Redux 090: Reverse Annex
"Hello once more, Uno."
The last thing Uno saw was a light too intense and loud to keep looking or listening at. He had to close his eyes for even a second. "What the.." The first thing he was allowed to hear afterwards, was the voice of a girl he had met twice in the past. Then he saw where he was.. "Again?" A minute ago he had been standing and facing his opponent in an open area. Presently, he was comfortably seated in a big chair within a dark musty building. He had gone through transitions like this before, transitions that echoed the feeling of waking up from a long dream. But he did not dream his duel with December, Uno knew that. He could not say the same about this place. "Veronica.." The library, the sisters. They transported him here... or he transported himself. "Uno." The middle sister sat in a chair on the opposite end of the table. This was how had left them after his duel; as if nothing had changed. Allthough Veronica now had her hair pinned back, and her dress covered in boa feathers. "Where are my friends?" A million questions came to his mind, just as usual. "Are you sure you want to ask that?" Just as usual, they were playing games and trading questions. Uno would not humor them this time. That didn't matter to Uno though. He'd passed the stage of questioning everything that defied sense and reason the last time. "You can believe I am!"
"They are here." Veronica merely smiled and clapped her hands. The noise activated every lamp in the house, casting lights across rows and rows of bookshelves. "A floor down to be precise." With the darkness pushed back, Uno could see that he was now on a raised floor, and that there many more floors above him and below him. Bridges connected the four wings that were separated by a large clearing in the middle. Not only was this not where this table had stood previously, this was place was far larger than it had ever appeared before.
"Guys!" What mattered was that he could see Alice, Eric, Iria and Adamant down there. The four of them were resting unconscious on the floor and couch. "Tch." Uno left his chair and ran towards them. "... They're sleeping.." They were alive, they were here.. "Has to be done. They aren't ready to experience our home, not just yet. We only handle one client at a time, three questions at a time." The sister said all matter-of-factly. "This place.. is no dream. You aren't a dream." Only just now did Uno start noticing that he still had his pendulum around his neck. He was here in the flesh, and so were his friends. Just when Uno thought he could get a handle on things, he let his curiosity get the better of him. "...Just what are you?" There was question number two. And Veronica had a big smile on her face.
"We thought you'd never ask." This was now Cloe's cue to enter the scene. "Guh!" The red-eyed girl lied on the floor right next to Eric, with her hands clasped together. "At least you asked a lot sooner than those before you, Uno. They only ever cared about their own stories." She got up and walked away from him. "Hey, wait a second. What about the answer?" It didn't sound to him like he had asked something they couldn't respond to. "We have another question to finish off first." Veronica said, her voice loud and clear. "Still?" Uno looked up at her and then back at the library. Cloe was gone again, of course she was. The little sisters voice was just as audible as the other's though. "Yes. You asked for all your friends." She reminded him. "You made a lot. You should've been prouder of yourself!" It was obvious what they were saying; who they were talking about. "Emily.. Zach." In fact there a lot of names, some he wouldn't even call friends. "So, to extend my first question, you're going to tell me where they are now?"
"Why tell you? When we can show you? That way we can skip the part where you doubt our every word." Veronica pointed her finger at a nearby door. "Through there.. eh?" Uno wasn't sure what to expect, but he had to find out. He turned the knob and pulled the door back. "Whoa.." He was led straight back to the courtyard of the synchro guilds' castle. The two locations had been connected through this one opening. Except he wasn't really there. "Whoops..hey wait a second." He realized this when several fusion duelists walked by him as he stood there in plain view. They didn't notice him or the door, he was a ghost. "These visions.. " When the pendulum showed him Alice's past, and what Veronica was showed him now; the two experiences were frighteningly similar. "This isn't happening, not right now.."
