XXII. Retrospective

Mutou-san had taken Jack and Crow to a car with blacked-out windows and the Kaiba Corp logo featured prominently on the front and sides. It should deter Security. Any Kaiba Corp car was able to pass through the blockades without so much as a second glance. Jack had learned that from his earlier trip with the Kaiba Corp employee whose name he hadn't bothered to remember. Having Mutou Yugi in the front was practically an official pardon from the emperor himself.

Jack had driven in many of these cars since leaving Satellite. Crow hadn't. He studied the inside of the car with the kind of paranoia Jack had always known him for. Check for cameras. Check the locks. They were still taking a massive risk.

No one spoke as they pulled out of the garage. Crow looked out of the windows, on high alert for any Security patrol planning on pulling them over. Jack took out his phone. He wasn't too worried about Security tracking it. Yusei had modified all their phones to be invisible on any network.

The home screen was empty. Nothing from Yusei or Aki. Nothing from Carly either.

If something had happened to Yusei or Aki, he would have felt it. But Carly… He hoped she had heeded the order to evacuate the city, but it wouldn't be the first time she'd landed herself in a sticky situation. And she still wasn't talking to him. He growled in frustration and typed out a new message.

at least tell me ur ok

He sent it and waited, tapping his fingers against his thighs to quell his nerves. Crow shot him an annoyed look. He tapped harder.

His phone's vibrations shook him out of his thoughts. He fumbled with the thing, activated it again and stared at the new message. Carly.

Im ok

It was short, far too short for Carly, but it was something. She was alive. She was okay and she'd talked to him again for the first time in weeks.

Should he have told her about the Dark Signers? Even now he didn't know if he'd be able to if he saw her again. Seeing her die, seeing her possessed by Aslla Piscu… It had been horrible and every so often, he still had nightmares. He didn't want her to remember that. He wanted her to be safe and far away from the mess they'd always managed to get themselves involved in.

But that wasn't like Carly at all, was it? She always stormed in headlong, her desire to know everything all-consuming. It was how he'd met her. It was what he liked so much about her. Jack closed his eyes. She'd keep looking. She'd keep looking forever if he didn't tell her. Was it worth it, driving her away to keep her safe?

A better man than him probably would have said yes. But Jack was a selfish man, and he didn't want to lose Carly from his life. He couldn't handle that, not after everything that had gone down. So he picked up his phone again and sent a new text, this one longer:

Im sorry, ill tell u what happened

It took over ten minutes for Carly to reply, ten minutes in which they had to duck down once or twice when an overly adventurous Security officer drove close to the car.

Ok

It was the only answer he got. Jack waited, but nothing else came through. Take it or leave it. He got the message loud and clear.

oOoOo

So this was the legacy Sagiri Mikage would be left with. The second director who managed to get the entire city destroyed during her term. And while Zero Reverse had not been the then-director's fault, it was because she'd been too weak to keep the city together that so much of it was in ruins now. All her arguments with the special defense forces had led to nothing. The entire inner city was in ruins, Security had had to arrest several people trying to destroy Daedalus Bridge, and she had absolutely no idea where Team 5D's, Team Chevalier or Team New World had gone.

Signing the arrest warrant with the members of Team 5D's on it had hurt. She'd liked them. She still wasn't sure exactly what had brought Yusei and Aki to the Ark, but the images didn't lie. They hadn't been fighting the other people on the Ark, as she would have expected them to do. There had been no duels, no speeches, no attempts to save the city. Yusei and Aki had been helping the others there. All of Team Chevalier and Team New World had been up there. They had been working together. To destroy Neo Domino City. It boggled her mind.

And then the Ark had disappeared. Small mercies, perhaps. It had disappeared before the self-defense forces could do any more damage to the city. All of her pleading hadn't stopped the shooting. The city had been evacuated, they'd said. Some structural damage was a small price to pay for the elimination of the enemy, they'd said. They weren't the ones who'd need to rebuild the city and restore peace.

With the Ark gone, Momentum had been restored but that hadn't solved any of her problems. Mikage stared at her computer screen, rubbing her temples. Her headache hadn't really abated in the last week or so. She'd slept maybe four hours a day for the last eight days and the end of her work was still nowhere in sight. Even her strongest coffee, the type that gave her stomach aches on a normal day, wasn't enough to keep her going anymore. She needed a break. She wasn't going to get it.

