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❝ Oh this is no simple nightmare. ❞ — Number 96.)
Ink drips from heavenward and quakes the stars.
Rippling from the disturbance, the puddle is left less reflective. Losing the star-speckled scene it plagiarized from the sky.
More rainwater trickles from the ebony railing and strikes the small pool, as if to taunt; the sky will not be outdone by a cheap replica between concrete.
Delta City station is small and roofless. Unlucky for a week brimmed with storm.
With a low, electric hum, a train slows to halt.
Pleasant chimes echo the line of white railcars, doors opening one after another. An automated voice welcomes the passengers, and dozens of baggage wheels click over the damp walkway tiles as everyone exits. Ticketbots file through the crowd, dispensing new tickets or offering directions where needed.
Above the flurry, on the head of the train's final carriage — a shadow sits perched.
Blinking a bright eye at the city they'd arrived in.
Small. Older. Perhaps less technologically up-to-date. Tucked within a near perfectly triangular vale between hills.
It is nothing like Heartland City.
It is just what he is looking for.
Light won't glimpse the horizon for another hour, so for now all is quiet. Everything is masked in dark grey smog. The air perfumes itself in downpour, fresh with the nip of pine needle from the nearby hills. Wind blows showers off the awnings to pellet unsuspecting travelers as they passed. The shadow snickers. Fools.
He slinks over the edge of the carriage, easing himself airborne and into a hover atop the crowd.
Flying has been an effective travel means (certainly convenient) but Black Mist would admit he'd gotten quickly bored. Clouds on clouds weren't a stimulating view in the first place, but the lack of directional cues kept getting him turned around. He wasn't going to reach his destination that way.
Not that he had one.
Once he'd touched back down on earth, he found a few buses and trains to 'hitch' himself to. Following different vehicles like hopscotch across the country.
Where they were headed didn't matter so much as the distance they were helping put between him and the envoy.
No set destination. No plan. Black Mist had just needed out of there and so he did what he had to. Taking care of himself. Always first. Always alone.
Wherever he was meant to stop, he would know when he found it.
And like always, he was right.
This was freedom.
That airship had been a prison.
Within the crank of gears and churning metal, there was no silence. Loud and unnervingly omnipresent. Madness stuck in amber clockwork, unable to be unleashed. Only felt. Brushing under skin like tides again and again.
The envoy and whispers of the other Numbers were never far, either. In the way one knows another's breath in a room overlapping their's.
Black Mist knew them even in the cage of his Pillar.
For weeks, he was plagued in this mania. Until a change.
It was small, but being entombed within the airship had it's singular perk — being too well tuned into everything to miss a change. The rhythm of the structure had offset, musicality of ambience once so constant and familiar — the very heartbeat of the mechanism — had nearly entirely vanished.
The envoy's musings beside his Numbers' Pillars were lengthening day by day. He too must had noticed the air amiss.
A few times, Astral would rush to the number pillars, and encase himself with the memories already collected. Striving for something. Searching.
The other Numbers whispered their usual secrets, feeding scattered syllables into Astral's mind until a headache likely had birthed from their invasion. Patience was not a virtue Number memories held in much practice, persistent in their will to aid the original understand what remained beyond his grasp.
Black Mist could never stay aware long enough to determine if the envoy found anything searched for. Number 96's pillar prison was still intact, his soul left to brood and rot inside. Angry, fitful, from the result of their most recent quarrel, but locked away.
He got pieces, though.
Chaos. Barian World. Rank-Up cards. New threats. New allies. A war of worlds.
Some he knew, a lot he learned. Much as he hated to dive into the chants of the Memories and allow himself into Astral's mind with them, it at least was keeping Black Mist mostly up-to-date.
It took some time (too long, for what allowed him to rot inside that pillar) but eventually Black Mist gained enough intel and wherewithal to offer some strike of deal with Astral.
One that he, naturally, had been able to execute perfectly. Pushing all the right buttons of his envoy, and tossing in a delightful pinch of peril towards the brat.
All of that to end up here. Free.
