CONTENT WARNING: Portrayal of suicidal thoughts/actions. Reader discretion is advised.


OP2: "Back Again" by Daughtry


Chapter 22: "Ghosts - Part 3"


"Mom?"

A warm smile spread across the blonde woman's lips before she approached her son, setting herself next to him. "How're you feeling, sweetie?" She held her palm to Mike's forehead, her skin cool against his.

"I..." He tried to speak, but words failed him. He had been mesmerized by the sight of his mother, one that should have been more familiar than it felt. Why did it feel like he'd gone a lifetime without her?

She noticed his perplexion and her face fell. "Do you still feel sick?"

Her words seemed to jar loose another memory he didn't know he had: replacing the nightmare that had tormented his sleep was his recollection of being picked up from school earlier that day. It had been recess. He'd been playing tag with Violet and a handful of other kids. Next thing he knew, he was keeling over on the schoolyard tar, dropped by an overwhelming heat that had inflamed his body and stolen his energy.

His mother had been swift to arrive and bring him home, carrying him into the living room where she'd given him a spoonful of medicine to ingest. It had tasted like acidic cherries, but he knew better than to complain. And before long, he must have passed out, whereupon Miryam had to have placed the blanket he'd awoken under on him as he entered the nightmare he couldn't recall.

"No, I... was dreaming," he said, scrunching his face as he racked his brain in vain. "A nightmare. But I don't remember."

His mom's warm smile returned to her lips. "Well, it couldn't have been all that bad if you can't remember it, right?"

He nodded, though uncertainty still gnawed at his thoughts. Despite them, however, one thought—no, an urge—toppled over all else that sprang him into action: he threw his short arms around his mom's neck, catching her in an embrace like he'd just learned how to hug for the first time.

"I love you, Mom," he said, his voice shaking. She was right. It didn't matter what the nightmare had been. All he knew was that he was with her, where he knew he was safe.

Miryam, in response, laughed as she returned her son's hug. "Oh, I love you too," she said, her arms wrapping all the way around him on both sides as she held him, planting a kiss on his head. It was the warmest, safest feeling in the world, feeling her slim but strong arms wrapped around him.

There they sat holding each other for a time, before breaking the embrace as they pulled away. However, Miryam's hands remained on her son's arms. "Well, since you seem to be feeling better now," she said, "how about you come help me fix up dinner before your dad gets home? He's bringing a surprise for you, remember?"

Mike's eyes lit up, the last of his weariness exiting his body with haste. "Okay!" He agreed to his mother's proposition cheerfully, bringing a smile to her face as she stood and stepped back up the stairs into the kitchen.

Mike bounced off the couch and followed suit. The kitchen was much flatter in light compared to the den, being finished with stained wood cabinets, counters, and a dining table with four chairs tucked away under it.

"Can you start by setting the table for me?" Miryam asked, pulling a box of angel hair and tomato sauce from an overhead door.

"Yep!" Mike replied, only becoming more giddy at the sight of their planned dinner that night. He liked spaghetti and all, but the toasted rolls they always had with it were his favorite.

He set to work assembling napkins and silverware, while his mother had already lit the stove with pans full of pasta and sauce starting to sizzle over them. It was a gas-burner; both obsolete and illegal now, but not when they had first bought the house all those years ago.

As he scurried to place the assembled tableware down, he could hear his heart racing in his ears with excitement as he recalled that morning. His dad had promised to return bearing a gift for him that he was picking up after work. Something that Mike had been "asking for a long time," he'd said, that he thought he was finally ready for.

There was no doubt in his mind what it was.

Mike had barely enough time to put the last fork and knife set down on the table when the gentle thud of the front door caught his attention. But it wasn't even 5 p.m. yet.

"Dad?" he called out, abandoning his mother's mission for him and rounding another doorway to the front hall of the house. Sure enough, a man stood there. He looked around the same age as his mother, but taller, around 6'. Flattened dark hair was matted on his head, a strewn mess equivocal to the tired look in the man's chocolate-colored eyes. A scruffy beard decorated his chin.

He was dressed for a construction zone: a reflective vest in the process of being unzipped over a black long-sleeved shirt specked with dirt. Carhartt pants were tucked into leather work boots laced tight. Hanging from the row of hooks on the wall next to him was a green hard hat that had only been removed moments before.

The man's head swung in the direction of his son. "There's my little man!" he said with a smile, dropping down to his knees with arms open. "Come here!"

Mike wasted no time, barreling towards his father, Merrick Harper, and jumped into his arms with joyful force. Again, it felt like such a foreign experience to him, feeling his dad's raw strength holding him. Though his mother's embrace felt warm and safe, his father's was more secure and impenetrable. A wall built to defend his family, come what may.

His grip not faltering, Merrick rose to stand again, sweeping Mike up from his feet as Miryam rounded the corner to join them, smiling at her husband. "You're home early."

