So, um. Once again, I apologize for the insane wait for this chapter. It probably sounds like a broken record at this point, but apparently late chapters are a regular thing now. I am not proud of this fact. All I can say is that two jobs + trying to figure out how to afford college loans and food are not very conducive for fanfic writing. IRL, you suck.
This chapter's mostly going to be some introspection, on the main cast's part. I figured this'll give me a little breathing room to plan out the next duel (why do I do this to myself? Only the gods know...) as well as give everyone some time to decompress after the last chapter. Also, reactions and drama and angsty stuff! Yay!
Anyway. Thanks to our new story favoriteers and follows, ARCangel asriel, SuperShadic2002, Tchevon Siddell, Jaunedice, ringtaillemur0, and Lilitigerlover~. Author favorites and follows go to SuperShadic2002, Tchevon Siddell, Jaunedice, and Lilytiverlover. Thank you for adding this story (and me!) to your lists, despite how long it's been since the last update DX.
To my reviewers I also send you thanks and virtual cookies~. As well as responses...
Zeladious: I promies, I have Plans involving Yuma. That's all I can say about last chapter...you'll have to wait till the next update for the first of those Plans also X'D
dianapinto19041: Thank you for not killing me ^^'. You're welcome for the update, and I can guarantee that this is not the end of the fic! As stated above, I still have Plans for our protagonist~
Aura Aura: It's gonna be a chapter or two till we see Yuma again. But in the meantime: Reactions.
The Writer of Darkness: I'm glad you're liking it! X'D As for the plotholes, I didn't actually know Kaito's age when I started writing this, ehe ^^;. I was going on what I could guesstimate from the anime, and not all of it is...right XP. As for Ryoga, I think we do see him the same school uniform as Yuma on several occassions, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're the same age. Either way it's too late to go back now and revise, sooo...yeah. Whups ^^;
The thanks still apply to Ben Arclight Tuskumo and to our guest reviewers, even though I couldn't get to you guys' reviews (it's a page already with the author's notes DX. I don't want to go over!). I'm glad all of you are enjoying this so far! (Despite all my procrastination...)
I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal, or anything else in the Yu-Gi-Oh saga for that matter. The whole thing, manga and anime, are the property of its creator, Kazuki Takahashi. I'm just messing with canon for my own amusement.
Chapter 28
Fallout
Yuma's dead.
Kotori still didn't believe it.
Yuma fucking Tsukumo was dead. Her best friend, her oldest friend, was gone.
It didn't feel possible. Didn't feel true. But it was, and it felt like a giant piece of her heart, the part right next to Tetsuo and Todoroki and Shark and the others, had been torn out.
And it hurt.
"Hey, Kotori? The final bell rang a minute ago."
Kotori started; she hadn't heard it, having been too wrapped up in her own thoughts. For that matter, she hadn't been paying much attention to the class either—almost a week later, and that day was still too fresh.
Every time she closed her eyes, she still saw Yuma getting attacked by the, the...thing. Saw his chest get torn open. Saw him unconscious, the blood...
She shook her head. Stop. Just...stop. It's already happened. Dwelling on it isn't healthy.
Oh, how many times had she told Yuma that since coming to Neo Domino? And now here she was, not taking her own damn advice.
Kotori stood. "I'm coming," She said, sounding a lot more normal than she felt. Zei met her outside the classroom—he'd been the one to prompt her out of her own head. Weird, since normally it was either her, Rio, or Ryoga (usually involving swatting the surfer with something in his case) to snap him out of the daydreaming.
Or, in Kotori's case, day nightmare.
They walked in silence to the lockers, the others likely already having left the building. "You feeling all right?" Zei asked.
Kotori grunted as she returned her books to her locker. If she was honest, she felt numb. Cold. Like she wasn't sure if she would recover.
This must be what Yuma felt like like Astral was...when he "died". She thought. No wonder he left Heratland...right now, I'd do anything to make what happened...go away.
But she didn't say that. Instead, she said, "I'm...okay." Well, it wasn't technically a lie, Kotori told herself. She was functioning, right?