There can't be a Number in this city, he's certain. Astral has no reason to follow him here. It's a blank slate. Ripe for ruining. And it's all his.
"These buildings are boring, mama!" Squeals one of the tiny humans — a child — from below, kicking puddles as it crosses the street. Its parent tries to shush it, but it carries on just as loud, "Can we go back to Heartland? Everything was rainbow and pretty there!"
Boring, huh? Black Mist had noted it was far less flashy than Heartland, but Delta must be overall pallid by comparison too.
Not that he can see it. Thanks to the achromatism inherited from the envoy.
One of the more insufferable attributes of Astral that transferred over when Black Mist used him to make a body. Undoubtably intentional programming by Astral's maker, meant to further heighten focus or deliberation in dueling — or something narrow and stupid like that. It didn't make seeing the world in monochrome any further acceptable.
Cards had hue. But that was it.
Well, cards and other aliens.
And the brat, his memory adds. That boy was unexplainably in color as well.
Arcing higher to a rooftop view, Black Mist swerves between buildings and satellite fixtures. He is on the hunt now.
Humans cannot produce enough chaos to offer power to him on their own, but if he gets ahold of one for possession, he can fester their negative energy into something better to feed on. All he needs is a victim mildly upset.
Number 96's languid flight through the inner neighborhoods quickly starts to feel repetitive, so he widens his scope.
A few areas catch his glance while he appraises the metropolis. A tall hotel, one of those abandoned casinos, some factories near the forest edge, and an old rundown library. Hardly anything stop-worthy.
Due to the odd hour, most of the people are in the middle of rest. Their consciousnesses incapacitated until morning, as is necessary for them to replenish energy. What a bore. Truly an entire planet of utter weaklings.
If he's going to make this city his playground, he wants to take someone who was actually a resident here. Someone with influence to abuse, or a stable life that Black Mist can have fun uprooting. It doesn't suit his interest to fly back and find those train passengers again, most of them were visitors or holiday-goers, and — based on the hours he'd had to listen to their idle prattles — none of them were interesting. The greatest sin of all.
Opportunity shines on him at last when he flies near a neighborhood of villas. The largest of which is hosting a cacophonous and trashy party, and it's there that he spots a lead.
The whole villa is alive with noise and booze and lights and people, but the one that's caught his eye is clearly trying to exit the premises. Shouting and waving rude gestures at another person who tried to follow them down the driveway, but the first human continues to stalk away from the scene in a huff until reaching the streets. Pure, archaic energy radiating from their form.
Black Mist ducks out of sight onto a close building, tailing his target in a half flight half crawl across the roofs. This goes on for a few blocks. The lights of the party house fade to dreary shopping nooks and pitch dark alleyways.
Letting his legs melt against the stucco, Black Mist peers down over the roof siding.
The human is evidently a woman. Adult. Dressed in flashy and gaudy materials (no risk of losing track of her even after dark with all those awful sequins). Her gait was more temperamental leaving the party, but there remains a silent wrath of chaos emulating from her.
Now that he's locked onto it, it drawls him in like a horsefly. Anger. Envy.
And it's him who will deliver the final blow — malice.
Black Mist rises, eclipsing the moon. A stain against the glowing silver. A fitting echo to when he'd forced himself born, snuffing out the light of his enemy.
Now, his next beginning has started, uninhibited by self-righteous doe-eyed opposition.
A grin, ugly and wide, splits across his face.
Oh it feels good to be him.
The shadow of his body swallows the woman's back as he dives. Making himself known only in time to hear a scream before he takes his prey.
— Instead, there's no scream, and Mist feels something inside splice.
And then he topples right through her.
He splatters against the ground, liquified and oozing around himself in angry serpent movements before rebuilding his body. His yellow eye pushes open through the oil first, the rest of his sneer quickly following as his visage settles.
The woman fishes a small compact from her bag to check her lips and teeth. Unaffected.
Black Mist snarls as he jumps at her again.
Same result. Whisking beyond her like an mirage. His claws won't grasp into her soul, refusing to let him in. That small heartbeat of chaos teases him as he comets around the human. The Number might as well be diving through a pocket of humidity. Able to sense where the entry should be, but somehow, isn't.
