Episode 14: A Cloud of Darkness

"Good match Koyou. Glad to see you're advancing." Yusei congratulated me with his usual hidden emotions as he approached me.

I was leaning on the wall watching people pass by, hoping one of them would be Aki. At the same time I watched the screen in front of me as the turbo duel between Trimmer and Baron came to a head, "Thanks. I'm sure you'll do a lot better though. My draws weren't very smooth in that one."

"You see the last match?" he asked, joining me in 'keeping the wall from falling over'.

"Yeah. Bommer's got some good techniques and a solid trap to close the gaps in his defense." I noted, "If I'm lucky, I'll get him next round."

Yusei looked to me, nodding, "If that Fortress is his ace, then you have a distinct advantage. It needs many parts and I notice you have a lot of monster destruction effects."

I tapped my foot on the wall, "I get the feeling he's got a back-up. I think I'll get some deck tweaks planned for the duel just in case I get lucky."

Yusei looked to the screen, eying the winner of the most recent match, "And if you get Trimmer instead?"

I shrugged, "He's powerful too. Doesn't have as many vulnerabilities against my type. Our decks are similar in that there's no set ace card. If he had an ace my deck could just snipe it and over-run him."

Yusei chuckled a little, "I looked up Trimmer's information. He's a retired marine from the United States. Three time Armed Forces Duel Champion in addition to being the most decorated sniper in the history of the marines."

"Ha!" the irony was not lost on me, "Sniper vs sniper huh? Would be more interesting than going up against a bomber."

Yusei stared at me without saying anything, as if trying to figure me out. I think he wanted to say something, but the sound of voices from up the hall demanded our attention. It was the twins, Leo and Luna, with their pal Tenpei. Leo seemed depressed, obviously about his loss to Bommer. I'm sure anyone could understand the hit to an ego that losing in round one could be.

"Man, that Fortress monster was harsh! I just couldn't get back into the game after he brought that out." Leo moaned.

Tenpei tried to console him, "Cheer up, Leo, losing isn't the end of the world."

Through sheer coincidence, Yusei and I spoke in unison, "It's not a loss if you-"

Realizing we were just about to give the same exact advice, I laughed. Yusei smiled one of his invisible smiled and continued, "You don't really lose if you learn something from it. Just take what you learned and apply it to your next duel."

Leo sighed, "Yeah, I learned a lot about losing. I can't wait to apply that to my next duel."

I was about to say something when the very person I'd been hoping to talk to walked by. She glared a hole straight through Yusei and me as she passed. There was a strange aura about her. It was a heavy feeling, as if the air around her was being dragged down by the anger and despair that burdened her soul. I found my words choked to a stop in my throat at her glare, but freed them soon after.

I gave chase, excusing myself from my current company and quickly catching up to her, "Aki!"

She kept walking.

"Aki wait! Talk to me!"

She stopped and turned, her glare so intense I almost needed to check and see if I'd been cut. "I don't have anything to say to you, or your family."

My heart ached at her rejection, but I didn't accept it, "Look, I'm not sure what happened after the accident, but it was just that: an accident. I don't hold it against you, and most of my family doesn't either."

"I'm not coming back to that hell." she said coldly, "I found a place that will accept me. A place where I don't get treated like a handicapped person."

"That would be fine, if you were happy."

"I am!"

"You don't look happy. Happy people don't glare like that and terrorize random innocents wearing a mask and practicing excellent villainous fashion sense."

She flinched at the fact I had recognized her as the witch.

"I'm not telling anyone about it don't worry. I just want to help you."

Suddenly a familiar man in a suit with red hair and a major cowlick sauntered over and placed a hand on Aki's shoulder. Something about the man immediately made me want to cut that arm off, before he even spoke. He was slimy, not outside but in personality, and my bloodline-given extra senses could detect only twisted, unabashed evil within him. The snake that lured Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit had nothing on this guy and that snake had supposedly been a vessel for the devil. Merely being around the guy and feeling what laid beneath the surface was painful. Not to mention my head had started throbbing.

Aki was immediately cowed by his arrival, "Divine!"

I went wide-eyed, "Divine?" I knew that name from somewhere.

He smiled at Aki, "Don't worry about this one. You have a duel to get to. Move along and I'll deal with him."

She didn't hesitate at all, like she was a servant, turning to leave, "Yes, Divine."

"Aki! Wait!" I called out, but she didn't stop.

The man called Divine smiled a smile more condescending than should be humanly possible, and spoke to me "Ah, good to see you again. You're coming along quite nicely I see. Enjoying your life with the Kou family?"

"That's no business of yours."

"Ah, perhaps or perhaps not. I'm always interested in powerful duelists with extraordinary abilities. I wonder how long until they start judging you for breaking ribs in duels and you figure out that you don't belong with them."

"You're barking up the wrong tree. My family wouldn't care, even if I was some kind of psychic duelist."