"Benefit of putting the boss in a good mood, I guess. Managing to drive six piles in a day puts a smile on my face too." He then leaned over to plant a kiss on Miryam's lips. "Not nearly as much as that does, though."

Miryam shook her head, blushing. "Humbly braggadocious" had been the first words she'd ever used to describe him, but his romanticism had been what won her over when they were young.

"Yuck!" Mike blanched, hating the feeling of being between the two as they smooched. Clearly he didn't quite have the same appreciation.

Merrick chuckled before returning his son to the floor. "Ah'right, ah'right. Well, at least you seem to be feeling better than earlier, eh kiddo?"

Mike nodded vigorously, and Merrick's smirk only broadened. "I bet I know why," he said, before reaching next to him to grab a large white shopping bag that, to Mike, felt like it had materialized out of thin air. "It's 'cause you've been waiting for this, right?"

"Lemme see, lemme see!" Mike's manners scrambled to hide in a corner as the rest of his brain ran frantic with excitement.

"Michael."

He froze. Hearing his mom's voice say his name with that stern tone always brought him back to his senses. "What do you say?"

He laughed nervously, before starting again from the top. "Can I see it, please?"

His father nodded approvingly, before lowering the bag to his son's level. "Sure, have at it."

His good manners accepted, Mike's small hands grabbed the gargantuan bag as he struggled to unwrap it from his gift, moving faster than his brain could process. It was right there, finally in his grasp—

And then a delighted squeal escaped from somewhere in his throat.

"YES! YES! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!" he cried out as the image of the child-sized duel disk on the box met his eyes. Excitement once again took over his body as he hopped in circles. Of everything his parents had raised him on, nothing had been more exhilarating to him than Duel Monsters. He'd watched so many matches on television and strangers playing out in the city, but he'd been taught to play up to that point using only cards and a playmat. But now, at long last, he could finally fulfill his fantasy of partaking in a real duel with the action brought to life.

"I told ya you'd love it," Merrick said, catching his son by the shoulder before he carouseled himself out the door. "But do me a favor and don't break it, okay? That wasn't cheap."

"Can we try it out right now? Please please please?" Mike hugged the box against his chest as he looked imploringly up at his father.

Merrick opened his mouth to answer, however paused when he caught the look on his wife's face. Though she was trying to hide it, her smile was failing to hide a hard-to-pinpoint feeling. Worry? Fear? But what was there to be afraid of?

Finally, she spoke up: "actually, Michael, I think it ought to wait until after dinner. It's cooking right now."

"But mom, you just started cooking it five minutes ago!" he whined.

She crossed her arms, making Mike think she was about to come down on him with the final "no" that would crush his dreams. For approximately another hour, anyway.

However, he felt his father kneel down beside him again, hand still on his shoulder as he looked up at his wife. "Look, I can smell the cold sauce from here. It's gonna be at least another half an hour, so why not let him give it a whirl? Trust me, we'll be done before Dean Martin can sing 'That's Amore'."

Miryam hesitated. She always hated when her husband took the side of their child. But she also knew he only ever did when she couldn't form a better argument against them.

She sighed. "Okay, fine. But when I call you two when it's ready, your butts better be in those seats before your plates are full."

"Understood, madam!" Merrick said with a joking salute to his wife, winning another romanced chuckle out of her. He then turned to his son. "Go get this thing unboxed and meet me out back with your deck, okay?"

"Ten-four!" Mike said, trying to play off his dad's joke before rushing up the stairs to his bedroom, box in hand. His door was already open, leading into a small room littered with old clothes and scattered toys across the floor. A child-size bureau occupied the center of one wall, opposite a tall window that overlooked the backyard, and his bed sat in the middle of the room between them.

He placed the box on his bed and tore at it, forgoing the idea of cutting the tape seals to free the duel disk from its cardboard prison. Before long, it was in his hands: an all-silver gadget with a card zone blade tucked under it. And not long after that, he'd managed to secure it to his arm.

He then traversed the room to his closet in the corner, opening it to reveal a row of hung shirts over a chest. His Duel Monsters collection.

But as he lifted the lid to the box, his ears suddenly caught the sound of his parents' voices downstairs. They sounded like they were mid-conversation:

"—I just don't think it's a good idea."

"Well you didn't disagree a week ago."

"Ricky, you know what could happen—"

"Nothing is going to happen, I promise!"

The words tugged on his heart for a moment. Were they talking about him and his duel disk? What was there to worry about? It's not like dueling was a dangerous game by any means. After all, the monsters were just holographic projections.

He then realized that his parents had gone quiet again, and resumed his search for his current deck. He eventually found it at the bottom of the pile of cards, wrapped with a rubber band. He tore the thing away and slowly inserted the stack of cards into the disk's deck slot. A perfect fit.

A satisfactory tingle ran down his spine, driving the timid thoughts about whatever his parents had been talking about from memory, and hurried back down the stairs. He passed through the kitchen, where his mom had resumed her dinner preparations, and dashed through the den's door to the backyard. His father was already outside, his own duel disk strapped to his arm. His eyes lit up when he saw his son walk out.

