Annex 062: Faceless from the Past
"Hey, Alice. I am going to check up on Cassius and see what he is doing. Will you be alright for a while?" Emily got up from her chair. Normally she was fine with patiently waiting for things to happen, but these were not normal times. "Sure. I have Uno for company. I can stay up for a little longer." Alice had her soft couch, she did not mind. Heather had already moved to the ground floor to call friends, coworkers and her own husband to tell them about all the madness she had seen today. "Okay. I'll be back as soon as I can." Her sister walked out of the office, Alice was alone now. "He's gonna wake up. He did it the last two times.. But, why did this happen to him?" Curiosity won her over, just like the first time, and she peeked to look at Uno's pendulum. "Huh.." That was when she noticed the cracks in the crystal. "It's cracked? Oh no. Did that.." She looked back at his dueldisk and his cards. "Was it the duel?"
...
"What is this..what.." In his hands was a book that had his name as the title; Uno. To say that this was unexpected would be an understatement. "Okay. Calm down, Uno. It could just be a book about spanish numbers.. as boring as that sounds. Or maybe this is one of those books UNO wrote.. No wait he used a false name." He tried to calm himself down. It did not help that this library had been disturbing enough before now. "It's not just dumb luck that I picked this book either. Something freaky is going on.." He had only one way figure out what the deal was with this book. He had to read it. "Huh?" But there was nothing on the inside. "What kind of book is this?" He flipped through the book, there were hundreds and hundreds of blank pages and nothing more. It was only when he got to the end that he stumbled upon words. That did little to diminish the strangeness of it all. "Nothing; no buildings, no faces, no voices." Uno began reading it in his head. At first he could not make out what was going on or what it was about. But then he saw names... and places..
"You're... not.." It was about him, it was about Alice finding him, it was about Emily and Alice waking him up in their house. "How can this.." It went on and on, more and more of his own experiences were right there on paper. "Why is this about me? How?" It went beyond the guilds, the tournament, the travelers, the future world. It covered events that only he could have known about. It covered everything right up until this exact second. The last sentence in the book spoke about him reading this very book, finishing with his questions. "Agh!" This was not normal, this could not be happening. "Who wrote this!?"
"You did."
A face with two red eyes dropped down in front of him. "Eesh!" Uno flinched backwards and crashed against another bookcase, causing several books to fall out. "It's you!" A little girl hung upside-down from the bookcase, with her long braids touching the floor. "Cloe! This is your house!" It was the youngest prophecy sister, still wearing the same white clothes from before. "Keen eyes, Uno." She stated unemphatically. "I knew it, this place was too familiar... How did I get here?" That was the mystery that desperately needed solving. "Oh you did not. Not really. You just fell asleep and your mind took a tumble through your own memories!" Cloe claimed as she lifted herself up and disappeared behind the bookcase. "Hold on! You're telling me that this is all a dream? Hey!" Uno called out after her. He had no clue where she had gone off too, and no idea on how to find her. "Wait.." He noticed the books lying around, they all had the same featureless cover and letterfont. There was a name on each book, a full name. "Emily Brandt? Zachary Creffield?" One for each person he had met. "Why.. why do you have these.."
"Careful!" Cloe's voice rang in his ears. No way to find out where it was coming from. "You already used up two questions!" The girl was definitely enjoying this. "Already? I didn't..You didn't say we were doing another round of three!" Uno shouted. "Yes I did. When we first met." She helpfully explained. "You never stopped doing it?" Uno cringed as the words left his mouth. "Was that a question?" The girl replied. "No! No. Just..thinking.. And hey you didn't even answer the first two questions completely!" If he had wasted two turns already, he would at least get a full story out of it. "No I didn't. But I said what you needed to know. You wrote that book, with your own experiences. Those other books were all written by their own owners. This part of the library was made for me, for the past. That is what you saw in there. Now about your second question.." Her voice fell silent. The sound of books dropping to the ground could be heard in the distance. "You damaged your pendulum. It could no longer keep you stabilized in this world, so your mind shut down."
"The pendulum, keeps me stabilized?" This information, it should have been earthshattering. Yet on some level, Uno already knew this. The pendulum was what allowed him to journey from one timeperiod to another, and it was what allowed Neter to jump from one place to another. This opened so many new unknowns while also clearing up old ones. "Neter said something like this too. Is he a time traveler? Where did he come from then?"
"You kept all those questions to yourself. That was not very kind to me." Cloe popped back into frame, her head poking through several books. "Ergh! Are.. You talk like you're reading my mind." Uno recoiled. He had to be careful when talking to her. She was clearly trying to draw out his third question. "No. That was the other woman. I did not have to read your mind, I merely had to read this." Cloe held up Uno's book. How it got in her hands, he had no idea. There was a whole new page in it now that described this very encounter. "I.." Where could he begin with this, where could it end? He had seen a lot of bizarre stuff already, but this was more than just a little crazy. Maybe he really was dreaming? If that was the case then none of this mattered. The answers were not worth it, they could have sprung from his own memories or lies. There was only one way forward. "How do I wake up?" He had to return. "Oh.. I did not expect that. You chose the present instead of the past. Unfortunately, you asked the wrong sister."