Even if 'functioning' was about all she was doing. Thank god she and Rio had already managed to win two duels; if not, she wasn't sure if she'd be a very helpful teammate.
Though it wasn't as if Rio hadn't been unaffected as well. If Kotori had been withdrawn, then Rio seemed to be in a walking coma. The other girl had barely said two words in the week since Yuma's...death, Kotori forced herself to acknowledge, and even Shark hadn't been able to really pull her out of her funk.
Speaking of, even he and Kaito seemed to have put their mutual rivalry aside. Or at least, hit pause on it; neither of those two hadn't so much as tried to bicker with each other. Thomas was another matter...though even those fights seemed halfhearted, more keeping up appearances than anything.
They were all hurting, just all in their own different ways.
Some, more...ah, vocal than others. Case in point: Kaito. Of all of them, the Numbers Hunter had had the loudest reaction to the news. He'd literally yelled at the doctor, demanding that he stopped bullshitting them.
He hadn't been, and Kaito had looked like he had wanted to punch the doctor's lights out. Instead, he'd settled for the nightstand after he'd left. And then threw the empty water glass at Thomas after the former Asia Champ had made a halfhearted joke about Kaito having a man crush on Yuma.
Thankfully, it hadn't gotten farther than that. Thomas may have made the badly-timed joke, but Kotori had seen that he'd been hit as hard as she and Kaito had; he'd crossed his arms tightly, hunching forward where he was standing against the wall as if he were curling in on himself.
Shark hadn't said much, but his eyes had turned icy. Rio had eyed her brother, worried; Kotori had seen that look before, and she suspected that Rio knew even better what that icy silence from her brother would turn into later.
If someone told her there was a dent in his dorm room wall afterward, she wouldn't be surprised at all.
Chris and Durbe had been the hardest to read; the elder Arklight had just stared out the window, his expression unreadable, arms crossed in a mirror of Thomas's posture. But, where his hands were gripping his upper arms, his knuckles were white.
Durbe had sunk into a chair, taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes. Kotori knew that he was Varian, but if so he was an awfully human one. His words were the ones that had stuck with her the most.
"We're fucked."
Just two words, but they were very, very true. And put a voice to what pretty much everyone else in the room had been thinking, among other things like "this is a mass hallucination" and "I'm going to kill that motherfucker".
Frankly, Kotori was in the latter camp. If someone put her in a room with the one who'd summoned the monster that had killed Yuma, she wasn't sure if there wouldn't be a corpse.
She finished putting her books away and changing to her outdoor shoes. She and Zei headed back to the dorms in silence, her mind winding itself into the same knots it had been for the last week. She knew it wasn't healthy, that she needed to stop dwelling on what had...happened. At least, that's what she told herself.
Unfortunately, her brain didn't seem particularly interested in listening.
"So, um. Term papers're due tomorrow." Zei's voice sounded flat. He never talked about schoolwork, which only made the attempt at converastion all the more forced. Zei and homework didn't exist in the same universe; no way, no how. It was one of the few constants Kotori knew about.
Like Yuma. Or at least, she thought he was.
Everyone's wrong sometimes.
Sometimes the one who's wrong is the universe.
Kotori shook her head, trying to banish the whirling thoughts. They needed a rock, and since their usual rock of insanity and reckless and stupid and...anything other than stable was gone, Kotori figured that role fell to her.
Zei gave her a worried look. She shook her head again. "I'm all right. Just...too many thoughts."
"About...that."
Kotori grunted. She swiped her student ID, and her door unlocked. "Thanks for walking me to my room."
"Eh." Zei shrugged. "I figured it'd be better than the alternative. We gotta keep each other up, right?"
It took Kotori a moment to process what the surfer was trying to say. She smiled weakly at the thought. "...Yeah, guess so." She murmured. "So. Um. See you in class tomorrow?"
"Yeah. Guess so." He rubbed the back of the neck. "I'm gonna go check on the others. Make sure they're still, you know. In one piece."
