A/N: Hey folks! It's been a while, but here we are with the latest chapter. Sorry for the lower than normal quality, but the chapter was hard to write and I have very little time for writing these days.

Chapter 13: Alone Part 2: Stranded in a Crowd

A Few Hours Earlier, Koyou's Perspective

I stood there in the bathroom of the hospital, staring at my reflection. Looking at it was painful, and it filled my stomach with a sagging feeling that I still can't describe. Not quite revulsion, not quite hatred, and quite of lot of empty detachment. Why was my face that way? Why didn't it feel like my own reflection? Who the heck was I if not the guy in the mirror? Thinking back to the make-up with Aki and Yusei, I found myself dwelling on the reason I'd parted ways with them and isolated myself and couldn't help but wonder if the entire thing had been an act.

I had meant it, at least I was pretty sure I did. I wasn't lying when I'd said any of that. The problem was everything I felt about it was so shallow. It was like I was relieved and happy because I was supposed to be. Worse still was the stark realization about the entire situation. The whole reason for our fight in the first place had been just as shallow. Watching Aki over the past few weeks and talking to her again... I felt nothing. It was like she was a completely different person that I had no feelings for at all. That was the real her though... the her I'd always said I'd wanted to bring out. The her that I wasn't in love with. Had I ever really loved her? I had to wonder.

In hindsight, everything seemed so shallow, so faked. I'd gotten angry over Aki's feelings for Yusei because I was supposed to, broken up our friendship over it because I was supposed to react that way. All for a love that I couldn't be sure was ever real. Had I been confusing my desire to help her for love? Had I taken a physical attraction too seriously? Why were my feelings gone if they were really love? Why did what I felt for Sherry so different than what I had felt with Aki?

I couldn't stand to look at the face in the mirror that wasn't mine. So I looked down at my hands as I slammed my fist into the sink in front of me. Scenarios upon scenarios ran through my head of how things could have worked out or fell apart based on different actions I could have taken, my mind trying to figure out how I was supposed to feel. I swallowed that compulsion to scream at the top of my lungs and the desire to punch the wall until well after my hand was broken to mush on the unyielding structure.

Why was nothing real? Why did I only notice how bad it was just recently? Only one thing felt real, and that was Sherry. She was the reason. What I felt when I was with her was so genuine that it made me notice just how fake everything else I felt really was. Why I had felt for Aki was completely different... If my feelings for Sherry were love, then everything that happened between Aki, Yusei, and me was a pointless lie.

Tears fell out of my eyes... and I only realized because I saw them. I didn't feel any sort of connection with the act or even the slightest emotional relief from it. Looking at the reflection in the mirror I fought back the urge to smash the mirror. Fought back the urge to grab the sides of my head and scream for some sense of identity. Fought back the feeling of my mind going in every direction and of the cold grip of insanity creeping up my spine to seize me by the back of my head and pull me into the abyss.

In that moment someone came into the bathroom, not even giving me a second look. After all, I was just some guy staring down at my hands to anyone giving a casual glance. I escaped out the door before he noticed and deliberately took a path to avoid where the others would be if they were still there. Honestly, I don't remember much after that. That includes how long I was driving aimlessly around the city on my runner before I noticed the plume of smoke and realized I'd gone to the hotel Sherry had been staying at. Even though there was a ring of police around the building as I got off my runner and approached, my troubled mind didn't fully register what was going on until I was stopped by one of them.

"Hey, you can't go in there! There was a gas explosion inside and they just got done putting out the fire. We're still giving the place a-"

"Which room?"

"Are you a-"

I grabbed him forcefully, my desperation and unstable state blinding me to his station, "What room?"

"Get your hands off me and calm down!"

I shook him, "JUST TELL ME WHAT ROOM IT WAS!"

"Number 312! Now let me go before I place you under arrest!"

I let him go, mostly because of the shock of having my fears confirmed. Sherry was staying in room 312. They'd found her. I pulled out my phone and dialed her number...

