Chapter Two: Dead Man Running

The first thing Johan noticed upon opening his eyes was the man standing over him, a sharp-looking scalpel in one hand. He was neither especially tall nor particularly short, and his hair and features were rather nondescript; frankly, the only thing distinctive about him was the white labcoat and he was wearing. A surgeon? No, that wouldn't make much sense; a coroner, maybe?

For a long moment, the two just stared at one another. As one, both of their gazes turned to the scalpel that was interposed between them. The presumed-coroner twitched, shifting the scalpel from a surgeon's grip to a defensive one, and that small motion was all the trigger Johan needed to move.

It was nothing more than a light shove to the shoulder, meant to get the man away from him so he could stand—or at least, that's what it was supposed to have been. Instead, the man was launched across the room with a sickening crack, slamming into the far wall with enough force to form an indent in the plaster. Absently registering a light tingling in his arm, Johan goggled as the coroner slumped down, the back of his head drawing a crimson streak across and down the wall like the world's most macabre paintbrush.

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Johan slid his legs off of the metal slab his corpse had been laid out on, for autopsy no doubt, and walked over to the coroner. He barely registered that he was completely nude even as he squatted down next to the slumped man and got a good look at what he'd wrought.

The image of crushed fruit preserves came to mind as he stared at the ruin that was the back of the dead man's skull—no, the skull of the man that he'd just killed. He felt sick.

He was going to be sick, he realized, falling to his knees and heaving. Nothing came out, of course, save for a viscous fluid that he had no way of recognizing as embalming fluid.

God only knew how long he kneeled there, forehead pressed to the floor, naked and gagging. Distantly he realized that he couldn't stay where he was, especially not after killing someone, accident or not. But…

It was too much. Dying, being brought before the Hyakki Yako, becoming one of the Hyakki Yako and apparently a fucking Duel Spirit to boot, and now this!?

It was just too goddamn much.

Johan's shoulders shook with sobs that his still-dead body didn't even have the decency to provide with tears. He tried to raise his hands to his face, only for another consequence of what he'd done to make itself known.

The arm that he'd shoved the coroner with was a mangled mess. His right hand hung limply from his wrist, each of his fingers bent in different, wrong directions, and as he looked on, the lower half of his forearm began to droop, bone poking through his skin as a brutal break worsened due to his movement. The most unsettling part, though?

There was no pain whatsoever. A faint buzzing, like a limb that had fallen asleep due to lack of circulation, but nothing resembling the agony he knew he ought to be in. It was yet another nail in the proverbial coffin, yet another anomaly signposting something he knew to be true but desperately did not want to accept.

He was human no longer.

'And what of it?' came a familiar svelte voice, disembodied and firm but neither harsh nor cruel. With the voice came a warmth not unlike an embrace, though rather than being physical, this comforting heat enveloped his consciousness, his very soul. 'You have a right to your despair, young Yurei, do not mistake me,' Dakki continued gently. 'You have been faced with hardship and confusion, and it is your prerogative to rage against this.'

He felt a sharp gaze focus on him, a shadow of eyes piercing the borders between worlds to pin him where he knelt. 'But wherein lies your value as a person? Does it lie in the blood that runs through your veins? The breath that fills your lungs? Or does it lie in the beating of your heart, perhaps?

'No,' the kitsune continued, not waiting for an answer. 'The form your vessel takes is immaterial. What gives shape to your soul and meaning to your being are the choices you make.' Dakki let out a telepathic sigh. 'Your grief and disgust at this human's death are understandable, if perhaps wasted on the likes of him.'

"What...do you mean?" Johan rasped, his one intact hand balling into a fist against the pale tile of the morgue's floor.

There was silence for a time, only the faint warmth of Dakki's presence in the back of his consciousness reassuring him that he was not alone. Finally, though, she replied, voice bitter and quiet. "Just as your actions and choices give shape to who you are, so too did this human's decisions do the same. His spirit is tainted with the misdeeds he was party to, whether through action or complicity."

"But—" Johan began weakly, before being cut off.

Dakki let out a growling hiss, then spat, "This is the place where you died, Yurei. Perhaps not the very room, but certainly the same structure. This human may not have taken your life himself, but he certainly did nothing to stop your death."

"And that's supposed to make it alright that I murdered him!?" Johan all but shrieked, voice hoarse with both emotion and from his bout of sickness. He punched the ground with his good hand, shattering the tiles and embedding his hand up to the wrist in the concrete foundation below. With a hiss of irritation, he wrenched his now crumpled left hand free and let it flop to one side, mirroring his ruined right. For a while, he just kneeled there, silent but for the heavy sound of his breathing.

When she spoke again, Dakki's voice was incredulous. "I do not understand, Yurei. Do you not seek to right the wrong that was done to you? To avenge your death? Or are you some manner of Buddha, to forgive any and all trespass against you?"

Johan let out a harsh, mirthless bark of a laugh. "Of course I want to see the ones responsible for my d-death punished. I'm no fucking saint." He spat to one side, before continuing in a harsh whisper. "But I want justice, not vengeance. Maybe it's nothing but self-righteousness, but I don't believe I have the right to take away someone else's life, not even those who took away mine."

He gritted his teeth, his nostrils flaring as fire burned behind his eyes. 'No matter how much I might want to.'

Dakki was silent for another period of time, perhaps processing what had been said, as well as what hadn't. Finally, she concluded, "Very well. This, it seems, is just another facet of what makes you, you. Though your mindset and values are somewhat alien to me, ultimately the most important thing is that you be true to yourself, and if pursuing a particular brand of justice over retribution is part of that, the Hyakki Yako will support you."

Johan sniffed, warmth welling up from within. "T-thank you, Dakki. All of you. Thank you."

