Redux 48: A Few Relative Facts

Amelia Brandt was a girl who preferred the normal life. There was nothing wrong with a small quiet town and a day-to-day agenda. She could no longer claim that she had never seen something unordinary though. Two days ago, there had been an incident in front of her home. It had nothing to do with her, was what the government, her parents and her mind were saying to her. Yet she could not shake the feeling that it wasn't over. And she was right, because one of the images from that recent past returned. "It's you." She saw the young girl again, with the blue dress, blonde hair and hazel eyes. "Ah.. hi. I just.. please don't be scared." The image was not as startling this time around. "I am not. I am just.. I didn't think I'd see you again. When did you get here?" Amelia spoke carefully. It was lunchbreak during school hours and she was sure she'd never seen this girl here before. What was she doing here? "Just now. I only wanted.. I had to come back to say sorry for what happened." The girl claimed. "Hm? But I understand why it happened now. Those men from the Union told us that you were high-Scale duelists sent to investigate a malfunction in the neighborhood network."

"Oh." The truth was not given to Amelia or the Brandts the truth at all, not even the fact that they were watching them now. "That's not everything.." Then again, this girl had been watching Amelia for a while too. "Ah! I should tell you my name! It's Alice B.. Alice." She wanted to pass on the whole story. "Alice? That's a nice name. And I guess I told you mine before. But there's more?" Amelia did not really understand why, but she felt her uneasiness fade away. "Uh. I'm.. not really from the union. Yeah. I'm just someone who wants you to be safe." Alice stammered, she was already losing control of herself. "Safe? ..Me? Why me? Do you know me.. from somewhere?" She was weirding Amelia out, but not chasing her away. "You want to know?" Alice could just as well take that chance. "Uhh.." While hesitant, Amelia still could not find it in her to say no. "I do now." It was like this girl knew exactly how to push her buttons. "Okay. Here I go.." Alice took a deep breath.

And then she told her as much as she could in one minute, from the truths of the other dimension to the existence of Emily Brandt, and the nature of her relationship with the Brandt family. "Ah.." Amelia began to show signs of a response, once Alice stopped talking. "Aha..hahahahaa!" The bewilderment turned to laughter, astonishing Alice. "I'm sorry! I'm not laughing at you. It's just.." Amelia controlled herself. "That's a really tall tale, isn't it? It's fine if you can't tell me what's really going on. But you didn;t need to invent that much of a cover story." It was beyond obvious that Amelia did not believe her. Nevertheless this was now how Alice thought she would react. "But.." Now she was starting to wonder if this wasn't for the best. Amelia did not need to be troubled and Alice was glad that she wasn't scaring her off either. In fact she caught Amelia's curiosity. "What is Emily like then? What is your world like then? Compare the two." Amelia sat down on a nearby bench. "Huh? Compare? You're okay with me staying? Do you have time for it?"

"Next class doesn't start for a while. Do you have the time? I suppose you're too young to be a millennium worker, so shouldn't you be in a school too?" Amelia asked. "Uh.. it's not that simple." Alice's voice trailed off. "Well. There's something about you, so yeah I want to hear more. I don't really get it, but I can't let it go now." Amelia explained. "Well, I don't know that much about you, or your family. The dad I know works at a mine. Mom's a politician. And you.. you're kind and strong and determined and everything! You're a cool big sister!" Alice gushed, letting it all out. "Cool big sister?" Amelia admitted to herself, that that sounded nice. But it did not sound like her. "Oh I mean.. you are probably cool too!" Alice quickly added. "And your world is cool! You have all kinds of stuff that we don't have! Like those cars! Or cities! We do have schools tho! Emily and me aren't that bad, she just doesn't like math very much." Alice paused to catch her breath again. "Maybe.. we are more alike than I thought then." Amelia had little love for mathematics herself. "..I don't know. It all sounds too mad to be real, but you seem so sure of it."