"The number you have dialed in not in service. If you feel that you have received this message in error, please-"

I hung up the phone. The cop I had man-handled was saying something, but I was too busy freaking out and looking around for any sign of Sherry or Mizoguchi. I pushed my way through the gathered crowd and searched nearby alleys with no idea what I should be looking for. Even in my desperation I knew that if there were obvious signs they would have already been followed and removed by the wrong people. Obviously though, I wasn't exactly in any kind of state to let good sense control my actions so I just kept moving from alley to alley looking for things I knew would not be there.

Through sheer luck my gaze passed over a pair of guys watching the smoke from an incompetently thought out hiding place. Both were plain and indistinct types with a common haircut, with the same brown hair. It would be hard to actually design fictional people more generic than them, aside from making them act less suspicious. They gave themselves away even more when they spotted me looking at them and hurried away. I rushed after them, but in the few moments it took to reach the end of the passage they'd been at was enough for them to exit the other side. Worse still I wasn't able to get to the end of the alley before they'd broken out of sight and left no sign of them at all. Not even a clamor, the scuffle of footsteps or a knocked aside trash can. Pursuing was a matter of blindly guessing which way they went and hoping for the best. Which didn't turn out well. Going back for my runner wouldn't exactly help either, they could have just gone into a building.

"Dammit!" I kicked a nearby trash bin in frustration. "Sherry..., where the hell are you? You can't be dead this easily! You've been doing this for 15 years!" I crouched down and hid my face as tears flowed and I kept breaking further down, "You can't be dead!"

The next thing I knew I was on my feet again and kicking the hell out of the garbage can. I'd clearly been doing it for a while without being aware, the things was a wreck, nearly stomped flat. It was a shooting pain across my body that brought me out of that sudden black out and let me hear the ringing of my phone. It took a second to process it, and another to answer it after I saw the lines of my Dark Signer markings glowing and the flesh they covered smoking a little, the smell of burning flesh wafting in the air.

I put on a fake calm disturbingly easily before answering, "Hello?"

The voice on the other end was my mother, "Koyou, your friend Sherry is here. She's waiting in the garage."

I relaxed, and the marks went away instantly. I swallowed hard, deciding without hesitation to conceal the fact Sherry's apartment had been attacked, "Really? Is everything okay?"

"I should ask you that same question. Apparently you left the hospital without saying anything to Yusei and the others? Now your new girlfriend shows up-"

"She's not my girlfriend." my voice cracked.

There was an awkward silence, but mom broke it only after a moment or two, "Listen, I know you are going through some things. I understand probably better than anyone other than your father could. Your father had a lot of trouble when he was in your spot too, and he didn't," there was another pause, likely her making sure Sherry wasn't within earshot, "He didn't have two incarnations of chaos sealed inside him until after he was over them. You're probably going through living hell and I'm sorry I haven't been able to help you more."

"Mom... there's nothing... You had just lost Dad and have another kid on the way. I understand. You weren't in any shape to help and I wasn't exactly letting you." I sighed, "I'm just sorry I've been worrying you so much you got sent to the hospital."

Mom paused, unable to deny that the stress of our situation had been a big factor in her collapse, "It's not any failure of yours. It's the situation. You have no idea how many times I've watched these kinds of things happening, watched people I care about struggling for their lives. The last one took your father for good this time and now here's another not even a year later? I don't want to lose you... but I know you can't back away from it."

"I'll... be fine."

Mom cut right through my lie, "You need them, Koyou, stop running from your feelings and your friends and just go straight for what you want. You won't go wrong that way."

"Yeah... I hear you."

"And come talk to your girlfriend, I think she needs you. Something happened but I know you're the only one she'd talk to about it."

"She's not my girlfriend."

"Well fix that while you're at it. It's pretty obvious she's crazy about you." I would say Mom was teasing, but she sounded weary and deadpan about it, "Come straight home."

"Yeah. I will."

"If some crazy person talking about doom and the future of humanity tries to duel you on your way back, just tell him it's a bad time and ignore him okay? I'm too tired to do my end of the whole routine." Again deadpan, but probably a joke. I'm still not sure.

