Hello, all! Here is the next chapter in the story. Don't have much else to say, so let's get right to the important things.
Ruka = Luna
Misty Lola = Misty Treadwell
Aki = Akiza
Divine = Sayer
DISCLAIMER: Same as always. Do not own Yugioh! or Android: Netrunner, do own custom characters/cards/devices/factions, etc.
Onward to the Chapter.
3rd-Person POV, Real World
Neo Domnio's electrical grid flies around The Masque and Apex as they traverse the Network. The virus rests around the AI's form like a cloud, broadcasting its presence in binary to the surrounding code. That presence contains a simple message: Do not interfere, or you will suffer the consequences. It is obeyed by any programs that come into Apex's path, leaving the way clear for The Masque's passage.
The AI's digital hair flaps behind her as a mark to how fast she is traveling. Granted, the Network holds no real equivalent to air resistance, but physical factors are not a concern right now. She has a plan, and she will do her best to complete it. The surrounding servers and nodes offer countless different worlds she could stop and explore, but she passes them by without a second glance.
She sees a large, empty patch of code in the horizon; the wastes of Satellite's digital presence. It quickly expands along the horizon as she gets closer to it. In seconds of travel, it becomes a large swath of black, dead cyberspace. She calls it a 'waste' due to the almost-complete lack of electrical energy inside it. A few pinpricks of digital light – very, very, small pinpricks – indicate sources of energy strong enough to be detected.
The moment The Masque starts to enter Satellite's digital landscape, she feels the change. Her head pounds as wild binary screeches ring in her ears. She draws back into familiar territory, and the screech quickly fades to nothing. The headache, however, remains.
She waits for a second, and then fees around the new area again. The screeches return instantly, and she doesn't draw back this time. 'Time' is not a resource she has to spare. She fully slips herself into Satellite, and the screeches turn into silence. Cold, dead silence. It has an emptiness The Masque cannot define. She instantly rejects it, wants it out of her.
She then realizes she has never entered a zone in The Network with barely any power. Even the darkest spaces in Neo Domino's cyberspace have some level of power she can try to understand. This space has nothing at all for her, save those tiny points of light beyond her current reach. She instantly knows, without a doubt, that she cannot get to those points via her own power. To do so would be suicide; the void around her would drain her dry before she ever got close.
She curls into a ball to try and dispel these fears. The silence does not let up an inch, the lack of power total and absolute. She holds back a scream as she already feels pieces of her digital form peel away, food for an ever-hungry mouth.
Apex reacts to this fear. It envelops her in a binary cocoon, tendrils of data wrapping over each other to form a shield. The void eats at this new barrier all the same, but it gives The Masque some room to think. She tries to form a plan as Apex's defenses slowly weaken.
An idea quickly forms in her mind, and she executes it.
"Apex," she calls to the cocoon's walls, "locate any electrical source you can find in this wasteland. The Superior's devices should emit a signature, even in this place. Find it, and we can track it."
"Affirmative."
The virus creates a long tentacle which extends around the cocoon. Several pods bubble and grow along the limb, turning into large spheres. Apex lines up these pods to the few energy sources it senses, even as Satellite's hunger leeches at the pods. The tentacle winds back, and then snaps forward like a whip. The pods fly off into the darkness, beyond The Masque's own sight.
Seconds go by as Apex's cocoon continues to weaken. The Masque tenses as she sees cracks form along the surface. A second later, the pods fly back into view. Apex absorbs them all into itself, and an orange eye appears on the cocoon's inner wall.
"Electrical data analyzed," Apex reports in an elderly male voice. "No trace of the Superior's energy signature is present."
"No," The Masque mutters, torn between anger and despair at this outcome. "Try again."
Apex repeats its previous actions with no objection. The pods fly out into the void. Only half of them come back this time. What's more, they are smaller than when they flew out. The Masque refuses to accept what she sees with her own "eyes".
"Data analyzed," Apex reports, this time in a young girl's voice. "No trace of the Superior's energy signature is present."
"Again!" The Masque glares at Apex's eye. "We must find the Superior's signature to have any chance of locating Epsilon!"
