Chapter 34 – Aftermath

When Jorann saw the light pierce the heavens, his heart sank immediately. To his left, Jack, Felirae, Quinn and Rafael were still focussed on the battle, but to his right, both Elise and Darrien had spotted the shining white light coming from the top of the tower. The Grand Order soldiers stopped momentarily before realising that their plan had succeeded, and with a triumphant roar that pressed them harder than ever. Their monsters were holding steady against the attack, but he could see from the look on the faces of Elise and Darrien that they were on the verge of breaking. Jorann himself was beginning to feel the stress of having kept up the fight for so long, and he could tell that the resistance leaders were beginning to falter also. Jack, it seemed, was the only one who was still at full strength. Or at least, that's how it appeared.

"The Conduit has fired," Ming said to them via their earpieces. "We need to move out."

"No!" Jack shouted back. "Yusei and the others will still be fighting inside. I'm not leaving until they stop that machine!"

"Jack, the machine has already fired," Ming pleaded. "We have to get out of here before the Grand Order wipes us out."

"I'm not giving up on Yusei just yet," Jack countered. "He'll find a way to stop this, and I sure as hell ain't moving until he does."

"Well I'm going," Quinn spluttered quickly. "I'm not losing my life now."

"Quinn, meet me back at base," Ming ordered. "If anyone else wants out, now is the time."

Jorann glanced at Elise and Darrien, only to be met with a look of steely resolve. "Elise, Darrien and I are staying, Ming," he reported.

"As am I," Rafael said.

"I have faith that The Three will find a way to stop the Conduit," Felirae said. "Our job in the meantime is to make sure they aren't followed up the tower. We will fulfil that promise."

"Uh, gentlemen, you're going to want to look up," Ming's shocked voice came through the earpiece.

Jorann glanced once again into the sky before his eyes widened. "What the hell…"

The beam of Duel Energy was seemingly splitting into two directions. One was heading high into the sky as before, but the other seemed to be focussed on a point at the top of the building, and the amount of Duel Energy that was heading there was getting larger by the second. It has to be The Three's influence, Jorann reasoned. Maybe a combination of Jaden and Yugi's power...

"Keep fighting!" Felirae ordered through the earpieces. "The Three have found a way to combat the Conduit. We need to make sure that they have the time they need. Press the Grand Order back!"

Although the words rallied the resistance members somewhat, it was obvious to those surrounding the building that they were fighting a losing battle. Their men were going down quicker than before, and with Quinn and Ming having said they were pulling out, morale was still not as high as it could've been. However, after a few more minutes of fighting, Jorann could sense that his Duel Energy levels were beginning to peter out, and it wouldn't be long now before he had nothing left.

"Argh!"

The cry came from his right, and his gaze flicked over just in time to see Gabriel, Angel of Light being obliterated by one of the Grand Order's War Machines, sending Darrien flying backwards. Elise immediately ran to his side, but not before destroying the War Machine with an emotion-fueled attack from Risen Soldier Pah. The attack, however, had left them completely open to cannon fire from the Double Cannons on the Grand Order's side, and it was only thanks to a blast from Edilisna destroying the cannonballs that they were able to escape unharmed. Come on, Yusei. Please end this…

An explosion interrupted his thoughts and before he could look in the direction of the blast the shockwave passed over him, and he instantly realised that he felt Duel Energy surging through him once again. In a moment of shock, Jorann turned to see that the beam of Duel Energy was now completely gone from the top of the building, and around him, he could see the faces on both rebels and Order soldiers breathe freshly again. For all of us to be refreshed just from the residue Duel Energy that was carried in the explosion… just how much Duel Energy did the Grand Order have stored to power this machine?

"Men, your energy has been renewed!" Rafael said through the earpieces. "You can fight as hard as ever, now turn that strength against the Order tenfold! Their machine has stopped! Take them while their morale is weak!"