Relative term. Kotori thought. "Right. Don't forget your paper tomorrow. Tanaka-sensei might put you in detention again."
Zei cringed. "Uhh..."
Welp. In a funk or not, Zei still managed to make Kotori roll her eyes out of exasperation. "You haven't even started on it yet, have you?"
"I've started on it!"
"Riight." Kotori turned to him and crossed her arms. "When?"
Zei hesitated. "Erm. Uh...I checked a book out of the school library earlier today?"
Kotori groaned and facepalmed. He's doomed. "If you want me to help you finish your paper in one night, you're out of luck. Mine's done, ask Tōya if you can mooch off his." She shook her head, pinching the bridge of her nose. "For the love of god...no wonder you ended up friends—you're exactly like Yu—"
She caught herself, not finishing the thought. Not because it wasn't true—exactly the opposite, really. Yuma was exactly the person to put off doing a research paper until the last minute. Had done it, multiple times, back in junior high. She remembered having to physically drag him to the school library, sit him down at a computer, and haul ass on him till he had something resembling a report done.
No, the aversion to homework was 100% accurate. It was what it stirred up that made her stop.
Anger. Sadness. Emptiness. Pain. Stuff she didn't want coming to the surface, not when there was still someone out there looking for the Numbers and trying to destroy this world by messing around with the Varian world.
The sigil on her chest pulsed warm. Apparently whatever power in her agreed; whoever it was had to be stopped.
How they were going to do that with one Sentinel missing was another matter entirely.
Apparently Zei felt the same way, because he didn't bother either finishing the thought, or protesting it. "Um. Okay. I'm going to make sure nobody else has had a mental meltdown now. And finish writing my term paper for Tanaka. See you."
Zei booked it out of there, heading the wrong way down the hall than the elevator. Kotori rolled her eyes again and entered her dorm room, not bothering to point out the fact that the surfer was heading for the stairs. He'd figure it out.
There was a note on her desk from Rio; she'd dropped off her things and headed back to the school library to do some math homework. Kotori filed this information away as she dropped her bookbag on her bed and changed out of her uniform. With no homework of her own to take care of before the next day, she wasn't left with a whole lot else to do.
She pulled out her tablet and opened up the messenger app. Hopefully the others were having a better day than she was.
000
"Keep that up and you're gonna put a hole in that thing."
Kaito paused and scowled at Thomas. "What the hell're you doing here?"
Tom shrugged a shoulder and leaned against the wall. "It's not school hours. When the guy in the office asked why I was here I just said I was friends with a student, which is true."
Kaito snorted and punched the punching bag again. "'Friends' is putting it a bit loosely, don't you think?"
"Eh." He shrugged again. Kaito went back to beating the hell out of the punching bag, pretending that the former Asia Champ wasn't there. "It's okay to admit it, you know."
Kaito snorted again, but didn't stop the beating of his punching bag. "Admit what?"
"You're upset."
"I'm not upset." He puncuated his response with first a punch, then a roundhouse kick.
Thomas raised an eyebrow. "Could've fooled me. It looks like you're taking out your anger over Yuma's death—"
"Shut up!" Kaito didn't even bother trying to keep form, just imagined the punching bag had Thomas's face on it. His fist smarted as he turned on Tom. "Don't even. Mention...that."
"Ignoring the fact won't make it go away. You know damn well how true that is." Kaito thought he heared pain in Thomas's voice, but the angry part of his brain chose to ignore it. He listened to the angry part. "And I know too damn well, so don't even start."
Kaito scoffed, gave the punching bag one last angry kick before heading to his gym bag. He pulled out a towel and started wiping some of the sweat off of his face. "Shouldn't you be off pissing off Kamishiro?"
"I was, but then he threatened to strangle me with my own necktie so I figured I'd see if you were in need of some company."
Kaito snorted loudly and gave Thomas the finger. "Guess what; I don't. Go find someone else to piss off. Don't you have an older brother to annoy?"
