S-S: Welp, we're back with some Crimson Fall.

Angel: You know what, I don't even care anymore. Do whatever the heck you want to.

Meri: Are you sure? This chapter is quite dark. *Laughs*

Lucy: Pfft, that's an understatement, Meri.

Angel: Like I said. Whatever.

S-S: …Suit yourself, I suppose. I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds, but I do own my OCs. And, as Lucy and Meri have been kind enough to mention, this chapter is extremely dark. You have been warned.

***This chapter is brought to you by Krone, from Guilty Crown***

Chapter 7

I… I don't understand. In the future… I kill Leo? But—that doesn't—I would never do something like that! …Except… that Angel had actually been there and lived through both Toby and Crow dying for her. I-I can definitely imagine snapping after something like that, even with Athena, Uncle Roman, and Mother still with me…

The only thing is… if, if all of the Signers in the future died…

XXX

The scene has changed once again, to the Original Reactor itself. It seems to have been turned on, the entire bottom of the pit flashing with rainbow colors, occasional pulses spiraling up and out through the chasm above. That extremely old rope bridge—so frayed that I'm surprised it even still exists—sways slightly in response to the spiraling of Ener-D.

My heart almost stops when I realize that my future self is standing in the middle of the bridge, quietly humming some sad song, though I can't make out what it is because she's shaking and the song keeps getting interchanged with pained sobs. She's got some sort of huge coat draped over her shoulders, hiding her body from view. Her back is to me, but I can tell she's looking down at the light of the Reactor. Is… is she trying to die?!

"Angel!" Miyuki's worried cry comes from the safety of the actual floor beside the Reactor. She stands as close to the bridge as she can without actually setting foot on it. Behind her are Akiza and Athena, the young girl in tears while clinging to Akiza. The magenta-haired Signer, on the other hand, seems to be in pain, her mark faintly glowing a deep crimson. "Angel, what are you doing?" Miyuki asks.

Angel shies away from them, wood creaking under her feet. Her back still turned to them, she looks over at her mother. She… she looks dead, there's really no other way to put it. Her eyes are so dull, although they look horribly pained. Still trembling, she says, "I can't do this anymore, Mother. I just can't. I tried so hard to keep myself together, but I just can't anymore."

Miyuki's eyes widen in horror as she realizes just what her daughter means. "No… you, Angel, you can't. Dying like this, it would mean your brother's death was for nothing! He wanted you to live, remember?!"

Angel looks visibly hurt by the mention of Crow. "Don't you think I know that?!" she sobs. "Him and Toby, they both died because they wanted me to live. But this, this isn't living, this is just existing. I killed Leo; I remember him begging me to stop even though he'd lost his will to live when Luna had died, but I still… I still… I still killed him! I don't want to exist anymore! I can't…"

"Angel, think about this! You still have your daughter, not to mention your mother and uncle!" Akiza argues, Athena wiggling out of her arms.

"M-Mommy… please don't leave me!" the young girl cries. "I don't want you to die!"

Angel closes her eyes, turning completely away from them. Her shoulders are still shaking, and I can hear her debating with herself under her breath about whether or not she can actually go through with this. Until she shakes her head, turning to face them. For a second it looks like she'll come back. Then the coat she had covering herself slides off her shoulders… revealing a massive amount of blood staining her clothes… and… oh god the source of that blood, it's…!

"I've already made my decision. There's no place for me here anymore! Not with this wretched curse placed over me! But no more of that…! I'm free!"

She tosses her right arm, severed from the elbow, across the pit to them. It lands at Akiza's feet, the mark on the back of it glowing just like Akiza's, only even darker. The magenta-haired Signer immediately falls to her knees, turning around as she proceeds to throw up. Athena just stands there, mouth half-open, staring at her mother's arm, completely unresponsive. And Miyuki… Miyuki looks even more horrified now, going as far as to start walking on the bridge itself.

Angel shakes her head again. "I shouldn't even be alive now, anyways. It should've been me that died in Nether, not Crow. …No, even before that, Sky shouldn't have… given up her power to save me and Father; maybe then this could've been avoided. But she chose that path, and now…"

She smiles, and lets herself fall over the edge of the bridge.

"No…!" Miyuki freezes; there's nothing she can do but watch her daughter die.

