The Judgement of the World
Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
Beta By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
A/N: This is the season finale chapter. And my current goal is 30 chapters a season soooo
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"No, and he might not ever again until he resolves this issue," Yusei agreed as he sat there going up another level of text and studying it. When a thought began to form in his head, one that perhaps Aki would be the best person to inquire about. "Aki... There are only five Signer dragons correct?"
Aki blinked, looking up from the list before her then nodding, "And from what Black Rose said, each dragon is a part of us. So when I summon the Spirits we can understand the Dragons when they speak, but others can't." The look that Yusei gave her made her feel as though she should elaborate. "Apparently the Signer Dragons are a part of us, like Black Rose was borne from my soul? I'm not sure the details, but they're a part of us and people who don't have a dragon in the same way can't understand dragons. When I was calling the Spirits at the twins place, no one could understand any of the dragons save the Djinn who is half dragon. Though it doesn't stop Dragons from having Human partners."
Yusei blinked as it helped his initial question along all the more ironically. "So five Signer Dragons, meaning they were originally borne from five specific people. And it wasn't the Crimson Dragon that created the Five Dragons rather Crimson selected the five. Which is probably how the signs can be changed at a moments notice."
Aki nodded slowly as she compiled what she had learned with what Yusei was explaining, "and we only have the intentionally slighted information from Divine and the Godwins about that even." She watched Yusei bob his head in a nod before returning to look at the file before him. Giving her time to puzzle with what he might have been thinking. That he brought up the Marks and Dragons made her start doing some connecting when she felt a frown form.
"Yusei, we've seen the Five Signer Dragons, and neither of the Godwins had that missing Wasp like Dragon with them. A wasp like dragon that looks like an organic version of Power Tool Dragon that Rua is in possession of. Are you suggesting that he's the fifth Signer?"
Yusei shrugged, glancing up at Aki for a moment before going back to work on the file. "The Godwins may have only gotten their Marks in an effort to find and safe guard us, if the Dragons themselves are intrinsically bound to us. In which case it would mean Rua must have been the original Fifth Signer. Whatever happened must have been serious enough to make him reject everything on the level where even his Mark had to be removed. You may have hurt your father, or others, but that only means something worse is in this file."
His tone and demeanor grew dark as he resumed his fixation on the file before adding firmly, "I want you to stop reading this."
But the words were already in play and Aki's own mind was already going over what circumstances Yusei was implying. If Rua was also a Psychic Duelist like herself and Ruka it meant he could make the Spirits come out of their deck, or effect damages using spell or trap cards. When she was about their age she had hurt her father and it had created a negative cycle when using her powers. The only thing 'worse' she could think of was just too harsh, and suddenly the importance of Crow to the group made sense.
It was very much possible that Rua wasn't being skipped over due to lack of skill, age, or his duty to his sister. Perhaps the Tail that Crow carried was always meant for Rua, only now he couldn't handle the responsibility anymore. "Like you can stop me," she retorted in a slightly taunting voice. After all she had the original file on her computer, and she wasn't going to be 'that' passive when things were this serious.
He looked at her silently, whatever thoughts he had in his mind held as close to his chest as his hand during a duel. But he resumed his search in the quiet, studious way he had established going through each duel and making notations. It was interesting to see how many duels the twins had, all the more amusing when it was taken into consideration that the duel disks didn't fit. There were just these two little kids with duel disks so big that they kept sliding on their arms.
"I just realized something," Aki suddenly spoke her eyes blinking in surprise, "the twins started dueling when they were three years old?"
"Apparently," he answered as she blinked at him then looked back down at the list.
He scrolled back up to the date and sighed quietly to himself, "Aki, was Ruka about 4 when she had her coma? Do you know?"
Aki blinked in surprise at his voice before giving an embarrassed shrug as though to say 'I don't know'. "I never asked, I only know she was very young... wait did you find something?"
"Not yet, but they started dueling at three years old and are now 11, that's eight years of dueling with only a break during her coma. It occurred to me that whatever happened may have only happened while she was in a coma. If I knew how old she was I could just narrow the dates down in our search."
When her answer came in an apologetic shrug he settled his focus back onto the rows of information. There were a few more consistent gaps in his cards as his deck started to flesh itself out. Nothing large by any means, but there were a couple of consistent cards Yusei found now. Then out of seemingly nowhere came a message reading 'Duel Disk Shut down' in brackets causing him to frown in concern. Moving up a little more showed that it was mid duel, another duel between the twins though everything appeared to be going normal until that point.
