"Lua!" Luka screamed again. "Lua!
Her throat was growing hoarser by the second and she didn't know how much longer she could scream. The Aporia possessed Lua just looked at her impassively, when she could actually see him behind the wings of Red Nova, who was still valiantly trying to help them. Jack still held her hand, but his grip was trembling, and she could hear his breaths getting rougher and thinner. The beating that Red Nova was taking was taking a toll on him, and the heat of his fire that was coursing through her to strengthen her was beginning to weaken. She licked her lips and blinked back tears.
"Lua, please!"
It wasn't fair. She was always separated from her brother. They were both always getting pulled apart, getting kidnapped, having to disappear on each other, having to find each other again. She just wanted her brother back. She wanted him back so badly: him with his stupid bedhead, his messy eating, his laser focus when he wanted to play video games instead of washing dishes, the stupid way he never learned to tie his shoes. She just wanted her stupid, obnoxious, loud, heroic brother back! Why wasn't her voice reaching this time?
I'm so tired of being left behind, she thought, tears blurring her vision again. First dad, and now you. Why are you always being taken away from me?
Pixie Veil let out a keen that sounded like her own heart breaking.
"Lua!"
Her voice broke and came out like a whisper. She couldn't do anything. She couldn't even call his name anymore. Her legs buckled, and Jack swore, grabbing hold of her by the shoulders. But he, too, was getting weaker, and he staggered under her weight, dropping to one knee. Red Nova wilted to the floor, though it struggled to stay in the air. Pixe Veil dove on top of it, like a cat trying to protect a much longer dog, her body arching and teeth hissing.
But the body that was Lua's just stared at them.
And then, they took a step towards the end of the disk, and began to walk towards the dragons. Ancient Pixie hissed again, but her body quavered nervously. She didn't want to hurt Lua, Luka sensed. Even if they were a threat, they wore Lua's form, and she didn't know how to handle it.
Aporia lifted both of their hands, and new lightning rose to their palms. They reached the end of the disk, and turned their palms forward.
The lightning crackled over Pixie Veil, and the dragon shrieked and convulsed. Luka felt it, too, her whole body spasming with pain as a scream she couldn't give air to tried to come out of her lungs.
"Dammit! Luka! Hang in there!"
Jack could barely speak, he was trembling so badly. Luka felt limp in his arms, and his own grip was slipping.
"We didn't want to hurt you," Aporia said. "But we need you to come with us. Z-ONE needs you."
"Fuck you!" Jack said. "You fucking coward!"
"My voice can't reach," Luka mumbled. "It...it just can't reach. It can't reach him this time."
Jack hugged her tightly as Aporia descended slowly from the disk, dropping through the air as though they were a leaf, and alighting on the ground. Pixe Veil tried to lift her head, but she only hissed weakly as Aporia walked around the two exhausted dragons, making their way towards Jack and Luka.
They stopped, however, a decent distance off. They raised both hands towards them, palms up.
"Please," they said. "Come with us. We don't want to hurt you further. No harm will come to Lua, either."
"Give him back," Luka cried. "Please give him back."
Lua's face twisted, and for a moment, she thought perhaps her brother was in there. But it was just Aporia, making a sad face.
"We don't like doing it this way either," they said. "But it must be done. Z-ONE needs the pieces of the dragon to put the world in order."
"We're not going to help you destroy the fucking world," Jack said.
Aporia frowned, and it looked wrong on Lua's lips. Luka shivered. Helplessness flooded through her like a drug, weighing down her limbs. She'd never been able to do anything. She'd never been able to protect him. Maybe it was okay to just give up. Maybe there wasn't another option.
And then a thin, weak voice rose up from the back of the room.
"I...I see him," Carly gasped, so quiet that Luka almost didn't hear her. "I can see him; he's— he's a tiny red flame, he's fighting the light in his body, he's...he's trying to get out, he can hear you—"
The words were like an even fiercer drug, burning through Luka's head all at once.
He could hear her.
He was fighting.
"Lua!" she shouted again, struggling up out of Jack's arms. "Lua, I'm here! I'm here! Don't give up!"
There was no change in Aporia's face, but Luka didn't care; Carly had seen it and she knew it was true! He was a tiny flame and he was trying to burn bright again, to burn the possession out of him!
Burn...burn it out of him.
Luka inhaled. She grabbed Jack's arm.
"Jack," she said. "Jack! If you can— if you can get to him, if you can grab him, you can use your fire to power his! You can help him escape!"
Jack's eyes widened. His lips parted. His eyes darted to the small shape; so close, yet so far. Lightning still crackled around the sides of Lua's shoulders.
