Yusei's legs felt like lead by the time he finally made it back to the complex, dragged himself through the tubes, and made it back inside the building. Unfortunately, his D-Wheel had sputtered out of life halfway back, and he'd had to walk. Each second he spent struggling back felt like an hour, the panic of time passing far too quickly overtaking him. He felt like an hourglass was going in his head, the sand running down through his blood, slowly running out of time.

He didn't go back the way he had come once he stumbled back onto the overlook, even though that was where he had lost Judai. He had a feeling the only way to go was forward. He needed to find the others. He needed to find Judai.

He walked, instead, down the opposite direction, using the railing to pull himself along. Despite the light that swirled in his heart, he still felt exhausted and weak.

Luckily, he didn't have to walk much farther. There was another door farther down the wall, and dragged himself over to it. It was unlocked, and it fell open at his light touch. Instead of a room or a hallway, he looked out into what almost seemed like a large lobby. This one, however, was actually upside down with the rest of the building, unlike the other rooms, which had been turned so that they looked the right-side up to Yusei.

It was eerie, he thought, looking up. There was a large desk and bookshelves up on the ceiling, and though they didn't appear to be bolted down, they hadn't fallen. Even the books sat neatly in their shelves, clinging to the bottom of the shelf. Instead of the building being upside down, Yusei felt like his own gravity had simply shifted, and that he was the one who was wrong-side up.

Another door opened on the other side of the room, and Yusei tensed.

But it was no enemy, he saw with a burst of relief, seeing Aki's haggard face and Crow's mussed hair appear in the doorway. Aki's eyes widened when she caught sight of Yusei— and immediately, she was bolting across the room. He stumbled to meet her, but she reached him faster, grabbing hold of him in a tight, furious hug.

"Oh my god," she said. "It's you, right?"

It was a strange question, but Yusei grabbed hold of her back, thankful for the feeling of someone solid, a friend to grab hold of and ground himself after the hours in this crazy adventure he'd spent on his own.

"It's me," he said, hearing how ragged his own voice sounded. "It's me."

Aki popped back then, and grabbed hold of his face, glaring at him as she turned his face back and forth to check for wounds, then began to poke and prod at his shoulders to make sure he was in one piece.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he insisted.

Crow looked pale when he finally stumbled over to them, looking as exhausted as Yusei felt. He grabbed Yusei's arm when Yusei reached for him, and dragged him into a hug of his own. They gripped each other's shoulder's for a moment, and then broke apart.

"Are you both okay?" Yusei said.

"Crow's lucky to be alive," Aki said, shooting Crow a look.

Crow just shrugged helplessly at Yusei's worried glance.

"I'm all patched up, no worries," Crow said, patting his stomach. "Anyway, Yusei, we need to tell you something—"

A third door crashed open, this one from the wall near them. A flushed Jack put his leg down from where he had clearly kicked the door open, hefting a very tired looking Lua higher on his back. Yusei's heart fluttered with relief seeing them make their way through. Carly and Luka were there, too, Carly holding onto Luka's hand. One of Luka's pigtails had come out and her hair was a bedraggled mess, but she stumbled along after an equally tired-looking Carly. Jack saw them first, and immediately made a beeline for them.

"Good, no one fucking died," he said, eyes flashing around. "Wait."

His eyes narrowed as he seemed to count heads once more.

"Where's Judai?" Carly asked as she hurried over with Luka.

Everyone looked at Yusei with varying shades of worry. Yusei felt his stomach drop.

"We got separated," he said. "We'll have to find him."

Aki swore. She gripped Yusei's arm again, then, looking faintly panicked.

"Yusei, Sherry told us something," she said. "About our enemy. You need to know."

Yusei knew, then, exactly what Aki needed to tell him.

"That I'm Z-ONE, right?" he said softly.

Aki's eyes widened. For a moment, nerves skittered over her face.

"It's okay. It's the past me, not the other one," Yusei said. "The future one isn't in as good of shape right now."

"What on earth are we talking about?" Jack demanded.