He scoffed, "I wonder how the really would react if they knew what you were."

An overwhelming presence suddenly came p from the hall to my right and shoved Divine away from me. The man only stumbled back a step, but I got the distinct feeling that the force that had touched him could have crushed him just as easily. I soon realized that my father was standing beside me.

"I told you to stay away from my family, Divine."

Divine smiled, raising his hands nonchalantly in an exaggerated shrug, "Well I can never let go of an interesting project."

"My children are not your projects."

"I have to disagree with you there." he snickered, "And how can I not be fascinated by the offspring of someone like yourself? I mean, they call psychic duelists freaks and monsters; but in my eyes, you're the most monstrous thing imaginable."

"If you're so interested in that part, I'd be more than happy to show you how right you are." something about my father changed, something unfathomable welled up within him, the slightly unsettling aura he usually gave off becoming as thick as tar.

"And there it is! A small taste of the power you-"

My dad cut him off, "Just walk away, Divine, while I'm still willing to let you. This is the last time you hear me? If you make one single step towards my children again not even God will able to find what's left of you."

The wicked man shrugged, "Fine, I promise. I won't go near your children again."

Suddenly, there were screams from the crowd and the roar of monsters as explosions rocked the stadium. My arm starting aching again, like when my mark had appeared in the Damon area. If I hadn't been so distracted by that, I might have noticed Divine looking at my arm with recognition and a smile. Not that knowing he knew about the marks would have have much difference at that point.

Divine also seemed to enjoy the commotion that was going on, "And there we have it. The future of psychic dueling. I have to thank you for your efforts in caring for that rose, Mr. Kou. Just that small amount of time you had her made her a far more effective weapon than I could ever engineer."

"Aki!" I yelled, and rushed towards the duel field, leaving my father there with Divine.

When I got there, Gill deLauncebeaux was in a heap on the ground, pieces of his armor either damaged or completely missing. His side of the field looked like it had suffered an attack from a foreign nation. The crowd throwing drinks and food at her en masse, most of it not hitting, but the cries of "WITCH! WITCH! GET OUT OF HERE YOU CURSED WOMAN!" knifed into both of us, even if she didn't show it. I stood there gawking at the carnage, an expression that Aki was not surprised to see when she turned and noticed me. She walked by without a word, and avoided my hand when I reached out to stop her.

She was out of my reach... I realized that. I also recognized the feeling, even though it was not this painful the last time I felt it, the pain made me remember all my past emotions. The pain in my heart for her was indescribable, and surpassed anything I had felt in my life. Even the throbbing pain in my head was numbed by my heartache. I could only hurt for her. That's all I could do right then. Every fiber of my being wanted to do more, but I didn't know how. God help me I didn't know how.

I should have known right then, in that very moment, that she would never be mine. No matter how much I wanted her. I'm stubborn though, proven when I turned and called to her, "I'll make you come to your senses, somehow."

"I don't need you to. I have Divine."

"You don't belong with him."

She just turned and walked away without replying.

The shy, innocent girl I'd met around three years before was still there, I knew it. Under the twisted mess of sadness and anger was the warm and caring girl I'd known back then. I swore to save her from Divine, to return her to where she belonged: with me. I stood in that place, looking at all the damage her pain had made her cause and I couldn't help but tear up. Sometimes, the gift of insight into people's hearts was hard to endure. To know just how deeply tormented someone you loved was...

"Hey, Koyou." Mei's understanding voice came unexpectedly to my ears and she walked over and embraced me as I turned to her, "You remember her now?"

I returned the hug only briefly before pulling out of it. "Yeah."

I wiped my tears away one eye at I time. At least the was my intention, Mei ended up wiping the other eye for me, "God, you're so sensitive. You're soft."

I laughed at bit at her teasing, "Yeah. I need to be a bit stronger huh? I'm the big brother."

Mei pouted, "We're twins, dummy. We can both get away with pulling the benefits of the younger occasionally. It's one of the nice perks among the many annoyances."

"Ha."

"I've never been that good of a sister, but I pay my dues okay?"

I looked at her, confused, "You seem just fine at it."

She smiled and tapped me on the shoulder with her knuckles, "'Cause somebody went and died then came back, I've got another chance." She put a hand on each hip, "So big sis is here to comfort you! Cry all you like! My shoulder shall not shirk the moisture!"

I raised an eyebrow, "You are a strange one."

"I'm quoting you actually." she teased.

"Sounds like something I'd say." I admitted. Instead of crying I smiled and glanced back at the ruined duel field, "I'm fine, just got a bit caught up in my emotions. I'm relearning a lot of old feelings you know."

Mei nodded.

"I've got a lot of work to do if I want to bring her back."

Mei sighed. When I looked to her she had a pained expression on her face, "Why can't you just leave her be? She already killed you once."

"I love her."

