Thanks once again for the reviews and suggestions! This chapter will conclude the second section of the story.
Octavus
"Aki? Are you there?"
The soft voice in her ear broke her out of her reverie.
"Kiryu? I thought you are still in the City?"
There was a little chuckle in his voice when he heard that question.
"I am, but I should be coming back soon." He replied with another laugh. "No point with me staying here now everyone is back in Satellite."
"What about the twins?" She insisted. No, not everyone of importance was in Satellite. The twins wouldn't have left.
"They are not a priority anymore. Not after what you did to liberate Satellite." He concluded. "Even Crow had returned to Satellite. We should now be focusing on building a future for the area. The twins and everyone else in Tops can be taken care of once we secure our position in Satellite."
She did not respond and let the silence hang between them.
He soon spoke again, as if to appease her. "Aki, I apologise... should I stick here to take care of the kids then?"
"No... I don't like having to pull out of the City, but if that's our orders, then it's fine." She shook her head, even though she knew he wouldn't be able to see it. "It's best to do what our mentor says. Did he want you to come back?"
"Yes." His voice picked up a pitch, as if it was something that excited him. "Especially now the princeling is hiding in Satellite too."
"Have you heard of the latest news then? They are currently with Martha."
There was a sigh of slight exasperation on Kiryu's side.
"I knew it. That's what Crow always does. Anything happens to him – he runs back to Martha. He's left his kids with her, and now he's going to leave Fudo Yusei with her too?"
"Do I have your permission to pay a visit to Martha's place then?"
"Oh? Can I trust you to hold yourself back in return?"
"Kiryu, don't talk like that." Her voice became cold for a brief moment. "I do know how to control myself. All we want is Yusei. I won't touch Martha. Unless you want me to fetch Crow as well?"
"Crow, unfortunately, is not the most important part of our plan." Judging from his tone, he would have shrugged as he said this. "We should probably let him go, even though I would love to get my revenge on him for betraying us like that. Let's just get the old Momentum up and running at full capacity first."
"That is our goal, after all." She chuckled too upon hearing his dismissive tone. "I agree with you. We should get Yusei and worry about everything later. It's still really ironic, you know, how important Professor Fudo's son is to the running of Momentum."
"Are you feeling vindicated, dear?" He said in a low, gentle voice.
"Completely." She answered immediately.
"Good. That's good to hear. Getting Fudo Yusei is of benefit to us all, regardless of our distinctly different aims."
"What do you mean, Kiryu?" Detecting something else in his usual irreverent tone, she lowered her voice. "What different aims? I don't think I follow you."
"I love you, Aki, but I'm not so silly to think you completely agree with everything I do." He replied, flippant as ever. "My dream is to liberate Satellite. You're not someone born here. I don't expect you to feel about Satellite the same way as I do."
"And your point is…?"
"My point is that no matter what you really want to do, capturing Fudo Yusei still falls within your interests, dear Aki-chan." He almost giggled. "After all, you are most beautiful when you are angry, and I simply adore that."
"Do you have anything more to say, Kiryu?" She could feel him trying to upset her with the way he was talking, and she didn't want to fall into his teasing. She had realised that he liked doing it. It was not the most logical thing to provoke her, but he never backed down from it.
"Ahaha, no, not anymore. You go and do your thing, Aki-chan. It feels good to be free to do what you wish with City folks now, isn't it?"
"..."
She only breathed into her microphone, unwilling to say anything more to his taunting.
"You know how I want you to turn out, Aki." He whispered softly. "Embrace it. Don't hold yourself back. Frankly, I don't really care if you hurt Martha. Do whatever you want to do to advance our plans. As long as it involves hurting the City, I am all for it."
"Of course I won't hold back for the City's sake. Are you still doubting me after all this time, Kiryu?" She hissed out.
He only replied with another giggle.
"So beautiful, so angry, so full of vengeance. This is who you are, Aki, and you are awesome. Don't ever change that, darling, no matter what happens."
-\-\-\-\-\-
"Is there anything else you can tell me about that Rosewood place, Martha-san? I'm a reporter at the City and I covered all of Izayoi Aki's case. I want to know what's actually going on here."
