Title: Ashes and Oaths
Characters: Shun, Ruri, Yuuto||Ship: N/A
Chapters: 1-3||Words: 3,279||Total: 3,279
Genre: Angst, Drama||Rated: PG
Prompt: Arc-V Angst Week, day #1, Heartland
Notes: This takes place, obviously, pre-canon, during the early days of the invasion of Heartland. Upon rewatching Arc-V, I noticed it was said the invasion would be soon, three years prior to canon. So, for the sake of this story, the invasion began two and a half years before Yuuya discovers Pendulum Summoning. Also, there is minor character death and everything else that pertains to the invasion in this.
Summary: Once everything was normal. People didn't hurt themselves regularly and if they did, it wasn't hard at all to get it taken care of. If people died, there were others to take care of those left behind. All that's changed now: changed forever.

Shun wasn't certain if the clouds were actual clouds, perhaps filled with rain that could wash away the streaks of blood he didn't want to look at or if they were just the remains of the most recent attack the Antique Gear monsters unleashed on the city.

He curled himself into the tiny hole he'd found. It really wasn't big enough for him – he'd always enjoyed being tall, it made him feel like he could protect the ones he cared about. But now it meant that he couldn't always stay in the same places that they did. There just wasn't enough room.

Right now, this little hole did provide enough cover. If he folded himself up in just the right way, then it wasn't likely that any of the duel soldiers going by, or the far too solid holographic monsters they walked with, would notice him.

At least he didn't think they would. He wasn't sure if those monsters – Antique Gear Hunting Hounds – could track by scent or not. He'd heard stories, but he didn't know if they were true or if people just panicked.

Flickers of rage coursed through him at the thought of his people panicking. That had happened so much in those early days. No one knew what was going on. The world came to an end and no one knew why or how.

Bits of information came through, that was all, tiny and disconnected and no one was entirely certain of what they could trust, or who they could trust.

Another dimension. A whole other world, with a summoning method that Shun had only heard of in his duel history classes. And unknown numbers of soldiers marching into this world, turning everyone they encountered into cards with little more than a wave of a hand.

Sometimes they dueled first. Not always. He'd seen people he knew, people he'd gone to classes with, people who'd lived on his block, transformed into cards without even the chance to raise a duel disk in defense.

Sometimes something even worse happened.

Shun ran through the streets, grip on Ruri's wrist as tight as he could manage without actually hurting her. Yuuto ran on his other side, just barely keeping up with him.

"Did you see them?" Ruri gasped. Of the three, he'd always had the longest legs and could run the fastest. If he hadn't feared what would happen if they'd lost sight of each other, he would have run on ahead.

But after the last few hours, he wasn't going to leave anyone behind. He could not forget – would not forget – the streak of light aimed right for him, and the sharp shock of being pushed aside, crashing into a broken wall…

And then the single card wafting downward…

Shun shook his head, clinging to Ruri's question in an attempt to not think about those few horrid moments. The card in his pocket remained there, silent and unmoving, as a card should be.

It was a card that should not be and yet it was.

Yuuto caught up, stumbling to a halt as the Kurosakis paused at what had been a street corner not all that long ago. He breathed a little more deeply.

"Do you think they're all right?"

The question drove deep into Shun's heart. He clenched his teeth as hard as he could, biting back the words that raged. How could anyone be all right in all of this?

Cards lay everywhere, scattered to the four winds. Some of them came from normal decks. He even recognized a few as belonging to people he knew.

Some of them held the faces of people that he knew, and the card in his pocket warmed.

His imagination. Nothing more than that.

"I want them to be," was all he could say. He couldn't entirely believe they were. Neither of them were duelists. Even if the invaders gave them the chance to fight back – which they didn't most of the time – then they weren't good at it. It would take almost no time for them to lose. To be lost.

Another block. It would have taken almost no time just the day before to get there. Now they had to move carefully, to watch out for any of the invaders who could be wandering in the area, to keep their attention alert for falling debris.

A day ago this had been a perfectly ordinary neighborhood. Shun found it a little boring, in fact. He'd wanted something to happen. He'd never been very specific on what he'd wanted to happen, so long as it was a little interesting.

This wasn't what he'd wanted. This wasn't even close to what he wanted.

Carefully they made their way through what had been houses and now were ruined, burning messes. Shun couldn't even imagine what had done all of this. He wasn't sure what monsters the invaders used, except that they were strong and big and ruined everything they came near.

Ruri gasped. Shun's head came up at once and he saw they'd come within sight of what had once been their home. If he didn't recognize a few of the boards being in the right colors, he wouldn't have known. There wasn't anything really left.

Everything shattered. Broken. Burned. There weren't any cards that he could see, but he could see other things. Other things that struck a spike of cold fear in the deepest depths of his heart.

Ruri stared. Yuuto didn't move. They weren't his parents, but he'd spent so much time at the Kurosaki home as they grew up, that on the moments he forgot and called them mom and dad, no one so much as blinked.