She cannot see him. And more urgently, he can not possess her.
What damn trickery is this?
Approaching with curiosity rather than ambush this time, the malign Number experimentally lifts his hand in front of her face and snaps his fingers.
She squints into her little mirror and then closes it, satisfied.
He swipes her face. No flinch. No marks. His touch is smoke.
The woman adjusts herself and carries onward into the night, Black Mist is so bewildered that he doesn't even think to follow her again. So Black Mist is left alone.
What the hell is going on?
He's not supposed to be invisible or intangible to humans. He's not Astral!
Black Mist looks for himself in the reflection of the nearest building windows. Most of him usually blends into the night, but his more striking features — his eye, markings, jewels — should starkly stand out against the dark.
He stares hard into the glass.
A vague, fathomless shape inside an abyss of nothing. Like a photograph taken wrong.
His anger and confusion confound into a storm. Emotion heightening his chaos levels.
Why is he invisible.
Why can't he take control of someone?
He growls, searching for more of himself in the reflection. Then pauses. Catching a faint movement.
A wisp, just across from where his reflection's hip would be. The brief reflection of something else. Something behind him. Across the street.
Heat floods the aura seeping off his skin, sharpening the ebbs of their flow.
Black Mist isn't immediately sure why his senses react that way, so he peers over his shoulder.
A figure, just a human, sidesteps down an opposite street out of view.
There had been something odd about it in the reflection, some detail, but it drifted away like a vapor before his mind could grasp what.
Never that mind. Another human, another shot. His anger will make the possession easier.
Black Mist lifts across the street like a flying ghoul and pursues the human.
Another turn into a side path sandwiched between two buildings. Two alone in a dark alley now.
Black Mist is prowled, shoulders hanging low. Completely hiding from sight of the mortal, serpent shadows rising off the number's skin as he finds his way to the wall behind the human.
He tests a low snarl, and the stranger stops. Their head ticking in that way Black Mist knows means they heard it.
The simple indication calms all the previous tumult he'd felt. There, see? That last possession attempt was a fluke. It'd solved itself, now he can get on with it. More harm, more foul.
Since he's back in business, Black Mist puts some care into surveying his new prey. They are male, a bit tall for his taste, but with a nice build as a saving grace. Likely a young man freshly primed into his youth. Though the jacket made it a little hard to tell.
Nevertheless, the idea of having a physicality advantage over others sounds delectable, curling a grin back onto the Number's face. He has always wanted to try using a stronger vessel to throw a punch, it looked fun.
The human hasn't moved again or tried to investigate, so Black Mist decides to cut to the chase.
A feeler unfurling out the side of his leg. He breathes out some chuckles, slowing raising them louder so that his echoes consume the whole street. "Didn't you know?…" He singsongs, delighted when he sees the human freeze and turn.
Black Mist chooses that moment to bleed from the shadows and strike, cackling, "Curiosity killed the cat!"
Golden eyes.
"And satisfaction brought it back." Finishes the stranger, one fist out. And Black Mist's feeler caught inside it.
The Number blanches.
Gold. That was the strange detail he hadn't properly processed in the reflection before.
Surprise stifles his reaction time of yanking his tentacle back, which brews another snarl. A real one this time.
The human flashes a strange — smirk? Smile? The Number doesn't know. But it's crooked to one side, and is immediately the most aggravating thing Black Mist has ever seen.
So this guy, what, isn't human? The gold Black Mist is currently seeing would certainly suggest not.
Eyes in color. Damn it all. His attack seemed sloppy and novice because he'd been expecting a weak opponent.
Black Mist wiggles his feeler, shaking off the disgusting sensation of those fingers. "A lucky catch, I'll give you that. But I'll make you regret ever touching me."
Two tentacles shoot at the stranger.
The first is dodged, and the second is almost grabbed again. Black Mist snaps the makeshift limb away from enemy reach before that can happen.
"If you wanna continue this song and dance, we should go back to that party." The smile-smirking not-human says. "They have music."