"MOMMY!" Athena screams, snapping out of her trance and running to the edge of the pit. "Mommy, n—eeek!" The girl slips in the pool of blood Angel's arm had created, and she can't reach up in time. She, too, falls into the light of Ener-D, though unlike Angel who went quietly, she screams as loud as she possibly can until she can't any longer, silenced by the light.

Miyuki collapses on the bridge, sobbing.

XXX

The scene abruptly cuts to my uncle, furiously writing something down on the paper in front of him. There are sheets of it surrounding him though, some crumpled and some just lying there. It looks like he's trying to come up with the schematics for something—but, who cares about that right now. I can't… I can't believe that's my fate—and Athena, my baby, her too. Falling into the Reactor…

The door to the room opens, and Miyuki stumbles in, holding the door frame for support. Her breath is ragged, but even so, Roman doesn't even so much as look up. He just keeps writing down whatever it is he's working on, muttering about it as he does so. Eventually, he shakes his head, ripping the piece of paper off the pad and letting it fall to the ground. It lands next to a bowl of uneaten, cold soup.

"R-Roman…" Miyuki stutters, letting go of the door and taking a step forward. She falls almost immediately to her knees.

It's at this point that my uncle turns. The unhealthy pallor on his face seems even worse when the dark circles around his eyes emphasize it. He doesn't… He doesn't look like he's slept in days—weeks even. His eyes narrow upon seeing Miyuki's trembling form, but he does not get up from his chair. "What happened?"

"A-Angel… and Athe-ena… they both… oh god they both…" She takes a deep breath in, steadying herself. "Angel let herself fall into the Reactor… after cutting her own arm off. She, she threw that arm to us—god, it was horrifying—and then she fell, and little Thena ran to the edge and slipped on her mother's blood, and there wasn't anything I could do… they're both…"

Roman turns back to his desk. So that was the screaming he'd heard a short while ago. And, Angel really severed her own arm because it held her Signer Mark? He spared a glance to his own arm that—so many years ago—had held the Mark of the Dragon's Head, but was now just a prosthetic limb. …No matter. "I see. Thank you for telling me this, Miyuki."

"That… That's it? Your niece and her daughter just died and all you have to say for it is 'I see'?!"

Silence fills the small room for a good minute until Roman replies, "I don't see the point in grieving for them. Not if… I can get this to work, but so far I haven't made it past the planning stages."

"Huh…?"

"I'm trying to build a time machine. Then we can fix all of this."

XXX

So… that's what they meant when they said they needed Roman alive to have a time machine. And he clearly had to be successful at some point if these people are here in the present time. But… this isn't over yet, is it? We haven't seen the future Akiza die yet, and there's also the matter of where they got the Spirit Weapons from…

"There it was: a hope spot in the midst of despair," Lucciano says. "If Roman could build a successful time machine, they would be able to prevent Sky's conversion into Queen Sythini, and thus keep all those they cared about from dying. But… hope and despair are two sides of the same coin, and Sythini grew anxious to stomp out the rest of the Crimson Dragon's power. She had no way of knowing that Leo and Angel had already passed, but still came up with a plan to draw all of them out of hiding."

"She launched a widespread attack on the Human World," Placido picks up—for once, not so conceited as to let Lucciano explain everything.

The area around us begins to show snippets of the Earthbound Immortals, aside from Uru and Dai Aurelius, slaughtering people in cities across the world. The destruction does not discriminate, either; it swallows everyone in its path, no matter who they are.

"Akiza knew she couldn't take them all on at the same time, but she couldn't sit by and do nothing," Lucciano continues, crossing his arms. "She was still a Psychic Duelist, after all, and repeatedly used Teleport to get as many people as she could to the safety of the Original Reactor until she collapsed from exhaustion."

The scene shows us Miyuki and Roman trying to explain to a large crowd of people what's going on—most of those people either angry or crying or both, some injured, some fine. It seems there's been another timeskip, however, because Vincent looks like he's about sixteen now, when last I knew he was six in terms of this future. It really hurts to look at him, though, since aside from his eyes and his hair being significantly longer he looks exactly like Jack did at that age. He, too, is trying to help these people.

"There's just one problem… getting enough food and water for all those people," Lucciano says. "Their supply was running low enough already; at this rate they would be out within a week. And that wasn't their only problem…"

XXX

The ground suddenly starts violently shaking, everyone dropping to their knees. And when Miyuki and Roman both see that their Dark Signer Marks have started glowing, they immediately pale. That was no earthquake—the barrier that Shoshan had put up for them twelve years ago had finally come down. There was nothing else protecting them from the Netherworld—they'd all die here, wouldn't they?

