Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds: The Judgement of the World
Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
Beta By: Lady Lunar Phoenix
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"I don't know who spoke, but they were angry, and..."
Mikage saw the signs flickering across Asuka's face as the young woman laid there against the medical bed. The way worry tugged the corners of her mouth down, and the expression grew more thoughtful.
Asuka looked about the bed and wearily pushed herself up, "I'm sorry, do you know where my deck is?"
Mikage shook her head, but then made the effort of going through the drawers before finding Asuka's bag and bringing it to the young duelist.
"Yubel... we got attacked by Judai's spirit, Yubel, she... he? They... They wanted to hurt... And there was..."
Her speech became increasingly distended, signs that she was starting to remember pieces of the very reason why she was in the hospital. Quiet pauses between her sentences were filled with her searching her bag. Which Mikage could see was causing the young womans' hands to shake as Witch of the Black Rose began to materialize in the room.
Asuka didn't pay the Witch any mind as she went about digging, her tone becoming edged with worry. "There was another Yusuke as well... he was dressed the same way we found Fubuki, but... it sounded and looked like Yusuke..."
Mikage firmly, but gently, placed her hands on Asuka's shoulders and eased the young woman to lay back on the bed. "Yusuke was only trying to show his 'love' for his partner by... bringing us? We were sacrifices?"
Witch hovered in the air before drifting over and magicking off her shoes so she could walk on it. "You know everyone's worried about you, I checked the other rooms and so far you're the only one who woke up again..." Witch tried to sound professional and confident, yet the way Asuka zeroed in on her and that hint of pink skin around those eyes. Pink ready to go red with tears if Witch didn't tell her what she wanted to hear. What she 'needed' to hear.
"So if you're here, hey can you get my spirits to show where my deck is?" Asuka asked, her voice tight with fake calm and seeping desperation. She could hear Bladers' shriek of pain with Tutu dashing forward crying out in a panic.
"Get up Queen! Come on you have to get up!" Kazus' hot blooded spirit... Did Asuka see that Yusuke person break the spirits' back?
"Ahhh..." Witch anxiously cast her gaze around the hospital room trying to focus on Cyber Angel out of desperation. 'There's no one else for me to seek... I can't... Oh wow how do I? Even Aki can't think of how...' Witch thought as she peeked at Asuka from the corner of her eye. Seeing the memories starting to wake back up in Asuka now that she had been awake for a bit. Watching the memories distort her expression into mounting worry and fear.
Angel could be found on the other side of the room, so Witch flew over where another bag rested. On top there was a pair of duel deck holders with one showing a barely there aura of a deck with a spirit attached to it. She tucked her wand under her arm and picked up the case before flying over Fubuki's sleeping form.
It wasn't as though Witch was an expert, but even to her eyes she felt that he didn't look all that great. Bandages and trauma all around, the others in their group had been of various amounts of bandages for the physical injuries. If someone remembered Dream Sprites were a thing she didn't want to go into this trauma conga line that would follow.
Hopeful elation blossomed into Asuka's eyes as Witch returned to her, holding out the deck with an awkward smile on her lips. Even as the door suddenly startled both of them as a sharp knock pierced the quiet atmosphere, with Witch sensing her partner on the other side. Mikage left the bedside to answer the door, where she found Aki leading the rest of the Dragons and their friends with them. If the spirits she saw before were still out, they were kept invisible to her eyes for the moment.
They began to pour into the room, Aki in the lead with Yusei shadowing her, Asuka held her deck to her chest as everyone else shuffled into the room. With only the red head being the unknown to her, which he seemed to pick up on. He gave this encouraging cheerful smile and wave, but it didn't reach his eyes. She saw those eyes get pulled to the numerous bandages taped to her skin the ones on the edge of her hospital gown.
"Asuka," Aki began as she noticed the deck clutched to her friends' chest. Aki could see herself reflected in Witches' eyes, the apprehension was evident as the spirit floated up and glided herself over to Aki. "Asuka how are you? You look better than when we found you."
"I'm going to be ok. As bad as I look right now, if it weren't for our Spirits it wou..." Asuka watched the flinch on Aki's expression, while in the corner of her vision she saw little Ruka duck behind her twin... "Ok, what is going on Aki? Witch, even Ms. Sagiri, everyone here knows. So just..."
Aki walked over to the bed in a series of quick steps with her eyes closing as she stood at Asuka's bedside. When Cyber Petite Angel manifested, already floating up into the air and turning around to look at Asuka.
Asuka looked at her little angel and possessively snatched her spirit out of the air even as she began looking around for the others.
"You need to finish the story, Ms. Tenjoin," Mikage began while Ryu walked over to stand next to Aki.
"Lord Kaiba?" Asuka looked over down at the young child.