Carly's serious voice rang out in the quiet living room as they heard the humming of a summer storm approaching, but no one gave it any heed. Yusei was too busy reeling in the impact of what Martha had just said, and the rest of the group were either also contemplating the depth of those words, or busy worrying about the future of Aki, Kiryu, and indeed the rest of Neo Domino and Satellite.
Jack was the only one who had the leisure to survey the clouds as the storm slowly moved in from the sea, promising both Satellite and the City torrential rain. With a slightly irritated look, he glanced over at Carly, who was speaking next to him.
"Well… It has been operating for a long time. That much I can say for sure." Martha lowered her head and thought of the answer. "They opened soon after my place did, serving the people of Satellite. Even though it was a charitable hospital, it still charged its fair share of prices, and many people still came to me for free treatment, especially for their children."
"Do you know whether Rosewood has been operating as a secret stowaway place for prisoners from the City when it was build? Or do you suspect it was a later thing?" Carly furrowed her brows lightly, her interest deeply piqued.
"I can't be sure when it started. When the Institute was firstly built, we were all convinced that it was definitely a hospital. The Momentum team was already working here when we were still the port of old Domino, and they were trying to get basic facilities up and running in this neighbourhood." Martha mused. "Come to think of it, it had always operated in relative secrecy, even after the malfunction and after Rex Goodwin briefly took control of the Institute."
"Rex Goodwin?!"
Jack's eyes widened at the same time that Carly exclaimed. He was not expecting to hear the name of the current ruler of the City associated with the place where Aki and Kiryu were kept in secret.
"Martha! You mean the Rex Goodwin who's currently leading the City?"
Crow looked as startled as Jack was as the orange-haired young man nervously asked Martha for confirmation. Martha nodded gravely.
"… Yes, I mean the same Rex Goodwin."
"We never knew any of this." Jack continued the conversation with a low growl. "I knew Rex Goodwin was a scientist with the Momentum team before he turned politician, but I had no idea he was in charge of that hospital at some stage."
"All of the Momentum team were living in Satellite before the old prototype malfunctioned." Martha shook her head. "They were hardly strangers here."
"So… Martha, did you know any of them in person?"
It was Yusei who spoke up this time, to Jack's surprise. The City-born young man was looking up, his navy-blue eyes once again filled with an unknown resolve as they fixed themselves on Martha.
The King really didn't know how to give up. Jack whistled internally to himself.
"I certainly met your father when he was here leading the team, Fudo Yusei." Martha answered without missing a beat. "They were very amiable folks. The old Momentum model was also situated at the caves near the ocean. The area was a bit treacherous with the digging, and they sometimes had their fair share of accidents." She gave out a brief sigh. "I don't need to remind you how they had plenty of fatalities during the first prototype's construction, do I now?"
Yusei and Carly both nodded heavily. They knew the City paid its price for the ultimate energy source, something that Professor Fudo and Rex Goodwin often reminisced about.
"And even after the prototype's construction was finished and was it activated for trial runs, they still had plenty of misfortune." Martha looked up, her eyes clouded with distant memories. "Rex Goodwin even lost his brother to the project at the last minute."
"He had a brother?"
"Yes, he had, although I suspect he doesn't talk about him much now." Martha answered Yusei's incredulous question with a sad smile. "Rudger and Rex were your father's brightest colleagues. Momentum's construction was dangerous enough on its own, and its energy output wasn't always the most stable. The entire area was prone to accidents. We lost Rudger in one of the mini explosions shortly before the mass malfunction. I've always thought that was one of the reasons why Rex left science completely and pursued a career in politics afterwards."
"Were they… close?" Carly carefully offered.
"Very much so." Martha answered gravely. "They looked similar too. Blond hair, blue eyes, both tall and imposing figures. Rex was a lot more fair-skinned than Rudger though, and was less muscular... People involved in the team and in the surrounding areas all knew them, although most of those people have either moved away or died in that malfunction... It was a very sad time for us all."
Carly's phone lit up brightly just then. The bespectacled girl blushed as everyone's curious gaze fell on her, and she lowered her head in apology towards Martha.
"Sorry... This is from one of our acquaintances in the City. These people were the ones who secretly sent us here, in fact..."