Although there were no clear battlelines on the field anymore, the roar that came from the rebel soldiers was deafening. Even from his position on the edge of the battlefield, Jorann could see that War Machines were beginning to fall left and right as the rebels renewed their assault. Even though the Grand Order soldiers had also received a boost from the Duel Energy explosion, it seemed that they were not as able to convert it into a stronger attack like the rebels were. Perhaps it's because their cards were manufactured and therefore there is no connection between them and their cards.

"Resistance! Grand Order! This battle is over!"

The voice boomed across the battlefield, far louder than any of the attacks launched by either side. It brought the fighting to a halt immediately as all present turned to look in the direction of the voice. Much to his surprise, Jorann was just able to make out a familiar figure at the top of the building that they were guarding.

"Grand Order troops, stand down," Seto Kaiba ordered. "Irene, Zera and Erial have fallen. The machine no longer has power. This is not a request, this is an order from the last remaining Commander of the Grand Order. All troops, stand down."

They actually did it, Jorann realised. The Three managed to find a way to stop the Conduit from firing. He could feel a sense of jubilation beginning to form in his chest, and he could see that those around him were feeling it as well. After five years, five long, trying years… is it really over? Glancing around the battlefield, he could see members of the Grand Order deactivating their duel disks and surrendering to rebel forces. Some tried to continue fighting, but now that Seto had given the order, they were vastly outnumbered.

"Darrien, are you alright?" Felirae asked, having approached the three of them.

"Ribs are a bit sore, but they will survive. What do you need?" Darrien asked.

"Jorann, I want you to take Elise and Darrien up to the top of the building. Ming is moving in to help with the clean-up, but I want the three of you to see what happened on the rooftop, understood?" Felirae said. "Now that the machine has stopped the shields should be down. Make sure that everyone is okay."

"Of course, Felirae," Jorann said, nodding slightly and calming himself down slightly. "Elise, Darrien get on Edilisna. Let's go."

The ride to the rooftop took mere seconds once Jorann was confident that neither would fall off. Upon landing on the rooftop, Jorann dispelled Edilisna upon seeing the severe damage that had been done to the roof itself. It's like a sword slashed through the roof… did Tanion do this? After landing safely, he noted that Yusei, Jaden, Yugi and Seto were all standing at the base of the pillar in the centre of the roof, and they turned to face the three newcomers with a look of both relief and concern on their faces.

"What happened here?" Jorann asked as they approached, circumventing the hole. "Where's Tanion? Irene?"

"Irene is dead," Seto replied quickly. "She was so confident in the machine working that she used XYZ in a reckless revenge act against Tanion for taking Yusei away from her during Theta. Every summon aged her considerably, and she must've been flung into the pillar by the attack that made the hole. She was dead by the time these three got here, just after that Duel Energy explosion."

"Wait, just after the explosion?" Elise asked curiously. "But that means…"

"Tanion was the one who caused it," Yusei answered. "He's unconscious but alive."

"How did he stop the machine?" Darrien asked. "I noted a split in the Duel Energy before the explosion, but that makes little sense."

"Tanion… he absorbed the Duel Energy," Yugi muttered as he kneeled over the boy's body. "All of it?"

"But… that can't be possible," Elise whispered in shock.

"It is," Jorann replied grimly. "I remember your words, Yugi. Elise, Darrien, Tanion is unique in this world. As someone from Eden, his Duel Energy interacts differently with ours. While is can absorb our energy, the difference also prevents him from having a limit on how much his body can absorb. He is essentially a 'bottomless hole' as I recall you putting it, Yugi."

"This sounds really familiar," Darrien noted.

"It should," Jaden answered. "We've been discussing it already. That warning I gave some time ago about the Knights… this appears to be the first sign."

"When the traveller breaks the light, warriors will arise with an eternal soul," Elise recalled. "Gone the rules of old, and fractured the boundaries between worlds, for when the traveller wakes, the Knights will rule over all."

"What are you all blabbering about?" Seto asked.

"A while ago, Jaden gave a warning. A prophecy, if you will," Yusei explained. "He doesn't remember saying it, which is the reason we've given it so much attention as it was unique. From what we can gather, the traveller has to be Tanion as he is a child of Eden."

