Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds: The Judgement of the World
Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
Beta By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
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Old Man Seiji really hated Kiryu from the moment the stray showed up outside the motel door avoiding the rain shower. Boy had the full on appearance that kids that age shouldn't have had. That look of an upstart punk who strutted into a gang zone and got broken by it. There were things broken behind Kiryu's eyes that shouldn't have been in a kid. Escaping those eyes was why Seiji had moved out here in the middle of nowhere.
Crash Town was for those running away from Zero Reverse, the people who couldn't stomach the fake smiles of the world. How everyone just said 'sure a bunch of us died but look at all this money we keep from not paying bills!' Sure even he saved money on not paying electric to run the motel. But then there was that damn kid.
"Your friends still here?" He barked out as he watched that barely suppressed worried expression on the kids' face.
Kiryu blinked back into the present, as he turned to look over at his boss. For a moment he didn't feel like he should answer, but then resigned himself. The man meant well, in his gruff as hell way. "They'll be back, they're off to kick a bastards' ass."
"What the hell did you get yourself into this time Kiryu?" Seiji demanded cleaning his glasses as he squinted at the boy, but he could see the shake of the unnatural gray hair the boy had. 'Silver' HA stupid cartoons.
"This isn't my doing. A friend of mine... I don't have a right to call him that, but he's dying and they're after the guy who's the reason." Kiryu began before sighing, "I want to go with them, but they have no room for a third person. Yusei's still in Neo Domino, and there's no way in hell they can get the antidote and back there in time." Kiryu's head lowered, so he was facing the railing with his often near emotionless voice barely trembling with now suppressed emotions.
"The hell is going on in Neo Domino? Back in my day it was only Domino, and it was whole..."
Seiji went on another of his rants about the state of the world while Kiryu fought to find his own self control. He lifted his head up to see the afternoon sky while a single star blazed across the endless field of bright blue. It arced in such a graceful manner and even though Kiryu didn't deserve to pray or wish he closed his eyes. 'Please Gods, don't let Yusei suffer.'
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It was a building in the middle of nowhere.
Off the normal road and so far in no one would see it casually. All the while painted in the warm clay colors associated with the landscape. There was no real way to tell what it was built for, there was no signs announcing it or a landing strip for planes. It wasn't run down looking, but there was a weight of age to it as well. While outside of the building there wasn't much around it anymore.
Just a few garage doors and the BlackBird resting out in the front. The door near it was hanging off a hinge and the building was eerily silent from time to time. When it wasn't silent, it was either Isao announcing the time or minor, or not so minor, explosions. Erupting inside the building from various parts. Jack was busy bashing down doors with the single minded determination of an angry bull charging about a china shop.
While Crow was busy rigging explosions and anything else he could to keep the Psychics away from them. After all, what else could he do when the people they were facing could fire off fireballs from their decks.
"On the plus side, they're not an angry Sister," Crow noted as he poured a bottle of rubbing alcohol on floor and set it on fire.
"Must you burn the building down? Or did you figure a way out before you went mad?" Jack grumbled as he stalked into the room. Another front, like the whole high school student facade, the room was mostly empty. A few folding tables and chairs, flipping on the lights showed a white board with what appeared to be a mining schedule. 'A mining building? I see so there must be a mining shaft around here somewhere.' Jack thought to himself as his gaze glided across the wall to a phone on the wall. It was an older model lacking the video call function that modern phones had, which served as a way to roughly date how old the building was.
But even Jack knew how to use one of those phones, while Crow sped about the room and started looking for more ways to make things go boom. "This is a mining operation, or at least it used to be. No idea how long its been since someone was here," Jack told Crow before picking up the phone.
"Just what the hell you got against Yusei that you have to pull a stunt like this?!" Jack demanded as he hit the intercom button. His voice boomed out across the empty rooms out of every phone and speaker about the building.
"He is diluting the purity of Aki's power! He's turned her into a lapdog ready to eat out of his hand. Which goes against the plans that our leader had charted for her," Isao replied in that irritatingly calm voice. "So long as the Witch lives, our plans will come to fruition."
Jack hated hearing Isao's voice.
It wasn't an issue of grating, rather it was that calm, confident, grounded tone. This wasn't a crazed loon talking out of his ass. There wasn't any audible sound of mental instability, Isao wasn't off his rocker. He knew what he was doing and the path he was on. Fanatics were one thing, grounded fanatics were another, more dangerous, thing.
