Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's: The Judgement of the World

Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix

Beta By: Lady Lunar Phoenix

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From rowdy dinners in an orphanage to the solitary dinners in a condo. Dinners with Carly were a mixed affair that was the best of both worlds. Neither loud or alone.

However; tonight was near silence, despite wearing a pair of blue jeans and a soft creamy yellow tank top. Her bright and ever cheerful colors, Carly stared listlessly down at her steaming cup of noodles. It was about all the energy she had in terms of eating and the extent of Jacks' ability to 'cook'. There was only the faintest sound of normal exterior apartment building sounds. While the honk of a car horn was rare in the area, it was still enough to make Jack's gaze start to the window. A throw back to his upbringing and the threat of potential gangs wanting to raid the orphanage.

Carly didn't react at all.

Which normally Jack would have assumed it was due to her life in outside of Satellite, that she was used to it. Speaking of 'normal', dinners were usually lively affairs, with them discussing the plot of a show that 'Carly' enjoyed. Jack had never been allowed to watch something as base as 'soap operas' and been groomed to see them as mindless entertainment by Godwin. But Carly enjoyed them and so to 'humor' her he had 'begrudgingly' sat down and watched one such drama.

It began that way, only for Jack to find himself taken by the supposed 'mindless' entertainment. It did a good job of filling the empty air with conversations on plots or characters.

But tonight there was a weight in the air that crushed any conversation, grinding any of their normal pleasurable discourse into silence. Even so much as asking for the salt shaker earned not a peep out of Carly. She merely sat there staring down at the cup, listlessly picking up her chopsticks, only to put them down again.

'She's been like this since she got home...' Jack mentally grumbled, more to stave off the growing uncomfortable feeling. That 'he' was going to have to break this silent stalemate between the two of them. 'But the only reason I can think of is about Aki. A whole damn month and not a word, she's been riding on the faith that Aki was ok. Ever since she came back from her interview run with those classmates of Akis.. Encouraging Yusei to not give up hope that she would be found...'

Yet he wasn't sitting across from the stubbornly confident reporter that he fell for. Amid the cabinets and drawers, the soft rumble of the motor of the fridge. Despite all the security of being surrounded by familiar objects, that grinding feeling raked across his skin, a dragon chewing on a bone with the noise of nails on chalkboard feeling.

The one thing that stood out to him was the file she had resting by her hand on the table. Her hand rested on it more than it gripping the chopsticks she had. It had all the interviews that she had done that night and the following day. In true reporter fashion, she had refused to let any of them read the file. Insisting that she 'protect her sources' despite the fact that they knew who she spoke to. But humoring her meant Jack never bothered to look inside it.

If Carly said that she had been given confirmation that there was a witness to Aki's survival, then he would accept that. Even if Ruka and her dragon couldn't find Aki or her group, if Carly said Aki was ok, than Aki was 'ok'. End of the discussion, move on to the latest episode of Love Express.

So if Carly was going to sit here and mope, 'Might as well grab the oni by the horns...'

"Woman..." He imperiously began, giving the pause required for her indignant 'My name is Carly!' retort.

"hmmm?"

Jack blinked in concern as she didn't even follow the 'script' that much, worry finally piercing the last of his firm resolve. "This is no way to dine with a king, I demand to know what has happened to sour your company this much."

Carly's answer came by her flipping open the file under her hand. She moved through each sheet with a lifeless touch, not even bothering to look at the pages. Just taking a seemingly random page out to pass across the table to Jack. "He's the last one to see Aki alive front page is the high points of the interview, followed by the details of what he told me."

Jack blinked as he accepted the sheet of paper and looked down, it was as she said, with name and time of the interview as the header. From down there were a list of dots that indicated each high point with the second one having been near stabbed to death. It was the largest of all the dots as though she wanted to make sure, overly so, that it was preserved.

Aki was found in the area where the body of Jounouchi, Katsuya was discovered. A figure, indistinguishable due to lack of light. Grabbed Aki. Could it be that he took her through one of those 'Duel Spirit Portals' that the Tenjoin siblings talked about?

Jack blinked and read the line over again several times. A frown pulling at the corner of his mouth. 'I see, this is what gave her the faith that Aki is alive, she must have shared this with Aki's father at least by now. But if she's like this...' The noodles that Jack had already scarfed down started to feel as though he ate a small boulder. While no detective, he was smart enough to see the play and, personally, he really didn't want this particular train of thought to reach the station.

The rest of the narrative didn't feel important, whatever it was that upset Carly was not written down in these notes. It was recent, probably that day. "They found a body didn't they?"

It was a shot in the dark for Jack. No different than assuming an opponent had a monster card in their hand. Obvious.