"Sherry said that the leader of Yliaster is Yusei," Crow said. "Not this one— a future one. Something makes Yusei go crazy in the future, I guess."

Luka stared at Yusei wide, disbelieving eyes.

"That's ridiculous!" Jack said. "I've never heard anything more stupid in my entire life!"

"It's true," Yusei said, feeling his chest squeeze. "Bruno...he told me. He was working for him before his memories were scrambled. He...he wants me to save myself."

It was weird, trying to talk about it in the open. He didn't know how to quite wrap his words around the idea. He was their own enemy. He was the one who'd turned into a monstrous machine bent on destroying Neo-Domino for the sliver of hope that it would save the broken future. Light swelled in his veins, and he felt briefly sick. How long did he have, with all of this power in him, before he started to wilt away from the same madness as his future self?

Lua stirred on Jack's back.

"Well j-just don't go crazy, Yusei," he said, trying to crack a tired smile. "Then this future doesn't even happen, right? Isn't that how time travel works?"

The joke somehow managed to diffuse the growing tension, and Yusei felt like he could breathe again. Still, the looming knowledge of what was ahead of him felt like a weight over his shoulders.

"I don't know how to stop myself from turning into Z-ONE," he said. "But...maybe...I can convince him— convince myself— that this isn't the way to save the world."

He looked to his friends, suddenly nervous. This was a huge bombshell. He was almost afraid, now, to look at them and see wariness, betrayal, even fear. They knew, now, what he somehow became. Would they mistrust him, now? How could they trust him, when this is what he apparently would turn into whether he liked it or not?

"If you all want to turn back, I understand," he said, feeling the panic spike in his chest. They might leave him after this. He wouldn't blame them. Not only was he the reason for this whole awful situation...he'd already come to the worst conclusion.

He was also responsible, directly, as the leader of Yliaster, for Zero Reverse.

Jack was the one who let out a harsh snort.

"Are you stupid?" he said. "If you think something like this is going to make me stop now, you're not the man I thought you were."

"Yus, we're not leaving you behind," Crow said. "I trust you. The you right now. And whatever shit happens in the future, we'll all deal with it together."

"I've come this far," Carly said, her lip trembling despite her determined stance. "I'm coming along, Yusei. I'm sure that we can find a way to fix this if we all work together."

Luka actually threw herself forward and hugged Yusei around the waist.

"I don't believe you'd ever become something like that!" she said. "But...but even it's true, I'm not giving up! We can save you, and the future together!"

"We are not abandoning you," Aki said fiercely. "Never."

"And I'm finally a Signer, so I wanna go on this adventure the whole way," Lua said, trying to punch the air with one weak arm over Lua's head.

Yusei felt tears blurring his eyes, and he gently put his hands on Luka's shoulders where she was still hugging him. Before he could say anything else, Aki was hugging him too, sandwiching Luka, and then Crow was grabbing them all from the side, and Jack was slinging one free arm over Yusei's shoulders, Carly was reaching over to give him an awkward pat, and even Lua reached past Jack's shoulders to try and give Yusei an awkward arm hug.

Yusei bent his head down into his friends' group hug, and let a few of his tears escape him, running down the cool space where his marker was. He felt too overcome to speak, for a moment, his chest too full of his friends words for him to force out any of his own.

"Thank you," he finally gasped out. "God. Thank you."

One at a time, the hug broke apart.

"Now," Aki said, eyes flashing. "What about getting out there and saving your boyfriend's ass?"


The walk was longer than Yusei would have liked. That moment in the lobby had made him feel like they were one door outside the boss room, but once they had made their way to the door on the other side of the upside down room, there was another hallway. At the end of that hallway was another upside down room, and another hallway beyond that. How big was this complex?

"Are we getting closer?" Luka asked nervously.

"I think so," Yusei said. His chest felt heavy, like he was trying to breathe someone else's air. He had a feeling that that was coming from getting close to his own other self.