Oh, great. And a wise guy of all things too. "Your quips won't do much against this!" Black Mist hisses as his legs bloom into a small mass of tentacles. Readying.
The reminder of his previous possessing failure, and admission that this bastard's been following him since then, pisses the Number off even more.
"Not one to shy from overkill," The stranger notes, sticking to that aggravating fly boy attitude. "I've not even given a name yet."
"A dead man's name has no use to me."
"Cute." The other tugs his shirt collar loose from his jacket. "But my intention here isn't actually to fight you, 96. I want to talk."
Did he know him? "This is hardly a fight," Black Mist counters. Having his sharp tentacles surround the man. The Number hadn't broken a figurative sweat. "And do not call me that word! I despise that."
"96? You prefer Black Mist?"
"'Cute'." The number growls.
"Why thank you." The about-to-be-dead-man says.
And here come the claws. Grown, morphed into grizzly exaggerations from wrath. Beastly claws like his numbersake.
The razor jet of tentacles race forward in a fury, and connect with skin - tearing it off the stranger's hand with a spike of blood. The not-human covers the nasty cut with a fist.
Try to grab me again now, see what happens, Black Mist taunts silently.
A beat. Then the slanted smirk broadens in reply. "Touché."
The appendages are swallowed back and part into Black Mist's regular legs. "How is it that you know of me?"
Golden eyes glance up and crinkle, "Ah, well. You're looking at our world's most devilish archangel."
"This is not my world." Black Mist interjects with disgust, not understand what any of that meant.
"And it's not mine either."
One of Black Mist's eyes slowly gets more squinted than the other.
"Jey," The golden eyed bastard says, "That's my name."
"Haven't heard of you, and I care even less, angel." Black Mist drawls, interest waning. If he could not posses this fool then he had to keep looking.
"Oh don't call me that." The smirk gets broader, "I despise that."
This guy is lucky Black Mist is too done to keep attacking. "Funny. I'll be taking my leave now. I refuse to waste any more of my time arguing with a Barian."
Jey slides his shoulder along the alley wall. "Good thing you aren't arguing with one, then."
Oh?
"Though you're not the first floating being to assume that."
Oh? Maybe this was interesting after all.
Black Mist's voice oozes from his lips, slow as syrup. "You're one of those new recent allies of Astral's." The secret spying he'd done inside the pendant coming in handy once more. "Now what could you want with little old me~? Trouble in paradise~?"
Jey's smile doesn't lose coyness, but his eyes do. "What makes you think there's trouble?"
"Oh please, this sounds of textbook runaway."
"I'm not one for reading."
"Then I'll spell it out. You're not here on Astral's terms. I happen to know he's not into sending lackeys." Too busy following the brat's example and making humans his friends. Ughh.
"…No," Jey mutters in seeming agreement to Black Mist's words, "..He's one for formalities."
Okay. Whatever that means.
"You're right. I'm here on my own terms." Jey tugs his jacket further down his injured arm. "And there.. have been problems. That's why I'm here."
The silver earrings jingle and clink from Black Mist tilting his head. So go on, he thinks. Talk.
Jey's face finally shed of that damn smirk in trade for a tired expression."I've recently discovered I'm not suited for their rules and morals. All that war talk got lost on me. So I got out. Came looking for somewhere, or someone, who can better help me spread my wings."
It is clear by his pauses that there are details left out and being harbored close to chest. But the Number can feel the delicious energy of betrayal simmering off the other too.
Black Mist cannot believe what he is hearing.
It fosters a wide grin across his face. Suddenly feeling maliciously giddy.
"You left." His voice rises as his clarifying question turning into cruel mirth. Black Mist crosses one arm and sets a finger on his cheek teasingly. "Abandoned dear-old-Astral and his gaggle of weaklings, to find me?"
Oh this was too perfect.
Jey is clearly not thrilled by Black Mist's choice of summary, but he nevertheless assents, "I needed someone who doesn't see the worlds so black and white."
Black Mist laughs. "Then I have unfortunate news for you."
"Figuratively." Jey adds, and that smirk-smile's back.