"Satellite's lack of electrical power is draining us." Apex's eye blinks as the cracks spread out across the cocoon's surface. "Continuing this effort is futile. We should move back into the Network, rethink our moves."
"There's no time! We have to act, now!"
Apex does not respond. Its eye shrinks into the fleshy wall around The Masque. The cold touch of Satellite begins to seep into the cocoon, heightening the AI's fear even further. Desperation takes hold, her worries split between two equally-important areas.
Her first fear is not finding Epsilon, and facing the consequences. The Superiors would certainly be upset if she failed the task they gave her. Epsilon is one of their agents, and those three care at least somewhat about their agents. But, she would also be upset at herself. An AI of her level should be able to do this sort of task, even in apocalyptic, low-power environments such as this. Besides, success is the only option that she considers logical.
Her other fear contradicts that logic: the fear of death.
To the Masque, the equivalent of "dying" in meatspace was having one's material presence annihilated. No trace of you left to recover. The closet she has ever come to this was when she felt Hivemind's "death" in the Fortune Cup. The feedback drove her to the brink of madness. She only refrained from changing her base coding to match this madness because of vengeance. This time, she doesn't have that feeling to defend herself. She has no plans, no reserves, no failsafe tactics.
With this in mind, she focuses her thoughts, her fear-driven focus, into a single directive: Find Epsilon's signal, and take control of it. The directive moves from her mind to her body, channels into her fingers as energy. Satellite's void reaches for this fresh source of power as The Masque puts the energy together. She cradles it between her fingers as Apex's wards try to hold the void off for another second.
The wards give out. Apex wordlessly cries a warning which The Masque doesn't need to hear. She takes her energy as the void claws at it. Her body bears the void for as long as it can, and only then does she release the energy. It spreads across the void in a blast wave from her form, strong enough to resist its hunger.
Red light shines in the darkness. A miniscule signal shows itself. She instantly knows she's found it. Apex locks onto it almost as quickly, and recognizes it as well. Without a moment's hesitation, they fly towards the signal. The void claws at their bared cores as Apex executes the final stage of their plan. The Masque holds her breath – a human expression, certainly – as Apex swallows her whole.
Something slides over her mind. She accepts it without question, wearing it like a human would wear a piece of clothing. The coat grows thicker and denser as she slides into it. It protects her against the void, which she greatly appreciates.
She releases her breath through human lips… and instantly starts coughing through human lungs. The conceiting part of her "consciousness" takes this moment to say this process was never going to be easy.
EPSILON POV
"It's him, isn't it?"
A quiet, almost breeze-like female voice whispers this near me. A series of high-pitched chitters follow, almost like a response. I slowly inhale through my nose as I feel a soft surface beneath me. That's not right.
The last thing I remember is my brain catching on fire. Two cold hands – Divine's hands – had dug into my scalp and burned my thoughts to a crisp. It all happened so fast I had no chance to react, much less counterattack. So, Divine had ambushed me when he lost our Duel. He didn't want to lose.
"Do you think he's awake?"
More chitters follow. I smell something sweet in the air. The anger in my heart against Divine's actions mars the pleasant feelings around me. Despite my feelings, there seem to be two creatures near me. From what they said, it seems like they are watching me.
I let out a groan as the breeze-like voice speaks again. This cuts her words off as I lurch to a sitting position. The chitters then reach a feverish pitch as I finally open my eyes. I almost instantly close them again when I realize my surroundings are really, really bright. Too bright to be natural, in my opinion. I grit my teeth to block out a curse as the pain in my eyes flows to my head.
When I open my eyes again, two creatures are in front of me and giving me curious looks. The three of us rest in the middle of a large field of bright green grass. Wind blows over the grass in a slow wave as I look at it. I know of only one place with this kind of natural beauty: the Duel Monsters Spirit World.
How did I end up back here, of all places?
I put that question aside and turn my eyes to the two creatures before me. To my left is blue-haired, green-skinned woman with pointed ears and black eyes stands to my left. A golden gown covers everything below her neck.