Then Jack squeezed her shoulders.
"I'm going to need cover," he said. "Can you handle it!"
Luka reached out to Pixie Veil Dragon, and the dragon lifted her weary head, forcing herself up to her wings with sheer determination. Pixie Veil let out a cry of defiance.
"Yes," Luka said, determination turning her bones to steel. "I can."
Luka! Luka, I can hear you! I'm trying to get to you!
Lua threw his shoulder against the walls of his prison again. It hurt even though he didn't have a physical body, but he did it again anyway.
Aporia watched him from behind, sitting in the air with their head on their hand, considering him.
"Why are you so desperate to escape when you plan to die anyway?" Aporia said.
Lua bit back furious tears. No one was supposed to know that was his plan! It wasn't like he had any other choice, anyway! He had the missing heart of the Light, and without it, the Light would go Mad forever, and the ReBalancing could never happen. And his body wouldn't be able to handle it when he lost the power that was so integral to his soul, so of course he would die! He...he had already come to terms with that!
"It doesn't seem like you have. You seem scared."
He wished Aporia would shut up.
"It's okay to be scared of dying. I was. I think, at least. I don't have everything of the old Aporia programmed into me, and I don't remember dying."
Shut up, shut up, shut up. He was trying to reach Luka.
"But if you help me and Z-ONE, you won't have to die, you know. He doesn't need the whole Heart to complete the ReBalancing, just the fire from it. You won't die if you help him."
And Z-ONE, whoever he was, would do it wrong. Lua knew that in his bones; the knowledge that he could sometimes grasp from the Heart within him made him know it was true. Without the Heart, Z-ONE's grasp over the Light and the Darkness would spiral away into Madness.
He heard Aporia shift, and in spite of himself, he turned towards them.
Aporia looked...uncomfortable.
"Are you sure about that?" they said. "Are you positive that's what will happen to Z-ONE?"
Lua frowned. Then he nodded. It was pretty obvious already that Z-ONE, the big baddie of Yliaster, was super infected with not just Light, but Madness-tainted Light. He'd simply make a bigger mess of things, if he did die immediately upon activating his plan.
Aporia looked pale now. And Luka could catch glints of their memories, their feelings— worry and fear for Z-ONE.
They really cared about Z-ONE didn't they?
"He's as good as God for me," Aporia said. "He created me as a program, and as a human— he saved me, saved my life, gave me purpose and meaning, a way to change it all. Are you positive that his plan can't work? Will he...will he really die?"
Lua was as close to sure of it as he could be. Aporia looked horribly shaken, their hands in their lap, shaking slightly.
"But then," they whispered. "What other choice is there?"
Lua turned back towards the screen in the wall, where he could see the view through his own eyes where the program was controlling him. He saw Luka, standing right in the open, her Pixie Veil arrayed over her and light sending rainbows through its wings over Luka's skin. Lightning crackled towards her, hitting her in the shoulder, and she stumbled. Lua's heart caught. But she was back up, eyes alight with determination. She wasn't giving up. She would never give up on him.
And he wouldn't give up either.
His hands curled against the edge of his prison. A fire was growing somewhere in his chest, and he tried to stoke it. The Light pressed it down, tried to suppress it.
And then Lua felt arms fling around his body from behind, and a hot rush of flames exploded through him from Jack's burning soul.
Aporia shrieked as the Light burnt away under the rush of crimson flame. Before they could disappear, however, Lua turned to them, met their eyes with as much determination as he could muster.
"There's always another choice," he said. "You're just not looking hard enough yet."
Judai kept walking. The edge of his light prison never got any closer, but it made him feel like he was doing something.
"You're only going to wear yourself out," his captor said, sounding as close as they had been before.
"Don't care," Judai said. "I'm going to keep trying until I get out."
"Why don't you want to help me anymore?"
"News flash, asshole, I never wanted to help you destroy the world."
His captor hesitated for a moment, and Judai could hear the Light catch, as though it were holding its breath.
"Judai," they said, so soft and pleading that Judai stopped walking, his breath catching. That wasn't the sound of someone who was trying to keep someone imprisoned. That was the voice of someone's heart breaking. And for some reason, Judai shivered to hear his name said that way by them.
"Shut up," Judai said. "Lua told me about you. You're the one who kidnapped him. You mess with people's heads."
"I don't want to mess with anyone's head. I just want to fix things. I need help."
"Kidnapping people isn't the way to do it!"
"You wouldn't listen. I needed to find a place where you would listen to me."