"It's definitely getting brighter," Carly said, quickly putting her glasses back on after taking a peek and immediately looking blinded.

There was another door at the end of this hallway, and Yusei hesitated before he grabbed the knob. There almost seemed to be some kind of electricity circling it, that if he touched it, he'd get more than just a zap of static. But he heard the others breathing quietly behind him, the sound like a lifeline pushing him forward. Judai was waiting for him.

He grabbed the knob, and pushed the door open.

This room wasn't upside down, or at least, compared to their own orientation. And it was a mess.

Piles of scrap lay in heaps all around, and Yusei's nostrils filled with the scent of oil and rust and metal. It was a homey smell, and for a moment, he was taken so off guard that he stopped in the doorway, just breathing. He felt like he was in the junkyard where he'd scavenged the parts for the Yusei-Go.

But the illusion faded, and he was just in a room full of junk, dimly lit and claustrophobically cramped. He slid himself inside, and let the others through. There was a faint trail through the piles of junk, though the heaps were leaking bits and pieces in the way of it. One at a time, and with some difficulty, the group made their way over the fallen pieces. Yusei looked around as they went, looking for any sign of himself or any other traps or surprises. It was hard to pick out much in the almost-dark, with all of the shadows cast by the piles and piles of old metal scrap.

He felt a tightening of sadness in his chest, but it wasn't his. His hand immediately went to the mark on his arm,and he noticed the others all twitch, too, as a faint pain twanged through their Signer marks. He felt the sudden urge to cry.

In response to the feeling, a low keen broke over the room.

"Antinomy," a voice cried somewhere among the scrap. "Antinomy. Antinomy. I'm so sorry."

Yusei felt his chest squeezing and he almost choked on it.

"Antinomy wanted me to talk to you," he called out, his voice echoing over the scrap.

Immediately, the voice fell silent. For a long, long breath, there was nothing.

And then something shifted, sending a rain of metal clattering down the piles into the path. Yusei noted the direction, and turned towards the fork in the path between the junk where it was coming from. In a few breaths, he'd broken free of the junkyard, and was in a sort of cleared out space in the middle of it all.

The biggest pile in the room, almost to the ceiling, lay before him. At the bottom of the pile was a very broken looking android— Yusei sort of recognized it as the combination of Luciano, Placido, and Jose from their last WRGP match, but different in small ways. This one had smaller shoulders, less markings around their eyes, and was very broken up. One arm was hanging loose and dangling by wires at the elbow. The face was half peeled off to show the dented metal beneath, and their hair was tangled and half shorn. Still, they struggled to stand, glaring at the group with their one functioning eye.

"Aporia," the voice gasped. "Aporia, who's there? I can't see. It's so bright."

"They've come, Z-ONE," the android called Aporia said. "Antinomy failed his mission."

Another low, broken keen escaped from above Aporia, and Yusei finally looked up.

At the top of the pile of garbage, almost invisible against it, was a particularly large hunk of metal. Among the pieces, Yusei had almost mistook it for part of the pile. But no, it was a single entity, a sleek metal cocoon cobbled together from several different colors of metal, with two large protruding poles, like arms from the sides.

Aporia moved haltingly, putting themselves between Yusei's group, and the hunk of metal at the top of the pile. Yusei's skin crawled, unable to look away from it.

That's me? he thought. That's...I turn into that?

"Please do not worry," Aporia said. "I will take over Antinomy's prime directive for the time being. Then I will retrieve the Heart."

Jack tensed, tightening his grip on Lua, and Luka jumped in front of Jack.

Yusei, however, clenched his fists, and walked forward. He heard Aki swear, and she started to reach for him, but he was out of her reach in a moment. Aporia's eye widened and their mouth opened. Yusei walked until he was halfway to Aporia, and then stopped. He looked up at the metal on the pile.

He looked up at himself.

"I know who you are," he said.

The other didn't answer. After a breath, he moved slightly, shifting his metallic arms and sending another clatter of metal down onto the floor like dissonant rain.