"Not only that, but he did just 'break the light' of the Conduit," Yugi realised. "That has to be it."

"Do you think that covers the fractured boundaries part as well?" Darrien asked hopefully.

"I don't think so," Jaden said sadly. "However, at the same time, it could do. We just don't know."

"When the traveller wakes, the Knights will rule over all," Yusei repeated. "Could this be a reference to now? What will happen when Tanion wakes up?"

"We haven't a clue," Jorann muttered. "I'll take him to Felirae and make sure he's delivered to a very secure lab of some kind. We have to figure out exactly what's happened to him."

"Agreed," Yugi nodded. "Seto, are we in agreement then? Over what we discussed before Jorann, Elise and Darrien arrived."

"Now that our plan has been thwarted, and with no feasible way of repeating it, this world needs to be rebuilt," Seto commented. "As the last leader remaining, I will assume command of the Grand Order and begin working with your leaders to fix this world. You have my word."

"Here," Darrien offered, holding out his earpiece. "You can talk to them right now."
"Thank you, whoever you are," Seto said, snatching the earpiece before wandering off.

"So what do we do about Irene?" Elise asked. "We can't just leave her body here."

"I will take her with me," Jaden said. "It's the quickest way."

"Okay, sounds good," Elise said with a nod. "Hey, Jorann, are you alright?"

Jorann's eyes were locked firmly on Tanion's body. "Did we do the right thing in bringing him here?" he asked aloud, causing the heads of the remaining people to turn. "I've been asking myself this question since Theta, and I can't convince myself either way."

"What's done is done," Yusei said assuredly. "Let's just make sure he's okay when he wakes up."

Jorann glanced at the unconscious body. "If he wakes up."

During the next week, Jorann barely had any time to stop and truly soak in the feeling of jubilation that he had on the night of the machine's destruction at Tanion's hands. After that initial night, it had been back to work as usual, except this time things were different. Seto had quickly gone about ceasing all operations and reverting them to either retreat orders or rebuild orders. Between the leaders, it had been decided that it would be impossible to start working on fixing the entire world at once. Therefore, the three areas that were to be focussed on were the United States, Europe and China, as those were the three areas that had the most remaining functional technology and buildings. Not all parties had been happy about this, some having to abandon their old countries to rot while they fixed others, but the decision was made nonetheless. With mass transport for the other continent's citizens to be organised as soon as possible, it was looking to be a mammoth task that was estimated to take months to complete. And that was the easy part. After everyone had been transferred, the rebuilding had to begin.

As had been expected though, there had been major complications with the surrender of the Grand Order and the transfer of power to Seto. Although most of the resistance groups had ceased fire immediately, tensions were likely to run high between them and the Order troops for months, likely years to come, and not only that, splinter groups amongst the Order formed just as quickly upon receiving the news. Seto had believed it unlikely that they would be convinced otherwise, but he was also confident that he would be able to stamp them out as they would have no access to Grand Order infrastructure.

Around Stromberg Castle, the celebrations were still going on in small pockets around the base, although most of the rebels had returned to their work. The castle, along with the ruined city of San Francisco on the nearby mainland, was to be one of two bases being set up to rebuild the United States, the other being New York. In Europe, three bases were being set up in England, France and Germany, and the city of Eravand and Beijing were to be the bases for operations in China. As Jorann walked through the corridors of the castle, he couldn't help but shake his head slightly in amazement at the fact that the fighting had finally ended. Since we had no idea of the Order's plans until the very end, I was stuck in the motions of war. Now that I don't have to worry about those things anymore… I don't know what I'm supposed to do with myself.

Although Felirae had put him in charge of the castle while he was busy with Seto and the other resistance leaders organising transport, he felt as if most of it was being handled by the workers. Although he had the final say on what happened, that had only taken up around an hour of every morning, if that, and so he had had more time than he had known what to do with. However, as he rounded another corner and starting heading down to the laboratory beneath the control centre. After being let in with a quick nod from the two guards at the door, he entered the room to see a familiar sight. Of all the trips he had made down there over the past week, it seemed to him as if nothing had changed.