A pink winged creature about the size of my head is to my right. Its wings have blue feathers, it has small arms and feet, and a halo rests above its head. Its pink eyes with white pupils are wide open as they stare at me.
I know these creatures. Their names come to me after a moment, and I turn to each of them as I announce who they are: "You are Spirit of the Breeze, and you are Petit Angel."
"You remember us!" Spirit of the Breeze exclaims as she delicately claps her hands together. "That's great news!" Petit Angel adds in several chirps with a happy smile. I just try to stay upright and look at them. My stiff muscles want to fall back on the soft grass and rest for several more hours.
"Please, come with us," the female spirit, who I mentally name "Breeze", says. "You need to see Torunka."
"Torunka?"
"A wise sage, one of the greatest sages in the land. He helped the Spirit Caller Ruka fulfill her promise to the Spirit World."
"Ruka?" I perk up a bit more as I hear that little girl's name. "She was here, too?"
"Yes, not too long ago. But, we don't have time to talk about that." She starts walking towards the rows of trees as she states, "Torunka told us to bring you back to him, if you were alive."
I ask, "How did he find me at all?" as I get up to my feet. Petit Angel, or maybe just "Angel", flaps a bit behind Breeze.
"He sensed your latent energies," Breeze answers, "the same energies you used to come here the first time. Come on, let's go!"
Breeze and Angel move quickly across the grass. I move to catch up with them, trying my best to ignore this persistent headache. Luckily, the grass field doesn't go on too far, and is replaced by a dense forest of beautiful trees. Sunlight streams through the canopy in a way I partially remember from the last time I was here. There isn't any time for me to get a closer look, though; Breeze and Angel don't slow down as we cross into the forest.
The three of us don't say a word as we move through the forest. I let Breeze and Angel take the lead since they know the way and don't have to deal with headaches right now. The forest has no big differences from when I last saw it. Whatever corruption was happening here is no longer present. Breeze did say that Ruka was able to fix the problem. How long ago did that happen?
It doesn't take too long for us to walk out of the forest and approach a ruined castle. It rests on the top of a large stone mountain with several holes in the walls. Two large arches have been lopped off at the top, leaving only the stumps behind. The castle's entrance consists of a lowered wooden drawbridge at the top of a long and winding stone path up the mountain. An air of darkness hangs on the walls, almost like an extra coat of skin.
"Do we have to go up there?" I ask the Spirits as I stop to stare at the castle.
"Yes," Breeze confirms. "That is where Torunka is. He is working to purify the place from its previous owner." I look to her in confusion, to which she then says, "He can tell you more about it when you get there."
I sigh irritably. That isn't a good answer in my book, but Breeze and Angel don't stick around for me to tell them that. I have to catch up with them again as we begin the trek up the path. Thankfully, the path never slopes at too sharp an angle to impede my walking speed. The darkness looks even more intimidating the closer I get, though.
Once we reach the drawbridge, I see two men standing guard in front of it that I didn't notice at the bottom of the path. They both have golden helmets on, various pieces of armor, and hold weapons. One of them carries a green lance over a shoulder like it weighs nothing, probably because his unarmored blue upper body has so many muscles it amazes me. The other wields a curved sword and more golden armor over his upper body.
The blue-skinned man gruffly calls out, "Halt!" as we approach. He raises his lance at me, and the golden man lifts his sword as well. "Who is that stranger with you?"
"He's the one Torunka sensed in the castle," Breeze responds, "the Spirit Caller, Epsilon."
"Is that true?" the man asks Petit Angel. The pink creature lets out a rapid series of chirps with equally-rapid gestures of its arms. The two men look at it as if they understand. That's a lot better than me, then.
After several seconds of Angel's movements and sounds, the men lower their weapons. The first turns back to Breeze and says, "You all may pass. We're sorry for delaying you, it's just…"
"I know," Breeze replies with a sad smile. "You have to be careful. Thank you, all the same." With that, she and Petit Angel walk between them and towards the lowered drawbridge. I move to catch up while trying not to flinch under both men's combined glares. The fact I can't see their faces makes them look more intimidating.