Shun's throat dried. He couldn't have said a word if he wanted to. He took a step closer, and then another. He could feel Ruri's hand close on his wrist, just as he'd done for her, but he twisted away and ran, faster than before, until he dropped down next to the body that had been his father.

He reached out, fingers brushing against cold skin for a heartbeat before he pulled his hand back. Cold flowered up within him, followed by heat hotter than the hottest of volcanoes. His eyes prickled and a tiny part of him became aware that tears burned down his cheeks.

He didn't care. It didn't matter. Not when he could stare into eyes that couldn't look back, see a hand that couldn't comfort him even when he thought he didn't want it, no longer hear a voice that told him what he was doing was the right thing or not.

Slowly Shun raised his head and stared to where Ruri stood staring down at their mother. She had her hand wrapped around the pale, limp hand, as she had so many times when they were growing up.

There really wasn't that much left of them, both crushed by what had been their home. Shun's throat closed even tighter.

They were waiting for us. They were worried about us. It made sense, even if he couldn't be sure about that. Their parents were dead because they hadn't been home.

If we'd been here, we could have all gotten out safely. Or they could have died together. He didn't know. And once again, he didn't care.

A hand came onto his shoulder. Shun raised his head to stare into Yuuto's worried, grief-filled eyes. He could barely wrap his thoughts around the idea of what was happening. His parents dead. His personal teacher – one of the most famous duelists in all of Heartland – nothing more than a card, kept in his pocket.

At least he had Yuuto. At least he had Ruri.

"We need to go," Yuuto murmured, throwing a look over his shoulder. "I think I heard some of those hounds getting closer."

Oh. They couldn't stay here, then. There wasn't enough space to hide for any of them and he needed time to scream, to decide how long it would take him to find the ones who did this and strangle them, or worse.

He wasn't sure of what 'worse' would be. But Shun found himself more than willing to find out.

Yuuto helped him back to his feet, casting intermittent glances back along the street. Shun could hear them now too, bays and howls that sent unwanted chills all through him.

He wanted to stand and fight. He knew they couldn't. He knew every reason they couldn't but it was what he wanted regardless. He wanted to see Rise Falcon's talons rend every single one of those soldiers – those cowards! - until there wasn't anything left of them, not a card, not a bit of breathing flesh, nothing.

Ruri took one of his arm. Yuuto took the other. They dragged him along, his feet stumbling over stray pieces of rock and shattered pieces of wood, until he managed to get himself together enough to run on his own, to search for a place that they could hide and get themselves together.

He wanted to look back, to at least find the time to bury the people who'd raised him for all these years. But there was no time. Staying around here would do nothing but give the invaders more bodies, more cards.

He didn't know how they made people into cards. He would find out. And he would do it to them.

Even better, he would shred all of those cards. Would that kill them all the way? Did being… being carded kill someone?

That was something Shun didn't have the slightest idea about. But he would turn all of them into cards and shred them all and then he would know.

He wouldn't care but he would know.

Yuuto pulled them both to one side. It took Shun a few moments to grasp why: a long spread of shattered brick and stone that had probably been the big house at the end of the street not that long ago. Shun remembered who lived there: a retired pro who still had quite a few of their old skills left.

Shun wondered if they'd been transformed into a card with or without a fight, how many of the enemy that they'd taken down if they had fought, or if their home had simply come crashing down on them without any sort of warning.

There was enough space here for them all to curl in and hide, giving them a chance to catch their breath. Shun rested his head on the ground for a few minutes, letting all of his thoughts swirl around before he raised his head to look towards Ruri.

She lay much as he had, clothes streaked with dirt and mud and tears, holding her deck close to herself.

Shun breathed in silence for a few moments before he said anything.

"We have to fight back," he murmured, the words just enough to carry to the other two. "If we don't, we're already dead and just haven't stopped moving yet."

He hated the thought of Ruri being in a battle like this. He hated the thought of anyone being in a battle like that.

But they hadn't started this. It was the fault of all of those Fusion soldiers. They'd come to this world without so much as asking permission, let alone getting it, and unleashed monsters that somehow straddled the line between being holograms and being real. He couldn't even imagine all the destruction and that was just over less than a single day.

What was it going to look like if they didn't get rid of these invaders? If everyone just hid and waited until their world was crushed beyond their ability to rise up again?

Yuuto nodded. He didn't look any happier about it than Shun himself felt. Shun wasn't even all that certain how happy he would ever be again.

Ruri said nothing at first. Her eyes remained on her bracelet.

Shun couldn't remember when she'd not had that. As far back as his memory stretched, it had been there. One of the very first memories he could recall involved Ruri chewing on it, back when her wrist was far too small for her to wear it on there and she'd carried it as a necklace.

She stared at it a lot whenever she was upset or worried about something. She'd mentioned once that it helped her to think. Now he wondered what she was thinking about.

She raised her head to meet his eyes. "Let's see who else we can find. There have to be more people. The more that we find, the better."

She wasn't wrong there, Shun decided. If they could find more survivors, especially ones who knew how to duel, then they would have a much better chance of success.

"Where do we look?" Yuuto wondered, raising his head up to look around. Shun wasn't sure how good of an idea that was, but he didn't lift it far, and tucked it back down a few moments later.