"Chris has got a lot of stuff on his plate right now, otherwise you can bet I'd be there being as irritating a younger brother I can." If Tom was trying to hide concern under his flippant tone, he was failing miserably; Kaito could pick it out even without looking at him. The man was leaning against the wall, trying to look chill, but his shoulders were way too tense to pull it off.
Whatever else Christopher Arklight had on his plate, it was enough to worry his brother. And if the WDC debacle had been any evidence, it had proven that Thomas Arklight was an egotistical jerk who didn't get worried about much of anything.
So again; what was Chris dealing with that was so bad that Tom was wound up in knots?
Kaito figured the only way he'd find out was if he bit, so he did. "What kind of 'stuff'? Other than the whole keeping-the-world-from-coming-apart-at-the-seams thing."
Thomas's mouth thinned. "That's...it's complicated." He replied at length. "More complicated than I want to admit."
Okay...that was cryptic. Kaito narrowed his eyes, but didn't prompt him; he was pretty sure that was the most of an answer he'd get out of the former henchman of Tron. Whether that was because Chris was keeping things from his own brother, or because Thomas wasn't feeling particlarly generous when it came to information, Kaito didn't know or particularly care.
"What are you going to do about the tournament?"
Kaito put down his water bottle. He sighed, shaking his head. "No idea." He replied. "And before you say it; yes, I do know that if I don't find a replacement partner before the start of next round, I'm out of the running. I also don't care."
Thomas made a frustrated sound. "You do realize that Faker's been mucking around with the Varian world since the WDC, right?"
Kaito closed his eyes and took a deep breath, willing the rage to not bubble out from where he kept it shoved, in his mental closet. "Yes, I am fully aware of this fact. He's the bastard who implanted Varian abilities in me, and started pushing Haruto's abilities past their limits. He's also the reason why my baby brother's in a coma, so yeah. I kinda know that he's probably related to this Damien guy in some way." He replied in a very measured, modulated tone; all the better to not kill him. "You don't need to remind me. And neither does Chris, for that matter."
Tom didn't reply right away. "At least just...think about doing something about next round. Moping isn't going to do anything."
Kaito was packing up his gym bag. He paused and gave the man a frown. "Did I just hear concern come out of you? Because if it is, I'm calling a shrink. You might've fallen on your head and gotten brain damage or something."
Thomas snorted and rolled his eyes. "Please. The sheer volume of emo you're exuding right now is making my skin crawl. I figure it's either that or swallow my pride and be a supportive asshole rather than just an asshole."
"I'm still gonna call brain damage." Kaito said, packing up his gym bag and heading out the door. "Mostly because the whole idea of you being all sappy and supportive just freaks me out. And not a little bit."
"Yeah, yeah." Thomas turned and left. "Next round starts this Friday, by the way. Figured you'd probably want to know, if you want to stay in the tournament."
He left, and Kaito was left feeling frustrated and weirded out. Shaking his head he let out a noisy breath and dropped the gym bag. Apparently he wasn't done beating the life out of the punching bag.
000
"Knock knock. Anybody home in there?"
Ryoga let out a muffled groan and batted at the pencil poking at his hair. "Shut up. I'm studying."
"Right. And you're really reading that book, not using it as a sleep mask." Rio tapped the math book, and underneath it Ryoga scowled. "And I know you're scowling under that textbook, nii-san. Don't even try to hide it."
Grumbling, Ryoga sat up, letting the book fall onto his lap. "You're a pain in the ass sometimes, you know that?"
"It's the job of a little sibling. Same with making sure her older brother isn't sinking into a full-on emo-fest." Rio propped her chin up on her hands, thankfully refraining from continued pencil pokes. "And you, Ryoga, are doing really good at sinking into a full-on emo-fest."
Ryoga scowled at her. "I am not."
"Yes you are."
He crossed his arms. "Am not."
Rio raised an amused eyebrow at him. "Do you have any idea how stupid you sound."
Ryoga responded with a middle finger. Rio replied with a sweet smile. "You are an asshole."
"Considering who I've got for an influence, it shouldn't be that much of a surprise."
"Did you seriously just call me an asshole?"
