NO POVs WILL BE STATED.
Last chapter updated! (not including the epilogue)
A special shout out to Tenka for saying just what I needed to hear in the reviews, and an apology for the fact that I withheld the truth in my replies! Thank you for proving to me that this experiment worked!
~AxJfan
Disclaimer: I do not own 5ds, but I do own my twisted imagination and sick, ironic sense of humor. Isn't it grand?
Chapter Four:
Justice
Third Person POV
The moon had long since past its peak and the stars were mercifully quiet, leaving little light to be spotted by. Even the waves were still, offering only the occasionally mist for spurts of cover. One of these phenomena coated his white cloak and metal half-mask, and if there were light to go by, it would have made it shimmer.
Opposite to him, miles away—on the floor of a disaster-struck Hell—was a burned body. Below him, his repaired D-Wheel purred in anticipation, ready to carry him towards his future once more, towards his cruel and violent destiny. Beside him were his two companions, who quickly melded away into safety, at ease with what would be carried out here tonight.
Each had a role to play inside these complex bonds, and each would play it perfectly.
Even so, the silence was deafening. When he had reached his limit and could take no more, he was granted a small mercy: the roar of an engine, the player that would start and end this chain of broken evolution. The one who had to live.
His challenger appeared in a blur of white and red, a blood promise deep set in her scowl. The final pawn to God's Will screeched to a halt before him, removing her helmet as if he didn't already know her identity. Long blonde hair crashed downwards, catching the weak starlight and setting it aglow, golden.
Although obviously beautiful, her features were twisted, distorted, wild and inhuman. The only hint of her true soul played darkly in her rich emerald eyes, and he knew then that this was the angel sent from above, His angel of Death.
And he was not afraid, he had died once already after all. "So you've finally come for me."
"You killed my parents." Neither was she.
The billowing cloak he wore flowed off his shoulders with an indifferent shrug, revealing his dark riding suit below. The wrinkles in her already upset face deepened, aghast at the sight of it, but she stayed mercifully silent, knowing to engage him in conversation would lead ultimately to her withdrawal. Although his features were a pit peculiar—from the mark under his left eye to his chaotic two-toned hair, everything but his eyes were human—within those lied only the hate of a monster, dark and insane.
Even so, he was cool and collected, nothing like Placido who acted too aggressively or Luciano who was simply a child. He may have been the last to fight, but he would be the first in all else. "I may as well have."
She was shaking again, her features red, although this time it was certainly in hate. "I should have killed you the last time we met."
Both their duel programs deployed, announcing the activation of Speed World 2 so loudly that it echoed across the sea, yet neither of them mad a move to put on their helmets. After all, they both understood the world of speed and will they were about to plummet into. They lived for it.
And would die for it.
"You should have," he agreed without malice or mockery. A well-practiced switch of his thumb threw his machine into manual pilot and he added thoughtfully, "Though it wouldn't have saved you."
"I don't need saving! Not by the likes of you, murderer!" she screamed, voice low and booming, words trembling with her hands. "Yliaster can't save anyone!"
"Yliaster will bring justice and salvation," he replied simply, staring hard into her frigid soul, seeing the glimmer of others faces transposed over it. This time, his gaze did not stray.
She coughed up a laugh, bitter as the reclusive night holding its breath around them. "Justice? Salvation? So my parents' death was to save the world? Tell me! Tell me—who has Yliaster ever saved? Who has been granted salvation by that great white hand?"
"I have."
She chocked, "You? Look at you! Do you honestly believe that Yliaster has saved you? Do you believe that by killing your heart they've given you justice?" Then she paused, sick realization dawning in her evening eyes, and she could only stare at him, wide-eyed at her own conclusion.
It was his turn to laugh now, a surprisingly low, harsh sound, as if scolding a particularly nasty child for an unspeakable act. In that same moment of epiphany that burned harsher than any envy of the sun, the devastated woman began their death match, tearing out into the fixed dueling highways. In vain she tried not to hear the ringing of his justice in her ears or the weight of that responsibility on her shoulders, but he of course had to follow behind, his cold voice paining her with every single word.
"If I don't have the power to save anyone Sherry LeBlanc, how could I possibly save myself?"
She spoke no answer for that, though she housed it deep within her deck and veins, bet it on the value of her father's card. She thanked the night and wind for hiding their tears, and wished solely that it could mask their intentions, spare them from Fate.
She drew her first card.
When it was all said and done, the war over with another body on the floor, a D-Wheel upturned, the first rays of dawn sparkling off the cracked glass of his rearview mirror, she collapsed at his side and took his outstretched hand in hers, held it in bitter prayer, wept into his dying, rich, haunting sapphire eyes.
From her torn and battered suit, a single card flutter to the gouged road, resting beside his spilled deck, beside its silver opponent, united in victory and death, as always, silent companions.
The memory of her fallen mask bit deep, and her very soul unraveled at the look in his eyes, the steady, unquestionable gaze that had allowed her this victory, that had let her deal justice through and to the organization that had killed her parents, that had let her carry out her revenge, and that had shown her just where that path ended.
She doubled over and sobbed, clutching his hand close to her chest, forcing her eyes to stay open past the blurred tears, forcing herself to reveal her own personal truth to his maimed, destroyed soul. "I NEVER WANTED TO BE YOUR ENEMY!"
He reached upwards and smiled, a painful, beautiful sight, reserved just for the likes of her, his angel sent from the God of Destiny, his last hope in a word gone dark. His rough, calloused, bloodied hand brushed away the grime from her brow, but left the tears, knowing them to be necessary, and granted her his last breath.
"You never were."
He died with the sun in his eyes, beside a wingless angel, whose tears rolled thick and heavy down her face, whose hands steadily held his.
"Yusei?"
She did not look away when the ground began to shake or her lost card began to glow.
"Yusei?"
When the sun rose gravely across the once bustling city of Neo Domino, she did not care or notice.
"YUSEI!"
But when the wind picked up, carrying her mind past its limits, opening her heart to a new world of understanding, she smiled. Shaking with mirth and irony, she stared down at the peaceful face of her fallen once comrade, soaked in the wounds of her monsters, bathed in the forgiving glow of the sun. "So this was for them after all... you stopped them by... We stopped them..."
When his final light engulfed her, she was laughing, and from far above, under the sobbing eyes of the one who had cared and wished to remain from the start, the giant burning infinity symbol tore through the streets, obliterating what evolution had spared, wiping their story from the face of existence.
The bodies were gone.
Hehehehe...
If you review, I'd appreciate it if you told me:
1. What you think is going on.
2. The unnamed character identities
3. Where I epically failed
4. How the chapters are connected
Thanks for reading,
~AxJfan