"I know why you're here, even if I don't know how you got to this point," Yusei said. "Antinomy told me that I needed to stop you."

A low moan echoed from inside the metal cocoon.

"Don't speak of Antinomy," the voice said, cracking. "You killed him."

"He was already dead, a long time ago."

Aporia tensed when Yusei took another step forward.

"I don't know what happens to you," Yusei said. "To me. To bring us here. But I want to try to understand. So that I can talk you out of it."

"It's far too late," the other said. "You're young. You're naive. You don't know what the alternatives are."

"I want to find an alternative."

"So idealistic."

The other sounded almost wistful. Yusei stepped forward again, and this time, Aporia moved towards him, too. Yusei heard someone swear where he had left his friends behind him, heard a shuffle of feet as though someone were going to come after him. He tensed, and hoped— hoped that he was right.

Aporia was right in his face now, and one metallic hand grabbed for his throat. Yusei didn't move as the fingers tightened around him, just looking up at Aporia. Aporia was taller than him by almost head, but he could still catch their eye easily.

As he had expected, they flinched. Their hand slid off of his throat.

"You can't do it," Yusei said. "Just like Antinomy couldn't."

"Don't test me," Aporia swore at him, but they were trembling slightly.

"I don't want to fight you," Yusei said, heart panging. "We're friends, aren't we?"

Aporia flinched again.

"I'm not friends with you," they whispered. But their tremble only deepened.

"I only want to help him," Yusei said.

Aporia looked down at Yusei with a despairing sort of glance. Their shoulders slumped, loose arm snapping a few wires.

"You can't save him," they said. "There's nothing left to save."

Yusei swallowed. He felt a tremble starting in his own arms, and he grabbed his wrist with one hand to try to still it.

"Let me try," he whispered.

Aporia stared at him for one long moment. Then, silently, they stepped aside. Giving Yusei a clear path to Z-ONE.

Giving him a clear path to meet himself.

Inhaling sharply, Yusei stepped forward. He walked until he was in front of the pile, craning his neck to look up at the cocoon where his own body was nestled inside.

"Let's talk," Yusei said. "Let's talk until we find a way out of this."

He cracked a smile.

"We've talked to ourselves to find a way out of everything before, haven't we?"

For a long moment, there was no response.

Then Z-ONE's metal shell unfolded. The mask shicked away from his face. Yusei felt a shudder pass over him, feeling a horrible sense of uncanny valley that made his stomach turn. It was his face, all right. Albeit a face that was decades upon decades older, and much worse for the wear than he'd like to imagine that he'd aged. His own wrinkled, sallow, pale face stared down at him, a metal covering clamped down over half of it, one red robotic eye replacing one of the dark blue.

"You're so young," the future Yusei whispered, sounding wistful. "And everyone's here, too."

"We're all here to help," Yusei said.

Future Yusei sighed deeply, the sound coming out rattling, like a voice spoken into a running fan.

"I missed all of you," he said, looking out at the Signers still across the way. Yusei didn't look back to see how they were reacting. He felt like if he took his eyes away from himself, he'd somehow disappear entirely. Future Yusei's eyes dropped to Yusei himself. "I miss being young and believing in the world."

"It doesn't have to continue this way," Yusei said.

"You wouldn't understand. You don't have the years that I do. I knew that you would be impossible to speak with— after all, who lives that can truly come to terms with their younger self and the person they were so many years ago?"

"Please," Yusei said. "Antinomy said—"

"Do not talk to me of Antinomy!" the future Yusei said, and Yusei was surprised to actually see anger pass over his eyes. "Antinomy was...one of the last...one of the last to remain..."

A single tear rolled down his wrinkled cheek, and then Yusei understood. His heart clenched. Of course he'd reached this point, in this state...if he had lost all of his friends, one by one— if he didn't have them waiting behind him right now, he didn't think he'd be able to stand, or breathe. He was looking at a version of himself who had lost everything.

Could he really do as Bruno asked? Could he really save himself? Was there a way to even do it?