Just as I step past them, I hear the second man's more refined voice tell me, "Cause no trouble." It's as much an order as a warning.
I turn my head slightly towards him and nod. He doesn't return the gesture, which I understand as I turn back to the advancing spirits. We cross the large wooden drawbridge over a deep pit of rock and fog, and enter the castle.
"So, who used to live here?" I ask as I note the dark walls and dank corridors we quickly pass through. "It doesn't look like a place you all would enjoy."
Neither spirit gives an immediate answer. I can't see either of their faces, but they move with a speed I did not expect. Breeze's robe ruffles against the stone, and she doesn't care about any damages to such a lovely piece of clothing. But, she is the one to give an answer: "A tyrant used to live here: Zeman, the Ape King."
"Zeman? I remember that name; some monkey soldiers mentioned it the last time I was here."
Breeze and Angel abruptly stop. They give me surprised glances as I halt behind them. I shrug my soldiers with a quick, "It's true! They didn't see me, but I heard them mention that name. Also, something about a 'Minus Curse'."
"Torunka can talk more about that," Breeze states as we quickly move past two small rooms without doors on our left. "The Curse affected him differently than most Spirits."
'If that's true, then he must know quite a lot.' I flinch at how I phrased that thought. 'I'm not doubting these spirits, am I?'
After going through a few more passages, we come to some kind of throne room or meeting chamber. I get this from the larger space here, some broken ornate sculptures in the far corners, and the charred remains of a golden throne. That throne must have been where "Zeman, The Ape King" sat as he ruled here. Then, this also must have been the room where he kept the captured Spirits. That thought sends a shiver down my spine, even though the walls here have nothing creepy on them.
Before the throne is a large circular pool. A tall figure stands in front of the pool, their back to us as they hold a wooden staff in one hand. A green orb on the staff's front end shines as it hangs over the pool. They don't seem to hear us come in as they hold the glowing sphere over the shifting liquid.
"Master Torunka," Breeze announces as she approaches the figure, "we've returned. Epsilon is with us."
The figure turns to face Breeze. The light from its staff shows a very old man clad in blue and green robes with purple armor over his shoulders. The long pointed purple hat on his head tilts slightly over his face. He sports a thick white beard and several wrinkles. His blue eyes have a spark to them that surprises me.
"Ah," he says in a calm wheeze, "excellent work. " He then looks at me and says, "It's good to see you alive and well, young lad."
'Young lad'? I almost crack a grin at the term. I may be a cyborg, but I do not think I am a 'lad'. If he's going to keep calling me that, it might get annoying.
"Thanks for having me, Torunka," I answer as I walk a few steps towards him. "I was told you could answer my questions."
"I certainly can try." He looks back to Breeze and Angel as he asks, "Would you two want to stay?"
"I don't think so," Breeze answers with a slight bow to the sage. "We should probably check with the other Spirits still recovering from the Minus Curse." I turn to watch the spirits go to some duty I do not know about. They move just as quickly as when they brought me here.
"So," Torunka asks me with a smile, "what is your first question?"
I turn back to him and take a moment to gather my thoughts. I haven't had the time to compose my questions before now, what with waking up in the Duel Monsters Spirit World for the third time. Luckily, there's one big question I can ask without much explanation.
"What is the 'Minus Curse' I've heard about here?"
"A spell created by Zeman, the Ape King. It turned the spirits here into stone tablets, which Zeman had his ape soldiers acquire and bring to this castle. Then, the souls of those Spirits were offered as tribute to an Earthbound God."
"Then," I clarify with a frown, "a Dark Signer was behind all this?"
"So Ruka-chan said, yes." He adds, "Yes, she was here, too," when he sees my shock. "She came here to fulfill her promise to this world."
"How do you know that? Were you captured like the other Spirits?"
"Not exactly." Torunka looks away as he says this, clearly embarrassed. "The Minus Curse didn't turn me into a tablet. Instead, I became a child again."
"Wait, wait," I clarify with a raised hand. "The Minus Curse turned you into a kid? It reversed your age?"