"Dang, you look like a real duelist now!" he said, causing Mike to beam. "So, ready to have your first action-packed duel?"

"Yep! I'm gonna take you down!" was Mike's reply, to which Merrick laughed at.

"Now, now, don't forget what I taught you about sportsmanship," he said. "It belongs both in gym class and on the duel field."

Mike rubbed his head with a nervous laugh. "Right, sorry."

His father nodded. "Now then, let's shuffle up."

Mike groaned as the two exchanged decks. Shuffling cards was hard for his tiny hands. His father made it look easy. He hoped duel disks in the future would have automatic shuffling systems built-in.

After his best attempt at a decent shuffle, Mike exchanged the deck back with his father and they walked to take their spots. Merrick stood against the house wall by the sliding door, while Mike took the far end of the yard against the enclosing fence. As his father activated his disk, he pinpointed the button to do so on his own and pushed it, extending the blade from the disk and sparking the device to life.

His father smiled. "Whenever you're ready, then."

The two of them dealt five cards before calling out, "LET'S DUEL!"

- DUEL -

[Mike - LP: 4000] vs [Merrick - LP: 4000]

"You can go ahead and draw first," Merrick called to his son from across the yard.

"Then here I go!" Mike declared as he pulled a card from his deck. He looked to his hand, struggling to pick a first monster to summon through all the excitement that was bouncing around in his brain.

"Okay, I play the Hinotama Soul!" he decided, carefully placing the card onto the blade of the disk. He then watched as the small fireball monster with white eyes took form before him, and he felt his body shake even more. [LV: 2/ATK: 600]

"Wow," he said, staring in awe at the feat of holographic technology that was his monster's form. "This is totally awesome!"

Merrick smirked. "Got anything else to show off?"

Mike quickly regained his cool, though he continued to feel the tingling running through his body. "Nope, that ends my turn!"

"Then it's my turn," his father said, drawing. "And I'll start by summoning my Kaiser Sea Horse!" [LV: 4/ATK: 1700]

Mike's face fell. Of all the cards he'd started with, none of them came anywhere close to matching that monster's ATK.

"Now I'll go into my battle phase," Merrick continued, pointing at Mike's lone monster. "And I'll attack your Hinotama Soul!"

Kaiser Sea Horse dashed across the greenery, taking up its spear and piercing the fireball monster, which extinguished with a whine. [Mike - LP: 4000→2900]

"Aw, no fair!" Mike said as he stomped. "I don't have anything that can beat that!"

"Maybe not yet," Merrick said, "but that's what dueling's all about, remember? Don't give up until the last card is played. I end my turn."

Mike took a moment to simmer down. His dad was right. Nothing in his hand now was of any good, but maybe with the next draw...

"Okay, my turn!" Mike said, pulling his next card and humming nervously as he flipped it to see what it was.

Then he smiled.

"Perfect!" he said, abandoning his caution as he slapped the card onto the disk. "I summon the Blazing Inpachi!" [LV: 4/ATK: 1850]

"Then I activate the spell card, Monster Reborn!" he went on, the sigil of the card appearing on his field as he played it. "And I'll use it to bring back my Hinotama Soul!" The sigil went up in flames, before transforming into the fireball monster once again. [LV: 2/ATK: 600]

Merrick grinned with approval. "Not bad at all, little man," he said. "Now show me what they can do!"

"You asked for it!" was Mike's retort as he pointed to his father's monster. "Inpachi attacks!"

The flaming monster barreled towards the Kaiser Sea Horse, and plowed its kindling arm into the creature, which groaned before exploding in a shower of flames. Merrick braced against the shockwave. [Merrick - LP: 4000→3850]

Heat was beginning to rise through Mike as his excitement elevated. He felt like it was coming from all sides. From below the ground. From the air around him.

From the fiery monsters assaulting his father.

"Now, Hinotama Soul!" he exclaimed as he pointed at his father. "Attack him directly!"

The fireball monster made a guttural sound as it flew towards Merrick, whose eyes were wide and his mouth open as though he were about to say something.

But he never got to.

The monster rammed itself into his gut with force, launching him from his feet as he gasped, feeling the air being driven from his lungs. His punishment wasn't over, however, as the monster proceeded to launch him into the house wall, smashing through it and breaching the den as wood splintered and creaked from the break in the structure. The monster then came to an abrupt halt, sending him crashing into the wall next to the kitchen doorway, a howling cry of pain escaping him as he crumpled to the floor.

"DAD!" Mike was immediate in his response as he rushed over to the giant hole his monster had put in the house, slowing as he realized that the broken odds and ends of the gap were singeing.

Then he saw his father through the hole, and the adrenaline response his body had instinctively triggered was overwritten with dread. Blood was scattered all over him, having been whipped across his body from the motion of the assault. Where the monster had charged him, his black shirt had a massive hole burned into it that spanned his abdomen, revealing a massive third-degree burn where the monster's form had contacted his skin.