"Yes. Because you are one. And right now you're an emo asshole."
"I am not an emo asshole!"
"Could've fooled me."
Ryoga flopped back down on the sofa and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Aren't little sisters supposed to be, you know, cute?"
Rio made a rude sound. "Riiiiight. Probably other little sisters, but not this one. Mostly because of the sarcastic pain in the ass big brother I grew up with."
Ryoga let his arm hang over his eyes, covering them. Not looking, he extended another middle finger in the direction of the chair Rio was sitting in. She let out another rude-sounding snort. "Love you too, nii-san. Now aren't you supposed to be working on Shisui-sensei's assignment?"
Ryoga lifted his arm up and peered at her with one eye. "Wasn't I supposed to be the one helping you with math homework?"
"Well, technically...but I also used it as an excuse to get you out of your room so you'd spend more than five minutes moping."
Ryoga frowned. "I haven't been moping."
"Uh-huh. Right. And I'm a fairy princess."
Now it was Ryoga's turn to let out an ugly snort. "You. A fairy princess. That's a fucking joke."
"My point exactly. Which is why I'm using math homework as an excuse to be your counselor. Or would you rather I drag you to the school therapist instead?"
Ryoga's glower deepened. "You wouldn't."
"Damn right I would. Now for the love of god talk about it, or I'll go find Thomas, drag him here, and shut you two in a closet and wait to see what happens."
Ryoga made a retching sound at the idea. "No. Hell no. I'd rather eat rusty nails than be stuck in a closet with that asshole."
"Hence why I'm giving you an option that isn't that." Rio replied, reaching for her half-done geometry homework. "And besides, bottling stuff up isn't exactly healthy either, Mr King-Of-Emotional-Constipation."
Ryoga snorted. "You want emotional constipation, go find Tenjou."
"You're both a pair of emotionally-constipated idiots." Rio tossed an eraser at him, which he blocked with a hand. "And I can see what the effect of...that's been having. And before you protest I'm your sister. I've literally known you for my entire life. I know when you're not doing well, and you're really not doing well."
Ryoga snorted again and sat upright, idly paging through his math book. "I'm doing fine." He rolled his eyes at the glare Rio shot him. "Well enough to function."
"Barely. I can see the bags under your eyes, Ryoga. And coffee isn't a substitute for sleep."
Ryoga eyed the cup of coffee that was sitting—likely cold by now—on the table next to his elbow. "I'm not a morning person." He replied lamely.
"Still no excuse for drinking it like it'll make up for lack of sleep. Seriously, you look like a sleep-deprived vampire."
Ryoga stuck her tongue out at her and halfheartedly scribbled math equations in his notebook. He didn't like math class anyway, so he just did the homework on auto-pilot.
Rio was giving him a strange look. "What?"
"You're not bitching about having to do math homework." She replied. "Normally you bitch and moan the whole time. And you didn't get stuck with extra for trying to piss off Kaito in class earlier either, did you?"
Ryoga peered at her. "Regular homework is bad enough. I don't need to deal with more." It was true enough.
"Never stopped you two idiots before. Once I swore I could hear you two at the other end of the school. This whole last week you two've been civil." She crossed her arms. "You. Are. Not. Doing. Well. And I'm not looking forward to the explosion that's going to happen when your feels-bomb hits critical mass. Pretty sure nobody else is going to like dealing with the aftermath either."
Ryoga's mouth went into a thin line. "If you're implying that I actually miss Tsukumo, you're nuts." He grumbled, purposly not looking at the glare his little sister was giving him. It was frigid enough he was convinced it could flash-freeze water solid if she tried. "He was a freaking idiot, annoying as hell—"
"And one of your friends." Rio interrupted, finishing the sentence for him. "One whom you saw get attacked by that Varian monster. And you didn't leave the waiting room while Yuma was in surgery..." He heard her shift, and he suspected it was her crossing her arms. "I was sitting right next to you when we got the news. You looked like you were either going to break something or start crying. Admit it or not, you care, damn it."