I laughed anyway, "Sure, Mom. I'll do that."

"Good."

"And Mom?"
"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

I hung up the phone and looked long and hard at my arms, their scars being covered by long sleeves did not hide the throbbing from my memory. I'd hidden the breakdown and the pain from my mother, the one person left in the world that could know anything to help me. I couldn't tell her, couldn't worry her. I couldn't let her know...

"All of it is an act."

"No... no it isn't an act. It isn't."

"Nothing has ever felt real, nothing has ever been real."

"That's not right. I have people I care about."

"Look at yourself, you're a monster. You never felt bad about that power, you enjoyed it. The pain is the only things that has ever made you feel like you were alive. The pain is the most real thing you've ever had in your life. The only things you've ever felt is sadness and anger. It's all you have."

"No... I... care about..."

"You're going mad. Right now you are talking to thoughts running through your head. This isn't some outside force screwing with you. You know that. You can feel it, this is your own mind tearing itself apart and at the same time trying to pull you back from the brink. You are a monster, a freak, and self-destructive cancer eating yourself apart. You know the reason your father had no trouble with chaos being inside him. You don't have the same advantage. You don't have emotions. You don't feel anything they don't give you."

"Shu-"

"No! Don't treat this as a separate person! This is you! If you push this aside... you'll go mad. I'm not normal. I'm not right in the head. I'm slowing losing my mind and the only thing-"

I stopped my thoughts there, sorting out the chaos in my head. The mental, not the cosmic. I was struggling with myself and I knew it. I was losing my grip on things, getting tied up in uncertainty and confusion. The reality was... The reality was I didn't know what feelings felt like. Such a simple, seemingly obvious thing was something I wasn't able to do. The only thing to do was to stop running in fear and tying myself in maddening knots, to go right at the goal. I just had to keep going to the finish line... Everything would be sorted out if I kept going forward.

I drove home and into the garage, spotting Sherry sitting on the couch near the stairs to the loft apartment. She looked as tired and wrung out as you'd imagine someone to be after their home was blown up. I got quickly off my runner and was the first to talk, "Are you okay? I went over to your place and saw smoke."

"We were both at the hospital, why did you go there looking for me?"

"I...," I honestly didn't know, "I thought you'd left and wanted to talk to you."

"About what?"

I honestly didn't know, "Well...," it was then that I realized she'd veered off the important topic, "That doesn't matter. Are you okay? They blew up your apartment and you look shell-shocked."

"I was not inside. Hospital remember? I did leave, but they hit before I arrived." She looked down, "I am a bit shell-shocked though I suppose."

I wanted to comfort her, but froze. I didn't have any idea how to comfort her. I'd never been good at comforting people really. After all, I didn't have many feelings, so I didn't know what to apply to help. In this case, that handicap hurt a lot more than usual.

Sherry looked up, and must have noticed some expression on my face that showed how I was feeling, "You look like you are more broken up about it than I am."

"I'm just not sure what I should do... I don't know how...," I swallowed hard.

Sherry smiled a little.

I gritted my teeth momentarily, then resolutely stated, "I'll keep my promise, that's how I'll help you feel better. We'll stop Yliaster. Problem solved."

"That is what I like to hear, Koyou. We wi-" Sherry was cut off by me suddenly embracing her.

"This is to make me feel better. I'll admit seeing your place like that scared me."

Sherry relaxed, but not completely. Most of the tension was from the stress, what remained was from her current position, "I told you not to complicate things."

"I'll keep that promise too."

"Good." Sherry pulled back from my embrace and kissed me.

I didn't understand my own emotions very well, but I knew there was one thing that felt real aside from anger and sadness.

Next Chapter: Teamwork

Preview: The World Tag Grand Prix, aka the Tag Force Tournament, hits full swing and the team of Mei and Koishii face off against their first opponents (one of which is a character contributed by a fan of this story). Meanwhile, Koyou and Sherry get back on track towards her goal of defeating Yliaster. We'll be jumping back to Sherry's perspective at the start of the next chapter, so be prepared.