The phone rang again, as it had been almost non-stop ever since Momentum had come back. She glanced at the caller ID. Ushio. At least he could be trusted not to shout at her.

"Sagiri Mikage speaking."

"Mikage-san, hello. I hope I'm not bothering you."

Mikage made an impatient noise. Of course he was bothering her. There wasn't a moment when he wouldn't be bothering her. "What is it?"

"I found the twins."

"Really?" Oh thank god, finally some good news. The twins' parents had been calling her constantly in the half hour since the twins had disappeared. She'd almost snapped at them after they'd gone off on a lengthy tirade about how weak they were and how sickly Ruka was. Mikage had seen the twins in action. They were far better at surviving in the city right now than their parents would ever be. But she worried. She refused to believe that Rua and Ruka had known about the actions of the rest of Team 5D's. She knew Ruka had kept the Momentum reactor going in Neo Domino University Hospital. They wouldn't have helped if they'd known about this.

But then again, whispered a voice in her mind, so did Atlas-sama and Crow.

She dismissed it. She couldn't let a silly crush get in the way of running the city. And the odds that Yusei in particular would have done anything without Atlas-sama and Crow's knowledge was laughable.

"They're refusing to go back to their parents. Can't blame 'em."

Neither could Mikage. Still, she had a duty.

"Ushio-san, their parents are their legal caretakers, and they are very worried—"

"They want to tell us what they know."

Mikage sat up straight. Perhaps the two of them could shed some light on what had happened and what had driven their teammates to ally with their enemies.

"Can you get them here unnoticed?"

"Of course. I'll be there in an hour."

An hour later, almost on the dot, Mikage unlocked the door to let Ushio-san and the twins in. Ushio-san took up guard next to the door. Rua and Ruka came to a halt in front of her desk, identical expressions of defiance on their faces.

"Ruka-chan, Rua-kun, I'm glad to see you safe," Mikage said. Their harsh expressions didn't disappear.

"You're not sending us back to our parents," Rua said. "If you are, we aren't telling you shit."

"Language!" Ushio-san warned. Rua looked unimpressed. Mikage waved a hand.

"I'm not. I am far too interested in the story you have to tell to risk seeing you shipped off to god-knows-where."

The twins' parents had been very clear on that matter. If they found their children again, they would leave Neo Domino and the kids wouldn't be going anywhere until they were well into their twenties. Mikage had tried to temper their feelings. Privately, she'd laughed, one of the few laughs she'd had in the last few days. As if the twins could be stopped by mere locks when they'd defeated Dark Signers.

Mikage got up from behind her desk. Ushio-san gave her a quick reassuring nod, an unwavering presence. "Can you tell me what happened with Yusei-kun and Izayoi-san? Why were they on the Ark Cradle?"

The twins exchanged a look. "Yusei was trying to help," Ruka said. "And I'm sure Aki-neesan was too. To be honest, we don't know much about the Ark or what its goal was, but we know… Not all of the people who summoned it had bad intentions. They were trying to save a lot of people."

"By destroying Neo Domino?" Ushio-san ground out. Again, Rua and Ruka looked at each other. Mikage wondered if there was any truth to the old myth of twins being able to communicate with their minds. Something complicated passed on their faces until Ruka sighed and murmured, "What've we got to lose?" She turned back to Mikage.

"I know you know Bruno left the guys' house a few months ago," she began. Mikage nodded, confused. What did Bruno have to do with anything? Sure, he had been staying with Sherry Leblanc and her team, but he hadn't been present at any of their matches and clearly wasn't on the Ark. She was glad he'd been spared of it. She only hoped he was okay now.

"He left because he got into an argument with Yusei."

"I know that."

Ruka took a deep breath. "Yes. What you don't know is that he'd regained all of his memories a week before that."

"What?" But she'd asked Bruno! He'd told her he still didn't remember anything! Why had he lied?

"A while before that, Yusei was attacked by another duelist," Rua picked up, ignoring her exclamation. "Paradox. He traveled to the past. Yusei followed. Yusei defeated him and… arrested Paradox, I guess? He lived with the guys for a few weeks."

Again, what? What kind of secrets had Team 5D's been keeping from them? Time travel? It almost boggled the mind. If she hadn't seen the Dark Signers first-hand she would have dismissed their story altogether. As it stood, she was only barely giving them the benefit of the doubt.

