Author's Notes: Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh (GX): Name a more iconic zillenial duo. Jokes aside, I've had this idea of sadist crime boss! Zane Truesdale brewing in my head for a while now, and now you guys have to be subject to my madness. Sorry not sorry.
As a warning, this story gets dark, so if you're squeamish about torture sequences/dubiously consensual situations, the back button is to the up and left. It's very what it says on the tin.
Modern dystopia AU, no "children's card games" or any stuff like that involved. Comments and constructive feedback are always appreciated!
On the star studded evening of Academy City High School's fourty-first graduation, five students elbowed each other on the way to their friend's car. As he lagged behind, a certain student, a sort of bumbling and chubby fellow, turned to his friends and laughed:
"...Oh man, did you hear Dr. Crowler on the stage? I heard him bawl his eyes out! I'll miss you! I'll miss you all! You're all my beloved students! It was a straight riot!"
"Yeah, and he ALWAYS gave me a hard time!" another high schooler laughed, pulling open the front car door and then slamming it shut behind him. He then peeled off his red graduation robe as naturally as a chameleon does while shedding its skin and stowed it in the back.
Yet another young man wearing a yellow blazer jacket drawled, "He gives everyone a hard time, Jaden."
"Well, Crowler dished out the worst of it at me!" Jaden laughed while climbing into the shotgun seat of the car. Placing his hands behind his head, he said, "So, where we off to for our post-grad feast? I'm thinking... Red's Pizza?"
"Pizza! Pizza!" the high schoolers all chanted in unison. Except for one certain person, who happened to be already sitting in the driver's seat.
"Alexis?" Jaden asked, with one slightly elevated eyebrow. "You okay?"
The corner of her pink mouth tugged upwards in a forced smile. "Oh, yeah. Pizza! Pizza!"
"Way to ruin the mood, man," the young man joked, taking off her graduation cap and nudging her in the ribs with the end of his elbow.
Alexis laughed despite herself and adjusted the rearview mirror. Then she started the car by thrusting her key into the ignition. "Sorry, guys. I promise I won't be this much of a killjoy at Red's."
But as the rest of her friends piled into her car and slammed the doors shut, there was a completely different thought on Alexis Rhodes's mind. You see, the very same morning as her high school graduation, she had received a cryptic letter in the mail, addressed to her from her older brother. Which probably wouldn't be so out of the ordinary for most siblings of the letter writing variety, but this letter came as a shock to Alexis.
Atticus Rhodes had been missing for five years.
Alexis:
I know it's been a long time, little sis. And I can't express how sorry I am that I haven't attempted to reach out to you in the time that I've been gone. You should be graduating from high school soon, right? I'm so happy that you're finally going to go out into the world as a free agent. I wish I could be there to see it.
...right about now, you're probably thinking that it's a good idea to take some time off of your studies to come to Domino and look for me.
Don't.
I want nothing more in the world than for you to live peacefully. What I've done...
What I've done can't ever be forgiven, and whatever happens to me now is all my fault. But I'm gonna do my best to protect you. Remember that I love you more than anything else in the world, and I always will. Please don't go looking for me.
By the time you read this, I'll already be dead.
Always your pesky (but loving) big brother, Atticus Rhodes
And Alexis hadn't told anyone (not even her friends) about the letter addressed to her. How could she? It would be too odd. It was odd, receiving a letter from her long lost brother that basically asked her to forget all about him. Worse than that, telling her to consider him dead and buried.
After taking in a deep breath, she began driving. Atticus had been missing ever since she'd started high school. Her remaining family had sent her off to boarding school after his disappearance, with their farewell message being only: Don't be like your big brother. The words served as a staunch reminder for her to be a good girl. Stay in school. Get a good job. Get married to a nice boy. Settle down and have a decent family.
When the car came to a red light, she then looked up miserably at the photograph of her and her older brother that hung below her rearview mirror.
But Atticus was the valedictorian of his graduating class, and he always had a nice girlfriend.
But people hadn't wanted to hear that. They wanted to pin the blame on somebody, anybody, and as the length of Alexis's brother's disappearance grew longer and longer with no clues to his whereabouts, the blame eventually turned inward, towards him. Oh, that Atticus, he was always falling in with the wrong crowd. Too sympathetic to the wrong people. I heard he stood up for that troublemaker in class the day before he disappeared... He got what was coming to him.