"Any updates to report?" Jorann asked the doctors to his left as he looked through the glass.

One of them sighed. "Nothing has changed about his condition, no," the woman said.

Through the glass was a room with three white walls and a white ceiling, the only non-white wall being the glass panes that Jorann now looked through. In the centre of the room lay Tanion, whose body was attached with a myriad of wires and tubes that were keeping him alive and monitoring him at the same time. As he looked at the boy, Jorann couldn't tell whether or not he was feeling regret or concern as his mind ticked over. The boy is talented, but he had no place in our war. He was never on the level of our better duelists, although he admittedly was closer than most could even dream of being. So to suddenly have the strength to defeat the likes of Irene… there was no way that those actions were his own. They had to have been the actions of the Duel Energy he absorbed or the cards themselves. It's the only thing that makes sense…

"We've finished the analysis of his cards though, sir," another of the people present said.

This piqued Jorann's interest. "And?"

"There are two cards that stand out from the others, High Enchanter and Royal Paladin," the man stated, handing Jorann a screen depicting the results of the tests. "As you can see, all the cards are laced in Duel Energy, but those two have a lot of Duel Energy in them."

"I see."

Jorann had already suspected as much, as those were the two cards that he did not recognise from the time he had checked the deck in Yugi's mansion after Theta. He had tried to communicate with the Knights themselves through meditation with the cards, but had gotten nothing from them. However, the major concern that he had was that the cards were giving off Duel Energy readings at all. Only Yusei's Stardust Dragon had so far been recorded as doing so, but now Tanion's entire deck was giving off the energy, with each card giving a much higher reading than Stardust, let alone the two new Synchros that must have been created against Irene. Jorann grumbled to himself. Too many unanswered questions…

"Jorann, any progress?"

The voice came from Elise, who had entered the lab with Darrien in tow. "Nothing, I'm afraid," Jorann answered, before turning back to the others in the room. "Any progress on measuring the boy's Duel Energy?"

"It's… slow, sir," one of them answered. "Our machines are still putting out an error message when they try and read it. You have to understand, we don't actually know how much energy he absorbed from that machine. There could be the equivalent of thousands, or potentially millions of duelists worth of Duel Energy in his body. We simply do not know."

"Well keep trying," Jorann ordered. "I want to know what we are dealing with here."

"Yes, sir."

"Jorann, can we speak with you outside for a moment?" Elise asked.

"Of course," Jorann replied, handing back the graphs to one of the others present. Once outside and out of ear reach of others, Jorann spoke up once again. "You've spoken to the Three then, I'm guessing?"

"They returned from the Spirit World only moments ago. They're resting now, but they came with troubling news," Elise informed him. "They were unable to pinpoint the location of the problem, but there's been a disturbance amongst the spirits. Jaden was certain of that much, while Yugi was adamant that the energies of the Spirit World felt out of balance. Jorann, something is about to happen."

"It has to be about Tanion and the Knights," Darrien added. "The Three were certain of this."

"I agree," Jorann nodded. "There's too many uncertainties surrounding that boy and his monsters right now. Darrien, I want you to re-organise the guard rotations on the laboratory. I want at least four inside the laboratory, and two waiting outside the door."

"You think he'll go on the attack if he wakes up, don't you," Elise noted.

"If Jaden's warning is true, then we have to take every precaution we can," Jorann said. "With the amount of power he now possesses… there's no telling what will happen if he wakes."

"So what do we do in the meantime?" Darrien asked.

"We do our jobs," Jorann answered with a sigh. "We follow Felirae's orders and make sure everything is ready for when people start arriving from across the globe."
"What about The Three? They said they were going to wait here until Tanion wakes as a precaution. Jack too."

"Let them be for now, I'm sure they have their own agendas," Jorann said. "But now, all we can do is wait and see what happens when Tanion wakes, and we can only hope that he won't try and kill us when he does."

Coming Soon - Awakening