A spike of pain shot through his head and he gasped, nearly choking on it. The pain shot through him again, this time running through each of his arteries and veins one by one, nearly shaking him to his knees. A sickness lodged in his stomach as though threatening vomit. Almost simultaneously, his own future self shuddered, too, and a series of lights went off all down the sides of the cocoon.

"You feel it, don't you?" the future Yusei said. "The Light. It was not meant to be shattered in this way, and if it remains apart, it will tear apart its human hosts."

"Is that why you wanted to kill me? To remove the Light from my body?"

"It's the only way to separate such an entity from a host it's become a part of. The only way to save the world is to reforge Light all into one. And as long as two of us exist in one time with that power, we will die."

Or the Madness will simply consume us, Yusei thought, feeling a dizzy wave come over him. He felt, for a moment, completely disoriented. For a few seconds, he didn't know where he was— or who he was. When he jolted back to himself, panic settled into his bones. The fear of almost losing himself for even a breath was so palpable that he was breathing it like molasses.

He had to get himself under control. There was a way to fix all of this. A way out.

His heart ached, and he felt an awful urge to grab hold of a hand that wasn't there. He swallowed through a dry throat. Judai was still missing. He needed Judai. Not just because the Light in his blood craved the cool touch of Darkness, but because he— he needed Judai. He needed his reassuring warmth beside him, the hand in his own, the feeling that as long as they were together, nothing was impossible. It had only been hours since they'd been separated, and yet it felt like weeks.

"Where is Judai?" he asked. "You must know that Judai is Darkness—Judai can help us, he can help us find a way to—"

"No," the future Yusei snapped with far more force than Yusei was ready for. "I have him. He is safe. Once I obtain all of Light, he will help me put the world in order."

Yusei tensed with nerves. He had been right, then— somehow, his future self already had Judai.

"Let him out, please," Yusei said. "Wherever you have him, please— we can talk this out, together, we can—"

"You don't understand a damn thing!" his future self practically shouting, voice cracking with feedback. "The Judai you know—he was never yours! He was from my timeline! He fled from me, back to this time, but he was—I will not let him go, not now that I've found him again, not now that I've chased him through time and space to find him again!"

The voice was full of rage, hurt, and panic. Yusei felt those emotions crippling his own heart, as though he were feeling them himself.

"Judai knew that we could save the world, but he was a coward! He ran from me, he ran from what we could have done, and now that I've found him again, I will not let him go!"

All of Yusei's former concern and desire to understand his future self melted away. Instead, anger flooded through him, and he slid his feet apart to square his stance, lifting his duel disk clad arm.

"He isn't some object for you to imprison!" he said. "If this is the way it has to be, then— for Judai, I'll gladly destroy myself!"

"Naive fool," his future self said. "You'll see just how outmatched you truly are."

The ground shook, then. Yusei swore— he heard Luka scream, Jack shouting, Crow swearing— then the ground opened up beneath Yusei's feet, and the sky rained down with the remains of junk collected in the dark room as bright light from the world outside poured through from below.

For a moment, Yusei was simply falling.

And then he heard someone shriek out a name, and his body fell onto a soft bed of rose petals. He grabbed a tight hold onto the shining dragon of white roses beneath him, head spinning, trying to catch his breath. He looked up, and felt his stomach drop out as he realized how far he'd fallen. Above, he could see the hole in the floor of the room above, while junk still scattered like rain overhead. Luckily, it seemed, none of his friends had been on the floor that had opened up, as he could see their distant faces above him. Aki's dragon was warm beneath his fingers, and he clutched tightly to the petals for a moment.

Then a flash of light and motion caught his eyes, and he turned over his shoulder.

His future self, still clad in the metal cocoon, hovered in midair. Two gigantic metal arms and hands protruded from the sides of the hovering machine, and his own dark blue eye glared at him.

"If you would take him back, and doom the world," his future self said. "Then fight me."

Yusei tightened his knees against the dragon, and lifted up his Duel Disk arm.

"Fine then," he said.