"Those kids?" Jack picked up the conversation, his expression curious. Crow and Yusei also perked up.
"How are the twins doing?"
"They are fine." Carly answered Yusei's concerned question with a reassuring grin. "They also promised to do some digging in their parent's databases, and they're just sending over some data to my phone." She then lowered her eyes to the screen. "It's pretty much just everything we already knew, though."
"Even though the City doesn't truly care about us, our progress as an administrative district still gets tracked." Martha followed up. "We do have some data available to the public, but the stories from the days when the old Momentum team was here must be hard to find. You seem to have powerful friends, Carly-chan."
"You are too kind." Carly gave an open-mouthed smile towards Martha.
Martha, however, gave a curious look at Carly and then Jack.
"Carly-chan, if I remember correctly, you're a reporter from the City who wasn't involved with Satellite at all. Why did you come here with Jack?"
"Martha-san, like I said before, I was the reporter who covered Izayoi Aki's case." Carly answered immediately. "I feel like I should get to the bottom of that story."
"But Satellite is a very dangerous place, especially for folks like you who grew up in the City." Martha's face looked concerned. "You are a reporter, not a policewoman. It would have been safer to let Security handle it all."
"I understand what you're saying, but..." Carly bit her lip. "The more I heard about Rosewood from Jack, the more I wanted to get to the bottom of everything. Even though I am a reporter, and I heard about all sorts of things all the time, I knew virtually nothing about Satellite and what actually happened – or is happening. I guess I just wanted to help the King and everyone to expose the truth behind all this..."
"I know, I know, dear." Martha soothed Carly with her voice, but the old woman's face still carried a look of concern. "But Satellite could soon become very dangerous for all of us –"
"I agree with Martha on this." Jack looked up, his gaze firm and demanding. "I don't think you should've come with me, Carly."
"What?" Carly whirled around. "No! You didn't object with Ruka and Rua sent us here. " She blurted out almost instinctively as she faced Jack, losing the professionalism she had been putting up.
"Well, I changed my mind." Ignoring Martha's face, which looked as if she was on the urge of bursting out laughing, Jack glared back at Carly.
"I want to find out the truth about this place and help both the City and Satellite. What's wrong with that?"
"Exposing the truth won't help anyone." Jack growled back. "It's just Kiryu being his old self, being up to no good again."
"Really? That's not what I think. No one knows what is actually going on –" Carly checked herself then, realising that everyone was looking at her and Jack. "Sorry…"
"It's fine, Carly-chan. The boys talk over me all the time." Martha smiled gently. "But are you sure? You can stay here while the boys face Kiryu."
"I know… I guess… I just think there could be something bigger here, something that could impact everyone in Domino…" Carly mumbled with lowered head.
"You could be overthinking." Jack grumbled.
"I wouldn't say that." Crow suddenly spoke up. "Jack, do you remember when we had a visit from a guy when we were little kids? When we first came to Martha's place, six years old or so, not even in school? That man called himself Goodwin, but he was not Rex Goodwin, so we just thought it was some random guy who happened to have the same surname as the City's Director. Martha, do you remember that?"
"The Momentum team did come back to visit a few times." Martha furrowed her brows. "All of them would have come as a group though."
"No, I'm talking about one instance in particular." Crow persisted. "Jack didn't care about his birthmark before that. But that one time, that guy came up, straight up grabbed Jack and rolled up his sleeve –"
"– and told me my birthmark is the mark of a king." Jack quietly finished the sentence for Crow.
"What? I don't remember any of that." Martha looked startled as she looked from Crow to Jack.
"Well, we thought it was just something the adults all knew about Jack. We didn't want to tell you –" Crow hurried to explain their younger selves to Martha, but Jack quietened down, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.
That man who called him a king… He had tried to push it out of his mind after he recalled that distant and vague memory when he was still at Carly's place. He thought very little of it, thinking it didn't fit with the bigger picture. But now… But now…
He suddenly thought perhaps he – no, all of them – have been involved in a long and convoluted plan since decades ago, a plan that no one seemed to know about, controlled by culprits no one even thought existed. He had genuinely believed Carly was over thinking, but Crow's sudden jolt of his memory sent him into alarm.