"Well, then, start talking!" Judai said, throwing his arms up in the air with a burst of frustration. He was angry. He was angry and he felt so incredibly helpless. He hadn't felt this week since he'd been a teenager, fresh out of middle school, back when he hadn't known he'd had powers. Even then, though, he couldn't remember feeling this empty inside. No Yubel, no Winged Kuriboh, no hint of his shadow powers. This light burned everything out of him and left him hollow and aching. "I'm listening, fuckwad! What crazy ass justification do you have this time? Kill hundreds to save billions or some shit like that?"
They didn't answer for a long, long time. So long, in fact, that Judai was starting to think they'd left.
Then he felt something cool press against his face, as though invisible hands were being pressed over his eyes from behind. He wanted to flinch away, but his body was suddenly locked into place, immobile.
"Please," they whispered, voice inches from his ear. "Let me show you what happened."
The cool spot over his eyes warped like a mirage, and suddenly, he was somewhere else.
His body floated immobile over a familiar city: the lights of Neo-Domino flashed and spun; he saw the streaks of D-Wheelers zooming down roads and the flash of headlights from cars. The city's roads were completely backed up; it looked like a thousand people were trying to leave the city all at once. Even from here, he could see the flashing lights of police cars, their officers standing on the roof and waving cars down the streets with a flashing baton.
"What's happening?" Judai said.
"Ushio warned the Public Security Bureau, and the sight of the city above was enough to convince the rest. They are trying to evacuate Neo-Domino."
Judai couldn't move, but his vision moved upwards anyway. His stomach twisted: there was the upside down, ruined Neo-Domino looming overhead.
"You're showing me something that I already know," Judai said.
"No. You don't. Because this isn't your timeline. It's mine."
Judai's vision moved again, as though his mysterious captor were turning his head for him. What was that? He squinted. He saw...specks. Specks of something, streaking through the sky. There was a flash of crimson red. And then they zoomed in, as though he'd been moved abruptly towards them. His eyes widened.
That was Yusei, on the back of Stardust, ducking his head against the dragon's neck under a blast of silvery fire. His opponent was a massive hunk of metal, it seemed, flying about as easily as Yusei did with a pair of eerie looking, vaguely humanoid monsters beside it. Stardust shrieked and let out a burst of starlight from its maw, but it didn't seem to faze the creatures one bit.
"Yusei!" Judai shouted. "Yusei!"
"It's all right. This hasn't happened yet for you."
"What are you talking about?"
"This is the moment where my timeline was born."
One of the hulking metal monsters sent out a flurry of golden rings crackling with electricity. Stardust wasn't fast enough. It shrieked when the lightning coursed through it, and Yusei screamed. Judai screamed, too, even if his voice couldn't reach.
Yusei tumbled back off of Stardust, while the dragon writhed in the air. Judai's mouth opened in a silent scream this time, as Yusei's body streaked down towards the faraway ground. His body was starting to glow and shimmer, bright, too bright, until it was completely encasing him and obscuring his body from sight. Stardust! Stardust catch him!
But it was too late; by the time the dragon escaped the roiling electricity and managed to angle itself downwards in a steep dive after its fallen master, it was too late.
Yusei's glowing body struck the faraway ground and Judai's heart stopped.
For a second, there was nothing.
And then the world exploded with Light.
Judai was yanked back into his prison, choking and gasping. The cool hands had not left his face.
"What happened?" he gasped. "What happened to Yusei?"
"He died."
Judai's blood ran cold. Oh god. Oh gods, he had to get back to Yusei, he had to find a way out of here, he had to save Yusei! Was this why he had come back in time? Because Yusei had died that day? How many times had he seen Yusei die?
"But what happened? That light?"
"With no living vessel to call home, the Light had to flee. But it could not be contained in the world it was released into. The city was destroyed."
Judai could barely breathe, like there was a vise clamped around his chest.
"Let me show you why we had to do what we did."
Judai's vision was transported once again somewhere else.
A horrible crater was burned into the ground, the earth cracked and dry as though a meteor had struck it. Crumbled remains of burnt out buildings sagged along the edges of the crater. Even from this height, Judai could see, vaguely, the tiny shapes of staggering people, pulling themselves free of the wreckage.
And then the sky swarmed with specks of darkness. Judai squinted. He saw crowds of survivors gathering, pointing and staring up at the sky. He was drawn closer, and he could hear people shouting or calling out to each other, trying to find the missing or guess what was there in the sky.
The first beam struck the earth and left a burnt scorch inches from a group of survivors. Then the Meklords descended.