"Two. I got a call from my source in China. They found a body that they can confirm from a drivers license to be that of Jounouchi, Katsuya. They still have to do dental and DNA testing due to the length of time that the body had been down there. While in another area, they found Aki. She'd been stabbed a- about five times..." Carly began to break down, her voice began to stammer and a tear dripped down into her cup. "He couldn't get a picture at the excavation site, but he did get the one from the morgue. It.." Carly stopped as she pulled off her glasses and began wiping her eyes, while Jack covered his own eyes. "It was from her autopsy. They washed her for the autopsy... and he was nice enough not to send the photos of her cut... open.."

'Cut open' it hung in there air, souring the food inside Jack's stomach as he processed the information. Thanks to 'Love Cuts' he knew what an 'autopsy' was properly, and the notion of a friend being cut open. Being stabbed 'then' cut open? Suddenly Jack was taken by a feeling of pure fury, it made him start seeking out each shadow in the dining room. Not so much that Aki was dead, she was gone and having lost his parents he was well used to loss.

She was 'murdered'.

That was what got Jack infuriated. Stabbing a girl to death while in a man made volcano. Already the fact that someone else was down there that could 'do' such a thing was terrible. That a month had gone by and they had been sitting around doing nothing. When they 'should' have hunted the bastard down was another.

"WHAT?!" Was the first thing he could process and roar out, slamming his fist on the table with the force of a judges' gavel that rattled the cups of noodles. "Someone 'stabbed' her?! Where are the police? Have they talked to this group that Aki was with? Why are we sitting here complacent when she was stabbed!"

Jack kept revving up only choking a brake on that when Carly's shoulders began shaking hard. "Don't you think I've been asking that 'myself'?! I sat here for a month, trusting that Aki would be ok! She's powerful all she would need is a dragon, a witch anything and she would break out! I was confident that Hikari was right about the reading! DON'T YOU THINK I'VE ASKED MYSELF THAT?!"

'You calm down, you tell Carly you know that she did her best...' A list of instructions on how to be a good boyfriend ran down Jacks' mind. But didn't start processing out of his mouth before she got up and ran from the room. Leaving Jack alone with two cups of noodles and while still angry, his mind slowly shifted gears to wonder why she got angry.

His eyes drifted down to the cup of noodles sitting in front of him, before he gathered up his chopsticks and got to work eating the rest. 'Ugh was starting to get room temp,' he thought as he worked through his cup. 'She's... not going to eat 'cold' Cup Noodles. I refuse to let her eat sub par noodles.' Pulling her cup over he continued working his way past the less appealing cooling noodles to the still delicious warm noodles under it.

'Wait... did that idiot think I was blaming 'her' for what happened?' For all his indignation a niggling little voice in the back of his head, Crow like even. Began twittering that Jack may have made it sound like that.

'Someone murdered Aki?' It was a thought that began pestering him again as he sat there, hovering about him like a ghost. He wouldn't let Carly tell Yusei. Better that it be Jack, so if Yusei lashed out, an understandable reaction, he would take it out on Jack. He'd hold it in if it was Carly. Maybe stuff Yusei in a bag and drop him off at Martha's so she could help.

Carly had left the file on the table, and Jack found himself concerned enough to finally slide it over and study it. Keeping the pages in the order they were in the file, it was mostly long pages, glances showing they were interviews. There were notes about comments regarding the duel spirits, but nothing stood out the way that one line did.

Fubuki's seemed the most in depth, only logical given that the whole trip was to find him. The only thing of note that Carly had made was that Fubuki remembered Aki from when she didn't have control over her powers. Followed by apparently the Tenjoin's mother baked killer goods. Given how Carly wrote it, it appeared she aimed for double duty, getting an actual interview while at the same time looking for Aki.

Pages passed before his eyes, nothing but words so that when he found it, the moment felt like a sucker punch. A sheet of paper no different than the others, save that this was 'the' picture. The autopsy photo that had Aki laid out on a table, from a top down position. It hit at that moment, as he stared down at her face, impassive, devoid of life. Pale with the sickly tint of time lapsed death with just the hint of bloat as the internal organs were breaking down.

All the nasty stuff that had turned up his nose while watching tv shows. Churning his stomach and the noodles he had eaten into an ugly mess. So he turned the page over to see if there was anything on the back to work from. There was a pair of lists that went down, which he could barely read the first one on the right, the second on the left was in Carly's typical Japanese handwriting and he 'could' read it more easily. 'I guess she translated it for us. Meaning the other list must be in Chinese...'

It wasn't much, a list of time of discovery, locations of the stab wounds and a list of what she was wearing at the time. Oddly enough she was described wearing a white full piece coveralls that was several sizes too big for her. Attire that was completely out of the normal for her, worn over her regular, more Aki, outfit. There was no mention of her deck, but given the way her remains had been extracted it was plausible that it was missed.