"Ah! I can tell you how I got here, if you want! It will be a neat trick!" Alice pulled the pendulum from her dress pocket and showed it to Amelia. "That jewel? You mean you can make it glow?" Amelia's eyes were instantly drawn towards the crystal. "No I.." The crystal that was glowing fiercely. "Huh? It didn't do that before?" Alice flinched. The colors inside the crystal were shifting from red to blue to green. "This is.. bad. It's...Uno!"

...

Uno's LP: 0

"Ohhh..." After the fall, the senses dulled and his surroundings stopped making sense. The guilds beat him; used every method possible to take his power. He couldn't move, he was at their mercy. He could not even stop one of them from taking his deck away. The Minister pulled Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon from the stack of cards and showed it to Marie Celeste.

"This is what you wanted?"

"You know it is." The tech-woman reached for the card. "Remember our agreement, MC. We want control of our castle and our men again." Cardel pulled the card back. "You're bartering now? Wasn't Bakker enough?" She muttered. The Templars were getting closer, they didn't have a lot of time. "Oh fine. We will see what we can do about our 'prisoners'. Consider 'Luther' a down-payment." She snatched the Odd-Eyes card and walked away. "The knight? Is that okay with Martel?" Ichirou asked the puppetmaster. "He has failed me twice now. He is not a good pawn." Martel eyed the still unconscious Shiranui duelist with disgust. "I already have a new Knight." He took the card with Luther's face on it and tossed it away. "That sounds like a settlement to me." Cardel smirked. "Yeah. Once we're off this dirthole, we'll split." Celeste flipped back her visor. "You do your thing, we do ours." Martel then walked in between her and Ichirou, and pulled out his stuffed doll. "..." As he dug his fingers into the dolls head, he whispered some inaudible chant.. "Farewell." The Fusion/XYZ trio vanished along with Uno and the synchro duelists, in a flash of blue light.

...

"we lost him." All traces of Uno disappeared from the network in that moment, his dueldisk data was deleted and the Templars lost visuals. "No! How could you let this happen?" Iria, Marco and Anastasia had been helplessly watching the four-on-one duel from the network center in the control city. "I did all that was Possible! My Pendulum would not let Me jump to the Island." Marco cursed. "Then why didn't you send more Templars?" The disciple shouted again. "Those were all the Available Units! That should have been Enough!" Uno and the guilds were dueling in the middle of the ocean. The Union did not even know where they were until Uno activated his dueldisk. "They weren't." Those Templars were occupied by the guild's 'puppets'. Only those duelists were left on behind on the island, transformed back into cards and collected by the Templars. "When this duel started, we only detected two dueldisks in the area. The others arrived here undetected." The technicians at the network center had no explanation for how things got out of control either.

"...Rewind the footage." Iria wanted to see the last few minutes again. "There. It was him." She pointed at captured footage of Martel. Even though the image was grainy when zoomed in, they could tell that he was doing something with his strange doll before he and everyone else teleported away. "it's..." Anastasia shuddered. "he reminds me of..." There was no mistaking it, this was the same as their power. "You're suggesting That man has a pendulum Crystal as well? That is not Possible. All crystals are Accounted for. Besides the one from the Zodiac Travelers, there are only Three in Existence." Marco took a small embroidered case from his pocket and opened it to confirm to her that his pendulum crystal was still inside. "And you are not lying about that?" Iria rasped. "i would not lie about this. the crystals are sacred. without them, I wouldn't even be here." Anastasia gave an concise and contrite response. "Perhaps they took a Crystal from one of the Red Mans companions?" The Lord blustered. "Or they found a way to create their own teleporter." Iria theorized. It would explain how Phoebe and Martel escaped the tunnel maze before, when all exits were guarded. "And now they have an actual pendulum." This was the worst-case scenario, the guilds all working together would bring untold consequences. "Where is the third crystal? Does Alice still have it? We need to find her!"

...