"He and Bruno got along well. Very well. Should've been a clue in hindsight," Rua said with a dry laugh. "They'd been friends before Bruno lost his memories. They were from the future. They'd been trying to prevent the world's destruction."

Mikage closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. And here she'd thought this outing would serve as a distraction from the stress and the work piled onto her.

"So this Paradox character is still running around somewhere?" Ushio-san ground out. "Why the hell didn't you tell us? And what's all this got to do with the Ark?"

"You would've arrested Bruno!" Rua said. "We weren't gonna sell out our friends! We wanted to help him!"

"Yeah, where's Bruno anyway? If he was staying with Leblanc's team, why wasn't he on the Ark?"

Rua and Ruka shared another one of those twin looks. Ruka swallowed heavily.

"He was," she said. Mikage had to lean forward to catch her words. "Timothy Kant. That's Bruno."

The Accel Synchro duelist. Mikage only vaguely remembered a tall man who was always wearing his riding suit and glasses. She'd never seen his face. No wonder Bruno had been able to stay hidden. Team Chevalier had had a last-minute line-up change the day before Bruno had last talked to her. Then the other guy…

"Their backbencher is this Paradox person?"

Rua and Ruka both nodded. "Yusei and the guys didn't know about the Ark," Rua said. "Aki'd gone up there with Sherry. I don't think she knew either. And then Yusei tried to stop them once things down here were working out, so he went there too. And that's when those drones went up…" he trailed off, looking down. Mikage saw the picture take form in her head.

"All of the City and all of Satellite expected Yusei to be dueling… facing the attackers, trying to take them out. But they were just talking. You have to realize how that came across."

"I suppose he wouldn't want to duel Bruno," Ushio offered. Ruka frowned.

"Probably not, but if they'd really threatened to destroy the city, I'm sure Yusei would have anyway. So I think they weren't really planning on destroying Neo Domino, no matter what they said. The defense forces forced their hand."

And then the Ark had disappeared, fortunately before it could do any more damage. If Ruka was to be believed, that had been intentional. Fact of the matter was that Yusei, Bruno and everyone else on the Ark had now disappeared. That left an outstanding arrest warrant for Atlas-sama and Crow.

"You say Atlas-sama and Crow didn't know about this?"

Both twins nodded. "None of us did," Ruka said. "They were trying to help! We've been helping day and night since the Ark appeared. You can ask Kaiba-san!"

"Kaiba Mokuba? That Kaiba-san?"

"Yes! And Mutou-san and Manjoume-san and—"

Mikage cut her off with a tired wave. They were just name-dropping now. "Do you have any idea where Yusei is right now?"

The twins shook their heads.

"What about Atlas-sama and Crow?"

Hesitation. Ruka was the first one to speak up. "If we did, what would you do?"

"We'd like to talk to them and get their side of the story," Mikage said. Ruka looked thoughtful.

"We might be able to contact them," she said at long last. "If we do, we will tell you. In the meantime, I'd like for you to keep our parents off our backs. Please do not tell them you have found us."

Rua nodded alongside his sister, face pulled into a frown. With the calls she'd been getting from their parents, Mikage understood their request all too well. It was probably irresponsible, letting two preteens run around freely in the chaos that was Neo Domino right now. But it was their only hope.

"All right. What do you need?"

oOoOo

It had been a week since they'd arrived in the future. A week of sleepless nights as Yusei went over everything that had happened and everything they had to do. Neo Domino was in shambles. Satellite and the City were further apart than ever and the Bad Future —past now— would almost definitely come to pass. There had to be a way to fix it.

That meant going back in time to… Yeah, to when? And if they did, would that really mean never going back to Neo Domino again? Would they at least have time to find Jack and Crow and the twins? They shouldn't be affected by any changes they made to the timeline, right?

Yusei took a deep breath and turned around in the makeshift bed. None of them slept well here. Antinomy had walked past his room fifteen minutes ago. He could hear intermittent noises coming from Aki's room, like she was talking to someone. He wanted to tell her to keep it down, but he also didn't feel like talking to her at all. If they had to go back to the past, where should they start? The root cause of the Bad Future was Momentum (and wow, did that hurt to admit). But destroying Momentum was impossible. Stopping it from being created was too. They already knew almost everything there was to know about Momentum.

… Almost everything.