"Please, we don't want to make you wear yourself out, so if you could let us know what happened?" Ryu politely pointed out as he looked at the small spirit. Uncle Jounouchis' deck had to be in the room as well given who her brother was. Yet only this one small spirit appeared, where were all those spirits that he had been waiting to meet?
"We were at a ground zero, a cross fire between Judai, Yubel, Yusuke and not Yusuke. If it wasn't for our Spirits we'd have..." Asuka wanted to say 'been hurt real bad', but she looked down and saw the top of Angel's head. Though her left arm was wrapped with a sturdy bandage, it ached when she curled her fingers to help cup her hand to hold Angel. Everything was so sickly pale, from the pale off white blanket to the bed and bandages. Only her Spirits' light pink form gave any color... "They're ok," she repeated when an image played in her mind again. "Aki? You can't break a spirits back right?"
Aki's eyes grew big at the question, Rua instantly grabbed his sister as he spun around to throw himself into Jack's waist.
"What?" Crow stammered, horrified as he tore his gaze from Asuka to Aki in alarm.
For which the girl who had a talent for torture was quiet, "Normally? No... even now its possible that you didn't see that..."
Asukas' smile was stilted, her confidence waning, "so I just had a nightmare, that's good..."
But Aki was already shaking her head against that as Asuka spoke. "No, its just that..."
"Spirits are just spirits," Ryu answered startling the pair. "The original spirits were parts of the human soul, when we think of 'dueling' we at KaibaCorp understand that the story Pegasus wove was a 'war'. But we don't exactly want our graphics to be used for the true ugliness of war so we keep all animations in a fairly tame presentation. We don't tolerate high end torture because kids play this game." Ryu began as though reading from a press docket to a press conference. Calm, measured, professional, but that ended when he asked directionlessly. "Yet what actual spirits can do to each other?"
"But Queen..." Asuka sputtered as she rested her hand against her head. "Her back got snapped... I heard..." She began to turn green in mounting horror, sending Angel into worried chirps.
"Asuka stop, don't think about it!" Aki begged as she desperately pulled Asuka into a hug. The girl was trembling in her arms and Aki already had a terrible idea of what happened to the Queen.
"They ripped the wings off Cyber Harpy, but her wings are attached to her arms."
Mikage looked about for the trashcan and found the better option of the barf bag, putting it beside Aki in a hurry. Carly was mortified, her glasses hanging from her fingers as she covered her ears in desperation. Even as Asuka began to beg and order Aki to summon the rest of her spirits. Her cards spilled from her deck holder as she tried to get them out. Stiff, awkward fingers shaking with growing concern and alarm as her vision blurred. Fumbling between getting the cards and holding Cyber Petite Angel to her.
"Aki, Aki why won't you summon them! You got Angel, call them out! I need to make sure my deck is ok! What do I tell the others? How can I tell them..."
Behind her closed eyes Asuka could see the top of one of CyberEnd Dragons' heads getting ripped off the body by this wild haired spirit...
Yusei walked around the bed to the other side, he rested his hands on Asuka's shoulders waiting for her to relax enough that he could guide her back into resting. She was leaning into Aki's embrace so he couldn't do much, but he gave them a squeeze. Trying to express comfort when words were not going to work.
"I am... I'm calling everyone out, but..." Aki's voice was cracked and shaking as she tried. Truly 'tried'.
The Fortune Fairies were the first to appear, fairly hanging off Carly in quiet concern the womans' hair in their small hands. Soft spirits from Ruka, the toys that came from Rua, everyone short of a massive dragon began to appear. Bright colors of youth and light, to dark colors of experience and age, a spectrum of colors and spirits manifested through out the room.
There were no Cybers, no gambling or showy spirits, or air themed feathered spirits from across the hall.
"We were at the twins condo when Angel here came, weary and wounded. They lead us to all of you, but by the time we reached you. The last we saw was spirits defending all of you and being wiped out." Yusei finally explained his voice calm and even. Under his grasp even through the leather gloves he wore, he felt her shoulders' stiffen. "We thought that the duel took place here in the human world, and that the spirits were merely sent back to the Duel Spirit world. Only our spirits couldn't find yours."
"We looked..." Hikari added meekly. "We really did, we searched high and low and everywhere in between. But we just..."
"We're sorry," Hu pushed at her own glasses as she brought her gaze to focus more on the tips of Carly's hair.
'Honest is dead...' Aki finally realized as she stood there, she rested her head on Asuka's head, feeling the soft blond hair under her chin. Instinct made her want to look up at Yusei, to have him tell her what to do, only that wouldn't work... 'No more. I need to be responsible for this, I didn't attack them. I know that, but the realm of the Duel Spirits is just as much my responsibility as it is Rukas'. She's a kid, she can't summon as I can, even if she has Ancient Fairy Dragons' guidance.'