"Uno? Was he the one who was attacked by the Templars? Is he in trouble again?" Amelia did not know what exactly was going on, except that it did not sound good. "I don't know. This crystal doesn't normally light up like this, but.. he was going somewhere dangerous.." Alice got up from the bench. "Adamant!" And she called for her traveling partner. "Wh.. how long was he there?" Amelia flinched when she saw the XYZ-duelist pop up from around the corner. "As long as I needed to be to ensure your safety. Do not fault her, it was my suggestion." He knew his presence would unnerve her. "I'm sorry, Amelia. We gotta go..." Alice said, yet she was stopped. "Huh?" Adamant placed his hand on her shoulder. "Not yet. Something is wrong. Listen.." He waited. "I don't hear anything." Alice said eventually. "Precisely." There were no voices, no footsteps, nothing. They were right next to a school building that was as quiet as a graveyard. "Ah!" Amelia shrieked when she saw why. "They're all.." Her classmates, the teachers; everyone was standing around like a collection of statues. "What's wrong with them?" Nobody moved, spoke or reacted to each other or to them. "Oh no." This was not the first time Alice experienced this.

"Desynchronization." Adamant muttered.

"An astute observation." The silence was broken by the sound of pulsing energy and the voice of an old enemy. "Aaron?!" Alice turned around and there he was. "Your face..." He did not look like the man from before, he carried Aarons face again. And he was not alone. Cassius escorted a woman in a hovering wheelchair. "..and Vesper." It was the founder of the Circle, the grey-haired woman who seemed chairbound in this timeline as well. "What? Who are they? Do they know what's happening?" Amelia was understandably freaked out. "They are the Circle. People we have been trying to protect your family from. She is the one who paralyzed everyone around us." Adamant stepped in front of the girls. "But I thought she needed that big room to do all that?" Right now Vesper was just sitting out in the open. "With the limited technology of the other world, yes I did. I could build a portable version of the synchronizer, with the machines from this world." The woman tilted her head to the side to reveal a large cable connected to the spine of her neck, and more wires were attached to her wrists. "Everyone within a yard radius has been desynchronized from time, except for you three."

"Except us? Why would you do that? What do you want?" Amelia cried out. "Did these two tell you who they are? There is a reason why we couldn't desynchronize them. They were not born in this timeline, one of them never was." Cassius glared at the two duelists. "I tried..." Alice countered. "What? You mean.. that story was true?" Amelia couldn't believe it, not even now. "Those whose minds have been split across two dimensions, those are the ones I can affect. I stop them, by displacing those minds from this universe. It is only temporary. Until we convinced you, we did not want any outside noise." That was the trick behind her power, and the source of their synchronization. "But why do you want to.. do it to me?" If what Alice had told her was true as well, then these people wanted to combine her mind with the mind of the 'Amelia' that Alice knew. "Because, the world is dying. And this is the only way we can save you.. and your family. James and Heather Brandt, we desire to rescue all of them. That counts for your father too, Alice."

"But.. No! What did you do to Uno? Why aren't you there with him?" Alice turned the questioning around. Because she knew Cassius promised to be somewhere else. "We switched tasks, I wanted to be here to talk to Amelia. We knew that we had to act quickly if the arrangements fell through." And they had. "You expected it. Uno was never going to give you what you wanted." Adamant knew Uno enough to predict that, and he knew Cassius enough to see that the synchro duelist would count on that. "We tried to tell him that the pendulum crystal is the source of all this chaos. All of them must be destroyed. And we know how. We didn't expect to see you here, but we aren't here to fight." Cassius claimed as he saw Adamant reaching for his dueldisk. "You have given up, Cassius, if you think that your way is the only way." Adamant refused to stand down. "Is this about the prophecy again, Adamant? It is too late for that, the Fusion guild is the one who is closest to fulfilling it. They are the ones who have all the keys to the vault. But none of that will matter once we have destroyed the pendulums."

