The beeping sounds coming from the various life support machines surrounding the bedridden person in front of him felt uncanny. It felt strange... seeing the person looking so frail and hurt. Not that he had ever seen the person get hurt as badly as this in the past, but right now... seeing Keiwa unconscious like this just didn't sit well with him.

Michinaga grabbed a stool to sit down beside the bed. He bit his lips as he stared at the bandages wrapped around Keiwa's neck. The memories of what happened earlier were still so fresh in his mind. In order to get the collar off Keiwa's neck, Ace actually used their Magnum Shooter to break the collar apart. While the move did allow them to take the collar off and stop Keiwa from continuing to be moved like a broken puppet, the bullet still barely grazed the side of Keiwa's neck. And who knows just how much damage the collar had done to Keiwa.

Neon had spoken about how Girori used to control Win during an earlier DGP extra round and Win himself had explained further about how Girori used to do the same thing to some of the staff members that had tried to rebel against them. Win had told them how helpless he used to feel—not being able to control their own movements—and he couldn't have imagined how Keiwa would've felt having been used like a tool like that.

Michinaga took hold of Keiwa's left arm as he traced the rapidly darkening bruise around the latter's wrist with his fingers. Jitt had only kept Keiwa confined for barely a day, but already the guy was hurt this much. Tsumuri had told them that Jitt used to chain her up in that same way and Win had backed her statement saying that he saw it with his own eyes, but compared to the state Keiwa was in right now... Tsumuri barely had any scratch on her let alone any bruise. Either it was because Tsumuri wasn't quite human herself or Jitt had only inflicted mental torture on her to wear her down, he couldn't help thinking that what happened to Keiwa was a bit too extreme.

If Jitt was really the type to inflict mental torture on their victims more than hurting them physically, he had to wonder if before this... that guy had done the same thing to Keiwa as well. After all, Keiwa's personality had really changed a lot in the past few weeks. No, a lot of things had changed in that guy starting from the time they found out about Ace's mother. And Michinaga couldn't deny that he himself played a role in all of this mess they're in right now.

xxx

He let out a long sigh. It's been long since he last thought about that time when he had supposedly 'died' in Ace's arms back then... long ago during the last proper DGP round he was part of. Afterwards, after he had somehow managed to still be 'alive' yet not quite alive, stuck between being human and Jyamato. Back then his mind had been full of darkness and negative thoughts, it took him a while before he could pull himself out of that darkness.

Somehow out of the blue... he wondered if 'dying' during any of the past DGP rounds changed something inside of them.

Michinaga thought about the time he had 'killed' Keiwa during the Heaven & Hell round... as well as when he had dragged Ace to their 'demise' just because he wanted to get his hands on Niram's Vision Driver as well as take down his bitter rival. He never really spared much thought about it before, but back then when Geats had reappeared during his fight with Chirami... he did notice that something had changed in Geats. The guy had stopped playing around and got pretty serious. The same... should be for Tycoon, right?

He never really thought much about it—heck when that time he had gone looking for Tycoon after Geats had stopped the Grand End, he never really asked the man about it—how did... Tycoon came back to life? He sighed again.

Had he known about that—no, had he bothered to get to know Tycoon better—could things have occurred differently between them?

All these times, he never really understood why Tycoon was what he always had been. He couldn't understand how Tycoon could be so naive and trusting... and why that person kept on fighting even after finding out the real truth behind the DGP games and still wanted the games to continue to make sure that the wish they wanted was fulfilled.

In a way, he could perhaps understand Keiwa's position... having lost someone very dear to him to the DGP. Yet on the other hand, unlike Keiwa... he had never known what it was like to have a family. Or even had any inclination towards caring about other people unrelated to him. So he never really understood why Keiwa was so desperate to have his wish to 'save' all of the victims of the DGP be granted. Shouldn't Keiwa realise that in order for his great wish to be granted, someone else's happiness would have to be sacrificed in return?

But perhaps he was wrong for trying to condemn Keiwa for trying to do something that he himself had done. Didn't he also sacrifice Keiwa's happiness, Ace's... as well as all those innocent bystanders caught by chance during the last Heaven & Earth round, just to make himself the Jyamato Grand Prix's Jyamashin and have his own wish granted? What right does he have to assume that he had a higher moral high ground compared to Keiwa?

.

He thought back about the last conversation he had with Keiwa back at the Gang Rider base. Back then, had he actually tried his best to regain Keiwa's trust in him (and Ace) could things have happened differently? Had he actually tried to find out the truth about what had happened to Sakurai Sara (instead of 'killing' all those other people that have been turned into Jyamato) and found out that there was a way to save Sara without sacrificing Tsumuri, he could have stopped Keiwa from handing Tsumuri over to the management and be turned into a secondary Goddess.

Michinaga recalled all of the times he used to remind Keiwa that the two of them were enemies in this almost unending rounds of death battle games. Back then, no matter how hard he tried to push Keiwa away from him... to not let the two of them get too close (because Keiwa always made him think about Tohru and that always hurt him inside) Keiwa never gave up wanting to become friends with him. Yet, when the time came when he did want to become allies with the guy... like a curse that came back to bite him back, Keiwa did end up treating him as an enemy.

"There WAS a way to save your sister! But you ruined that when you wrecked this world with that foolish wish of yours!"

Back then... he had screwed up pretty badly. What he wanted to say back then—because he himself had his own share of making his own foolish decisions, he didn't want Keiwa to fall into the same trap. And unlike before, it's possible for them to try to undo the damage that has been done with Ace's power. But what he ended up doing was blaming Keiwa for all of the bad things that had happened after Keiwa changed the world.

Michinaga blanched at himself. He really had screwed up everything.

"I'm sorry... Tycoon."

He placed a hand on Keiwa's arm as Michinaga let out a soft sigh.

Please wake up so that I can make up for all the wrongs that I've done to you...

A/N: /sigh. I'm never at my best at writing thoughtful Miichi 8D. Dude not much to using his head to think about complicated stuff after all...