"Merrick!" The shrieking sound of his mother's voice pierced the air as she leapt from the kitchen doorway, rushing to her husband and kneeling beside him. As she slowly helped him to his feet, Mike could only stand there, looking from the Hinotama Soul that was still afloat in the den to his father, jaw dropped with horror. They were supposed to be harmless holograms. How did this happen? Why was his monster suddenly real?

Was it his fault somehow?

As he finally regained his footing with Miryam's help, Merrick looked through the hole in the wall to meet his boy's terrified eyes. "Son," he said weakly.

"Dad," Mike said, beginning to sniffle, "why did it hurt you?"

Merrick groaned. "I need you to stay calm."

"Why did the monster become real?"

"Listen to me very carefully."

"Dad, I'm scared." His voice was quickly starting to crack.

"Sweetie, it's going to be okay," his mother tried to assure Mike, while Merrick slowly started to stumble forwards.

"Listen, I'm going to come to you."

"No. No, stay back." Mike took two steps backwards. He couldn't stop shaking. Somehow, he had managed to hurt a member of his family. One of the people he loved most in the world.

Somehow, he had become dangerous.

"Just don't move."

"Don't come near me!" His head was pounding. His breathing had grown erratic as the panic in his chest grew.

"Michael, please—"

"I SAID STAY BACK!"

In that moment, all emotion that had built up inside Mike exploded outwards with that scream. And then, as though coming to its master's defense at his call, the Hinotama Soul rushed forward, suddenly enlarging in size as its fiery essence consumed his parents.

Mike heard himself scream, but it was quickly silenced when the house burst into flame with a thundering BOOM! It flung him backwards, the whole of his backside hitting the enclosing fence with shattering force.

And then there was black. But only for a moment. The first thing that returned to him was his hearing, though it started as nothing more than a high-pitched ringing. Then his nose caught the scent of smoldering wood. He tasted ash in his mouth as his sight started to return. Blurry at first, but it quickly came into focus when he realized what it was he saw before him:

There stood his home. Ablaze. Scorched black beyond recognition. Burned like an effigy already beginning to collapse in on itself.

He picked himself up from where he'd been strewn on the grass, before his pain receptors alerted him to the top of his left forearm. He winced as he grasped at the spot, only to quickly pull away when he realized it was wet. He inspected his hand, covered in blood, before raising his arm to look at the affected area. It was uncanny: what looked like a perfect 'X' had been etched deep into his skin. But when had he sustained injury? All he remembered was being flung back by the blast—

And then he remembered. His parents.

"MOM! DAD!" He rushed forward as fast as his tiny body would go under the weight of his agony. There was no entering the house through the hole his attack had made without cutting himself to ribbons on the splintered wood. The sliding glass door was all but pieces, however the upstairs landing had already fallen in and blocked the way. But there was one spot he could pinpoint between the door and the collapsed floor, just small enough for him to crawl through.

Taking a deep breath in, he forced himself through the space, arriving on the other side to find what remained of the den. Many of the walls had been scarred by the falling of the second story floor. There was nothing that wasn't being licked by constant flames.

None of that mattered, though. Cupping his hand over his mouth, he paced through the burning wreck of his home, frantically looking for his parents. "Mom! Dad!" he shouted between his fingers on occasion, hoping to hear them reply over the sound of the crackling flames. Over and under the destroyed remains he crept, taking care to not come into contact with any sharp ends or smoldering pieces.

And then he found them.

His stomach wanted to evacuate his tiny body. Every muscle quivered as his face contorted at the sight. They were nothing more than charred semblances of who they'd been before. Flesh had given way to bone in scattered places across their corpses. They were curled together, apparently having grasped each other in their final moments before Hinotama Soul's flame had snuffed their lives out.

He fell to his knees beside them, unable to stop the tears from forcing their way out of his eyes. He had done this. He didn't know how or why, but somehow, his parents—the people that had meant the most to him in his small little world—were gone. And it was all his fault.

He had killed them.

His crying became uncontrollable. All his inhalations were deep and unstable, inviting all the surrounding smoke into his lungs. With every breath, he felt it becoming more of a struggle. And in that moment, a terrible thought for a six-year-old child entered his brain: that he was going to die here, next to his parents. And he was okay with it. He deserved it.

Then suddenly, a strange noise cut through the roaring fire: a radio beep. And then a voice: "Securing one child on the ground floor!"

Mike's head whipped around, bringing him face to face with a clean-shaven man in a heavy yellow suit strapped with any number of gadgets he didn't recognize. A black composite helmet with a face shield adorned his head, and held a large ax in one hand.

"Are you okay?" the firefighter asked Mike.

He barely managed to nod, before pointing. "My parents..."

The man looked to the bodies Mike was pointing at, and his expression fell. An expression that said he'd seen this scenario plenty of times before, but it never made the next one any easier.

He turned his attention back to Mike with sympathy in his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said, sliding his ax into a leather loop by his waist to hang from. "But we need to get you out of here."