"The keys?" Alice gasped. "Odd-Eyes." That was the one thing Phoebe needed. "What have you done?" Adamant came to the same revolting realization. "It was a shortlived alliance. We joined forces." Vesper confessed without regrets. "You let them have the Pendulum dragon!?" Adamant growled in anger. "We have no secrets anymore. Yes, we did. Everything the Circle has done has been for the people of the world. The Union would not listen to us, they would not accept the existence of a second dimension or that they were endangering us! And now we find out that the true power behind Millennium has been using pendulums power all along? They wouldn't care which one it was. They just wanted to keep everything hidden and wait until one world died. Just like you, Alice, they can just move on to another timeline and start all over again! We will end this! That is why I knew Uno wouldn't cooperate. He is one of them, a Nisell! He will never learn to let go of that power. We must make sure we have the power to secure the future. Now that the fusion guild has the power to bring back the past. The synchro guild sees that now... your sister sees it too."

"Emily?"

"Yes. She has become one of us, Alice. Amelia, and Emily are a part of the future. Let us help you." Cassius extended a hand. "But..I." It was getting to be too much for her. "I can't.. what about the others?" She couldn't stand the frozen stares of everyone in the school anymore, but she did not want to go with him either. "They will be released, as soon as we can leave." Cassius pledged to her. "Then.. Then I will." And she relented. "Amelia. You cannot trust this man." Adamant tried to change her mind, but she walked to the synchro duelists nonetheless. "If I don't..." Amelia was too afraid to say no. "Come with us and see for yourself what we we do, Adamant. If you truly do not have faith in us. You will get to see Uno as well, that way. You will be not our prisoners, but our guests." Vesper's offer was becoming difficult to resist. "Uno.. Emily.. Amelia." Alice did not want to see any of them go away. "Adamant. We have to.." There was only one thing to do. "...I understand." He could not see this end well. However for now he would hold back and keep his dueldisk offline. "We will follow you, Cassius."

Amelia, Adamant and Alice were led to a white limousine parked one street away from the school. Once they stepped inside, time resumed for those outside. "Thank goodness." Amelia sighed as the car took off. She saw the villagers go back to their daily routine, they were not even aware of their lost time. "You controlled the whole block." Adamant said. Vespers power was even greater here, and more dangerous. "No more secrets you said... The threat from the other world was never Millennium, was it?" Besides the founding family and a select few institutes, nobody seemed to have realized the existence of the other timeline. "It was you; The Circle." Vesper herself once said that she was one of the first discoverers. "We are no threat. The only invasion is the one you and your superiors imagined when they learned of this world, so they could excuse a counter-invasion. We merely used insiders to spread false information to lead you to selfdestruction." Vesper gladly answered him.

"But.. what is going to happen now? What does synchronization mean?" Amelia was still scared out of her mind, there were strangers all around her. "It means that we will connect your mind to that of 'Emily', the you who lives in the other world. You will be one. And when one world passes away, only the body will disappear. The minds will come together. It wont hurt a bit, Amelia. Vesper and me have gone through the same thing." One stranger talked kindly with an easygoing smile. "But Emily wouldn't want that! She wouldn't do that without asking her!" The other was fiercely fighting for her. Amelia did not know why she would trust either of them. "Why don't you ask her yourself?" Vesper suddenly said. "What?" Alice flinched. "Amelia. You are very sleepy.." The woman intoned. "Wha..I'mnot.." Amelia dozed off before she knew it.

"Hey! Why did you.." Not even Alice's cries woke her up. "To show you. Now that Amelia is here, I could finish the incoming synchronization. In the other world, we lost most of our equipment when the fusion guild claimed the castle. But we salvaged the synchronizer and, just like we took in your sister, we took it with us. She is waiting, she has been by our side while you where in this dimension." Vesper was finished, and Amelia jolted back to life. "!" She stared right at Alice. "... Emily?"

"Alice! I made it!"

(To be Continued in Redux 047: Square World in a Round Universe)