Like if they blamed him for his death, then nothing bad would ever happen to them. If you went your whole life without making mistakes, then what happened to Atticus would never happen to their children. And Alexis had tried hard all her life to live a life where she did as she was told, colored within the lines others had drawn for her, but all of that seemed purely pointless now.
As the young woman's thoughts turned darker, her grip on the steering wheel tightened. How could Atticus expect her to stay put while he was in trouble? Or worse?
"H-hey, Alexis, eyes on the road!" the young man beside her squeaked.
Just as she opened her eyes, a semi-truck then slammed on its horn as their car drifted onto the opposing lane, and she jerked the steering wheel hard to the right, narrowly avoiding the collision by mere seconds.
After the car was safely back on the right side of the road, her friend, Jaden, laughed nervously, "You okay there, Alexis? You went completely AWOL for a sec. It was pretty scary; your eyes looked all blank."
Blair shot him an irritated look from the back seat. Seriously, Jay? Read the room. Does that seem like a question you want to be asking right now? But Jaden was one part well-meaning and two parts oblivious, so he didn't catch the annoyed glare the young girl threw his way. He'd been that way for as long as Alexis had known him.
"I'm fine, really," Alexis said, but she didn't believe the words that came out of her mouth. Neither did her friends, because they spent the rest of the car ride in silence. Perhaps they were scared they would distract her. Or afraid to ask what had distracted her. As her car then pulled into the parking lot of the students' favorite pizza parlor, Alexis held out a thin piece of plastic to the young man. On it was her name, imprinted, and the irregularly raised digits of her only debit card.
"But really... I'm fine. Go easy, Jay."
Jaden grinned and slipped the card into the back pocket of his jeans. Free food did a lot to smooth over the thoughts of any kind of suspicion — or near death experiences — brewing on his part. "You got it, Alexis."
Even as Alexis took a seat at their usual vinyl booth at Red's Pizza, the thought of her brother's letter haunted her, the details of which became a loop of fragmentary details that never came together and never stopped rotating in her head. What had Atticus done that couldn't be forgiven? What was he trying to protect her from? What could be happening to him now?
And why wasn't she doing anything to stop it?
A tan and manicured hand then placed the hourglass bottle of a Coke down on the sticky end of the table, and the familiar, but friendly, shadow of Bastion Misawa loomed over her.
"Not hungry today?" He gestured to the empty space on the table in front of her.
Alexis affected a tearful smile and a sniffle at the young man, who was now sliding into the seat next to her. "Not really. I'm just emotional over our graduation, Bastion. Can you believe that four years go so fast? I can't believe that we're never going to see Doctor Crowler or Chancellor Shepard again."
The smile didn't vanish from Bastion's face. "I know. But you offered to buy pizza today, and if I recall correctly, by my calculations, you've offered to buy pizza when Jaden is with us a grand total of zero times."
"Hey, I cover for you guys all the time," Alexis retorted, folding her arms across her chest, but knew the words were a lie the instant they came out of her mouth. Jaden and Chumley had the unfortunate habit of competitively eating whatever kind of free food was put in front of their faces, and Alexis hadn't wanted to be stuck footing the bill. It was hard enough working part-time in addition to school. She'd had little financial support once her parents had passed away. "Besides, today is a special occasion. Can't you let me treat you for once?"
"But of course," Bastion said, and lifted a grease-soaked slice of double pepperoni to his mouth. "I never meant to pry, Alexis. You're always quiet, but today you've been quieter than normal. Care to share what's been troubling you?"
"Nothing really," she said, but slumped ever-so-slightly in her vinyl-covered seat at the booth. The reason for her apprehension was simple: she hadn't told her friends she hailed from Domino City, much less Bastion, who was attractive, clean-cut, and articulate. He'd placed in the top ten in their graduating class, and he'd been offered full ride scholarships to almost everywhere he'd applied.
In other words, Bastion was going places.
Domino City was a place for people with no other place to go.
Perhaps this was a bit of an exaggeration on Alexis's part, but picture it. Domino City. Year 20XX. A place where turf wars between rival gangs regularly woke the residents with the explosive sounds of gunfire. A place where metal detectors in elementary schools and security tags on beef jerky were as commonplace as tomatoes were in the supermarket. It wasn't a hometown Alexis had wanted to be associated with, and luckily enough, neither had her parents, so she'd been sent away to boarding school when she graduated from middle school.