Which dampens Black Mist's own amusement but just slightly. Not enough to choke his laughter. This is still a great day. Astral's new apparent fly boy companion has abandoned him during the apex of their world's war, probably due to some ridiculous and frivolous teenage drama.
"And what would I benefit from such a thing? What makes you think I would accept having you as my underling?"
"We would be partners."
"No," Black Mist says.
A roll of sharp gold eyes. "Alright. Equals, adjacent, but not together."
"Absolutely no." The number states, smirking. "We are not equals. We never shall be."
The tall male shakes his head with a wry laugh. "Is this still cause I grabbed your thing earlier?"
"That 'thing' was my appendage, a self extension, which I will happily bring back out to make you bleed more for your insolence. I cannot be taken for a fool. You may not be here as those brats' spy, but you're not subservient to me nor under my possession. So I can't use you."
"A control freak? And here I was told you were Astral's opposite."
"I know your type." Black Mist interrupts with a dismissive hand flick, irked. "Just like your old 'pals', big bark little bite. You wouldn't last two minutes with me."
"Yeah?" Jey simpered, "C'mere, start counting."
Is this bastard trying to use the same method of intimidation he's mastered? Black Mist had tailored his more threatening personality to be the optimal pressure against Astral's nature. Where did this guy learn it? And why use it on him?
The Number's teeth grit to the point of numb ache. If anyone dares to think they can assert power over the No.96 Black Mist, they are dead mistaken.
"While I commend you for backstabbing Astral so hilariously by pursuing me, if your proposal is not to rub that fact in his face — we are done here."
"I'm offering a deal. Keep me out of that group's path, and as tribute, I'll make sure Astral can't hurt you. The Barians might be taking priority, but you and I both know Astral isn't going to just let you roam here forever. "
"I don't need protection from him, he needs it from Me." Black Mist hisses. "And Astral already freed me, idiot."
"Has he?" Jey asks slowly.
Incredulity and rage boils over the dark being's expression. "What?!"
A hand clutched into the hollow essence of his chest. Squeezing to feel the beat of the number card fueling his power.
Why could he not possess that woman? Not infect her deck and slip into her heart unnoticed?
Why was he unseen in reflections like never before?
Black Mist stares.
"Are you saying that Astral did something to me?!" The idea rages inside his head, sweeping hot anger across the rest of him.
In the key, Astral had unlocked Black Mist from his confines, but to fully unleash him — in all his power — it would be a risk.
Astral does not do risk.
Deal on Yuma's life or not.
He slams a plume of tentacles onto the concrete with a resounding boom that makes even the 'archangel' bristle.
"WHAT DID HE DO?" Black Mist demands, but the other just surrenders hands to convey he doesn't know either.
Harsh, enraged exhales of chaos leave his lips and stain the air hot. His face distorts in deep scowls. "…I take it this must amuse you."
"Am I supposed to feel a way about your situation? You got half way across the world while somehow physically incomplete."
Black Mist snarls at him.
"What would that feel like? Missing a limb? Be hard to not notice, one'd think."
Black Mist slams tentacles into Jey's chest.
"Maybe it feels like that," Black Mist purrs.
Jey stumbles and catches the wall with his elbow, swiping a knuckle against the side of his lip. His clear pain delights the Number for a moment.
But this was real trouble. He is certain his card-self would appear and obey him inside the sphere of a duel, it has to, but what good did that even do him when nobody can be challenged. He is a ghost.
He'd have to duel someone and win in order to taint their heart directly. . .
Black Mist looks at the not-human.
Jey senses the stare and gives him that half smile. "Thinking about another dance?"
The golden eyed stranger isn't designated an answer, except for another growl. But it's not a lie, he can't keep wrestling this fool til daybreak, that wouldn't bless Black Mist's problems.
Black Mist faces the archangel again, lips pulled into his most untrustworthy smile.
"Fun as this has been, I have to go see about some important wrought of destruction, and planning the demise of a certain loathsome enemy who scammed me."
Before Jey can protest, or say anything really, Black Mist pushes up into the sky. Spiraling upwards away from the alley, and towards the early morning peaking out between the clouds. Flying in zigzags of violet lightning across the city.