"Do you even remember her that well?"

"To be honest... no. I still have no memory of things we've done together or things we said to each other. I don't even remember how we met."

"Then how-"

"It's in my bones. Every cell in my body feels it. I remember how she made me feel, how she smelled, how her skin felt, and how I felt when she smiled or when she cried. I even remember that squeaky sound she made when startled."

"She's changed."

"She's still Aki. If I save her..." I swallowed hard, "You know... I also remember never telling her my feelings. I don't want to make that mistake again."

"Koyou... you big moron."

I turned to Mei and looked her in the eyes, "Sorry, but if I have to die a few times to get it done, I will. I promise I'll come back every single time."

"Ha! There you go trying to be cool again... you going to make us wait three years every time?"

"Well, not if I can avoid it." I grinned, "I'll get good enough at rebirth to shorten the time eventually."

Mei rolled her eyes and sighed, "God, you're so dumb."

"Heh."

"Don't be smug, I'm serious." she looked at me disapprovingly, "If you think she'll be in any state of mind to love anyone any time soon then you're dreaming."

"I'm not..."

"You saw her. Even even you get her on the right track if you blurt out your feelings she's just going to feel obligated to go out with you. Worse still, she might cling to you like a crutch and never get any better."

The truth of her words stabbed in all the most painful places, "Then I won't tell her my feelings until she's all better."

"That could take years, if it ever happens."

"I'll make sure it happens. No matter how long it takes."

Mei grinned slightly, despite trying to stay stern with me, "Well... I guess you are a little cool then."

I shrugged, smiling a little myself.

"Maybe I'll find someone to feel that way about me someday. I'm a bit jealous."

"Well, you seemed to like Yusei well enough, and he's-"

Suddenly she laughed, "What? Don't get weird ideas!"

"But, you were flirting with him so much the other day."

Mei waved the idea off, "That's just because he's got a nice ass."

I went wide-eyed in shock.

"What? Don't look at me like that! Have you seen his ass?"

"Why would I be looking at Yusei's ass?"
"It's so nice though. Nice and tight, but supple." she grinned as if she were a connoisseur of fine art talking to a person with no culture.

My eyes went wider, "I don't want to her my sister describing the finer points of my best friend's rear!"

She ignored me, "I just want to give it a good, hard squeeze."

I plugged my ears and started walking away, "I'm not listening. Lalala, I'm not listening!"

She followed me, continuing to elaborate, "It's an entirely different kind of ass than Jack Atlas has. His is more muscular and shapely, like a prince. Yusei has that nice blend of softness and firmness."

"Please! For the love of god, stop talking about this!" I'd forgotten that my sister was a bit of a pervert.

"I thought you weren't listening?" she teased.

"Gah! How did we even get on this topic!"

Later, as I was helping Yusei tuned his runner, my sister's ranting made it hard for me to stop glancing at his butt. It's not like I wanted to look at it, or liked looking at it, but the cursed woman had made me curious. Dang her. It would be days before I could look him in the eye again without thinking about how nice his ass supposedly was. Stupid sister.

"You missed the extra zero in the capacitor readout." Yusei noted matter-of-factually.

"Y-yeah. Sorry. I was distracted." I ran the program again, correcting the minor energy flow issue. I then ran another full systems check to make sure I hadn't missed anything else, "I double-checked everything. You're good. I don't have time to re-optimize the synch changer after you did that practice run, but that shouldn't be any problem. Any deviation from the parameters would affect the output only slightly. Just don't be too rough when you shift down a gear, with your current hardware it might knock performance down a few notches."

"I know."

I stood from the computer and unhooked it, setting the machine aside where it could be quickly retrieved later, then turned to Yusei as he mounted his runner, "Last duel for the day, man. Good luck. I did some reason on this Shira guy's deck if you're interested."

"Thanks, but I'd rather just face it straight on."

I nodded, "Honorable of you."

Yusei started his runner and revved the engine with his patented invisible smile, "See you in the next round, Koyou."

With that, and the announcement of the duelists participating, Yusei was off. My research proved pointless even moreso than when it was refused when the opponent was suddenly changed. Instead of the "Reaper Reborn" Shira, it was some man named Hunter Pace that had apparently broken in and taken Shira out of the equation. He pushed Yusei to the brink in a vicious battle of speed, but in the end he was no match for my friend. Just watching Yusei duel again was enough to remind me how much of a genius he was. I mean, beating a speed counter strategy by losing speed? I really wanted to try my luck against such a ludicrously good opponent. However, I hoped most for a chance at Aki.

Round two was officially ended soon after Yusei's win. We would have to see whether I was lucky or not the next day.

Proceeding to Round 2:

Koyou Kou

Bommer

Kodo Kinomiya

Lt. Adrian Trimmer

Aki Izayoi

Yusei Fudo

Next Chapter: Precision and Indecision