"Plans? What? Just going to make Aki go on a demolition spree?" Jack scoffed as Crow began twittering about finding something.
He watched as Crow opened up a partly hidden trap door in the floor and drop down without even a backwards wave. Causing Jack to slowly, painfully, close his eyes. 'Blasted fool forgot there's only two of us didn't he? Or maybe he's gotten more reckless as he's gotten older rather than less?'
Isao chuckled at that, "no, nothing as basic as that. Not that you can understand. You had that little quark about you. Thanks to Zero Reverse you lived on Satellite, where everyone was more invested in staying alive. No one really cared that a foreigner like you was living on the islet. Then by the time you got off it, you were in the care of a high standing Japanese citizen. Maybe if you lived life like that friend of little Ruka. Maybe you would understand better."
Crow, busy picking out his lock picking set from a pouch at his belt looked up at that. A grimace on his face as he saw where this was going. "Tell that son of a bitch to leave her and her grandma out of this!" Crow called out in response, the light in the room wasn't great, but he just needed his ability to feel more than see anyways.
Jack tossed a look over at where Crow had disappeared to, since Crow didn't really 'join' them until later. He didn't really get the first release of what Aki's life had been like, and he wasn't confident that anyone updated Crow since then. But being shunned for being different. Having powers while at the same time surrounded by people who didn't. It made her the odd ball, the dangerous one that no one knew how to approach.
But Patti probably knew.
Living isolated, shunned by others because of national pride, cranked up to being proud to be human. If someone, and people undoubtedly did, view being a Psychic Duelist as being non human somehow. It would just create another type of 'national pride'. Hence why Divine had his little group structured like a school.
"A good selling point, the Arcadia Movement, they just convince you that all you need is training and you stop being a threat to others. True enough, but your boss killed anyone who didn't meet his standards. That you're ok with that tells me you can shove all your attempts to play the victim card!" Jack retorted sourly, after all that was what lead to Misty's death. Divine outright murdering Toby and laying the blame at Aki's feet. Just so he could test how strong Aki was against an Earthbound God.
"So has every nation on this planet, every meaningless war, that exists for no further purpose than to keep the blood economy going. Sure Kaiba had the insane, and successful, notion to drop out out of that race once his adoptive father died. But that didn't stop the other 51 companies that sprang up within the next ten years after he had pulled that move. We don't consider their lives 'wastes' Jack. They were 'noble sacrifices for the greater good'." Isao corrected from his office, his feet kicked up while the package that held the antidote to the poison next to him on the desk.
There was a television hooked up to all the security cameras in the building. As the screen switched from camera to camera, some were static and snow only. Others showed his men, some making a showing of chasing after the pair. But the reality was they were moving the dynamite and other explosives that had been left by the crews away from the pair.
After the first explosion Crow created went off. It became painfully clear they needed to keep him away from anything bigger. So they were packing stuff up and moving it further into the tunnels away from the base. Leaving Isao to indulge in his observations of the pair who came to avenge their friend.
Not that there was more that Jack wanted to talk about apparently. Isao watched as the blond left for the back of the room and climbed down after Crow. Which wasn't entirely good since the office that Isao was in was also underground. 'A pity really, Lady Aki is so incredible. What I wouldn't give to have half her strength,' he thought to himself.
Able to call forth the Duel spirits into the physical world, so they were visible and able to communicate with others. It was a skill that no one, even Divine, could pull off. Instead the most that Divine could do was summon static versions of a spirit. The image, but not the soul of said image. Even his Empress Judge could only be an invisible ghost at 'most' if he wanted to interact with her.
And there was Lady Aki, just casually summoning ancient Dragons and anyone else as it amused her. But as she became re acclimated to a life away from other Psychic duelists it was would be only a matter of time before she lost her power. Without that driving motivation to survive, what would motivate her to keep her power active? She lived the sheltered pampered life of a senators daughter, she would want for nothing. Which by that, mean she would never use her powers again.
Leaving a world with psychic duelists left without a lady to lead them!
A frown crossed his face as the room brightened in a way he didn't anticipate.
"Get out of the chair!" Empress called out in alarm from in front of him even as his mind started to register that he was sinking into the ground. The phone fell from his hand as he reached uselessly for his Duel Partner. While behind the space where her voice came the image of the tv continued to flicker between cameras.
As a single purple eye searched the room.
