A Japanese Weresheep in Mutsuba Town
Author's Note: Time for a new pairing! Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of the Yu-Gi-Oh! GO RUSH! series.
Pairing: Developing Yuhi x Chupataro.
Summary:
There are some forms of alien activity even MIK turns a blind eye to. The truly alien activity between Chupataro and Ohdo Yuhi, for instance.
Chapter 52: On the Night…
A shrinking Velgear.
A world eternally at war.
War isn't a game. War is bloody and unremitting. And if winning the war necessitated weaponizing a card game very popular among Earth's elementary school children, Zuwijo would display no regrets.
This was false.
It was somebody's game.
They were the pawns. His Karutumata.
But from this, a love between fellows rising above it. Blossoming on the battlefield called Rush Duels.
Disagreements, physical and philosophical, blown away to reveal a vibrant understanding.
Love is true. And if Velgearians could love, their lives weren't meaningless and false.
The Creator was wrong.
Mitsuko knows she should be happy for Yudias. She is – but she can't help but feel jilted.
Mitsuko loved Zuwijo, and it was Yudias who finally got through to him. It was he who cut to the heart of it and stirred Zuwijo's distant heart by fusing his, Yuamu, and Yuhi's hearts.
"WAR TO ZEN! TWINS MADE MOI!"
The twins made me.
Yuamu and Yuhi made Yudias. Their bonds provided him purpose, not the giant machinations of the Creator.
What was gained setting these events in motion? By pitting the Velgearians against their enemies in a war with no end? Their own gigantomachia?
They might never know.
Until Zuwijo revealed the truth in defiance of the vision in his head, the truth that Velgearians were artificially engineered lifeforms wasn't meant to come to light. They were supposed to be unaware, reusable puppets.
Or was that also preordained?
Zuwijo didn't learn the truth. It was told to him.
By him, that guy. No, not that guy. Some other guy.
The Creator's objectives were as tangible as a hologram.
"As of today, I'm a free woman!" Mitsuko proclaims to Yuna and Rovian, shovelling BBQ parfait down her throat.
"That's the spirit!"
Goha Yuna got along better with girls. This was fact. Ask her to invite a boy to girls' night, you were in for an earful!
Yuna wasn't done savouring Rovian's return yet.
Yuna hadn't whacked the Rovian Bandits nearly enough times to get them to extol their queen's comeback either.
Mitsuko's worried she's the token third wheel now. First Yudias and Zuwijo, and now Yuna and Rovian.
"Do-do-do-don't diminuendo, pa-papaya," Rovian lyricizes. "Row, row, row your boat, a cappella."
"Rovian-sama says to do what you have to do to get over Zuwijo."
"What I have to do? I'm ordering thirds!"
…
Chupataro reflected mutely on Velgear's 8th and only undestroyed planet from the rusty windowsill of the Black Goat, the signs of attack and the planet itself growing smaller and smaller the farther the Great King of Terror's spaceship towed Mutsuba Town from the conflict.
Yudias wasn't coming with them back to Earth. He chose to shoulder the cruel fate of the Velgearians and fight with Zuwijo, Dinois, and Muda at his side to forge a brighter future for the galaxy, and that left Chupataro paradoxically hollow.
They were friends on diverging roads. Every last one of them who'd ever had anything to do with Yudias since he came to Earth, drifting farther and farther from him each passing moment.
"It's all right. Just tonight, I'll look the other way."
"Chupa?"
"You're down cuz the cute guy you like walked off into the sunset with Zuwijo, aren't ya?" Yuhi's covering the pain in his way, but he can't keep it together. "Just tonight…I'll look the other way."
"NO, CHUPA!"
"No?"
He wasn't denying his crush on Yudias. He was –
"Don't look away, chupa! You're –!"
Misery loves company. But Chupataro loves Yuhi, and Yuhi loves Chupataro. Chupataro liked Yudias, but he loved Yuhi!
What makes something real? If it breathes and thinks, is it alive, and does it have agency?
Could something that did neither be real?
Was the link between them real?
"I see you, Chupataro," Yuhi breathed.
Chupa… Chupataro thought.
"Hey, Chupataro?"
"What, chupa?"
Yuhi suddenly snatched Chupataro up in a hug. "I'm back…"
The legitimate smile Chupataro fought for slowly coalesced. "W-welcome home, chupa."
Home?
Yes. This was home. The Black Goat, Yuhi's home away from home.
And Chupataro…Yes, he was Yuhi's home.
"Why are you crying, cabra?" Chupataro is crying too.
"I'm – You're the crybaby, Chupataro!" Yuhi doesn't give Chupataro an inch in his death grip.
"Where's Damamu, chupa?"
"At UTS. Tazaki-san is keeping watch. MIK wanted to have a look at Damamu for science."
"If they try anything with Damamu, Chupa will –!"
"Manabu's doin' the checkup himself, and Ranran swore there'd be no funny business. Someone's protective, huh?"
"Shouldn't Chupataro, chupa? Damamu's our –!"
"No, Chupataro, Damamu's our younger sibling. As in Yuamu and my younger sibling. To you, Damamu's –"
"You're still on the sibling thing, chupa? Is the resemblance not uncanny enough, cabra?"
Yuhi gritted his teeth. "Shut it, Crybaby Chupataro."
And shut it, he did.
Their reunion didn't have the trappings of Yudias and Zuwijo's. There was no face-to-face in space. No break in the music. No field of flowers made vivid by the Earthdamar, overflowing with the light of two colliding stars. No petals dancing in the hues of an eclipse. No climactic pause with a sword pointed at one's throat. No open confession (one wasn't needed). No winds of change.
None of the preceding seven.
But in Chupataro's dank apartment, just the two of them, it was just as intimate.
A chapter was ending, and a new chapter soon beginning.
Time to turn the page.
On the night of a large and hardly recognizable full moon
A Duelist
will carve open an unknown path
and become a guiding beacon for the world
The King of…