He flies until the chaos-burn in his face is mistaken for whips of wind, and his nails itch with the desire to rip something apart.
Astral did something. Altered his power. Altered him.
The mantra rolls repetitive in his thoughts, making him feel murderous.
His process is going to be a frustrating nightmare to achieve now. He's no longer a blank number, so a human can't just pick him up and have their heart corrupted as per their own personal wickedness. The No.96 card is stone-set. And thanks to whatever Astral apparently did to him, Black Mist isn't able to possess humans freely now either.
The fly boy's judgmental sass was rolling his thoughts too. Taunting still how Black Mist could not have realized. How he didn't notice something so big had been amiss.
Black Mist slashes and hits random rooftop trinkets and satellite dishes as he angrily flies, which of course do nothing to them but act as a vague smoke touch. Destroying nothing, but feeding into his wrath.
Pondering further on it, he can see where it may have been a touch overzealous to just anticipate the envoy would roll over and humbly accept losing a number card.
Black Mist thought he'd pinned Astral pretty good by drawing attention to the brat's safety in the pendant. Extra insurance. Bargaining through manipulation. He is something of a professional at it.
But no, everything just had to fall apart before it even began.
He needs to be given time to think.
He spots one of the locations he came across earlier — the rundown library.
The evil Number flies low with decision to refuge within the dilapidated walls. Ghosting through the jagged, broken stained glass window at the center entrance.
He lets his feet touch onto the broken wood flooring, holding himself there in partial flight. Imitating the look of someone standing.
The library is a infection of age and wilt, black and grey and white.
Outside, birds chirp the arrival of dawn.
Black Mist stays there, a specter in a dead place of knowledge.
The wood under his feet is glossy. Veiled in a thin cast of dust, but mirroring underneath.
In that underneath, where he is, there is a deeper stain of darkness. A spot, hazy from dust, hazy from him, it is the most his reflection can offer. A poor replication of himself.
Black Mist hardens his jaw and averts his eyes.
Some kind of proper plan is required. If he has to go back to Heartland City like a dog with its tail tucked, begging Astral for the unlock of what was altered—
No. No. He'd quite literally rather die.
But what are his other options?
"No.96…"
The strange voice is whispered along the dust.
Somewhere near the half collapsed staircase, a shuffle.
"You truly don't quit," The number growled, "Go away or I'll cut your neck this time!"
Not-human as Jey may be, that's still rather fast to have already found him. A narrowing of mismatched eyes and the Number is blending beside the dark corners.
A tilt of head, craning for view beyond some rows of bookshelves.
"Trying to play cat and mouse?" He asks.
"Mine… My No.96."
Black Mist's stare sharpens. Hackles raising.
From out of the stairway concave, shambles a man.
Not the fly boy, more than ever obvious.
This one is gangly and visibly exhausted, but excited. Eyes alight with relieve towards the Number.
The ugly creature coughs, "No.96… At long last. Reunited! Now, now my sickness-!"
This human male is somewhere in late youth like Jey, but the streaks of lighter grey in his hair disconcert whatever his true age is. The way he walks is odd, too. Shuffling, tripping, reminiscent to a puppet on strings.
Black Mist makes a noise in his throat, tossing his head towards the ceiling, earrings clinking and snapping around from the movement. "Could this be a human willingly desiring possession? Is this night finally turning in my favor?"
"To me," The wild human says, reaching a shaking arm forward, features no longer in the dark. "Come back to me!"
"Ahh," Black Mist realizes, "You were my first possession, weren't you?"
In the direct moonlight, it's easier to tell. The vague familiarity in the other's dull unassuming appearance has struck its chord. The very one which had plucked up his Number and formed his card self's base identity.
What had been the deck again? Zombies? No, that's just the human's current likeness. It was something in that vein, though . . .
"Gyrms," Black Mist snaps his fingers. A smug lean closer, tapping his long nails down his chin. "Right~ The health inspector obsessed with his own non-existent illnesses."
"I am Chihaya." The man reminds his former parasite, voice rasped from coughing. "I challenge you to a duel!"
