefield in his last stand, the sacrifice he was about to make for me. "Yusei! Watch carefully!"

And so I did, for as long as I could.

Skiel Carrier went first; done in by the trap card he had set near only two turns ago, when he had still stood mostly whole and functioning. The Machine Emperor Skiel followed shortly, destroyed by its own effect in favor of more cards, as I thought. Then his entire deck went, much to the shock of my friends and the amazement of me. Aporia's gaze never strayed from mine as he discarded card after precious card, each I sensed, a gift from Zone at one point in their lives together. He had shed the Machine Emperors, the cards that had destroyed him thrice over, had obliterated the future, and had somehow 'poisoned' Zone.

It was a wonderful strategy, full of all the rough and wild feelings he held for the false idol, but a last-ditch resort by nature, and by the way Zone knowingly echoed "After Glow" once it was put into play proved it.

"That's amazing!" Rua exclaimed, always the lover of complex strategies at odd times. It seemed he had all but forgotten the threat Aporia had posed to his sister and Jack barely an hour prior, and his golden eyes shone with the hope he had filled Aporia with.

But it won't work, I reasoned, seeing the glint of betrayal in crimson eyes. Zone knows your deck, knows you only have one threat to him, and if he's as insightful as he's made out to be…

He was.

A new God entered the dueling field the moment Aporia ended his turn with After Glow waiting patiently to be drawn next turn and deal 4000 points of damage. As explained, Time Machine Deity Metaeon was returned to his deck as soon as his turn came back around, but the Trap Gate was still wide open, and his new monster was quick to emerge, forcing the newly filled graveyard to be return to his deck.

If Aporia did not draw After Glow on his next turn, he would die.

"Yusei!"

Sweat and blood abandoned me, drawn into the carnivorous lack of life threatening to engulf us, darkness beyond death, eternity, and nothingness all wearing the same flesh. "Soon we will be stuck in the gravitational field of the Black Hole. There is no path here that can get us to the light in time. If your next card is not a tuner, your elementary particles will be destroyed, and you will disappear."

Disappear…? Methodically jerking away from its alluring promises, I placed my smoldering hand on top of my deck. I had no doubt his words were true, the gaping pit promised me no sweet relief of death. Tense, unable to waste time with the fear and anticipation clawing at my throat, I shouted, "This is the last…"—not the last, I couldn't let it be—"the fifth!"

My friends who had already come so far were waiting for me—we were going to change the future together once more—and I could not fall here! Not to Antinomy or Dark Glass or whatever face he'll choose to wear next. For my bonds, for the world, I need this card!

He needs to die.

I drew.

"The third tuner, Hyper Synchron!" The sensation that flooded me was not relief, but I held onto it all the same, flushing it through my veins and letting it squeeze my wildly drumming heart. Anything to pull this off, anything to stop hesitating…

"Im-Impossible!" he shouted, though there was no true disbelief in his calls. He had known this was going to happen the moment I activated my trap, perhaps even from the second he showed me Clear Mind and the Delta Accel… "You can pull off three attacks?"

Deciding demonstrating was a better answer, I declared, "Shooting Star Dragon attack Halberd Cannon! Stardust Mirage!" Blue, yellow, and red light temporarily banished the darkness into its recess in our minds, sparing no time as they launched themselves at the stronger monster.

0 attack points against 4000.

He never stood a chance. Widening his eyes under the onslaught of power, a horrified and glorified whisper left him, "This is your…"

Taking his brazen features as the sign of a defeated enemy, not as the friend who was sacrificing himself, I demanded, "This is what you taught me, the power beyond my limits!" Hoping, somewhere against all the walls of denial I had forced around myself to finish this duel, hoping that somehow, someway, he would find a way back to me… Bruno would return.

"Yusei…"

As his lifepoints plummeted with a silent shout, the glass of his visor shattering over his right eye, I realized far too late that he never had.

I wondered if Zone thought the same about Aporia.

"I draw!"

Did he know, that with the last wheeze in his gears, the last spurt of Momentum's energy… did he know Aporia thought he was saving him? Did he know that this was not betrayal—

That was it!

I didn't have to look at Aporia to know that he hadn't drawn After Glow, didn't even spare the possibility under the impressive odds and the fact that he did not actually want it. He may have fooled the others, made them think that he had decided to fight for his life as well, but we both knew he was only fighting for Zone and that he would lose intentionally if it came to that.

It was Zone that did not understand.

It was I that didn't.

"Zone!" my voice left before I could stop it, after it was already far too late. "Zone—he's not—don't!"

Aporia's scream drowned the rest of my desperate splutter, ringing far too close to the last roar Bruno had spared before falling victim to eternity…

And briefly, desperately, his hand, alight with the blue inferno of electricity, reached across the dueling field, fingers clutching at the distance between him and the man he wanted to save… the friend who he had lost…

Beautiful, glorified, crowned with such an intense glow, and graced with such a slight smile, Aporia fell, dim eyes gazing towards the future he had seized with open hands. Sacrifice in its purest form, too wonderful and alluring to look away from, too heart wrenching to process until it had already passed.

"APORIA!"

Rua was the first to dart out of the stupor and throw himself onto the collapsed duelist's massive arms. Jerked forward by the string built of despair that was hope, I stumbled after him, falling to my knees at the man's side. "Aporia!" my cry was nothing in comparison to Rua's, his eyes already swimming with tears.