Ryoga finally met his sister's gaze. "Okay, fine. It hurts. It hurt a week ago, and it's still hurting but you know what? It ain't gonna do anything about it. Talking about my damn feelings isn't going to bring Yuma, in all his annoyingness, back. It's just gonna remind me that he's—" Dead. That he's fucking dead. And that Damien shit's the reason why.
If I ever see him again, I'm going to rip his fucking head off.
"Killing things won't either, Nii-san." Rio's statement made Ryoga realize that his hands had balled into fists. He carefully unclenched them, flexing his stiff fingers.
"Well, it's either track down Damien and pin his ass to a wall, or spill my mushy guts all over the floor. Frankly, the former's far more appealing." Ryoga snarked.
Rio rolled her eyes. "Not gonna argue that Damien's a piece of human garbage—"
"Piece of shit's the term I'd use, but human garbage works too."
"But," Rio put emphasis on that word as he interrupted. "Still. Not gonna help. What will help is working through the funk you've gone and dug yourself into—and not breaking any more walls—and then figuring out where to go from here."
Ryoga grunted. "You're starting to sound like Chris. 'Yes, Yuma's dead and that's sad and all, but we've got a much larger problem of saving the world. Let's take care of that before grieving, since that's more important'."
Rio tossed a pencil at his head. He caught it. "That's not true and you know it."
"Is it?" Ryoga sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. "He literally said that we needed to find someone to fill the place of Light for a Sentinel. That was his priority, not Yuma."
"He also said that we needed time to cool down, sit back, and process it. Damn it Ryoga, just because everyone else isn't punching walls or screaming obscenities at a video game—don't even start, my room is right above yours and I can hear you yelling at Subnautica though my floor—doesn't mean they're not hurting. Kotori is. Kaito is. Zei and Tōya are, I am...hell, even Thomas and that guy Durbe are. And Durbe literally showed up right in the middle of the fighting!" She crossed her own arms, mirroring his posture. "I'm not saying I trust Christopher implicitly, but he's not the heartless asshole you seem to be seeing."
Ryoga snorted softly. "Whether you're right or not, it still feels to me like he's just standing back and letting the rest of us do the dirty work for him." He replied, tossing Rio her pencil back.
"You sound like you're saying we should just butt out and let somebody else handle the Varian World situation."
"I'm not saying we should butt out. I'm just saying we're being used as tools. And I don't like it."
Rio arched an eyebrow at him. "Are you turning skeptic on me now? Kinda late, considering the Numbers and rips in the sky. And the whole elemental thing, too."
"I'm not denying all that's real." Ryoga scoffed. "I'd have to be an idiot to think that the whole Numbers thing, followed by these magical elemental powers, and a guy who can tear holes into other freaking worlds was all a hoax." As if it were responding, Ryoga felt the sigil on his chest tingle. "And besides, even if we did go off and mind our own damn business, I'm pretty sure this Damien and whoever he works for would've come gunning for us sooner or later. I cite the Captain Crunch fiasco."
Rio made a sound in her throat. "Okay, I'll give you this; I'm not going to discount that Chris has got something that he's not telling the rest of us—"
"I told you so!"
"Let me finish." Rio pinned him with one of her famous 'I will kick you in the balls' stares. "I'm not going to throw out the idea that Chris—and probably Tom too, so don't even start—isn't telling us everything. But I'm also not going to say he doesn't give a damn." She sighed and shook her head. "But you're stubborn as hell, so I'm just gonna go back to my homework and let you be cranky."
Ryoga went from leaning back in his seat ot sinking back into it. "I'm not being cranky. Just realistic."
"You're being cranky. And immature." Ryoga responded to her comment with a middle finger. "Not listening."
Ryoga grunted, but went back to his own math assignment. Our side or not, I'm still not convinced that Chris isn't working some plan of his own. He thought. I've been strung along once already. I can't help but think we're all getting strung along again.
000
"No." Thomas paced, running his hands through his hair. "Chris, you know it's suicide! You just- you can't! It's the same damn reason you had me team with Shark for the tournament!"