Maybe Carly didn't overthink at all.
Maybe something – someone – has been setting events in motion long before the foundations of the City were ever constructed.
-\-\-\-\-\-
Coming off the anaesthetic was always difficult for Aki. She could never quite completely shake off the drowsiness that lingered, nor the flares of bad temper that somehow always accompanied her after the recovery. She had no idea what exactly was being done to her during the time she was out, but the dull throbbing in her head gave out suggestions to the nature of her 'operations'. Most times she just laid there, letting herself stare at the white ceiling of her white room, feeling the white sheets underneath the white gown she was wearing, and feel that she was slowly losing pieces of herself to this pure, pristine whiteness.
A bump underneath her mattress made today different. She couldn't quite feel it, but she knew it was there. It was the deck of Duel Monster cards Crow gave – lent – her. It was a weekend, and normal inmates like Kiryu didn't have to work, which meant good business for Crow and his cards. She could faintly hear some men playing in the inner courtyard already, and the hospital staff more or less turning a blind eye to them.
Unfortunately, that luxury was not offered to the likes of Aki, nor would they consent to give her a Duel Disk. It was true that you don't need a Duel Disk to play the game, but when no one played with her, what was the point of the game?
Izayoi Aki brought her hands up to her head and massaged her temples gingerly. She had the freedom to roam freely after her nightly 'operations', albeit only in this wing of the hospital. Kiryu was allowed to visit her here, though, and as such she did not feel like she was missing much. Most of the inmates in this place were burly men coming from the lower ends of society, and she was never comfortable with them anyways. She hated what the hospital was putting her through, but she can't deny the solitude up in the high levels of the building suited her much more.
Divine's old room was next door to hers, too.
"I know why you wanted to kill yourself now, Divine-san."
She muttered under her breath, closing her eyes.
"... Aki? Aki?"
She sleepily opened her eyes again, registering the sound of Kiryu's voice and the soft knocking that accompanied his calls.
"Is it visiting hours already...?" She muttered to herself, dragging herself forcibly out of bed as his knocking continued incessantly.
"Aki...? Are you back yet?"
"... yes." She made a small reply and shuffled over to open the door.
"Aki!" Kiryu moved into the room as soon as she opened the door a crack, his face an unusual blend of excitement and nervousness. "How are you doing today?"
"Same... as usual." She muttered in a low voice. "And I'll be back doing more tests tomorrow too, most likely."
"Poor Aki..." Kiryu patted her shoulder gently. "Everyone is getting a break in the next few days. I guess that doesn't extend to you though..."
She shook her head. "No... not really."
"Well, no matter what, you should still relax tonight!" She had noticed that there was an unusual bulge in his jacket, and now he struggled to take out whatever he had brought. When she realised what it was, she couldn't help but feel a wave of elation. Try as she might, an expression of surprise surfaced on her face, and Kiryu grinned at her.
"Duel... Disk?!"
"Yes, a Duel Disk." Kiryu beamed. "Rented it from Crow, of course. Everyone's blowing off steam with a good duel or two tonight, and I don't want you to miss out."
The elation left as soon as it came. She stared at the Duel Disk, and all she saw was the mangled mess of Misty's brother's body.
"No... I'm a Psychic –"
"Aki!" Just as she moved to push the Duel Disk out of her sight, he reached out and grabbed her hand. "Just because you're a Psychic Duelist doesn't mean you are an out-of-control monster! You should think of powers as an advantage!" He gave her a positively devilish grin. "Besides, I've always wondered what Duel Monsters feel like when you touch them."
"Touch... them?"
Her monsters have always been thorny, rough entities, obsessed with protecting themselves and their mistress with aggressive defences. They were neither cute nor fluffy, unlike the monsters wielded by other girls her age. Even she herself avoided touching them, using them only when absolutely necessary, as if they reminded her of how different she was, of the thorny wall that she knew will forever separate her from the rest of the world.
"Yes. Unlike us, you can actually touch them, feel them. Don't you think that is an awesome power you have?" She could swear his eyes sparkled with excitement.