"Exactly, young lad. You've got a good brain in that head of yours." I raise the corner of my lip up in response to the 'young lad' quip.
"Then, when the curse ended, you regained your age?"
"Correct." Torunka winces after he says that. He places a hand to his back as his face twists in pain. "It didn't remove my sciatica, unfortunately. Muscle pains are a terrible side effect of old age."
The sage takes a few seconds to press his hand against his back and fix his posture back to normal. I politely wait for him to finish before I ask, "How was the curse removed, or dispelled?"
"That's where Ruka-chan comes in. I found her in my old city, after Zeman's troops had taken almost every Spirit they could from there. I had to get her out quickly because she didn't realize the threat Zeman's troops were. Especially their Cursed Needles."
"The troops I saw mentioned those devices. Where are they now?"
"There's one right over here," Torunka says with a gesture to a darkened corner of the chamber. It takes me a few moments to see the golden staff with pronged ends. It leans against the stone with the central black lines held in a vertical position. Yep, they still look dangerous by themselves.
"Like I already said, the Needles were used to spread the Minus Curse. They fired blasts of dark magic from their prongs that turned Spirits into stone tablets. However, another effect the Needles had was reversing natural phenomena that occurs in the world. Water would fall upward, broken structures would repair themselves. Even what you say would be reversed, making truth sound like lies."
"That doesn't sound good." I state, saying the obvious.
"It wasn't. It's especially bad if you have a Cursed Needle stuck on your body. That happened to the heroic beast, Regulus. The Curse turned him into a savage monster, and everything he heard was reversed in his mind. When Ruka-chan and I tried to bring him to his senses, he thought we were trying to kill him. The nerve of those apes!"
"You eventually fixed him, right?"
"Yes, we did. It took some doing, but we managed to remove the Needle from Regulus. Once that happened, he was able to think normally again. We then snuck our way into this castle and Regulus himself defeated Zeman. But, Ruka-chan had to go back to her world – the same world you come from – to truly end the Minus Curse.
"As I said, a Dark Signer was responsible behind the Minus Curse. Zeman worked very closely with them – he called them his master, which makes me suspect they created Zeman themselves. They took the captured souls of this world as tribute to their Earthbound God. They also held the guardian of this world, Ancient Fairy Dragon, captive. When that God was defeated, Ancient Fairy Dragon was freed and the Spirits returned here. We have used this place as a starting home, despite the lingering dark magic here. I am doing my best to remove or purify that magic."
"Is this pool a starting point for your purifying?" I ask with a gesture to the pool in question. Up close, its liquid has dark-blue and black areas that push against each other. Neither one completely engulfs the other as I watch their battle. I look away again when I hear Torunka loudly clear his throat.
"Yes, the pool is a starting point. This pool was used by Zeman as a looking-glass of sorts. He could see any part of the Spirit World he wished through it. This was how he accessed the imprisoned Ancient Fairy Dragon, and found new Spirits for his ape-soldiers to capture."
"And, you want to use it for your own means now that Zeman is dead?" Torunka gives me a sideways look for this question. I flinch as I see suspicion in his actions.
"I intend to use it to help the spirits here. I care about them, you know, like the closest of friends."
"I got it, I got it. I'm sorry for... you know." The mage just sighs before he raises his staff over the pool again. I continue to look at the pool as I turn to my own thoughts. Torunka's story adds bits and pieces to the gallery of other bits and pieces I already have. I now need to add these new elements into an overarching theme.
Suddenly, a revelation comes to me. The Spirit World's corruption was caused by a Dark Signer. Defeating that Dark Signer returned the Spirit World to normal. Then, defeating the Dark Signers reverses their actions in the real world. If that works for one Dark Signer, it should work for all of them.
That means… all those deaths aren't permanent! Everyone who they killed, or sacrificed to their Earthbound Gods, can be brought back to life!
Joy spreads through my body like lightning, punching through the wave of fatigue and despair that I've had since… practically from when I can first remember. That joy disperses when I realize I have no clue how to defeat a Dark Signer. Would a Duel of Darkness work? Was that what Ruka did? Or, is there something else I am missing?