The kitsune gave a telepathic sniff. "It is only natural. You are ours, and we are yours. Partners in revel and battle alike; it should go without saying that we stand at your back, that nothing from the highest heavens to the lowest hells should overcome you."

There was a beat, then she cleared her throat and spoke again. "But we may talk at length about such things when you are no longer within the gullet of the enemy. Pay attention now; I shall show you how to repair the damage you have done to yourself."

What followed was a confusing, if mostly comprehensible, treatise on the nature of Duel Spirits in general and the Mayakashi in particular, and the feats that their existence as energy-based thought-forms enabled. Some of the more esoteric metaphysics went over Johan's head, but the long and the short of it was that he had to hold the image he desired in his head and bring it forth into reality through intent and will.

Apparently, Psychic Duelists did something similar when manifesting their cards, though Dakki had seemed disdainful of the topic and declined to elaborate further on the matter. Johan might not have been in a very good headspace at the moment, but even then he knew not to press. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, after all, and that adage was likely exponentially more true when it came to kitsune, if the legend of Tamamo-no-Mae was any indication.

Regardless, by the time Dakki had finished instructing him, his arms were no longer mangled and on the verge of falling off. That being said, if the faint tingling deep in his right forearm, left wrist, and about half of the joints in his fingers was any indication, he still had a ways to go before they were completely repaired. Nonetheless, he could move his hands and fingers, albeit stiffly, and so quickly set about the next step of his escape.

It was a distasteful thing, to strip a corpse of its clothing, but he had little choice; there didn't seem to be any other clothes in the morgue. It was a small blessing that the coroner hadn't soiled himself upon death, but the process still made Johan's skin crawl. Some blood from the dead man's head wound had seeped into his lab coat, but his shirt and pants had thankfully been spared a similar fate.

Almost as an afterthought, Johan hefted the corpse, now clad in only its skivvies, and laid it on the table where he'd awoken. After digging through the labcoat for anything of use and procuring what looked to be a security keycard as well as a ring of mundane keys, he covered the dead man as best he could with the garment. It was a shoddy shroud, but it was the best he could do.

A final sweep of the morgue found him a couple of scalpels and a spare lab coat. The former he pocketed for self-defense, and the latter he threw on, if only so that he might blend in with whoever else might be in this godforsaken place.

Johan tugged on the cuffs of the labcoat nervously as he left the mortuary, turning off the light and shutting the door behind him. Floor by floor he climbed, eyes peeled and ears pricked for any sign of life. For better or worse, he managed to make it to the ground floor without encountering another soul, but there his luck ran out.

Or perhaps it was serendipity? He couldn't say. What he did know is that he recognized the man in front of him. His memories of the moments before his death were foggy and fragmented, but upon seeing that sneering face and that claw-like fringed pompadour, several pieces fell into place.

His chest heaved with black rage as he stared at the green-suited bastard in front of him. A pair of names rose from memories beyond death and twice removed.

Arcadia Movement.

Divine.

His jaw clenched as he passed the man in the hall, the egomaniac Psychic Duelist paying him no more mind than one would an ant as he swept by. All it would take was one turn and a jab of a scalpel, and—

No.

He would not allow his rage to master him. He could not go back to that place, not after escaping it and being in command of himself for so long. Though she remained silent, Johan could feel a hint of approval in the warm mantle that was Dakki's presence.

His knuckles popped from the sheer pressure with which he was clenching his fists. He had to get out of there, had to get away from—

A gloved hand came down on his shoulder and all motion in Johan's body ceased. "You don't work for me," Divine stated calmly even as bands of telekinetic energy snapped into being around Johan's arms and legs.

"So, stranger, how about you tell me why you're in my building uninvited?" The man gave Johan's shoulder a pat as he circled around to face him from the front, hands folded behind his back and an expression of false cheer on his face. "Don't get me wrong; I'm going to get my information either way. I'm just offering you the opportunity to do it the easy way."

Johan let out a growl that really shouldn't have come from human vocal cords, and tore the psychic bindings asunder, purple energy briefly flaring across his form. "Fuck you."

Divine took a step back, briefly nonplussed, but regained his composure with remarkable swiftness. "The hard way it is, then," he said, producing a Duel Monsters card from somewhere on his person and brandishing it as though it were a talisman against evil. The moment Johan saw the image on the card, he recoiled. A pair of hands, clutching at an unprotected mind.

Brain Control.

Already he could feel the tendrils of Divine's will seeping into the cracks of his mind, and he let out a scream, half in defiance, half in despair.

"Don't give in, kid!" came a different, but familiar voice. Hajun's voice was strong and determined. "You're not alone anymore, so you damn well better make use of that!"

"Yeah, Yo-Yo!" Next came Yuki's voice. "Sis got to have her fun, now it's my turn! Call my name and let me out to play!"

Johan's scream petered out, leaving him slumped over, arms and head dangling downward, eerily silent. "I get it now," he whispered. "I get it."

Even as the sinister fingers of Divine's spell clawed at his mind, Johan raised a hand, arm rising like a marionette's. In the palm of his hand, a glowing rectangle took shape. "Bury him in a frozen hell.

"Yuki-Musume!"

-x-x-x-x-x-

The next day, the Arcadia Movement's doors found themselves temporarily shut for the first time since the group's inception, on account of the localized blizzard that had erupted in their front lobby, landing their chairman in the hospital with severe frostbite.

Elsewhere in Neo Domino City, a young girl felt more than heard a cry of pain echo in her mind and rushed out with her twin brother to find the source. They found it in a nearby alleyway, where a man was slumped in a bright red, crashed D-Wheel, unconscious. Beneath the front tire of the man's vehicle, there was a second man in a battered lab coat, miraculously unharmed by what had to have been a dangerous crash.

Ruka and Rua Roba had no way of knowing just how strange their lives would become from that day forward.