"But - "
"We don't have to do this if you're that afraid, Aki." Sensing her reluctance, he backed down, holding the Duel Disk up in a placating gesture. "I'm sorry. I just thought maybe duelling can cheer you up too. I forgot about what got you here. I'm very sorry."
"Don't be..." She replied in a weak voice. No, she was different. She could never experience pleasure like normal people. Even a simple, harmless game can be the tool of her violence. She lowered her head, but not before grabbing the Duel Disk from his hands and cradling it against her chest as if it was a precious child.
"A - Aki?" Surprised at her movement, Kiryu gaped at her, not knowing what to say. "Are you alright?"
The sharp angles of the Duel Disk cut into her skin through the thin robes, and she relished the familiar, nostalgic sensation of the cold metal in her arms. God knows how many times she had hugged her Duel Disk like this. Many girls in Duel Academy had their own custom-made Duel Disks, either in baby pink or in sky blue, and they treated their Duel Disks with the uttermost care, as if the machine was a pet or a child. It wasn't rare to see someone in the female dorms cuddling their Duel Disks or giving the contraption pet names. She was one of the few exceptions.
She refused her father's offer to give her a custom-made Duel Disk, as she never used one anyways. Even so, she was still assigned one of the Academy's standard mass-produced Duel Disks, and she was still required to carry it during practical lessons regardless of whether she would participate.
She would see the other girls hug their special Duel Disks, with their rounded curves and soft touch, and she would hug her own Duel Disk, attempting to feel some kind of connection like all her classmates obviously did.
All she felt was the cold, the discomfort, and sometimes, the pain.
This familiar Duel Disk brought back all the memories of her girlhood in the Academy. She could not deny that she loved her Duel Disk and her cards, but she hated them with an equal intensity. And at the same time, she did not want to let go of either. They were what defined her. She excused herself from practical lessons and examinations because of the label of 'Psychic Duelist'. She passed over invitations to camps or competitions, because she was a Psychic Duelist. If she ever let go of that label, then she would become nothing. Without the protection of that label, she would truly become what Misty's brother's friends had called her, a top-tier duelist who had rarely ever touched a Duel Disk.
She didn't think she'd ever get to hug a Duel Disk ever again. Her only ally. Her greatest enemy. The only constant that seemed to link up all the broken parts of her life.
"... Let's summon something then."
"Sorry?" Kiryu blinked, almost too surprised to acknowledge what she just said.
She walked to her bed and took out the deck that Crow had lent her. "Let's summon something, then."
"I... you have your deck?" He looked dumbly at the cards in her hand. "I thought they confiscated it."
"Confiscated it and got rid of it from the City. Sold it off in the black market." She answered his suspicions. "Which is probably why... Crow managed to get the majority of it in Satellite."
It was incredible how thorough the orange-haired man had been when putting together this deck for her. Her habitual deck must have been publicised many times during her trial, and she would not be surprised if Crow knew exactly what cards she had back in the City. It wasn't something extremely rare, certainly not as rare as Yusei's Stardust Dragon, but it wasn't the most popular choice either. She felt an immense gratitude when she leafed through the deck and realised how many old friends were looking back at her. She would have to thank Crow properly at a later time.
"Which one do you want to see?" She stretched out her hand with the deck towards Kiryu, gesturing for him to look through it to see if anything interested him.
He took the cards gingerly from her – as he might take a bloodied knife from her, she remarked inwardly – and began to look through it. It didn't take him long to find something he wanted to see.
"This one seems fitting enough for you, Aki-chan."
He passed Lonefire Blossom back to her, and she almost pouted in response.
It was certainly small and probably something that can be safely summoned inside a room, but she didn't know what to think, being compared to such a harmless little plant.
"I see."
Nevertheless, she still took it from his hands, agreed nonchalantly to his comments, and placed it on the Duel Disk.
The holograph projection instantly sprang to life, but instead of projecting an image that others could walk through, the little plant and its surrounding fireflies solidified, took root in reality, and cast a shadow on the floor.
"Wow!" Kiryu was gazing at the little plant, his entire attention fixed and enchanted by it. "I... just... wow!"
"Didn't you... want to pet it?" She gave a small grin, feeling as if she had won against him in some non-existent competition.