But now her parents were gone. And so was Atticus. Alexis was all alone. A lone damaged sailboat drifting in the dark waves of the vast and endless sea with no lighthouse nor captain to guide her.
"All right. Like I said, I won't pry," Bastion said finally, taking a slow and measured bite of his pizza, but Alexis could tell that he could tell something was amiss, and she didn't breathe any easier when Jaden, Chumley, Chazz and Blair came back to the table, with Jaden hoisting a large cardboard pizza box high above his head. With a little note of amusement, Alexis couldn't help but notice the black boxes for pizza toppings had been marked, then crossed off, then marked off again. Was that what had kept them for so long?
In a elevated tone of mock outrage, Jaden laughed while placing the pizza box on the table, "What, you couldn't wait to eat with us, Bastion?"
Without looking up from the table, Bastion said drily, "I couldn't bear to listen to Chumley and Chazz argue over anchovies for another ten minutes."
Throwing down his arms emphatically, Chumley whined, "I said, just put them on the slices that're for me!"
"If it was up to you, that'd be half the pizza, you dweeb!" Chazz snapped irritably. "I don't want to have to pick disgusting rotten anchovies off my slice, you hear?"
Throwing gasoline on Chazz's ire, Jaden chimed in, "Hey, maybe you should try something different for once, Chazz! Maybe you might even like it!"
And then, as her friends argued over pizza toppings and then, the merits of hosting a bonfire for the students to throw all their calculus textbooks in, a strangely comforting thought flowed through Alexis— she had no one to stop her, so she could do anything now. Anything she wanted. She had nothing left to lose.
Five years ago, a girl skated in a Domino City ice rink without a care in the world, though her skirt was torn from falling and her long hair unkempt from spinning. Truthfully, at that time, Alexis was much more tomboy than prim and proper ice skating queen, despite being already 13 years old. Unbeknownst to her, however, she had had an audience of one dark haired young man, who had been watching her from the ice's edge.
"I liked your skating," he said to her once she had gotten off the ice and was taking off her leather skates.
"Y-You liked it?" she stammered. Her face was getting hot. "I wasn't... very good."
The young man looked out towards the rink. Many pairs of skaters were now heading onto the newly cleaned ice. Then he shrugged. "Sure. It was nice."
Coming up from behind her as was habit for him to do, her brother Atticus rapped her on the head playfully. "Good on you, Lexy! That's more syllables than I get out of Zane on a regular basis!"
The dark haired young man — Zane, as she would come to know — smirked and gave off a little chuckle. "Hmph. So?"
Atticus held a hand to his chest in an exaggerated show of feigned outrage. "So? So, you should think about opening up a little bit more, is all!"
The combined sounds of her car radio and annoyed car honks now awakened Alexis from her nap at the wheel. Currently, the DJ on her car radio was announcing a a celebration tonight marking Domino City's third year of being completely crime free. She then sighed and stepped on the gas, bringing her car to a lurching start.
Traffic's finally moving, huh?
A few days after the graduation ceremony in Academy City, Alexis had made plans to move into her brother's old condo in Domino City. Truth be told, she hadn't known why her parents had continued to maintain the condominium after his disappearance, although she had suspected that they had done this in hopes he would someday return, and then, when he had not, in hopes that she would have a place to stay in the future.
Much to her surprise, however, her hometown of Domino City had changed a lot in the time she'd been away. For one, the city's crime rate had dramatically decreased. Gone were the gunshots that used to ring out at night, replaced with a bustling nightlife and bar culture many residents liked to take part in. Secondly, one of the corporations that funded the city's rebirth liked to hold a weekly fair county market that featured game booths and even a small ice skating rink.
Maybe that's why she was thinking about the past. The ice rink was a precious memory of her and Atticus, although it had been difficult to reminisce on it much in the wake of his disappearance. She had been sure that it was demolished in the time she had been away.
After several wrong turns on the freeway, she turned into the condominium driveway and stepped out of the car. The light that came from locking the car doors was one of the only sources of illumination. Even though it wasn't yet dusk, the entrance to her brother's vacant condo was shadowed and still. The only thing moving was the distant ocean that glinted deep blue through the south-facing windows and sliding glass doors.