People screamed and scattered as the vicious robots stormed from the sky, firing off in all directions, heads spinning wildly as their robot bodies seemed to convulse.
"What's happening?" Judai shouted.
"The Meklords are Duel Monsters infected with the Light of Destruction from very long ago. The release of light destabilized the boundaries between the human and Duel Spirits world, and the Meklords were drawn to the echo of the Light. But the Light already fled, and there is nothing here for them to feed on, so they are going mad."
Judai's stomach twisted. This was what had happened to Yubel; warped and twisted her desires until she could only desperately seek out what little she know could satisfy her. And now, everyone was suffering for the Meklords' wild, desperate rampage as they sought Light they couldn't capture.
Judai's vision zoomed in again, and it was as though he were standing on a broken street, watching a small cluster of people from the explosions that rang out over the broken city.
His eyes caught on something familiar: eerily familiar.
A young boy clung to his mother's hand, father running just behind them both and pushing them along as he looked back over his shoulder. The boy was young, no older than eleven or twelve, his long red hair flapping against his back.
"Luciano," Judai gasped. "He's...but he was..."
A wild strike of laser crashed over the building over their heads, and a building swayed. The mother saw it first. With a cry, she grabbed her son by the arm and flung him forwards. The boy stumbled and hit the ground, rolling and scraping open gashes in his arms.
But he was the lucky one. As he struggled up to his hands and knees, the building crashed down beside him— taking his parents with it. The boy simply stared, mouth hanging open, as though he couldn't believe what had just happened. He struggled forwards on his hands and knees, grabbing at a few small pieces of wreckage and trying to throw them aside. Then a scream ripped from his throat, a scream that tore Judai's soul to shreds, and he began to dig furiously with both hands.
"We were all left alone by the destruction that followed. Alone with nothing but an unfulfillable wish to retrieve what was lost."
The scene warped and changed, and now Judai was in a city he didn't even recognize. Smoke rose in plumes over the burning city, shadows of fleeing people running in the wake of the advancing Meklords. Judai saw tanks battling furiously, but they were too clunky and slow to do more than slow the much faster Duel Monsters, and the military weapons were cut down one by one.
A blur of someone speeding past on a D-Wheeler shot through the chaos. Judai saw the man skid to a stop and slap cards onto his Duel Disk. A tall, robed magician-like man with a book in arms melted up through the ground, battling back one of the nearest Meklords. Judai squinted. He was pretty sure he had seen that man on the D-Wheel there before, too. It was right on the tip of his brain...
The magician and the robot struggled for a moment longer as the D-Wheeler tried to summon another handful of monsters to take on the next swarm, waving to a group of survivors to run.
Then a dazzling beam of light enveloped the city all at once, and when it faded, another awful crater was left behind. Judai's stomach twisted.
He felt almost sicker when he saw the D-Wheeler appear, gasping and struggling to pull himself out of the crater. He stumbled and slipped, but he managed to drag himself over the edge. His visor was cracked in half, and Judai recognized all at once he knew who it was: the suit and helmet were the same as the person who had saved him when he fell from the Dueling Lane while fighting Placido. But his eyes were Bruno's.
Bruno laid there, broken and staring at the sky, too shell-shocked to do more than sprawl. Then the tears came, as he seemed to realize that he hadn't been able to save anyone.
Something moved, and the man flinched. Judai would have, too, if he could have moved. But it wasn't a Meklord— it was another D-Wheeler. Something about the shape of the person seemed familiar. The white D-Wheel was familiar, too: it was the same bike that Paradox had driven when Judai had faced him with Yusei and Yugi. The mysterious driver definitely wasn't Paradox, though, he was too thin and dressed in dark, torn clothes.
However, the person seated on the back of the D-Wheel was familiar: it was Luciano again, seated behind the driver and clinging to his back. He looked significantly older than the last vision, at least fifteen or sixteen, and gangly— actually, he looked a lot like Placido now. All three of them had combined into one robot in the end...
The mysterious D-Wheeler on the front of the bike reached out a hand towards Bruno. Still crying silently, Bruno reached out and took it.
"We only had each other in the end. But we weren't content with just surviving. We wanted to find a way to fix it. To do the impossible."
The vision changed again. This time, they were in some shabby looking, makeshift lab, with a bunch of whirring machines that looked like they'd been cobbled together from scraps. Several cords ran from some of those machines to a chair, where someone was hooked up. Judai couldn't see their face because there was a cup over their head, but their hands twitched as the wires jolted them slightly.