He nodded in earnest and reached out towards the little spiky thing, obviously still hesitating at the notion of touching the manifestation of a Psychic Duelist.
"It's… actually real."
He unconsciously gave out a sigh of relief when he finally touched the little creature, and the plant just sat there docilely, giving no signs of any kind of danger.
She gave out an almost maternal smile as she watched him interacting with the plant, and as the expression on Kiryu's face shifted from caution to delight.
"Glad to see that you like it."
"I didn't think this is how easily Psychic Duelists would summon monsters." He looked back at her, grinning. "That is really something, Aki."
"Thank you." She nodded gratefully. Hardly anyone had ever praised her ability as a Psychic Duelist, and she couldn't deny that she felt a small warmth creeping up somewhere in her heart as she heard his words.
"We… should really take the card off though." She said gently, seeing that he was still engrossed in observing the harmless creature. "Awesome or not… the staff here won't like it."
As if right on cue, her door creaked open.
She must have gasped as she turned around, because the nurse immediately whipped to her direction, and saw the small monster lurking behind her as well.
A brief moment of incomprehension swept past the nurse's face, but even so, she recognised the forbidden item in her hands – a standard Duel Disk.
Even if she did not recognise the small monster behind Aki, the nurse certainly recognised the Duel Disk.
Something that Izayoi Aki was never meant to hold ever again.
"What are you doing –"
"No, please!" As the nurse reached out to grab the Duel Disk away from them, Aki found herself yelling involuntarily, but the nurse beat her to it.
"No! This is absolutely not allowed!" Months of incarceration had weakened Aki's body far beyond what she expected. She tried to fight the nurse, but it was of little use. Even so, her struggle seemed to have alarmed the nurse. She could feel Kiryu trying to untangle them, and yet when she realised what was going on, there were already guards rushing into the room.
"Hold, Izayoi! Kiryu!" There was a blur as strong hands took hold of her and forcibly ripped the Duel Disk out of her hands. She saw out of the corner of her eyes that Kiryu was being pinned to the bed and his face pressed deeply into the thin mattress, the hands of the guards pressing so hard on his neck that she swore she could saw the skin around those hands going red.
"No... Kiryu!" She yelled out at him, but a hand pressed against her mouth and silenced her.
"Get that card off the Duel Disk already!" One of the guards roared as they finally noticed the little plant hiding behind the bed.
The card – the card – the one thing that Kiryu said she was good at –
And without warning, the guards' clothes burst into flames.
The smell of scorched flesh instantly filled up the entire room as the guards let out a piercing scream and let go of Kiryu. Kiryu struggled free and stood up, his eye wide with surprise but not fear. The men who held him down just seconds ago was writhing on the ground, their bodies covered in living fire. The nurse was frozen in fear as she too looked at the dying men, unable to utter even a single word.
"What are you standing here for, Aki? Run!"
She turned as she heard Kiryu saying something at her. She turned to the door just on time to see more guards running up, alerted by the startling sounds coming from the room.
"She... She killed them!"
The nurse was screaming now. The Duel Disk that was previously in the guards' hands had long since clattered to the floor, and the Lonefire Blossom had already been removed. However, the fire remained – and so did the deck on the bed.
The new guards who were running towards her were different. They wore thick jackets instead of the standard clothes of the normal guards. She stiffened as she saw them putting their hands into their jacket, as if they were armed –
"No!"
She acted before she even thought of the consequences of her actions. She whipped out the first card of her deck, barely registered it was a Trap Card, rushed to the Duel Disk and activated it immediately.
"Don't touch us!"
As a vicious tornado tore off the roof of her room, it served as the beacon of Rosewood's countdown towards annihilation.
Duel Disk on one arm, and Kiryu's hand on her other, the two of them tore through the building with no aim in their minds, only knowing they must keep moving and keep fighting. The fire – the materialisation of her monsters' rage – spread everywhere, even forcing them to turn back themselves and try another way to escape. Kiryu was adamant about that point. They must leave the building.
"We've got to get out of here! You can't go back now!"