And then a strange figure descends through the chasm that is the top of the facility, cloaked in white. The mask on her face is black, however, with white coverings where her eyes should be. This is… This is Athena—the leader of the group from the future, not my daughter—isn't it? But here she is, hovering over the Reactor, Black-Winged Dragon's katana in her hand.

Miyuki recognizes the blade immediately. "Who are you?! Why do you—no, how do you have my son's sword?"

"Me? I'm… just a wanderer," the woman replies; she's definitely Athena. "I no longer have an identity to call my own." She points the katana in her hand at her mother. "As for why I have this sword… it was given to me by its Signer—not of this world, but of one of the many others I've been forced to wander through in finding my way home. I have the others as well… but first…" She tosses some sort of device to Roman. It looks like some sort of cross between a flashdrive and a key, the metal casing black and green. "Roman Goodwin, this will complete your time machine. Finish it quickly—the creatures of Nether will be on our heels any moment now."

He turns it over in his hands, then nods, running deeper into the facility.

"As for the others…" Athena holds up the cards of all the main Signer Dragons except for Black-Winged Dragon, apparently also gifts from that other world. "…whoever they choose as their new Signers, along with the only one left from this world, will come with me to the past, and fix everything."

"Why…? If you're not from this world, why help us?" Akiza asks, her eyes stuck on the second copy of Black Rose Dragon.

"I… have my reasons for wanting the past of this place changed."

XXX

"The other Signer Dragons that Athena had brought with her chose their new owners immediately—us, of course—and certainly without time to spare," Lucciano says. "The Second and Third Princes of Nether immediately led the charge against what remained of humanity and the Signers… in a way they did not expect."

XXX

Athena and someone else who's now cloaked in white run through the halls of the facility, fighting off the shadowy creatures that are trying to kill them. There's so many of them, though, and every time one falls three more take its place. Athena suddenly stops running. "There's nothing else for it then. I'll have to—"

"COSMIC FLARE!" a very, very familiar voice screams—but that's impossible, he's dead—and then the scene fills with a silver light. When it dims, all the shadow creatures are gone… instead, Yusei's there, completely uninjured, but breathing pretty heavily.

Akiza looks as white as a ghost. "Y… Yusei…?"

Athena backs into a wall, just as surprised. "No… No, this isn't… I saw him die…!"

And yet here he is, smiling at Akiza like nothing is wrong. "I'm so glad I finally found you, Akiza. I've been looking for so long… How are you? And Bruno too, how's he?"

The magenta-haired Signer starts crying, taking his hand. He's real, he's here—and he's stabbed her through the heart with some sort of dark sword. The illusion falls apart, revealing a man with bright-blue eyes, a shadow for a body, and a ring of red around his neck. The man smirks as the last Signer of this world slides off his blade, falling to the ground before shattering just like the others. Then he turns his attention to Athena, who punches the wall in frustration. "Dammit! I should've known that was an illusion!"

"You fancy yourself a hero, then?" the shadow-man taunts.

Athena makes a noise—something like a chuckle. "A hero? Maybe I did, once." And then her left arm glows red while her right one glows purple, and she sends a sphere of green energy flying at the Third Prince of Nether, Darkrai. He dodges it easily, but that means it collides with the wall instead, kicking up a cloud of dust that allows her to escape.

The rest of the scene is nothing but a blur of colors as Athena makes it to the room where the time machine is, getting Pearl and Miles to head through the machine—a metal ring the size of the wall, blue light spiralling in the center—stalling Milon for a brief time, and then running through the portal herself right before Roman shuts it down, preventing anyone from going after her.

To be continued…

S-S: And there you have it, the end of the Future of Despair.

Lucy: Heehee… *Notices Angel isn't even here* Ah! She didn't even pay attention to this chapter! No fair… I still wanted her to flip out even though she said she didn't care…

Z.Z.: Perhaps I should go share this with our lovely Signer?

Lucy: That's a great idea! Let's go find her!

*They leave*

S-S: Great, they're collaborating again…

Rudolph: U-Um, I'll go make sure they aren't causing too much trouble, okay?

S-S: Yeah, go do that Rudolph. And, in the meantime, I hope all of you reading this right now decide to leave a review for this!