"She cannot tell you what you should do, Uno." Suddenly, there was a wide open space behind Uno. And in that space was a reading table. And at that table sat a woman in a green and red dress. "...Veronica." The second sister, Uno figured she would show up sooner or later. "You look different." Unlike Cloe, Veronica had changed her entire appearance. Her ears were pierced and her hair had a more punkish cut to it. "Thank you for noticing. I change it every day." She smiled. "Let's talk business. It seems you're stuck here with us. I can only tell you where you are and Cloe can only remind you of how you got here. That is what we see." She bluntly informed him. "Well.. then I know who I should ask." If the sisters of past and present were not going to help him, only the sister of the future remained. "Margot does not wish to see you and I can not see what will happen if you approach her. Are you sure you do not want to something else, something we can help with?" She asked him now. "Yes. Your third question has not been locked in yet." Cloe added.
"Sounds like a trap." Doubt weighed down on him. Uno finally had the opportunity to find out what he had forgotten, yet he did not want to lose his chance to return to his friends. "I could just leave." He looked for an exit, any exit. He had walked out of this house before. "You can't, actually." Unfortunately Veronica seemed to be telling the truth. There were no doors. "There should be.." He had seen doors the last time. Then again he had not been in this part of the house the last time. And if this was apparently all in his head, it did not need to make sense. "Or.." Uno tried left and right. Nothing worked, he ended up back at the reading table every time. "I can't stay here!" What good was the past to him if he had no way out. He wanted to remember, but he also wanted to live. "You said my mind was shut down because I damaged my pendulum. That must've happened when I dueled Meridian. I summoned that XYZ Dragon and..." He had it now. If he couldn't ask for a way to fix his issues, he would identify it and fix it himself. "Why did my cards break my pendulum?"
"Oh. That was the question?" Cloe asked once more, without giving away whether or not it was a valid question. "Yes." Uno was determined to stick to this course either way. "Impressive, you rejected the past. You guessed correctly too. It was your card that caused the damage. Your Pendulum Dragon resonated with your XYZ Dragon, causing incompatible energy types to mix and discharge. Your XYZ dragon was too much for your pendulum, the cracks were a result of that." So far, so good. "Why was it too much?" Uno thought he could press his luck with a follow-up question, since it might count as a part of the same subject. "I was getting to that." It did count, luckily. "Your Pendulum did not feel you earned the right to use Dark Rebellion XYZ-Dragon." The girl asserted. "I didn't earn it? It did not seem to have a problem with fusion monsters, if that's what this is about." Uno argued back. "That was because you made those fusion dragons from your Pendulum dragon, they were not pure fusion monsters." Cloe stopped there. That was the end of the answer. "...Then I need to be worthy, somehow." It was a start. Was it enough?
"!?" His train of thoughts was disrupted. "..." The third sister, all of a sudden she stood there in between the bookcases. This was the first time Uno got a good look of her, though her back was turned to him. She was tall, had short black hair and wore all black clothes; a sweater, mantle and long skirt. In her black-gloved hand was another book, which she seemed to be reading. "Margot?" She payed no attention to any of her sisters or to Uno, she made no sound of any kind. "She said that you could earn the right, in this place." Still, Cloe was able to relay a message from her. "Here.. I should do what I did before. I should find a way to make a XYZ-monster with a pendulum monster." Uno had to admit that he liked the sound of that. The problem was, how would he do it? "First you need to duel against that kind of power. You need to prove you can overpower XYZ-monsters." Veronica chimed in again. "We can help."
"You?" He didn't see that coming. "Us." Cloe corrected him. "However, because your pendulum was damaged you lost a portion of your power; everything after the beginning." She started to say, and Veronica took over for her. "You can't use your magicians, your fusions, your pendulum dragon." Essentially only his performapals were usable. "Just the basics.." Uno had confirmed that back when he woke up here, now he understood why. "Well that makes things more interesting. Alright." Uno took his cards. Cloe smiled. "Good. However I forgot to mention.. Margot said one more thing. If you win, the damage will be undone. But if you lose, the damage will get worse. You could be stuck here forever."
"I will be trapped here if I do nothing anyway." Uno shrugged. The future did not change on its own accord. "Let's get this show on the stage."
...
Ichirou woke up to a strange sight of his own. Apparently he had been tied down to the same chair that Dom was sitting on during his interrogation. But that was not the odd part. The odd part were the four people who were interrogating now. Master Dom was giving them a very interesting story. The same one he had given Uno and friends before, about UNO, his books, and his cards. It would be helpful later, for now it served better as a distraction. Nobody was minding him, in the corner of the office. Slowly he wrestled his hands out of his bonds.