No, she really couldn't go back now. She never expected Rosewood to have armed guards that rivalled the Security forces in the city. As she faced them and called forth her crimson dragon to bring down death and destruction, she knew that she could never go back, and that through destruction, she had gained true freedom.
They stood opposing her with the best weapons known to men, yet she alone remained.
Rosewood was nothing more than a charred skeleton holding onto the last remains of its life when she was done with it. Her dragon still perched in the courtyard, its impossibly huge body instilling fear into everyone who survived the horror. The few patients who managed to escape screamed and scattered when they saw the creature, some even running blindly back into the fire to get away from this unbelievable monstrosity.
The night's events were a non-stop whirlwind of heat, of blood, and fighting through rows and rows of men and having absolutely no mercy. Kiryu's hand was the only thing that held on to her and gave her a sense of direction.
"Aki... Aki, are you alright?" She heard his voice calling out as she turned her eyes, delirious with relief, towards his face.
She had expected him to show an expression of concern, or perhaps even fear. It was beyond her how he managed to stay with her even as he witnessed her rampage throughout this institution, a place of such tranquiloty throughout all the time they spent there. Yet the emotion on his face was one of ecstatic joy. He was beaming at her, an honest and genuine happiness that struck her so unexpectedly in its warmth.
"Aki, you are... you are absolutely awesome!"
He was the first person to ever praise her for being a Psychic Duelist, and she would never forget that.
-\-\-\-\-\-
Had that been the only words she heard before she left Rosewood, she would have been Kiryu's loyal follower, walking with absolute conviction towards any path he might set her upon.
"Kiryu…" She had held onto his hand as they gazed at the burning land, momentarily not knowing what to do. "Where… should we go now?"
"We need to hide somewhere in Satellite. Don't worry. This is the day I have been waiting for… I am finally free!"
He turned to her with a grin, a wide and gleeful grin that she had never seen on his face before. Her heart skipped a beat from a wild, savage joy, a delight with a tingle of fear.
But as the ground of parts of the building crumbled away, the truth of the institute finally came to light.
If it weren't for that sound of the ground collapsing, she would almost certainly have missed the man walking slowly out of the cellar – a cellar that she had never known to have existed.
"What –"
"Well spoken. I too am finally free."
She didn't manage to voice her curiosity towards that man when the stranger spoke. Kiryu spun around in genuine alarm.
"You are a good girl, Izayoi Aki-chan. I knew you would come one day."
Kiryu cast frenzied glances between her and this figure, clothed in a tattered Rosewood uniform, walking slowly out of the collapsing rumble before them.
"Do… Do you know him, Aki?"
She shook her head in terror as the pitch-black figure walked over to them, his entire body shrouded in the black debris that showered upon him from the charred dust of the fire.
"I've watched you for a long time, Aki." The unknown man walked almost up to them now, yet his rugged features still brought no recollection to her mind. His skin was dark even beneath the soot, and he still possessed an impressive height despite his age. He was certainly not a young man. Wrinkles marred his face and neck, and even his voice was hoarse and brittle, a sound roughened by time.
"Who… who are you?"
Kiryu was standing in front of her, his arms outstretched in a gesture of protection. His voice shook slightly out of fear, but he did not move.
The dark-skinned older man reached out a hand as if to strike Kiryu. The younger man flinched and stepped back, but still kept Aki behind him.
"You don't remember me, Izayoi Aki-chan?"
The familiarity he exhibited scared her. She shook her head, not knowing why she was feeling such terror even though she still had her dragon. The beast was standing beside them, sneering down at the newcomer. The older man did not even spare the creature a glance.
"Really? Not at all?"
With that, the older man rolled up his sleeve. Kiryu gasped at what he saw, and Aki simply blinked. Now she recalled him. It was a distant memory long buried by childhood, the only time when she saw someone else with a similar birthmark to her.
On the older man's forearm, there was a twisted, crimson claw that mirrored the shape on her own limb.
She remembered him now. This man long thought by all to be dead.
He saw the recognition in her eyes, and he smiled – a smile full of relief, satisfaction, and bottomless malice.
"You are Uncle Goodwin." She whispered that name, and slowly, it matched the smile before her. "Uncle... Rudger Goodwin."
-FIN-