Without warning, the man effortlessly scooped Mike into his arms, lifting him up and cradling him carefully. He had wanted to protest that he left him there, but at that point, he was too deprived of energy to even try and push the man back. The 'X' in his flesh felt as though it were draining him.

He carried Mike through the kitchen, which he noticed was particularly blackened—as though it had been the epicenter of the explosion that was turning his home to cinders—before they both emerged through the house's front door. His eyes felt a tinge of relief as bright heat turned to chilled night. The man carried him past a myriad of other firefighters, many with hoses attempting to douse the flames from the structure, while others barked directions between each other in coordinated effort.

The fireman brought Mike back to one of the massive engines by the curb of the street, telling him to wait and not move before running back to rejoin his brothers and sisters in combating the blaze. As he watched him charge into the fray again, his eyes drifted upwards to the remains of his home. Though his tears had ceased, there was no stopping the large hole that felt like it was expanding from the center of his chest. An emptiness that consumed him, as though to show him what he had left in that moment.

Nothing.

"Such a senseless tragedy."

Mike's eyes widened. He knew that voice. It had been from his nightmare. But how—?

He whipped himself backwards: there stood the man in the brown blazer with glasses, hands in his pockets as he leaned against the firetruck.

"To be so young, and to have witnessed such a horrible calamity," he drawled as he stepped forward, stopping to stand beside the child as he observed the searing home, "all while carrying the burden of blame for it."

"Liam?" Surprise hit Mike's face as soon as the name escaped his lips. How did he know this stranger's name?

The spectacled man looked down at him with a knowing, evil smirk. "After they managed to put out the flames, an investigation took place," he said, looking back at the burning structure. "They concluded that there was some sort of critical failure with the oil tankers that fueled the stoves in the kitchen. And they were right. They just couldn't find an explanation as to why."

Mike's eyebrows raised as Liam started to pace around him. "After treating you, the firemen turned you over to the County Dame P.D. The cops interviewed you, asking what had happened. And you told them exactly the truth. With the monster, the real damage, and the fire. But all they garnered from that was they were interrogating a traumatized boy with a slipping grasp of reality. A child only able to use child logic to explain away what had happened. But you knew better, didn't you?"

Mike opened his mouth to speak, but his jaw remained stuck in place. Now Liam was recounting memories of his that he hadn't even experienced, yet... he still remembered them? How was this possible?

He turned around again to face Liam, but was in for a shock: suddenly, he was no longer outside his former childhood home, but standing in the corner of the beige interrogation room at the C.D.P.D. An officer sat across from a young blond boy in flame-tattered clothes, his face scrunched in pain as he recounted the details of his parents' death.

But wait... that was him.

He looked down at himself: he was in the same body that he'd remembered being in during his nightmare again. Older, teenage age. Nearly an adult.

No... this was his real body. And the nightmare had been when he had reverted to his child self, living through the unintentional murder of his parents all over again.

Across the room, Liam stood in the corner, still grinning; clearly enjoying this way too much. "Later, your little girlfriend and her father would show up. He volunteered himself to be your guardian, but was rejected. The state wouldn't allow a single father getting by on nothing but self-employment to take another child into his care."

With what felt like a blink, the room changed, and Mike stood in the building's front office. Sat in the two chairs up at the front were his child self and a young Violet, with dark hair and a blue dress. Her arms were wrapped around him as he cried into his hands, muttering over and over again, "it's my fault..."

Another blink, and the scene had changed again. Mike stood at the bottom of a stairway on the city streets of County Dame, looking up to a large, brick building with a set of broad, arching doors inlaid with stained glass towering over the two standing at the top. Himself, holding a small bag of belongings that the police had gathered for him, and an elderly nun with a severe face looking down upon him.

"The foster system failed you, with every single family called upon refusing to take you in," he heard Liam say from somewhere nearby, but he couldn't rip his gaze from the sight of his younger self being escorted into the building. "Your psychiatric evaluation labeled you as disconnected from reality. A problem child that nobody wanted. 'Too much of a burden,' they all kept saying. So the state, with options exhausted, put you in the custody of the Daybreak Guidance Home. Or, as everyone else called it, the 'orphanage.'"

Blink again. He and Liam stood at opposite ends of a small office. An impossibly stacked pile of smooth stones sat displayed on a desk, with a nameplate reading "Skeldon Crawford, PhD" at the front. In two identical chairs between Mike and Liam sat the former's young self, battered with bruises and a puffy lip, and Dr. Crawford, with considerably shorter hair and unrimmed, circular spectacles.

"The abusive way the nuns ran that place was bad enough, but it was even worse being targeted and isolated by the other children there," Liam said. "You were the standout: the only one among them that hadn't been left there since birth. And they hated you for it. For having known what it was like to have a family. And they bullied and beat you relentlessly. It wasn't until you started fighting back that they decided to request that the remainder of your parents' assets be reallocated to get you outside counseling."