The original plans for the B.A.D. Momentum reactor, the very first one, had been lost in Zero Reverse through what Yusei suspected to be Rex and Rudger's machinations. The reactor itself had continued working after Zero Reverse, but it was substantially different from the main Neo Domino reactor in ways Yusei had never been quite able to grasp. If they could figure out what had led to the creation of the original reactor, would they be able to find a way to keep Momentum from going out of control? Everything he'd learned told him that there was no way to limit the output of Momentum, but what if there was?

Yusei sat up straight, not even pretending to be asleep anymore. What if they could control Momentum?

It wouldn't solve the problem of Satellite and the City, but it would give them time to fix them without having to worry about another disaster. And best of all, it just required knowledge of the original Momentum reactor. There would be no need to change the future in any real way. They would be able to go back to Neo Domino with no trouble whatsoever.

He got up. He was loath to talk to anyone right now, but he needed to. He left in the direction he'd heard Antinomy leave in and followed the lit-up hallway until he reached a large vault. It was open. Yusei knocked to announce his presence.

"Who's there?" Antinomy called.

Yusei said nothing as he entered. Inside was a massive laboratory, even bigger than the ones he'd seen at NDU. Any other day, Yusei would have been overjoyed at getting to spend time here. The fact that he couldn't enjoy any of the scientific facilities he'd been to in the last two weeks was seriously starting to get on his nerves.

"Who— Oh, Yusei." Antinomy looked up from the screen he'd been staring at. He eyed Yusei warily. "Can I help you with anything?"

"What do you know about the B.A.D. Reactor?" Yusei halted on the other side of the lab table. It was about as close as he was willing to get right now.

"It's the original Momentum reactor. It never stopped turning."

Yusei nodded. "The plans for it were destroyed in Zero Reverse. Did you ever recover them?"

Antinomy carefully considered his next words. "We tried to," he finally said. "Professors Fudou and Fudou were very… reluctant to allow people near the reactor."

The mention of his parents had Yusei suppressing a grimace. "I see."

"Why do you ask?"

"You keep saying Momentum is a fixed point in time and that it always leads to this future."

Antinomy let out a long sigh. "Yusei, look, I know you don't want to believe that, so it was pointless to tell you anything more—"

"I don't care," Yusei bit out. "Fine, Momentum caused it and Momentum's creation can't be prevented. Well, what about keeping it under control?"

"You think we haven't tried that?" Antinomy stood up. "Yusei, be real. Everything you can think of is something we've probably already tried a hundred times over. We've been working on this for years. Z-one was literally you, do you think he didn't think of the very same things? Momentum can't be prevented and it can't be stopped. It can't be controlled either. It feeds and feeds and feeds upon everyone's emotions until it overflows and explodes and we still can't do without it!" He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. "Look at this place! Look at my D-Wheel! They still run on Momentum. We don't have any alternatives!"

Yusei glanced around. He hadn't consciously paid any mind to what kept the lights on. This was still Momentum? In all their hatred, they hadn't been able to stop using it?

"I want to go back to when the first Momentum reactor was activated."

Antinomy faltered. "Are you sure?"

"Look, I don't want to go around changing anything. I just want info. And I think 2011 is the year to find it in. So I go back to Domino in 2011 and I try to find out what's going on. I want to see what made the original reactor tick."

"You realize that we've tried that already?"

"I'm sure," Yusei waved a hand. Antinomy's frown deepened. "But look, I've got resources you don't have."

Antinomy let out a snort. "Claiming you're the son of the Fudous won't get you access to the reactor. They'll just call you a fraud."

"Not what I meant." God, why did everything between them have to be so hostile? How hard could it be to have a single civil conversation? "I know Yugi-san and Judai-san. They know a lot of people that can help you. And they'll know me in 2011."

That actually got a reaction out of Antinomy that wasn't barely disguised disinterest. "… I see your point."

"I can get in touch with them. They'd already been trying to help me. They got me some of my parents' calculations. Maybe we can prevent Judai-san from disappearing altogether."

Antinomy nodded and sat down again. He gestured at a chair on the other side of the table. "You say you only want to go back for research. Do you realize that if you go back to prevent Judai-san from disappearing, the consequences could potentially be far-reaching? That they could prevent you from going back to Neo Domino in 2031 altogether?"

"It won't come that fa—"

"Do you realize that?" Antinomy leaned forward. Yusei was very glad for the table between them. He tried to meet Antinomy's eyes without flinching as the latter continued: "Time travel is fraught with danger, Yusei. Your mere presence in the past can affect the future. So even if you don't want to change anything in your past, it might happen. You need to be ready for that. I don't want you to get hurt."