The date on the duel put them around at four years old, somewhere the middle of their age, neither recently turning four or close to being five. When Yusei's mind asked 'who would Rua duel once his sister fell into a coma?' A warning from his subconscious possibly, that the next duel he found would be 'the' duel.
"I need to go to bed, school in the morning," Aki suddenly broke into his thoughts causing him to look up at her. Only for his eyes to then shift hard to the clock on the computer before nodding.
"Sorry I wasn't very talkative tonight." He apologized earning a look from Aki as though to ask 'when are you ever'.
He looked away a bit with a slight twist of the lips before she waved him good bye and ended the call. Leaving him alone in the garage of the orphanage where he had been, using the tools to work on his ride before the twins had called him. The room was familiar and for that it helped take the edge off of what he had found and what he expected to find soon given the situation.
Because it was the very next duel when he found a private message in the log by Lord Kaiba. It stood out from the neat, orderly text established by the records created by the computer system, regardless if this was the normal form of the records. Or if Lord Kaiba created this profile for them, after everything he had heard about the mysterious 'Lord', Yusei wasn't going to put anything past the man.
Cold Case File.
The simple sentence, bolded for Yusei's viewing pleasure, stood out like a large 'X' on a dueling field screaming 'this is important!' Since a Cold Case File meant that this duel involved Security 'and' was never resolved. It was warning enough to make Yusei sit back in his seat and close his eyes. Letting his mind shift through the information before he braced himself to read the full data out of the duel.
A Cold Case File meant a crime had happened, again no parents or adults aware of his issue with those cards. Thus not involved on Rua's end and the twins lived at the top of a condo. Insert what Aki had pointed out, the very real possibility that Rua was 'also' a Psychic duelist and the true Fifth Signer. With the little girl serving as the defender or shield it would make sense that Rua would be an aggressor or weapon. Meaning that if he 'did' get pushed to use an, up until then unknown, psychic ability. The odds were heavily stacked that it was in an aggressive style.
He took a deep breath before reaching forward to scroll the read out about this particular duel starting at the very top. Letting the ensuing disaster scroll past his eyes while he sought the start of the duel. Glancing at all the very real signs that something had gone terribly wrong scattered through out the duel.
The first red flag was the date, the twins dueled each other daily, only after the last duel that ended abruptly this date put it almost 15 days to the day of that last one. Meaning that whatever stopped the other duel 'must' have been Rukas' fall into coma. And this duel was distinctly someone elses', so Ruka was undoubtedly absent from the event herself. The accompanying time indicated that this duel took place around 1am, well past the boy's bedtime.
Yusei sought the coordinates for the duel before opening another screen to get a map of the city. Shifting to the residential district of the Tops and the address for the twins before zooming in, and toggling on the grid of the building. The coordinates at the start of the duel had it straddling between the outside and the interior. Meaning that they started while Rua was inside the house, probably behind the protective glass doors.
Rua wouldn't go outside when there was a clear and present threat, and a person randomly at that time on the roof of a building? The coordinates didn't adjust themselves for the opening and three turns that went on. Yusei became increasingly anxious as he shifted the information regarding the few cards over to the other file. The invasive reading of Rua's deck bothered him, it was an invasion of privacy for certain. Yet now he felt like ants were crawling along his skin, trailing up his arms and spine. Making his naturally spiky hair want to spike up even more.
Suddenly on the fourth turn the duel shifted into the condo, meaning that whoever managed to get in. Perhaps it was because of his duels against Divine over Aki that made Yusei realize what he was looking at. A majority of direct attack spell cards and trap, and a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that Rua wasn't just dueling a thief. But a 'Psychic' thief meaning that either he got controlled into opening the door, or the door was blasted apart. But there was no mind control type cards in play, leaving only the more violent option.
He went through the next card that Rua had drawn, 25165047 a card that had been in the deck since the very first duel yet oddly never drawn. Always a small probability true, but this card, 'this' card...
"Life Stream Dragon."
Yusei said the name aloud like a prayer. A 'dragon' in Rua's deck and without thought his fingers went to pulling up the find program. He typed in the cards' serial number in the untampered with copy on his desktop and set it to scan the file, whatever else could be found in the duel could wait a moment. The program did as instructed scanning from the top most recent duel and worked its way down. Again that number series repeated again and again, Yusei discarding them as he searched for when that number was brought into play and thus a name was issued.
'Power Tool Dragon'
Same serial number, different name, an impossibility unless...