With one last slurp of noodles, Jack put the papers back into the file and returned it to how he found it. Pushing his towering frame from the table, he finally forced himself to face the last hurdle this dinner had brought to him. He had a duty to Carly. Despite the desire to tiptoe through the apartment due to the weight of grief in the air, Jack pushed against it.

He would stride forward with the confidence he had always carried. Be the king that was needed for Carly as he made his way to their room. Where the sounds of sniffling and crying could now be more readily heard. It didn't matter how he felt, so long as he projected strength and confidence. And vengeance.

"Woman! Stop that sniffling! We have work to do!" He barked out as he reached the room. Throwing open the door imperiously to find her curled up under her blankets, only the tips of her hair visible that didn't get pulled in when she turtled up. Despite referring to it as 'their' bedroom, it was mostly untouched of Carly's personal things.

Jack, didn't have much that went into a bedroom, thanks to how Godwin had trained him. So it was bright, posters of both Jack and other duel monsters that Carly was partial to along the walls. Mismatched furniture that she had cobbled together over the years into a collection for her room. For all that brightness, when Carly was feeling down the whole room seemed to lose its brightness.

"Sleeping? We have a duty to avenge Aki and you're 'sleeping'!?" He demanded intentionally misinterpreting her position causing her form to twitch in reaction before tightening up even further.

"How? Sure she's a senators' daughter, but if that was just some madman in China how would we get anything done? They 'trusted' me!" Carly's muffled voice retorted as she laid there refusing to come out. "We'd just get in the way of the real detectives."

Jack took the few steps necessary before reaching down and yanking the blanket off of her, literally sending her spinning briefly in the air. "Have you forgotten what this means?" He asked pointing at the mark on his arm. "I'm bound to the other Dragons, and duty demands that Aki be avenged. And don't give me that garbage about 'some madman'! You wrote it yourself the very reason its 'not'!"

Carly fumbled with her glasses with a deep frown on her face as she glared up at Jack. But at least she was listening, though Jack would have carried on regardless.

"Someone clearly put her body back to be found later! All you did was report the facts that those high schoolers gave you!" It was always something to hear Jack talk about the high school. Given that, unlike Yusei subtle longing and Crows' utter indifference, Jack talked like he was older than them.

Hello Jack, 'you' should be IN high school.

"Dead is dead." Carly listlessly pointed out turning back around, deprived of her blanket she just huddled in, hugging her pillow to her chest.

"Woman we 'have' a direction to go in hunting down the killer!" It had no effect on Carly. "How many people can take a person out of a volcano, kill them, then shove their bodies back into the volcano 'after' it's collapsed!" He demanded finally getting her to peek over her shoulder to look at him. "You've forgotten that you're friends with a woman who sought to kill Aki. Is it hard to believe that she has others who probably have a reason to want her dead? Someone with a unique power no less!"

Carly pushed herself to a sitting position, pulling off her glasses so she could rub her eyes. "Another psychic duelist you mean?" It... it 'was' possible now that Jack had suggested it. There was plenty of reason to view Aki as having gone soft and take that opening. Also given that she could travel through those portals, didn't mean 'she alone' could. The elder Tenjoin sibling could do the same with his magic mask!

Jack stood there proud that he got her to uncurl from their bed and sit up. He was about to sit down when her hand shot out blocking his move. He started to frown in reaction only to see that she grabbed her box of tissues... And proceeded the water works. Off came her glasses, thoughtlessly put in the place of the tissue box. It would be forgotten to have been left there, Carly would be blind for an hour looking for it if Jack didn't remind her. Again. While tears streamed down Carly's face.

But it wasn't her guilty, hide under the blankets with self loathing and sob quietly cry. This was more cathartic, her bawling in grief because a friend died cry.

'Yes, finally figured out how to make her stop doing the guilty cry. Took long enough to shut that up. This at least I can manage...' He thought victoriously, before that got soured by the reality as well. 'Now how do we find the bastard that killed Aki?'

There was no way to hide this from Yusei or Aki's parents. But while the parents were one thing, Jack couldn't help but feel that he and Crow would need to get Yusei to Martha. Loath as Jack was to admit though, now that he sat there with arms full of Carly, he realized a small flaw. Ruka was their only remaining psychic duelist. Unacceptable. The most they could hope for was getting help from that one Tenjoin guy. But only Carly on hand knew anything about him, so would he even be willing 'to' help them? But of course he would. He was the reason Aki was dead after all sooo...

Since the other option was rotting in hell. There was NO WAY Jack was letting Carly or Ruka get involved in any way with Divine.

Only, by giving Carly a direction to go after, had he already put in motion the chance that she 'would'? 'Though, Divine saw Aki as a weapon he could use, he might actually be upset that someone killed his primary weapon. But I'm not letting the girls near the bastard.'