Yusei snorted. Antinomy's face fell.

"Is that so hard to believe? I messed up, I know. But what other choice did I have? The original plan was to let the Ark fall within twelve hours of its appearance. The only reason we could convince Z-one otherwise was because he believed you might be able to turn the tide after we found out that it was Satellite and the City causing the Machine Emperors' appearance."

"If you'd just told me that!"

"Then what? Would you have been able to uphold a fake threat?" Antinomy leaned back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "You wouldn't have been able to. I knew that, Z-one knew that, Aki knew that, we all knew that."

"We're not talking about this now," Yusei ground out.

"Oh, then when?"

"Never, for all I care!" Yusei shoved his chair backwards. "Can you take us back to 2011 or not?"

"Of course we can! All I want to know is if you're actually ready for that!"

"I am!"

"Well fine!" Antinomy threw his hands up. "Fine, we'll take you. We'll talk about it with the others tomorrow."

"Fine."

"Fine."

They lapsed in silence. Yusei wasn't going to be the first to admit defeat and leave, and clearly neither was Antinomy. Yusei threw a glance at the computers around the lab.

"… Z-one said you're a clone of the first Antinomy."

Antinomy looked at him through narrowed eyes. "I am. What of it?"

"They managed to clone each other just like that?"

"We," Antinomy said, and Yusei grimaced, "needed a lot of time for that. I was the fifth viable attempt and the first clone good enough to actually reach maturity."

"… Good enough?"

Antinomy sighed. He pointed at his eyes. "Surely you've noticed my eyes aren't the way they should be?"

Yusei squinted. Antinomy's eyes were the same dull grey they'd always been. "What's wrong with them?"

"They're bionic. I was born without working eyes."

For a few seconds, Yusei didn't reply. Antinomy's eyes didn't reflect the light. He'd never paid attention to it before, but now that it had been pointed out to him, it was unmistakable. Bionic eyes were nothing new back in his proper time, but the technology hadn't quite reached the point yet of looking natural. With Antinomy, it was almost unnoticeable.

"What happened?"

"Ocular nerve didn't connect properly to my eyes. So they took them out and replaced them with eyes that would connect properly. Hence." Antinomy gestured at his eyes again. "Aporia has the same kind. Paradox was a far more successful clone than I ever was. He'll be fine in the long run."

That sent a chill down Yusei's spine. "What do you mean, in the long run?"

Antinomy shrugged. "I was the best of the lot, but I was still born with a whole host of defects that will probably catch up to me sooner or later. We patched up most of them and my body's probably gonna hold up fine for at least another twenty years or so. After that, it's anyone's guess."

That would put Antinomy just over forty when his body started giving out. Yusei clenched a fist under the table. "Can't you do anything about that?" he asked in a low voice. No matter how angry he was, there wasn't a single cell of his body that wanted Antinomy to die, especially not at such an early age.

Antinomy shrugged. "Why bother?"

Why bother?! "You can't be serious," Yusei bit out. "Are you telling me you want to die?"

Antinomy chuckled lowly. It only served to infuriate Yusei further. "Not particularly, but what does it matter? The odds of any of us ever reaching forty are minuscule. We were always going to save the future or die trying. If Paradox is to be believed, there already was a timeline where we all died and still couldn't save the future. There are hundreds of those. Maybe one Antinomy out there will actually succeed and have to deal with the fallout of this body in the long run," he gestured at himself, "but what are the odds that it's this version of me?"

"How can you think like that?" Now Yusei was furious for an entirely different reason. "Do you think I want to see you die?"

Antinomy looked away. "What I think or what you want has very little importance, Yusei," he said, almost whispering. "Do I want to die? Right now, definitely not. Does that matter? I'll try to avoid dying as best as I can, of course. But if I do, I can only hope it somehow helped to bring a peaceful future closer. I'll support your idea of going back to 2011. It's probably the best idea we currently have. But you have to be absolutely sure that this is what you want to do. Because if it's not… It could change your entire life, and you're not used to that like we are." He got up and walked towards the exit. Yusei didn't have it in him to stop him. "Think about it, Yusei. If you never believe anything else I say ever again, at least believe me on this: the point of no return will have passed before you've even realized it was headed your way."

Next chapter: Temporal-spatial-dimensional travel.