The events in front of him were those that transpired right after he had teleported his friends away from the castle. That was at least an hour ago. From the point of view of the three guilds here, the clash between the three dragons had just been a normal if not somewhat overpowering lightshow. The disappearance of five duelists escaped their notice for the time being. They only saw the result of the battle royal; the defeat of Cassius and the loss of all three dragons to Dame Phoebe. The Fusion Guild had won. "Now then, are you a man of your word, Ichirou?" One duelist remained, but against such an overwhelming force there was little he could have done. He had thrown in his hat already. "A deal is a deal, milady. If it is cooperation you want, the XYZ-guild will give it." The XYZ-duelist placed the Dark Rebellion XYZ dragon card on his disk and extracted the decryption code from it. With a push of a button, he submitted the code towards Phoebe's dueldisk. "Smart choice. After all, with Roma's demise and Adamants return, you barely have anything left to hold your guild together. Now you at least have some power for yourself, heheh." Phoebe glared down at the XYZ-duelists below. They were forced to surrender throw off their dueldisks.
"But what about you, Cassius? Will you give us your resources freely? Or do we have to be mean?" The Dame asked as she pushed her finger against her cheek. "I will never cooperate!" Cassius roared. "Boo. I was afraid your answer would be something like that.." She snapped her fingers, which Martel down below immediately responded to by grabbing Bakker. "No!" Cassius shouted when the kid mercilessly used his ability on the fusion spy. "Aaaaahh!" Bakkers muffled screams came through as his body was transformed and changed into a mere data card. "You witch!" The synchro-duelist cursed. He would lunge at her if she had been anywhere near him. "Oh I barely touched him. Correct me if I get anything wrong; but the way synchronization works, your friend Bakker will still have a body on the other side of the world. Just like you will." Phoebe aimed her finger at Cassius like a gun. "So say you will work with me, pretty please? I would much rather have here with me, as one big happy family." Cassius held his arms against his side and stood firm. "I will not repeat myself, Dame Phoebe." He had sworn to fight her, no matter on which side of time his mind rested.
"Shame." She pulled her triggerfinger, and Martel activated his power again. "Aaaagh!" The synchro-leader vanished like a flash of light. What remained was the card with the image of his face frozen in defiance.
"Well, glad I did not say no." Ichirou laughed nervously. "Me too! We are going to be best of friends." Phoebe smiled innocently. "Yes, about that. Would it trouble you to share your plan for the world with your new partner? What do you need us to do, take down the barrier?" Not a minute in, and the XYZ-duelist was already fawning at her feet, metaphorically. "Oh I like you. You have no self-respect at all." The girl giggled. "Nah, you don't need to do a thing. The country is better off this way. As for what our plan is to avoid the destruction of the world? Well, we like to be all inclusive. What you need to picture... is what happened to Cassius over there.. on a worldwide scale." That was all the hints she would be giving him for now. "Worldwide?" Ichirou made an intrigued noise.
"Anyway. My friends will round up the rest of the synchro guild. I am sure not all of them will be willing to side with Cassius.. or throw their lives away. Not that we mind either way. As for us.. It is time to open the vaults." The fusion guild already controlled most of dreamworld. Even without the XYZ-guilds help, they would have gotten access to the network itself. All Phoebe needed to do now was to put in the remaining codes on her dueldisk. "Yesss." The codes worked, the hidden files were being decrypted right before her eyes. "I wonder Ichirou. Did your guild truly know what kind of power Dom was hiding?" To pass the time, the guildleader gave her new partner a pop-quiz. "We know plenty; the Gods, the Earthbound, the Numbers. Need I go on?" His replies left a satisfied smirk on the womans face. "You do have a good source then. That's good. It's so rare to find someone these days who appreciates the forgotten.." She was moments away from gaining access now. Uno could look right over her shoulder without a care in the world. With abilities like these, he was not surprised that the Sisters had so much knowledge.
Unfortunately, and cruelly, this showing came to an end. "What.." The people and the castle fell into a haze, as he was pushed back into the door by an invisible force. "Hey Hey. Don't stop now!" Uno grumbled. He definitely wouldn't have cut the scene there. "That is all you needed to see, for context." Cloe's disembodied voice told him. "Context? Context!? Why did you even get me here to begin with? To see what happened to Cassius? He's not my friend!" He protested. "He was once. The past hasn't changed just because your feelings did." Cloe chided him as the gateway opened once more. "I don't recognize this part..." He was in a different area of the castle now, deep inside the mountain. "Emily!" That was when he heard someone shout a familiar name. "Emily?!" It was Akai and others from her guild. They rushed towards a big metal door at the end of a hall.