Blink. Mike stood in the lone bedroom he had been forced to occupy on his own in the orphanage. Slate gray stone surrounded his young self as he sat on a thin bed with a single pillow and ragged blanket, legs curled inwards and arms wrapped around them as he sobbed.

"And sure, maybe it helped you to move past it," Liam said, leaning in the doorway of the room. "But no matter how far you managed to come each session, closure was always just out of your reach. Because in the end, you still had no real confirmation as to why your parents had to die... until two years ago."

The room faded, and Mike was alone in the void. No room. No younger self. No Liam. Just darkness.

"The Mark of Death."

Mike raised his left arm, sliding the armband down that concealed the scar that had become forever etched into his skin twelve years before.

"The curse that took your family from you. The power that scared you from picking up a duel disk again for years. And what drove you to Frontier Haven, and kept you there even when all you wanted to do was return to your friends."

Mike felt his strength beginning to wane, sinking to his knees as his head hung limply. Liam's voice was no longer an audible force from somewhere distant. It was within his mind, overriding every conscious thought he could no longer find the strength to form.

"You didn't remain for that town's righteous crusade for independence that you always touted. You remained because you wanted to protect them from the danger that was your very existence. And yet, even after returning to them, you're still the same six-year-old child you were before, begging for your loved ones to stay back so you don't hurt them. Or worse."

A single tear fell from his eye. He hadn't even known it was forming until he felt it drop from his face.

"But there is a way to stop it."

He raised his head. Standing before him was his child self. Clothes littered with burn holes. Left arm dripping blood from the newly-formed Mark in his skin. In his right hand... a revolver-disk.

"So long as you live, you will remain a threat to everyone you profess to love," Liam's voice echoed.

The child extended his arm, holding the firearm by the barrel and offering it to Mike.

"You've already caused enough harm to your friends. And the only way to stop that from ever happening again..."

"Is for me to die," Mike finished, his voice quivering.

His child self nodded, and he reached his own quivering arm outwards, taking the gun from the boy's hand into his own. As he did so, his child self's mouth curled into a somber smile. This had been what he'd wanted since that day. And it was finally time.

Mike watched as the boy faded, leaving him alone again. Nothing but him and the cold steel in his hand. He knew what he had to do.

He swallowed hard, moving his thumb to pull back the gun's hammer, clicking it into place. Slowly, he raised it upwards, until he felt the barrel meet his temple, sending a shiver through his entire body. If this was what it took... then it was time to bring this to an end.

His index finger met the trigger.


As soon as Mike's duel disk arm had lowered, Ciro thought it was over.

He had started creeping further down the stone towards Mike, expecting him to turn back around to face him, having been freed from the yūrei's trance. But after seeing in the ice's reflection that his eyes were still glossed over, he'd halted himself again. If whatever battle Mike was fighting had ended, why was he still stuck in this state?

So again, he waited. He'd had strong expectations for Mike going into this. He wouldn't have offered this method of training if he didn't think the kid could handle it. But this was starting to go into overtime, and he was struggling to stave off his fear.

And then it happened: the one thing he'd been afraid to see.

Suddenly, Mike's right arm began to raise, and Ciro watched as his fingers shifted to replicate the form of a firearm, taking the tip of his index finger and putting it to his head.

"NO!" Ciro roared as he leapt down the natural stairway, expertly avoiding every dangerous obstacle before reaching the floor and rushing to Mike.

"Kid, I'm here!" he said, rounding Mike's body to face him and grabbing his shoulders. "Listen to me! You've got to snap out of it! Come back to me here!"

He shook Mike's body, but he was entirely unresponsive. It was like shaking a wax figure, detailed so realistically yet dead in every other way possible, and body stiff like it wasn't made to move from any other posture.

"Damn it, kid, COME ON!" Ciro's volume grew, his voice echoing between the cavern walls. "DON'T LET THEM TAKE YOU! PLEASE!" He tried to pull Mike's arm from its raised position, but it was like he had become stone. Unmoving, impregnable. He remained catatonic.

Terror gripped Ciro's heart, his breathing becoming unstable as his hand around Mike's raised wrist fell instead to his shoulder, before both arms slowly started to weave their way around his neck in an embrace. Before long, he was broken down entirely, sobbing into his shoulder. "Not again... please, not again...!" he croaked between gasps for air, memories starting to flood his mind of a time in his life long past.

He couldn't bear to lose anyone else.


"Don't."

A tingle ran through Mike's body as he felt a comforting hand come to rest on his shoulder from behind. A hand that belonged to her.

His eyes squeezed tighter shut. "I'm sorry... I don't have a choice."

He felt the hand on his shoulder rotate as Violet moved from behind him to his side, crouching down to his level, her expression gentle. "There's always a choice," she said, sliding her hand from his shoulder to the hand holding the gun. "And this isn't the one to make."

Mike shook at the feeling of her touch. "But it was my choice to come home, knowing everything I would bring back with me," he said, managing to open his eyes. "A choice that was never fair to you, or the others."