"Yusei…" he began softly, the mechanisms in his throat already spinning themselves into oblivion. The electricity had finally stopped running through him, and he had moments left, leaving us finally able to approach him, to seize that outstretched hand, at the cost of what little life his memory had left. "Have you seen it Yusei? The path towards our victory? Can you save him? Or will you keep pretending that you don't have it?"

Accel Synchro is more than light! Using it, carve your own future Yusei!

"I don't understand why Aporia," I murmured, bringing my trembling hand under his gaze. It curled into a fist, formed by the loss of two great men in such a pointless war, and sparked the cold flames of justice back into my blue eyes. "But I know what you want—no. I know what you and Bruno gave your lives for, and I won't let that go to waste! With the power of our bonds, we will overcome Zone! With your sacrifice, we know his strategy, and with Bruno's… I have the means to end this!"

The already lax muscles in his face seemed to sigh outwards, releasing whatever fear his restless spirit housed. "I wonder…"

A clawed hand engulfed my raised arm; it was both frozen and boiling from the dying war within his circuits, alien and uncomfortable, yet as familiar as the parting smile Bruno had left. As if seeping through his skin, the touch of death tingled up my arm and spread through my chest, tumbling through my ribs and jarring sensations long since sent into hiding, or not yet awakened. A lifetime of devotion played out behind the glazing red disks that made up eyes, and for a moment they were filled with such passion, such irrevocable, glinting joy that I doubted he was a machine at all—that this was the man who died at Zone's side, who begged to be of use to him, who gave his death and life to try and save the man who killed him…

"… if you had this much life in you…"

The man who floated impartial, offering no last condolences to his last standing and most faithful companion, who bathed in silent victory of one who had 'wronged' him, who had given us hope through the Accel Synchro to turn it against him, and who gazed at me with such a disdain so heavy it was almost pity.

"Why…" he whispered, the claw sliding from my arm and falling onto his deck carrier, flooding it with his last charge of energy. "… why you ever let it go…"

"Why I let it go…?" I echoed. The smile on his face was reserved for the likes of another man, or for three, for a child who found his lost family, for a man reunited with destroyed love, and for an old fool who had found his last kernel of companionship once more.

"Team… 5ds…" the fanged teeth disappeared behind hard lips. "Save… him…"

He said no more.

Rua screamed his name on repeat, clawing at his chest with the strength I didn't have left to do, instead turning towards Zone and glaring at him, wondering how many more times his friends would sacrifice themselves trying to save them before he saw it as anything but betrayal.

Before he realized he was wrong.

"Zone!" Ruca shouted. We all turned towards her in mute shock as she rushed forward, putting a firm hand on her sobbing brother's shoulder, repressing tears of her own. Tiny raised fist shaking with her words, she reversed the roles and protected her brother, shouting, "How could you do this? You killed your friend without remorse! Aporia died because of you Zone—how can you remain so unfeeling! I can never forgive—!"

"Silence!"

She reeled back, tears coming with her. Though his voice had not risen, it had been a shout all the same, but not one of scorn or misery or even denial. It was a proclamation, and it left no room for negotiation. He sounded every bit like the God his fallen, twisted, tools had seen him as.

Once again, unnoticed by all, Rua glanced at the tip of my D-Wheel and Zone's machine, sharing the chills travelling down the my back. There was something wrong here—something more than just a desperate man's means for an end.

"I'll defeat you Zone," I finally said when even Sherry seemed unable to recover enough to speak. Slowly, I stood, yanking up the sleeve of my jacket so he could see the Crimson Dragon's Mark that changed Aporia's mind, that, according to his friends, he had believed in at one point as well.

When he was upside down, a distant observant voice supplied wryly. When his view of the world was flipped with the Arc Cradle, when he still resided in the world of Speed and Feeling, surrounded by humanity's purest wishes and desires: Clear Mind.

"For Aporia."

I pointed down at his fallen corpse, forcing the man to look at his sins.

"For Bruno."

"The happiest days of my life were with you." The half-shattered visor cut at me from within my pocket.

"For that future that we're reaching for."

Cards were being pressed into my hand, a dragon for each Mark we shared, encouraging words building up the strength in my lungs and limbs, sparing me from the pit of misery I had fallen in with Bruno, and the chill of death Aporia had reminded me of.

"Zone!"

The plight of our efforts, the city watching with fear so great it was tangible, the ever-crushing world I carried on my broken back…

"I'll revive that hope within you!"

Sorry about the late chapter everyone, I had an appendix scare. So rest assured that I couldn't watch the episode! I just got to scribble down the chapter in my notebook while waiting for fun medical stuff... yay?

(1) Remember I decided he'd start out with Wisel? Oops...

And they're starting to get longer... oh dear, I'm not sure I'm capable of keeping things short and bitter after all...

ONTO THE ACTUAL EPISODE! (I hope they explain Yusei's flying D-Wheel from the opening, it'd be nice if it were a gift from Aporia since he has a momento from Bruno as well, but it'll probably be the Crimson Dragon-I mean, it's a red flying thing, come on writers...)

So everything's still clear and IC?

Thanks for reading!
~AxJfan