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"Jack?" Crow asked, confused as he looked about the tunnel for the intercom that could have come up with that sound. Isao had grown silent true. Only he suddenly sounded startled, and while Crow wanted to pass it off as the bastard falling out of his chair. It was a funny mental image to start with. Now there was the hissing static of a phone line that had been cut.
"Somethings wrong?" Jack asked as his eyes searched the ceiling of the tunnel with a shared concern.
"Think someone got to him first?" Crow asked, as they followed the tired yellow lights through the tunnel they found under the building.
Jack walked along, quiet at first as he tried to think of what would cause that to happen. "No... He's had this too well planned out to be just be jumped."
"Sis 'did' make it from here to China... So maybe... there was an office with one of those portals? Would explain why this place is abandoned like it is," Crow suggested.
"Couldn't be one of her school friends. Even if those guys knew about this, they don't have a psychic with the..." Jack cut himself off.
"Unless they talked Aki into guiding them here?" Crow asked alarmed, because an angry Aki was 'not' something he wanted to be in the proximity of! But then he shook his head as common sense took over. "No, she can't be here, she doesn't strike me as silent when getting angry. We would have 'heard' her on the phone if it was her. Kiryu?"
They had no idea where this tunnel lead, but it proved to have several trap doors leading up. Neither gave the doors any further thought, save to climb up and check to see if there was anything or anyone upstairs. But Crow could only see more empty rooms. The air stale with age and dust and only carrying the sound of the trap doors as they creaked into use.
"Hmmm..." Jack crossed his arms as his gaze went to the floor as he thought about it. "Agreed, Aki should be in school right now, same as her friends, Kiryu... He was getting off work when we arrived so its not something in the way..." His words stilled as he saw the faintest shift in the colors of light. The yellow from the overhead, had a distinct appearance when on a darken floor. But in the distance he could see it brighten, and that shift was enough to hurry his steps.
Before the pair was a doorknob with the thinnest of slits of light spilled onto the floor. They approached the door with only a small amount of trepidation as all conversations came to a halt. Both did what they could to quiet their steps as they approached the door.
Both guys pressed their ears to the door to see if they could hear anyone inside.
Silence was the answer.
Exchanging a glance between each other, and Crow gently eased the doorknob to turn around. Silence continued to greet them until Crow pushed open the door. Revealing a bare security room, across from them was a lone television cycling through different cameras across the building. Some were of rooms others were static. A pair of tables, one with a strange looking box and a telephone, the old kind. Lacking a video screen, but also it also lacked a receiver.
The cord was hanging off the table, lightly swing into stillness as they stood there, leaving the pair to exchange wordless glances again. It would explain why Isao was cut off. Jack went to the phone and grabbed the cord to check the swinging end. Holding the small black cord between his fingers, the edge was a smooth clean cut.
While Crow went to the security system and began rooting around it. Dated as it was, he was able to get it to replay the last recordings. "Hey, I can't get far but I can wind back the recording a bit."
"Cord was cut clean, not pinched, but I can't see if it was cut with a knife or what," Jack reported as he gave the tv his attention.
Rooms sped by his view, many appearing static to his gaze due to the lack of people, others showed movement in reverse, including his and Crows. The room they were in came into life while a hole widened and Isao was seen rising up. Crow stopped the video and let it begin to play again, revealing the swapping between cameras. But when it came back it showed Isao beginning to fall into a hole that was under him. Reaching forward for someone that wasn't there...?
"Maybe for his spirit?" Jack asked, when the image cut to a single eye peering out from the screen. "SHIT!"
The pair stumbled back when the eye seemed to exam the room before the screen went black. Only to have the rotation resume as it had. Jack blinked before internally shaking off the alarm the eye gave. People didn't just rush to a security camera and ram the lens right at their eye intentionally, but it made no sense, nor did the hole in the...
"Can't be a hole, you're standing right where it appeared," Crow noted with a small frown. "It... can... There has to be a portal here. And you're right, his spirit might not be visible to us... But that wasn't the expression of someone going willingly..."
"Damn it! How are we supposed to beat his ass for his stunt if he gets kidnapped into the Duel Spirit world?!" Jack demanded in outrage, while he sent one fist swinging towards the box resting on the table. Only to have Crow deftly snatch it out of his way before he could send it into the wall.
"Now now, Jack. If Isao had this box, it must be important and what..." Crow stopped as the possibility awoke in him. Turning his teasing tone into a distressed one as he realized...