Violet's gaze didn't let up as Mike's shifted to the empty void above him. "I was selfish, thinking that I could return home and have a life with all of you again."

Violet shook her head. "It's not selfish to want a good life for yourself," she said. "If anything, you are one of the most selfless people I've ever known."

Mike's head lowered, clamping his eyes shut. His thoughts were a jumble. How was she even here? Why was she suddenly putting the very opposite of the thoughts he'd been infected with up until now into him?

"You've done nothing your whole life but do everything and anything you could to help others," she said, slowly guiding his hand holding the firearm down. "Because you know, better than most, what it means to be alone in a world without people who care. It gave you a gift that you've passed on to so many other people. Our friends. The people of Frontier Haven. Me. And even now, you would give up your own life if it meant protecting everyone your life has touched."

Mike finally managed to meet Violet's eyes, and she smiled warmly at him. "Does that sound like something a selfish person would do?"

He felt himself choke up as his grip on the gun in his hand loosened. "After all I've done to push you away," he said, "I don't deserve to hear these things from you."

Violet's lips curled apprehensively. "Maybe not," she said, "but you can fix that. And the only way you can is if you come back home to us. Because we all need you here. And if anyone, so does she."

Mike's breath caught in his throat. Casey. She was still out there somewhere, waiting for him and Aeron to find her. And Danny, Marina, and Josiah. They were all still standing by him, despite all the distance that he'd put between them.

And Violet. She still loved him. Despite everything he'd withheld from her or lied about. He owed her an unpayable debt.

But he'd never find Casey. He would never be able to stand by his friends' side again. He would never be able to pay that debt to Violet back.

Not if his life ended here.

His grip finally gave way, allowing Violet to remove the gun from his grip as he fell to all fours. His body finally began to cease its quivering, and his breath was slowing to a controlled pace. The words that Liam—no, that the phantom—had put into his head were being pushed out by Violet's.

He turned to her, seeing that she had stood and extended her other hand out to him, still smiling. "Ready?"

With a nod, he took her hand and allowed Violet to pull him back to his feet. Meeting her smile with one of his own, he said, "I'll see you soon. And thank you."

With a nod, she faded away, and he turned his head back to the void in front of him. He needed to get out of here.

"Hey, phantom?" he said, raising his left arm up and willing for his duel disk to re-materialize upon it. "Why don't you come out of hiding? I'm not done with you yet." [Mike - LP: 700]

At this, the sound of Liam's voice angrily growling echoed across the void. Before long, the phantom emerged again from the inky depths, its duel disk active and Cyber Dragon Nova in tow. [Phantom Liam - LP: 2000] [Cyber Dragon Nova - ATK: 4200→2100]

"How?" it demanded, its expression boiling. "You should've been dead by now! Why are you still alive?!"

"Because I still have things worth living for," Mike shot back, readying himself to draw. "And no mistakes I've made, or manipulative bullshit you say, will ever make me think otherwise again. It's my turn!"

He dealt his card, looking to it. And smiled.

"I activate my Pot of Desires!" he said, throwing the card into his disk. "With it, I banish the top ten cards of my deck and draw two cards!"

His thumb flipped from the bottom towards the top of his deck until he reached the amount, and pulled them before replacing them in his deck case. He then returned to his deck, and dealt his two cards.

It was them. His deck had returned.

"I summon my Constellar Algiedi!" he said. [LV: 4/ATK: 1600]

He took a moment to appreciate the phantom's jaw dropping with shock. "When Algiedi is normal summoned, I can special summon any other level four Constellar monster in my hand, like my Pollux!" [LV: 4/ATK: 1700]

"And with both of them out, I'll use them to build the overlay network one more time!" he exclaimed, raising a hand as a spatial vortex opened above him, absorbing Algiedi and Pollux. Moments later, the portal would give way to his longtime ace, who somersaulted over Mike and landed before him, its blade of light extended and at the ready. "Xyz summon! Strike with the power of the cosmos, Starliege Paladynamo!" [RK: 4/OUs: 2/ATK: 2000]

"And by using his effect," Mike said, his smile growing, "detaching both of his overlay units takes away all of your Nova's ATK points and effects!" [OUs: 2→0] [Cyber Dragon Nova - ATK: 2100→0]

"NO!" shrieked the phantom, its voice distorting like nails upon a chalkboard. "HOW DARE YOU?!"

Mike's smirk grew broader. "Just like this. Starliege Paladynamo, finish him off with Galactic Gladius!"

The warrior launched itself across the void, taking up its blade and piercing straight through Nova's center. The sound of tearing steel nearly pierced the void as the dragon let out one last robotic roar of defiance, before exploding with an impact that shook the nothingness they stood within, illuminating the space with an all-encompassing white light.