"Akai?" The duelists opened the door and walked into the room. "Are you okay?" It was the safe room where Cassius had left Emily. "I am alright I think. Wait. What are they doing here!?" Among the duelists here, Emily spotted a few friends of the Circle. "Running away. The fusion guild has taken over. We were headed for the teleporter down below, but Cassius insisted we take you with us." One Circle member claimed. "We're kinda forced to work together, it's either them or those carding monsters up above." Akai did not like this arrangement, but the Circle knew the only way out of this base. "Carding? Fusion Guild? Teleporter? What the hell is going on? Where is Cassius? Where is Alice? Where are my friends?" Emily had been out of the loop for so long, she could not begin to form a coherent picture of the situation. "There's no time to answer all of tha! Cassius is already gone, the Fusion guild wasted him!" Jet shouted. He was already halfway down the hallway. "Cassius is gone?" Emily could not believe what she was hearing. "He isn't dead. Neither are your friends and sister. As far as we can tell, they escaped on their own. Emily, you have a choice. Trust us for now, or take your chances with Phoebe and Ichirou."
That was not much of a choice for her. Emily grunted and got up. She would stick with them for now, as they raced down the elevator shaft to reach Vespers domain. "Thank god she's alright, sorta." Uno could not follow, the background changed once more to bring him a few floors up. "Zach?" There was the other disciple, hunched in a corner of the synchro base, staring dead ahead. Uno didn't understand what had happened to him. Then there was James Brandt, being driven towards an unknown location inside a limousine.. Uno didn't get that either. He also Heather Brandt, frantically arguing with her coworkers about the nations crisis. There were so many in turmoil, and nothing that could be done.
"Even if I could travel back in time, I cannot change the past without destroying the present? Was December right about that?" That was the last vision, all went dark. The door and the library were gone, it was just him and his friends now. "You understand don't you. You aren't seeing this because you can help anyone, you are seeing to this to understand you are too late to affect anything." The sisters were in the shadows. They could still read his thoughts. "You sound just like all the other visitors. They do not understand that time is not kind." Though his questions didn't count until he spoke them out loud.. "The other visitors? Who would.." Uno's mind created a few more of those. "Careful. We let you get away with minor prying while we were answering your first question. That liberty has passed." The unseen Cloe sent him a warning. But this time Uno decided not to take it under advisement. "What did Tempus ask you?"
"Interesting. You never once considered getting back to the very first thing you wanted from us; your name." The little sister let out an odd little laugh, it sounded like a rattlesnake hissing. "I already know what I want. After everything I've seen I can't pretend that I am the most important piece of the puzzle anymore. And besides, what good is knowing my own name gonna do, if I don't have a world to live in anymore?" Tick tock, the clock was still moving. He couldn't go back to save Emily, Dom or Zach in the past world. He would have to move forward, into a new realm. And ultimately, this crisis wouldn't end until Tempus himself was caught. "Well, you are quite good at leaping to where you want to be. You are right, we know Tempus as well.. We know his name." Veronica talked about him as if he was their least favorite person in the universe. "He asked us about a lot of things; the guardians of time, the laws of travel, the identities of his pursuers.. and the limits of his powers. He has come here often, he always knew where to find us."
"Well, then.. I guess this takes me back to my second topic... What are you?"
"We were the yesterdays.." Cloe said. "We are today." Veronica said. "... and you will be the tomorrows. Yeah yeah I get that." Uno answered for Margot, the sister who had yet to speak a word. "You know what I want to hear. Are you real? Are you human? Everything I hear makes it sound like this timeline isn't your first rodeo. And your memory is pretty good too." He wouldn't let them get away with metaphors. He had to know what he was dealing with; where on the power totem pole these ladies rested. "A biological question then. Well, we can answer that with a story." Veronica and Cloe walked out of of a veil of darkness. The darkness had hands, and those hands held a book. "!?" They were standing in the shadow of the last sister. "Once, there was a world where time did not matter, where mans souls gave life to spirits.. and those spirits could grow into gods. There was an age of magic and wonder. But over time, that magic began to wane.. and the spirits faded from the world of man. They became myths and fairytales."