I look at Torunka, but he is completely focused on his purifying magic. My gut says I should not disturb him. So, I kneel down before the pool and stare into the water. The black and blue continue to fight, but the black slowly loses ground as Torunka's magic tips the scales. My thoughts are just as confused, mixed between rising hopes and crushing fears.
These hopes and fears feel almost real. I've dealt with them for so long, they've given me lectures. I could reach out and touch them. What does that say about me?
Torunka says a few words, but I don't register them. I then realize my right hand is beneath the pool's surface. I don't recall putting it there, but it is having an effect on the pool. Before my eyes, the waters form pictures of devastation and ruin.
I look on as the images become crystal-clear. They sweep across a wider expanse, until they come on something I somehow recognize: the remains of a giant facility. I can't tell what kind of place it was from the pieces I can see. Nevertheless, I keep my hand beneath the pool's surface. My persistence quickly pays off when a glowing object comes into the center of view. The image zooms in on the object – an "Iron Core of Koa'ki Meiru" that still has power. Or, maybe, its power was the cause of this destruction?
The surface ripples by itself. The image breaks apart, changes into a new scene before my eyes.
The remaining members of the Collective sit at the same round table as before. They all have tense faces, even the Superiors, as they talk about something I can't hear. Kate Mcaffery, Andromeda, and Edward Kim are all animated in their movements as they state point after point to the others. Nero Severn listens to the conversation with complete focus, his tablet nowhere in sight. The Superiors look on as the other agents argue with each other.
Ripple.
Four large pods rest in a white-walled room. Each pod has wires connecting it to a central computer in the room. The place looks familiar, but I do not know why. It tickles the corners of my mind, fragments that disperse the moment I try to focus on them. The big clue I can see are the purple lines of energy that flow down the wires from the pods to the computers. There is also a large condor geoglyph on the computer screen that fills me with dread.
Ripple.
Misty Lola stands opposite Aki Izayoi, both in the ruins of a former theme park. They are in the middle of a Duel, Solid Vision projecting cards on both sides of the field. The field itself is covered in a sphere made of differently-colored shards. The Dark Signer has the same clothes and bears the same marks as when I saw her, but she is visibly angry at her opponent. Aki also looks the same, but her hair is free of its bindings and her face shows pleasure laced with insanity. As I watch, Aki laughs wildly at Misty's face, clearly lost in something dangerous.
Ripple.
Divine stands behind a window frame. He bears no additional scars from our Duel. He looks over Aki and Misty's Duel with his usual dark grin. The glint in his eye tells me he is involved with Aki's change. How much, I don't know, but I don't need to know that. The fact this manipulative man is loose and harming the people I want to protect is enough to reignite the burning rage I have against him.
Suddenly, Yusei Fudo appears in the image. He races up the stairs towards Divine's perch and confronts him. Divine holds up the card "Hinotama" before activating it in his Disk. A large fireball flies towards Yusei and throws him against the far wall. He struggles to get up while Divine advances.
Ripple.
My body moves through Satellite's ruins, beyond my control. The metal eye glows dark red, like Apex appears in cyberspace. The Superiors had said it was locked in a private server. Is it in control of my body again? If so, how did it get free?
The image zooms in on my body's false Signer mark. The eye glows the same white that I saw during my Psychic Riding Duel with Aki so long ago. That glow quickly blinds my eyes, spreading over the pool's surface. Pain shoots up my own arm, and then all through me.
I scream as I pull my hand out of the water. The pain continues as I see the same mark glow on my arm. It's the same white light instead of the usual red. I feel shock where there shouldn't be any; I saw this color change before, why am I so surprised? Before I can answer my own question, the shock changes to cold determination.
I stand and turn to face Torunka. The elderly sage clutches his staff with both hands, his back bent and his face screwed up in pain. He manages to look at me through his suffering.
"Torunka. Take me back to the real world."
Alright, that's all for now. This chapter was short, but I think it got some points across. I've got the ending to this story in sight, I just have to get to it.
As always, any reviews/comments/constructive criticism/feedback is appreciated.
Draconos is taking off.