An even older Luciano, getting gray and growing a beard like his Jose form, leaned over to show something on a small handheld screen to someone else. Judai swallowed. He knew that person well, too: that was Paradox. The blond haired man frowned as he looked at what Jose had to show him, and shook his head. Jose frowned.
A much older looking Bruno stood up straight from behind the chair with the other person on it, wiping his brow from the sweat and replacing a wrench on his belt. The other two looked over at him, sudden worry crossing their faces. Bruno shook his head, looking grim, and the other two paled, Jose's lips pressing tightly together. Jose immediately turned back to a beat up looking computer and started typing frantically.
The person in the chair spasmed slightly again, and Bruno braced himself against the back of it. His body twisted on itself and he began to cough, his whole body rattling.
"But it took us too long. And I was deteriorating much faster than I thought I was."
The image seemed to fast forward. There were bits and pieces of clear Meklord technology now, heads strapped and plugged in to computers, arms that were soldered to modems. The person in the chair had wheels now, and the machine only covered part of their face, revealing half of their mouth and jaw. Their arms moved slightly as they used their fingers to try and move themselves across the room.
Judai couldn't hear words, but he could see that something was wrong. Paradox was clearly shouting at an even older looking Jose, who shouted back, his beard bristling. Bruno was in between them, hands up on either side of them as though he were trying to break up the fight. The person on the chair wheeled forward, but Paradox turned on them, too, shouting til he was red in the face. The person in the chair's lips moved slowly, as though it were difficult to speak, but Paradox just threw up his hands and stormed off. Bruno ran after him, but he hobbled, and a coughing fit came over him as he tried to pursue, forcing Jose to grab hold of him and support him as best his frail arms could.
Paradox grabbed the white D-wheel in the corner, yanked it to its wheels, and leapt onto it. Bruno and Jose both tried to move towards him, but they weren't fast enough. Paradox revved the engine, and bolted— immediately disappearing before he even hit the wall.
"Paradox grew weary of our patience, and determined to go on his own. He stole what little we had cobbled, and set us back further. We lost our precious work, and our time was running out."
Again, time moved forward. The person in the chair moved in a small, hovering vehicle, now, still covered except for half of their mouth. They hovered over what looked like a metal coffin, unreadable except by the way their lips were pressed together.
Inside the metal coffin, beneath a case of glass, was the wrinkled form of Bruno. A second coffin beside it contained Luciano/Placido/Jose.
"My friends died. I was all that remained, but only barely. We had just enough power to get to the past, but not enough to complete our mission. We would have to collect energy on the other side."
"But you said they were dead," Judai said, voice shaking. "They died. How did they..."
He saw the hovering figure turn in the air, towards a screen. There were wires from the coffins running to the computer, and images appeared on the screen: blueprints, for the Bruno, Luciano, Placido, and Jose that Judai knew from his timeline.
"I was forced to recreate my friends as programs to assist me. There was no one else left, and I was still dying, quicker now that Antinomy was no longer alive to maintain my life support. I couldn't manage the journey on my own."
Judai felt sick. This was awful. Was this real? He...if it was real, he almost couldn't blame them for coming to such desperate measures.
But he couldn't let them do what they were planning, either.
"You said you absorbed the Light— you took it after Yusei died?" Judai said. How was that possible? Yusei was apparently the Light Channel, or something, but how could any other person hold the Light the way this person was managing to do?
"Yes. In a sense."
"I don't get it. You're not making any sense, you're just talking in circles! Just tell me what you want, straight out! Stop showing me this and making me try and guess!"
The images faded, and he was back in the room of light. The cool space around his eyes faded, and he could move again. His knees buckled, but he caught himself.
The light wavered like a mirage before him.
"The me that caused that future the first time didn't realize what he was doing. He needed you, all along. I needed you all along. I was so stupid, pushing you away."
"What are you talking about?"
The light wavered again, bubbling. An image started to fade in from the light: legs, first, and then the outline of hands, and an all too familiar silhouette of shoulders, the dark cut of hair, the gold mark down his face— the eyes he'd recognize anywhere.
Judai took a step back, horror freezing his stomach.
"No," he said. "No, Lua told me about this, he told me that you make yourself look like the person you want to see, he told me that you looked like Luka back then—"
The image of Yusei smiled at him, but it seemed distant, hollow.
"I could never hide myself from you," Yusei said. "And I wouldn't want to."
Judai's world was closing in around him.
"No," he choked, tears bubbling in his head. "No, god, Yusei, it can't be you, it can't be you."
Yusei just kept smiling at him, sadly now.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't want to meet you again like this, either."