"DAMN YOU!" The phantom's screech couldn't match the explosion of its creature, and within seconds, it was enveloped in the bang that had vanquished its monster, swept away in the light. [Phantom Liam - LP: 2000→0]

- DUEL OVER -

[Winner: Mike]

Before long, the same whiteness that was transforming the void reached Mike, who had no time to raise his arms to shield himself from the permeating force. And then—


The icy mirror shattered with an impact that felt like the wind of a hurricane, sweeping both Mike and Ciro from their feet as they were blown backwards. The two landed on their sides a short distance from the stone stairway, feeling the cold rain of the shards smash across them.

With a heavy gasp, Mike's eyes fluttered open to see the face of Ciro, to his surprise, uncomfortably close as he looked back at him with bewilderment.

"Kid?" he asked, quickly removing his arms from Mike and scrambling to his knees beside him. "Kid, is that you?"

Blinking, Mike rose to sit upright, not breaking eye contact with his mentor. "Yeah," he said, almost breathlessly. His lungs felt like they were burning, as though he'd been stuck in a sort of stasis for a long time without air. "Yeah, it's me."

Ciro extended his hand, which Mike took gratefully as he allowed him to pull them both back to their feet. And while Ciro's eyes didn't leave his pupil, Mike glanced over to the now-barren wall. Nothing more than a cold stone surface, freed from the frigid imprisonment that had probably been all it had known for centuries.

Like these walls, he would never allow himself to be held prisoner within his own world again.


Author's Notes

Two years. Over two, long, goddamn years. Holy shit.

Well, hello everybody. After my longest-ever hiatus that I probably should've been able to get WAY more writing done within the duration, I'm FINALLY back. So what'd I miss? Pandemic? Check. New President? Check. All-time high gasoline prices? I hate it here.

So, after this long a time, I'm sure there's not many of you who would really care to read this three-part BEHEMOTH and had just presumed me dead. To those people, you were only half right. Just dead inside. But for those of you who gave a shit and managed to reach this part and want to know where I've been, well. First of all, thank you all so much for your readership, even after all this time. As for where I've been... that, in part, ties into the reason this entry as a whole took forever and a half to get done.

Let's rewind a bit. March 30, 2020. Last chapter came out. I was feeling good. Life was going aight. A pandemic on the rise, but I was prepared to hunker down and wait it out with my family so we'd all stay safe. And then on April 4, 5 days later and two years ago from today... I lost my mom. To suicide.

Yeah.

Being grief-stricken and hardly able to function for a really long time after that aside, imagine what my thought process was when I finally came back to try writing this up and realized THIS was what I was writing around. I literally could not find it in myself to even begin to touch this for the longest time because of that fact alone. And it wasn't just my mother I'd lost in that span. Literally a month later, within weeks of each other, we put our last dog in the family down, and then my grandmother, my father's mother, also passed away.

Fast-forward maybe about a year later. I DID finally start working on this maybe in early 2021. And then on and off over the next few months after all. All things considered, I actually banged out the first two parts pretty quickly. And then I hit THIS ONE. I must admit, I froze up, and couldn't touch it again. I still wasn't ready. I was still trying to fix a lot in my life. And I knew I was going to have to reach into the depths of my own personal depression and trauma from everything else and draw as much from it as I could to make this the impactful piece I needed it to be. The process then devolved into me just managing to come up with bits and snippets at a time on my phone, usually at night when I couldn't sleep.

Then I realized we were approaching the second anniversary. And I decided to commit to making sure that this released then, today. Everything in this chapter is, at large, a tribute to the process that I went through trying not to succumb to my own demons like my mother had. It's taken EVERYTHING in me to reach a stable point where, now, I can say that honestly, I'm okay. In fact, in some respects I'm thriving. I have a great job that I love, my father got to retire and is enjoying everything that freedom has to offer. And I've since made so many new friends that came to inspire me to even start streaming. If you're interested in meeting my irl face and have a Twitch account, maybe check out my channel on there. Same name as on here, ThatLoneAvenger. (Yes I'm shamelessly plugging at the tail end of this heavy-ass shit. Fight me. xD)

So... what is there to say at the end of all this? Well, for one, this story ain't dead and neither am I. I'm still not guaranteeing a stable schedule for this story, but I will be doing my best to keep up with it where I can. Also, mandatory shout-out goes to Master Of Anime224, who not only is my beta reading hero, but also just a really fantastic friend who's been there for me through all this shit. Thank you, now and forever, my man. Oh yeah, and he's been making waves with his own entries in our little RealityVerse, so be sure to check out Reality's Curtain and The Golden League on his profile.

Last but not least, at the end of all of this... NOT a Chapterly Question. Instead, I would like to make a request of y'all: please, make sure that the people in your life that you love, know that you love them. You never know when someone might be struggling with their own lives and could use a friend. Oftentimes, it's those who seem the most fine that are battling the worst demons. And none of us know how long we still have left with anybody. So don't take them for granted.

Okay. I think I've droned on long enough. Hope to maybe see some of my old friends from here on Twitch. And I promise you'll see more of this story soon enough in the future. So until we all next meet: I love you all, thank you for reading, and as always, stay awesome.


PUBLISHED: 4/4/2022