After walking up the stairs and making her way inside, Alexis walked down the beige-colored carpeted hallway toward the bedrooms. The door to the bedroom was open, but the closed shutters within it made it hard to see inside. From what she could see, however, the bed was made and Atticus's old patchwork comforter had been pulled up to the aged wood headboard. There was no sign of a struggle, no evidence of forced entry, though one of the sliding doors had been left unlocked.
It was, in two words, completely empty.
As Alexis took in the sight of the deserted apartment, a strange, uncontainable sensation was winding its way through her. Maybe it was the exhaustion from the long trip. Or the fact that she knew she would spend the entire evening going over every couch cushion, turning over every mattress and magazine in hopes of finding some clue related to her brother's disappearance.
But Alexis wasn't going to cry. That wasn't it. She couldn't remember the last time she had cried. It wasn't like her.
In the end, however, she found nothing.
Nothing, save a lone photograph in Atticus's bedroom.
She recognized the people in it instantaneously. In the photo were three figures, Alexis standing in between two tall boys standing side by side, one with a mop of chestnut brown hair, the other with a shaggy mane of raven-blue hair. The boys had been celebrating a graduation of their very own, and Alexis's hands were looped through the crooks of their gown-cloaked arms.
And they were all smiling.
She then held the photo and frame close to her chest, as if willing the memory of a happier time to return to her. Evidently the photo hadn't been firmly secured in the frame, however, because it came sliding out from under her embrace soon afterwards. Alexis stooped down to pick it up —
But the sight of what was written on the back on the photograph caused the blood to freeze still in her veins. In bold black letters, this word was scrawled in all capitals:
TRAITOR
Alexis then covered her face with both hands to stifle the horrified shriek that threatened to escape from her lungs.
What happened to you, big brother?
Later, during the same evening as Alexis's impromptu move-in, a handsome young man with silvery blonde hair dodged a crowd of clamoring paparazzi as he made his way to the podium situated on the balcony, set up high above the city fair. Licking his dry lips, Aster Phoenix then said through a silver microphone, "Thank you all for attending tonight's celebration, which is sponsored by the Society of Light! We will continue to support Domino City and bring it into the light!"
The crowd below cheered wildly. As they should have. The Society of Light had almost completely eradicated the criminal underworld element in Domino.
Key word: almost.
Cutting the applause short, the broad and imposing figure of a familiar man then made his way up onto the tall balcony, accompanied by two underlings standing behind him. His pitch black coat flared out like a wide ragged cape behind him, which was offset only by his pale skin, almost bone white. Like their boss, the two men now standing to either side of him were also dressed in dark muted colors, with matching draconian tattoos on either sides of their necks. The young CEO then wrinkled his nose as he turned and took the sight of the older man and his entourage in.
"Oh. It's you. Shouldn't you be crawling into the sewers where you belong? Or is that too clean for the likes of the Kaiser nowadays?"
The man in front of Aster scoffed. Didn't meet his light colored eyes as he said with a wave of his hand, "I'm not in the mood to play with toys. Move aside."
The silvery-haired young man chuckled, then stepped aside to let him pass. Over his shoulder, he said, "Heh. Sure thing, Kaiser. Guess everyone has the right to have fun at the fair. Even you."
The Kaiser said nothing in response, the blankness in his expression emphatically hostile. He then passed Aster without another word, and Aster let him go. Standing high above the crowd, the Kaiser then leaned forward to gaze on the little people underneath him, and despite how cool his face was, the movement expressed his physical power and menace.
"...did you see her?" he asked one of the men standing beside him as he took his usual seat above the din of the crowd, his voice simmering low, with the edge of a growl that was almost imperceptible.
The man nodded. "Yes, Kaiser."
The Kaiser was silent.
Then he said suddenly, "It's been five years, and she still looks like an angel, doesn't she?"
His subordinate cocked his head. To the side of his neck, a dark and patchy tattoo of an multi-headed undulating cybernetic dragon could be seen. One head was eating the other. "An angel, sir?"
The young woman turned her head to smile at the crowd that had assembled behind her, in awe of her elegant footwork. She was hurtful for the Kaiser to look at, her heart-shaped face lovely, soft, and unguarded. His eyes blacker than midnight blue watching her, the Kaiser cocked his lean jaw open and off to the left like he was testing the joint.
"Yes. An angel."