"Mikage, the girl can't talk, but she must have told you something," Jack finally growled out in an effort to keep his voice down but still commanding. "Tell us what she told you."
Mikages' name caused her to jump in surprise, her gaze having drifted to the comforting sight of all these Duel Spirits. Not holograms created by KaibaCorp technology but actual 'spirits'. Heart ache reflected in her gaze as she jerked her head over to the taller duelist before giving a quiet nod. The spirits were respectfully quiet the whole time, everyone listening as Mikage recited what Asuka had explained to her. Punctuated by Asuka's growing sobs and low moans of horror.
Each sound dragged out of the blond as though hearing the story told again was bringing back 'more' memories. Added knowledge that this actually happened and her spirits were all dead. Ruka was quiet as Asuka occasionally broke into the retelling as another piece of what happened after came back.
Kuribon was snuggling in her arms, the small spirits' tail wrapped around the girls' arm to stay extra close. While a few spirits among Crow tried their best to hide, after all feathers were feathers and Cyber Harpy was dead... While the mechanical spirits followed suit their expressions mostly static save what little could express their sympathy and awareness.
It was a strange concept to the spirits as a whole, dying. A good number of them were machine based and associated 'death' with being turned off. Monster Reborn or other such methods were used to turn them back on again. While the plant and animal type spirits understood death as either a cycle that could be interrupted into starting again, again Monster Reborn. Or evolving up into further stronger tiers of their own being. There was just so many ways for them to change, revert, evolve, stop, but they saw the battle site.
"There is reason to be concerned, something has gone horribly wrong here..." Regulus reported with a unsettled growl as he stalked around the edge of the battlefield. It was a scar of light that carved the dark lands of Yami with a pulsing wound. Light didn't have a 'scent' in the typical sense, as a light spirit though, Regulus felt his fur stand on end. "This isn't from the Duel Spirit World..."
"That's what Regulus reported," Ruka noted softly once Mikage finished. "There is this wide assortment of spirits we have, from different elements, and types, all of them say that they don't recognize what that strange light is. Regardless, its capable of doing something that is disrupting the very fabric of the Duel Spirit World..."
Asuka sat there resting against the bed, with both Aki and Yusei resting their hands on her arms. Gently lifting and holding them for her so she could continue to hold Angel. "I... I guess Angel went to get help?"
The spirit chirped supportive in tone as it turned so it could peer up at her, trying to give her a positive smile. But its best smile only brought more tears to Asuka's eyes as she pulled the spirit into a hug. "None of this makes sense, for that matter, what about Yusuke? Where is he? Why would a duel spirit take his form?"
"You have it backwards, actually." Aki began slowly and felt Asuka turn to look at her even as she looked down at the bed. "The 'Yusuke' that we've gone to school with, wasn't Yusuke. It was Yusuke's own Duel Spirit, 'Honest'."
"What? A duel.. But we all saw him..."
"That's the power of a bond between person and spirit."
Suddenly a new voice broke over the near silence of the room. Quiet, drained, but recognizable, as Asuka rocketed herself into an upright position. "Big Brother?!"
"Honest was Yusuke's own partner... When Yusuke lost his parents though, he gave up on the world at large. Ryo and I, we tried to be there for him, but we couldn't replace the loss of his parents. So he left, and Honest, just wanting his partner back came to us."
Everyone moved and shuffled themselves so they could see Fubuki, spreading out to extend the circle to include the teen. He was staring at the ceiling without really ever seeing it, while his normally expressive face barely moved. If not for his open eyes and moving lips he could have been still unconscious.
"But we didn't know for years, then one day he revealed his presence to me. Honest was afraid that with Yusuke's absence we would forget about Yusuke. Without us, there would be no one left to call him back from the dark roads he was traveling. So Honest took Yusuke's form and life to keep the memory of his partner alive while trying to find him. That first time he revealed the truth, was why I ended up in China." Fubuki explained quietly, "for all the good it did. All I accomplished was hurting my adorable baby sister and parents... and the people Yusuke ordered me to hurt. And costing a good man his life for trying to help."
"Apparently though Yusuke recently realize what Honest had been doing all these years... And wasn't happy..."
"Could Honest be ok? Given his situation could he have survived the attack?" Yusei asked. There wasn't much else 'too' ask, perhaps he would appear, pretending to be a wounded Yusuke, or even a got out of danger Yusuke.
Fubuki barely shook his head as the memory played back, "no. Yusuke killed him first and all of Mr. Jounouchis' spirits tried to fight. But whatever that light was, it radiated off of Yubel like radiation. And there I was..." Fubuki's voice cracked and broke in self directed anger and shame. "unable to help anyone. Mr. Jounouchi entrusted his deck to me, and I screwed it up the first damn chance!"