"So..you're spirits?" Uno asked. "Were." Cloe mused. "We are so much more... now." Veronica sighed. "Many stories fit us; fates, witches, goddesses. We can see the now, the before and the after. We write it down, from beginning to end. Some say we even create each destiny, that we control time..." Whether that last part was true or not, they did not say. "..Then what can you do? What do you want?" Uno thought he would have been a little bit wiser after all of this, but he understood even less now. He'd seen part of what they could do; help him regain control of his dragon cards.. of his spirits. Could they do this because they were spirits too? But as he suspected.. ".. There will be no fourth question, Uno." His time was up. "Damn. I really should make a list of top questions one of these days." He assumed that their meetings were not yet at an end, but who could tell without asking? "Don't feel too down on yourself, you still have time left." Veronica laughed, as Uno heard the noise of flipping pages again. "About 89 Pages, Margot would say."
"What?" Uno couldn't help but flinch. The book held by the darkness was his book, with his name on it. "The ending.." The third sister slammed the book shut before Uno could catch a glimpse and tossed it aside. The book never hit the ground; it kept falling. "!" There was no floor, the pit below stretched down indefinitely. "This.." And he dropped into the abyss along with it.
"Oof!"
"Uno!" This was the real world. "I.. We were worried.. You didn't wake up. We didn't know what was going on!" Alice was there, her face looming over his. "Heh.." He couldn't help but smile. "Uno?" She was surprised to see his reaction. "Sorry. I just remembered that this is how we first met. Ergh.. it misses a soft bed though." He lied with his back to the rough soil. "Everyone's here?" He crawled back up and saw Eric and Iria a few feet away. "Yeah.. but where is Here?" Eric did not understand at all what had happened. The streets and the town buildings looked nothing like those of his hometown anymore. "We were swallowed.. by the force of your duel, and brought here. But this location is not a different one." Iria knew they were not teleported distance-wise, since the mountain range was still the exact same. "Did the XYZ guild do all of this?" And the color of the sky had gone from strange to stranger. "No. They didn't." Adamant returned from a quick scouting walk at this point. "Uno.. you know this world as well, don't you?"
"...Yeah." Uno shook his head to get back his senses. "We're in the other timeline."
"This?" Eric gasped. "This is even crazier than I thought." Gone was the barrier. Instead there were curved drones at every angle. And on the horizon there was a majestic city with towers that reached as far as the clouds. The world Eric knew could not create such wonders. "Did you bring us here on purpose?" Iria cursed. This seemed like a setback. "Not on purpose, but it must have been my pendulum who broke through. They did say the barrier between the worlds was at its weakest here." Uno hadn't planned on this. He guessed the sisters had a hand in this too. "But this isn't terrible news, Iria. I know that Emily and Zach are alright for now. But Dom is here somewhere. So is UNO. I have a feeling the fusion guild will come here too eventually. All roads lead to this world. Isn't that right, Adamant?" Besides Uno, the XYZ duelist was probably the one with the most knowledge about this timeline. "That is correct. Now that a guild has all three keycards, the next step is to take the legendary cards that Dom hid inside his network. With those, the duelists from our world will fight the duelists of this world. The winners will be judged, and the losers will have their world destroyed. At least, that is what I believe.. That was what I planned."
"That? That sounds insane. And how can you be so sure that Zach is alright? What did you see?" Though Iria enjoyed the thought of finding her master. Even she could not free herself from worrying about her fellow disciple. "I saw it. And I trust what I see." Uno grabbed his pendulum. "Alice. I am going to make everything better. For you too. I will find a way to save the two worlds, to save your family, and to make sure you can stay in them." That was another promise he intended to keep. "I.." Despite the tears underneath her eyes, Alice finally found a smile inside herself. "Thank you.." She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. "I'm glad I met you Uno, no matter what!" Uno took a deep breath and ran his hand through her hair. "Me too.. Me too." He looked ahead, to the new world. "Well.. this is home."
...
Far away, at the top of the tallest cloud-piercing building in the middle of the greatest city, a light just like Uno's lit up. A figure walked to the window that looked out over the world, holding a pendant in her hand. "What is it, milady?" A servant walked up to her, noticing her concerns. "It... is Uno. He is alive. And he has come back."
(To be Continued in The Rise and Fall of History Part II)