Christopher was perched on the window ledge. "It's also our last gambit, Tom." He sighed. "I wish it hadn't come to this either."
"No shit." Thomas shook his head. "This ain't a normal tournament. You're putting your life on the line here."
"Yes, I realize that." Chris gave him a somewhat amused, but mostly long-suffering look. "Hence why I say it's a last gambit." He was looking at the back of his right hand, where his Varian crest was etched. It wasn't visible, but Thomas had no doubt that his older brother could feel its presence—he certainly felt his, every moment of every day.
The back of his hand tingled. The symbol over his heart prickled in response, and the mixing of the two was...uncomfortable. He wondered if the mixing of the Varian abilities and Sentinel power was going to accelerate the...downsides of the crest.
Which one's downsides was...another question.
Again the crest on the back of his hand twinged. He balled it into a fist, ignoring it. He ran his free hand through his hair again. "Tenjou isn't going to take it well."
"I know."
"He's going to be stubborn as a mule."
"I know."
Thomas peered at his brother through his bangs. "You could die in this. There's going to be Shadow Games."
"I know."
Thomas rubbed his face with his hands. "Fuck." He said. "Fuck all of this. Fuck everything. Fuck that Damien bitch. Fuck Tron for starting this damn mess."
"Tron didn't start it. He was simply a cog in a much bigger, much more long-running plan in the works." Chris responded, his tone mild. He had his hands in his pockets, probably to hid the trembling. Tom wondered how long he had left. "One that's going to come to fruition very soon." His eyes flashed to Thomas's direction for the first time since he announced he was going to replace Yuma as Kaito's partner.
Thomas thought it was a bad idea.
He raised his hands in an 'I surrender' motion. "I know, I know. I get it; we don't stop Damien's boss, the world gets fused together with the Varian and Astral worlds. Which would be bad."
"Putting it mildly." Chris rubbed his forehead, sighing tiredly. "This is going to be nearly impossible without Astral, though..."
"Which implies that it is possible without Astral." Thomas was pacing again; the news his brother had just dropped on him was sending his brain into overdrive, and the pacing was keeping him from having a nervous breakdown. Mostly. "I get that you're not telling Kamishiro and Mizuki and Kaito and the rest of the kids the whole story, but I'm your brother for fuck's sake. If you're not gonna tell the others what you're planning, you can at least tell me."
Chris was hesitated before he replied. "I wasn't...I didn't want to put you in more danger because of it." he said at length. "It's kind of the opposite of an older brother's job."
"We're not kids anymore. And you don't need to take the brunt of Tron's crazy anymore." Chris nodded slowly, but didn't reply. "I'm serious here, Chris." Thomas added. "And Tsukumo's dead because of all this. Like I said already; if you don't want to tell the others, at least tell me what you're thinking. I even went out and did mushy, supportive shit. I almost got strangled for it, too. I don't wanna have to do that again, its gross and kinda life-threatening."
Christopher let out a soft snort of a laugh, but he didn't reply. Thomas was about to give up and leave the room when his older brother spoke. "I can't tell you everything I know about what's happening, but I can tell you what I've confirmed." He said softly. "I'd rather you not tell the others, but what you do with that information is up to you."
Thomas grunted. "And it's including why you're going to put yourself in the line of fire."
Chris nodded. As he began explaining, Thomas couldn't shake one thought that kept on running around in his brain.
I hope this doesn't end up being a suicide mission for him. I'm not ready to lose another brother.
Ahh, angst. Gotta love it.
I swear though, this chapter has a purpose, I guess? When I was writing it I didn't really have anything in mind other than "reactions to Yuma dying" and kinda...went from there. So if it's kinda windy and crap, apologies ^^;. I wasn't really going anywhere in particular with this little interlude, other than into our characters' heads.
Next chapter though we get to see Yuma again, as well as a couple of very familiar faces. Until then, feel free to speculate and discuss what is/could be happening. I'll try to answer at least some of them in...whenever the hell I get around to posting the next chapter XP.
Keep reading!
~Hikari Hellspawn