"Well that's the basics. Now if you want the story of how I met the guy, I can tell this story the long way, the short way, the exciting way or the factual way." Dom was finally done with his speech, though he left the four travelers unsatisfied. "Do not delay us. We know you expect company soon, and they cannot save you. How did UNO make the pendulum cards? " August angrily reminded Dom of his place. He would crack his mask if he kept on prattling. "Now see here, I'm not stalling. I just abhor a dull narrative. Anyone can summarize historic events.. Besides, I couldn't tell you. Card design is largely in the hands of the creative staff and the guilds now." He was telling the truth. June figured that much by reading Iria's mind. "Yes we learned a great deal about your version of history when we took the data from the Synchro guilds and your libraries. But only you seem to know the name of the 'first duelist'. Did he ask for you to take credit as 'the cardmaker'?" June spoke as if she already knew the answer yet wanted to hear him say it anyway. "Yeah, UNO wanted to avoid publicity. I wish I was half as creative as UNO, the best things I created was this 3D-vision tech."
"... You too were aware of this, weren't you?" June turned to the disciple for a moment. "I was. But why does this matter?" Iria had little say in what answers to give someone who could tell lies from the truth with 100 % accuracy. But that did not stop her from wanting some answers in return. "It matters because anyone who claims to have invented the game is a liar. The cards and the monsters are far older than you can imagine. If you did not start this, then you are of no use to us! UNO is the one we need to find. Where is he?" August advanced on the Master and lifted him up by his collar. "Easy there sport! You'll ruin the fabric!" The master stammered. "When I say that UNO does not like to be seen, I mean it! He has not had one public appearance in recorded history and no known address. Not even I got to see him. He probably retired somewhere in a sweet old house near a beach, living off royalties. That's what I would have done. He sometimes mails me messages, sketches and ideas; that sort of stuff. You could try and track that; that is all I can give you.. well could."
"Could? Explain yourself." August dropped Dom to the ground again. "Sure. Just give me a minute. My neck's had a rough day." The master cleared his throat. "Another funny coincidence. I had to decrypt everything on my system to keep my inventions from falling into the wrong hands. All of his emails.. were stored on there. The only way to recover the data is to get back the three cards that carry the decryption key. And I don't have those anymore. Just bad timing. If you had come a week earlier, things would have been fine." He tried to laugh it off. They did not look like they saw any humor in this situation. Surprisingly, they did not seem to angry either. "Where were you, when you last contacted him?" It was December now who requested facts from the master. "I was here. Behind this desk, on that laptop. It happened yesterday, around 5 PM." Dom gave him a straight and simple answer. This one was unlike the others. They were all terrifying to an extent, but he was compelling at the same time. He was not someone you wanted to say no to.
"Thank you." December even made his words of gratitude sound like death threats. The man clutched his chest and closed his eyes. "What is he doing?" Dom figured he could just ask about it. "Ooh! Can I tell him! It's really cool!" Neter was willing to meet Dom halfway. "I do not think..""He is looking into the past!" June did not even get a full sentence out, before the kid spilled the beans. "They did not need to hear that!" Neither June nor August were happy with this. "Looking into.. the past? You can do that?" That should have been an undeniable truth. Every time these people found new ways to challenge Iria's view of the world. "I can." December spoke up as his hand let go of his chest. "I have seen what I needed to see. If Tempus is a part of this, he's made sure we cannot link anything back to him. UNO might be a link, but Dreamworld is a dead end."
"I could have told you that from the start... who is Tempus?" That name got thrown around a lot in the last few hours. Dom wondered what was up with that. "A man whose face is unknown to us, but his crimes are seen everywhere. He is not someone you can fight, so do not worry about him." June said as she grabbed Neters shoulder. "Huh? We're going? But I wanna see what he's got hiding under his mask!" The kid said with a pout. "We have one more person to catch up with. And I already got the image from her head." The woman smiled at Iria. "Tch. That was not your right." Only the disciples had seen Dom without his mask, before today. "Where are you going, who is..." Iria realized who they were talking about. And June shared that realization. "Iria Silver, the pendulum is what makes everything possible.. You were entirely honest with us when you said that Dreamworld did not give Uno I his pendulum cards. This Uno seems to be special by himself, his duel with Neter made that undeniably so. He could be even more valuable than your UNO. However my colleague raise a good point. Before we leave, we have to make one agreement.."
June snapped her fingers, and in an instant Doms mask cracked like an eggshell. "Ahh!" The topleft side of his face was revealed, black hair and all. December then approached him to look Dom in the eye. "You will do one thing for us, Dom. And we will know if you try to deceive us..."
(To be Continued in Annex 063: A Dream had Me)