How fitting.
Black Mist scoffs with amusement and rears into a dueling stance. "I accept!"
It is only after Chihaya yanks his d-pad from its belt latch that Black Mist finds himself once more run into a tiny issue.
He has no deck.
His duel disk will materialize fine when he beckons it, but as for the matter of cards…
That was half the reason he desired possession over a person in the first place.
Without a human servant at beck and call, one who owned a deck for him to use, it was impossible to initiate himself in duels. No way to XYZ summon his card self.
Well-timed, the front door suddenly barges.
The hinges strain from an outside impact. And then the whole thing breaks open on second try. In stumbling a self-described 'archangel'.
Chihaya braces belatedly, his lungs wheezing out more phlegm into his filthy sleeves. His murky eyes never leave Black Mist, however. Trained on the Number's visage like he is some cure to ailment.
Jey gives the scene a once-over and hums something indiscernible under his breath.
Black Mist feels a twitching sensation up near his temple, and pointedly does not spare the arriver a glance.
"You're fast." Jey notes without trace of exhaustion.
"I thought you weren't one for reading." Black Mist lowly mutters.
Fly boy moves some steps closer to him, each footfall clapping short echo troves up the several library floors. The gold in his eyes shifting dark under every shadow passed.
The light in the tarnished library is slowly seeping brighter. Beyond the stained glass shining above, there will be birdcalls and cars humming and a city slowly waking.
Jey jabs a thumb towards the unwell man across the foyer, questioning; "New friend?"
The reply he gets is almost snappy, but it is not lost on the Number that he is in a predicament that this annoying bastard might be able to actually solve.
"That unfortunate thing is my first human host. I used him to find Astral originally."
"What's he doing here?"
Ugh. All these stupid questions. "No matter that. He's here, and he instigated a challenge, so I must duel him and defeat him."
"And he can see you because?"
Black Mist looks at Jey, then at Chihaya.
"…If he is able to witness me," Black Mist answers coolly after a pause, "Then he might contain residual power from once having hold of a Number. If that's the case, all the more reason I must crush him now!"
It is difficult to grasp the laws of this curse Astral put upon him. Whatever of him was messed with, whatever in him was changed, it did not seem straightforward. Too many loose exceptions to loose rules in one day. He can't worry about that right now.
"And that is where you come in."
Jey's mouth twists into that awful slanted smirk. "Oh?"
Black Mist scorns that reaction, but continues. "I have no cards beyond my own self, so congratulations. You're getting your wish after all. You will act as my arms and deck for this duel."
The whole open room brightens. The sun must be piercing the horizon outside. Haloing them all in splits of light, casting out from each frame of the high mosaic window.
It causes the gold in Jey's gaze to be unbearable as it catches the shine. He is tall next to Black Mist, even when the alien is hovering a foot or two high, their stare is eye-level.
Black Mist floats higher, pointedly, peering down at Jey with crossing arms. Which feels too disturbingly Astral-like, so he brings one hand to upright near his collarbone.
"So does this make us a team?"
"It makes you useful to me," Black Mist counters, a pulse of disgust twisting somewhere within him. "For right now. So do it! Prepare to duel as my vessel!"
A yell and wretch from across the field signals Chihaya's impatience.
After a reluctant glance between both parties (and a dangerous glare from the Number) Jey wisely accepts his fate and starts activating his dueling gear.
Finally. All Black Mist's instincts resound and thrum alive with the dark joy of battle.
Jey and Chihaya throw open their duel disks, gazers snap over eyes and flare to life.
Augmentations of a duel field sweep across the library, glitching to visibility.
The tattered, strewn books and debris and wood planks shift into the outline of their duel field. Offering a dilapidated grounds for their epic duel. Flashes of the competitors' headshots and names zap above. Black Mist is frustrated to see Jey's name appear instead of his, but its no matter.
The stage is set.
He will win this duel. Claim the darkness in Chihaya's heart, and begin anew in this town far away from Astral's touch.
Number 96 throws a clawed hand towards his opponent and cackles. "Let's duel!"
~ to be continued… ~
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