He looked at his marked arm, pulling off his gloves and shrugging out the jacket so he could see the Mark. If a tattoo engraved on the skin by a supernatural force could be traded among others, could a card change itself? If not for Aki and the Crimson Dragon Yusei wouldn't even believe this was possible. His world was one of gears, metal, the creation of the physical tangible and the fight against those who would hold him down.
But that wasn't Aki's world. Hers was a world where beings materialized out of thin air tangible, and as real and as solid as he or the orphanage. It was real, a different yet attached world to the one he knew, living, thriving. And he didn't even have an inkling on how to measure or guage this world so he could even help. The feeling of uselessness settled into his shoulders, causing him to roll them before he settled back into reading the file.
The distance between the two was markedly different in the next turn, the opponents coordinates put them outside again, dangerously close to the edge of the roof. Rua hadn't moved from where he was and Life Stream's first attack had been incredibly damaging. The disks started showing signs of damage, they couldn't calculate the damage input and a message was being sent about it to the tech support at Kaiba Corp.
The last 'move' was a gut punch as he saw Rua attack again, the life points started dialing down from the stranger. They had nothing to protect them from the force of a Signer Dragon, more over the coordinates showed movement again. Indicating that the person was knocked back 'again' only this time there was no more building. Given the building, Yusei could only figure that the coordinate could only indicate that this duelist was knocked off the roof and were plummeting to his or her death.
Life Stream Dragon apparently knocked the person off the building itself, and the duel disk was broken when it made contact with the ground below. From there the narrative wrote itself out, a would be thief attempted a break in only to get violently rebuffed by a young duelist. How the thief ended up on the ground below was negligent. Leaving Rua committing a murder in self defense and too young to understand what had happened.
This was years before Rex Godwin began gathering the Signers using the Fortune Cup, he would still have been fixated on Jack. Meaning whoever did this did this was a random criminal who faced the ultimate punishment for their crime. Regardless if they were a Psychic duelist, or just someone armed with what was necessary to break the glass window to get inside, the ramification of this duel showed.
It could have been Roman, it could have been anyone else. The point was there was no way to get into Security and getting that cold case details now. Even if they tried to push the case, or found out what exactly happened and used that to get into the files. Security would be within their right to arrest Rua and have him marked as a criminal.
That thought alone was enough to make Yusei reach up and touch his own face, running his bare fingers down the Mark. A visual brand marking him for the rest of his life as a criminal, a price he knew he would have to pay. But paid it for the sake of reclaiming what was his by right. A choice 'he' made, while Rua? The very thought of the poor boy being so marked, no matter how small the mark might be, was upsetting.
They could possibly ask Aki's father to do something about the situation, he certainly had the position. But he had a duty to the city, and using him as a type of lackey so they could resolve something that was clearly solved was a waste of time. He knew now, he knew what happened to the final Signer Dragon, and realized who the original fifth Signer was. Rex might have kept the head in a container, but the reality was that those events happened long before Yusei or the gang was old enough to deal with anything.
The best course of action would have been to install Signers before Yusei's time to protect the world from the Dark Signers only that didn't happen. Rex's actions, right or wrong kept the city if not the world in such a state of balance there was never a need for a previous generation of Signers. So maybe to a degree he 'did' the right thing, even if it was for the wrong reason.
But Yusei didn't know what to do to help Rua or Life Stream really. Helping Aki meant being someone she could attack, someone she could take her anger and rage out against. But willing to stand up and show that she wouldn't be rejected. Helping her meant showing people without her power could still accept her, and that had meant enduring the physical pain of what she could dish out.
Connecting with her on an emotional level, giving her someone to care for her feelings and not tell her to shut them down. Or only validate them when she was destroying something, otherwise being indifferent or scared.
But he would endure hell itself for Aki.
Leaving only Rua and the hanging question of what to do 'now'. Ignoring it was out of the question, the boy needed help. Dueling him with those cards in his deck again would be pointless if he blacked out. Though... maybe if they could find a way to recreate the duel without the life or death aspect?
Yusei saved the files, he had the information he needed and now just wanted to go to bed. Shutting down files after they were saved, shutting down the computer Yusei finally stood up from the desk and was surprised at how tense his body felt. He tried to think that it was because he had been in the same place since the twins called, but that would only be denying the truth. But thinking back on the twins and their ardent plea...
Given when he knew now, perhaps it 'would' be for the best if he moved in with them, at least for a while so he could assess Rua better. He grabbed his gloves and jacket before he walked to the door out of the room. Bed sounded wonderful at that moment and once the bridge was done.
Yusei was going back to Neo Domino.