Shun tried to think. Duelists usually gathered in several different places: the main city center had been a popular one. That was where one of the biggest invasions had occurred, with nearly fifty dueling soldiers and their monsters appearing out of nowhere.

Fifty hadn't seemed like so many a few days earlier. Shun thought differently now. Fifty did so much damage. Not all of this, but so much.

"Let's see if we can get back into town," Ruri suggested, tilting her head a little, gaze flicking back and forth between the two of them. "We might meet some more people on the way."

Shun couldn't help but snort the faintest bit at that. "Will they be people that we want to meet?"

It wasn't funny at all. They all knew it. But both Ruri and Yuuto choked out something that wasn't even close to being laughter. If one didn't pay enough attention it could have been mistaken for that, though.

Those sounds did seem to help, in an odd sort of way. Shun couldn't seem to smile himself, but to know that something he'd said got that reaction warmed a tiny part of the strange mixture of ice and heat inside of him, in an entirely different way than he'd ever thought possible.

"Let's find out," Yuuto said, taking another look. The baying of the hounds had faded over the last few minutes. Shun guessed that the soldiers and hounds had taken a different way.

He pressed his head down for a few moments, trying to breathe quietly and get himself sorted out. He couldn't even imagine everything that they were going to need. It all swirled around in the back of his head.

They would need food and water. He hadn't eaten since this all began, searching for answers on what was going on. He didn't think Ruri and Yuuto had eaten either. There wasn't anything at all left of their old home to give them anything, not clothes or spare cards or anything.

Shun couldn't help but be glad that they had their decks with them at all times. He had no idea of what they might have done if the decks and discs had been at home when all of this started.

They would also need a place – or a lot of places – they could be safe at. Shun couldn't imagine how many they might need. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have more than one bolthole to hide in?

What else… what else would they possibly need? Medicine, in case anyone got sick. Someone who knew how to fix a duel disc in case any of theirs were damaged. That didn't happen often, or at least it hadn't before. But accidents could happen even under the best of circumstances.

Shun's duel disc had broken just two months earlier, when he'd dropped it from his bedroom window. He hadn't meant to, but he'd been leaning out to talk to Yuuto and it slipped from where he'd put it. It cost him all of his saved allowance to replace it.

Now the three of them carefully worked their way from one bit of cover to the next, watching for any sign whatsoever that would give them a warning of being approached. Ruri took the lead; she wasn't the smallest but she had the sharpest eyes and more than once she gestured them to hide either in a rare surviving bush or behind a pile of rubble and debris.

Every time she did that, within a few minutes, the firm tread of boots, usually accompanied by mocking laughter and words Shun couldn't quite understand, crossed by. Shun clenched his fists together every time, aching to get out there and fight. The idea of letting these monsters go by without some kind of fight infuriated him.

I'll fight them, he promised himself. Sooner or later, I'll fight them.

Shun tried to ignore the throbbing in his ankle. He'd been able to for a while now, but the longer he did, the worse the pain grew.

He'd slipped down a hill. He'd been trying to get into position to attack one of the patrols when his feet caught on slippery mud and down he'd tumbled.

That had been nearly an hour earlier, and he'd spent every bit of that hour doing his level best to avoid being caught. His ankle wasn't even the worst pain. That was his right arm, where his duel disc was.

Had been. He'd tucked it into his coat for safekeeping, at least until he got back to the base.

Which base was this now? He couldn't remember. Over the last couple of years, they'd moved as often as they needed to, and sometimes when they didn't. Some of their best fighters ended up captured, and while everyone presumed they were turned into cards, no one could be entirely certain.

So when they didn't know, when no one had seen what happened, they packed up everything and looked for a new place to set up their base.

Ruri would probably know how many times they'd moved. She helped keep all of this organized, which was better than he could do. He fought. He and Yuuto both fought. Ruri did too, though he still wasn't happy about her doing it.

She fought well, though, and she'd even carded some of the Fusion soldiers. He had a collection of cards that had once been people. He kept them in two separate areas: the ones that were Fusion soldiers – if he ever ran low on fuel during winter he wanted to burn them – and those who'd been Heartland citizens.

Shun kept himself out of sight, reaching up to touch his wrist with his free hand. He couldn't tell just what the damage was, only that he wouldn't be able to duel until it healed. What he could also be certain of was that his wrist was badly bruised and whenever he moved it, pain ratcheted up from wrist to shoulder.

"I think he's picked up a scent!" He heard one of the Fusion duelists, far too close. "Let's go!"

Shun bit back words he didn't want to use for fear they'd give him away. A quick look, the tiniest of peeks, showed they were indeed as close as he feared, if not closer.

Even worse, he could see another team of patrolling duelists coming up from another angle, with another of their holographic beasts. It didn't matter how much time had passed since the invasion, he still wasn't close to certain how real they were.

And if they could indeed track by scent, then they had his.

To Be Continued

Notes: I have ever so much fun planned for this week! Most will be one-shots, and I'll continue this one next week, hopefully. Until then!