Both men turned their gazes downward to watch her. Indeed, the girl now dancing on the ice looked every part the angel with her fair skin, and the long dark blonde hair that extended halfway down her back, fanning out around her like the pleats of a golden skirt. Her face then became gently focused as she broke out of her spin and prepared herself to jump— biting her lip, allowing her eyebrows to climb up, loose strands of long hair escaping the velocity of her graceful yet forceful movement.
Enraptured by her wonderful performance, the Kaiser wondered what it would be like to watch her fly.
He wondered what it would be like to watch her stumble and fall.
He wondered what kind of expression she would make when she was in pain. When the scarlet drops of blood sprung from her broken bones, the spurs jutting out hard and white from her torn skin. Would she shriek, as those weaker than him had? Or would she come to relish her anguish, as he did?
The thought of it sent shivers of anticipation down his spine.
His other associate, a man dressed in all black, then cleared his throat. "Kaiser, our associates say there is a matter that requires your attention."
His dark brows furrowed together. Looking down at the ant-sized girl and her even smaller audience, he mused:
Another time then, Lexy.
In the swirling darkness of an underworld basement, far, far away from the twinkling fairy lights hung above of the celebration currently ongoing, a muscular man greeted the Kaiser with a deferential bow of his bald head. He then gestured to a seated figure located in the middle of the room behind the corroded bars of a metal cage. His clothes were torn in several places and metallic, barbed electroshock collars had been placed on his neck, wrists, and elbows.
"Despite your instructions, he has continued to be uncooperative, Kaiser," the underling said, wringing his hands together, an uncharacteristically deferential movement for a man his size and build.
The Kaiser nodded. It was as he had expected. "Leave us."
The man swallowed deeply, then nodded. After most in the basement had departed, the Kaiser retrieved a blade from the hilt of his belt. The metal was smoky black with age and oxidized in the way of very old carbon steel. He turned the blade to face him and it showed a unbroken, unglinting line without a single nick or flaw. Along this sharpened edge was the same twisting figure of a multi headed dragon, barely visible. Its cybernetic links were joined together seamlessly.
Their multiple heads, too, seemed to be devouring each other.
"... I saw your sister today," the Kaiser said tonelessly, polishing the knife in front of the restrained man with a cloth that was stained splotchy brown and faded scarlet red. "She was skating in the town square. I missed her."
At the sound of this name, the lifeless man in the chair rocketed to life. He pulled his slick brown hair into two agonized fistfuls at both sides of his head and rocked back and forth in his metallic restraints, moaning only, "No... no..."
The man stopped shining his blade and held it up to the underworld's cruel and hard light to admire the edge. "Yes, Nightshroud. Alexis is here in Domino. Aren't you happy that your little sister has come home to see you?"
The prisoner's rocking motions worsened into violent racking sobs. "No... no... no, no, no! I told her NOT to come! Why didn't she listen to me!?"
The Kaiser tsked and brought the blade down to waist level. No need to use this now. "One would think you want to die. You don't want her to come here and save you?"
He shook his head vehemently and wheezed, "Anything but that. Anything but that."
"And why's that?"
The helpless man becomes suddenly defiant. His voice was like a bracing slap as he said:
"I've got nothing else to say to you, Hell Kaiser."
The man standing before the prisoner clicked his tongue and closed his dark eyes. With a disappointed shake of his head, he then sighed, "The big bad Hell Kaiser. What, is that what you told Alexis in your letter? You tell her I'm some kind of monster?" the Kaiser then leaned in and squeezed the cheeks of the older Rhodes sibling together with one hand. The sheer force of his fingertips' grip left behind a pale and deep indent on the man's tan skin.
Barely concealing a crazed laugh, he proclaimed, "That's good, Nightshroud! I don't need your respect. In fact, all I need is for you to tell her all kinds of stories about me. Tell her I'm the man who stalks your nightmares. Tell her I'm the reason why your family can no longer sleep peacefully at night. Tell her all these stories, and even more! After all, paranoia is just a kind of awareness, and awareness is just another form of love."
Breathless, Atticus spat out:
"You're sick, Zane. You need help."
He simply shrugged and motioned one of the few remaining Cyberdark lackeys forward to tighten his restraints. And your point?
Before being gagged with a towel, the young man begged, "Just… just leave Alexis out of this. Please."
With another wave of his hand, the Kaiser then motioned to another man who was standing by the electroshock machine.
"... But why," Zane said, leaning forward with a slanted smile that bared all of his glistening jagged teeth, "would I dream of ever doing that?"