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“A king is always two steps ahead of his opponent,” Jack once boasted after another victory in the stadium, because planning is how you win. He always, always wins, until one day he doesn't.
He says the same thing to Carly after their third duel in a row that he wins, each in fewer than ten turns. She always rushes into things like a fool. She has no sense for dueling, no capacity to anticipate her foe’s next moves. She chooses what seems most immediately effective, even if it hurts her in the long run.
“Nooo! I thought I was getting somewhere that time!” she says. She stares mournfully at her field, a lone fortune fairy remaining. The others lay in her graveyard.
“That’s as far as a bunch of weak normal monsters with no attack or defense points gets you,” he says simply.
He can tell she’s thinking more than she was when she started; she’s not the complete fool he thought she was when he first glanced at her. But she’s still painfully impatient. And her face—her eyes, especially—reveals too much. It’s all too obvious what her trap cards hold; he negates and counters them with ease.
But for someone who seems so slight and meek, she’s daring, more than anyone he can think of. And it’s also clear to Jack that despite her constant losses, she’s enjoying their duels. She has even more energy than usual; she bounces back quickly from mistakes with a smile. Her eyes, behind those thick lenses, seem brighter.
Almost anyone would make a better opponent in a duel. Yusei certainly would, but Yusei’s disappeared, as far as the world is concerned.
Even so, though she’s a poor practice partner, he finds himself indulging her demands for rematches. He knows that the old him—the one who stood tall above his opponents—would have found her annoying, not even worth his time.
And here he is, shuffling his deck again. It’s a small and justified sacrifice, of course. He’s not king anymore, but that doesn’t mean his duels can’t be for entertainment.
x x x
Now, those duels feel like they were half a century ago, because recently Jack hasn’t been thinking ahead at all. It is an amount of comfort that he rarely allows himself, but he can’t quite even call it stagnation.
He only just saw the giant that Kiryu summoned in Satellite, towering over even the high-rise in Tops; he only just witnessed Yusei nearly dying at its hands, bleeding from his stomach. And he realizes two things.
First, his future is filled with danger and death—more death than he could have imagined. Second, he has to leave.
When was the last time he felt such urgency to act? Vaguely, he recalls a rundown theater, a clown making him a proposal, and a shimmering city in the distance. He had scrambled together a plan then to get the card he needed—not a plan he was proud of, but one that got him to Neo Domino City in the end.
This time, Jack doesn’t have any plans at all. When the helicopter lands back on her rooftop and she still tries to follow him to Satellite, he knows if he prepared for that moment, he could have said something more compelling to her. He could have said: Why are you so damn persistent? Why are you always so reckless?
Before she knew him for more than an hour in that hospital, she was already taking hits for him; he is not letting her do so again.
Even so, when he sees her sad eyes, he tells her instead, “When it’s all over, I promise to tell you everything.” As king, he was used to giving lofty declarations, but nothing quite like that.
It’s not as if he were someone who makes promises and keeps them.
x x x
After he gets back in the helicopter with his secretary and turns his back from Carly whom he imagines is watching his departure, Jack tries to plan.
His secretary tells him the director has a new Wheel of Fortune for him, so he’ll go test it out. He’ll eat dinner, spend the night back in his old high-rise, and then go to Satellite to deal with the Dark Signers and stop whatever it is they are trying to do, save the world. Probably have a meeting with Godwin along the way. And then—
And then he’ll go back to Neo Domino City and give her the scoop she’s looking for.
Sure, that seems okay. He’ll plan to keep his promise, just this once. He owes her after all, and it wouldn’t satisfy his pride to remain in her debt. He can already imagine the ecstasy on her face when he finally fills her in. He already knows she’ll be impatient given how long she’ll have to wait. It’s a decent enough plan by his estimation.
And then, before he can even sleep two straight nights in his old bed, the world splits apart again. Flames rupture the city, and his mark starts to glow and burn. The people of Neo Domino are offered as tribute, and two more giants appear: first a lizard, then a hummingbird.
They are gone when he arrives. Jack is not quite sure what compels him to drive into the wreckage of the Arcadia Movement building. Though he has witnessed her impressive dueling prowess and they have exchanged a few glares, he has never spoken to Aki Izayoi in his life. She had simply been one of the obstacles keeping him dueling Yusei and regaining his title of King, not too long ago when that was his only plan.
Perhaps, he thinks, in the path of a king that he is slowly paving for himself, rescuing her is what a real king would do. But he also knows whoever summoned those gods must also be in that building, and though the monsters are horrifying, their immense power is a temptation.
He wouldn’t actually use those cards, of course, but perhaps if he could find the Dark Signers who used them, maybe, maybe—
He finds her glasses first. Misplaced among the rubble.
He’s seen her fall on her face with them on more than once, seen her misplace and accidentally step on them. Those spectacles are as hardy as she is. And yet now—now of all times, the thick glass of one of the lenses is cracked. Part of the frame is bent. And instantly all he can think of are those sad, sad eyes.
x x x
Most feelings he gets over eventually. He’s familiar with soreness in his muscles after a good workout. In Satellite, as he grew older and craved more food, he adjusted to being slightly hungrier than ideal. When he broke his arm, the pain was chronic, but he ignored it with ease; it was the easiest part of the process. He can adapt to any pain.
Yet the weight of her glasses against his chest is a feeling he’s not sure if he’ll get used to anytime soon. However he shifts them around, part of the frame always seems to prick and sting at his skin through his coat. It’s uncomfortable. But he can’t bring himself to put them anywhere else.
“Why are you going to Satellite?” his secretary asks him more than once, as if that hadn’t been part of the plan all along. Only to himself does he answer, “Obviously, it’s because I can’t keep my promise if she’s dead.”
x x x
Turns out, she is.
x x x
Turns out, even dead, her eyes still look so sad.
Their sclerae are black, their irises bluer than ever before, but he knows them well.
If he had been thinking at all, he might reach out, try to grab her wrist and pull her to his side. He had done it so easily that day, in that hospital, back when she didn’t mean anything to him.
He’d tell her to snap out of it and come back to Martha’s place with him and the other Signers. Whatever she was going through, he’d get through it with her. He’d force himself to look straight at the sadness in her eyes.
But Martha’s just been sacrificed, and Rally’s dead, and instead of being a sacrifice to an Earthbound God, she’s right in front of him and that’s somehow even worse. The plan comes to him too late, when she’s long gone.
As she walks away, the realization comes, and things are clearer then, because of what she calls him: “Her beloved Jack.”
Her beloved. His beloved.
So that’s what this sting has been.
Jack grits his teeth. He never asked for any of this. He never planned for any of this.
More than that, as she turns her back to him and runs away, promising him answers later, he understands better than ever: This is how she must have felt back then, on that rooftop.
x x x
Dealing a blow on his opponent used to be a cause for gloating; a proof of his superiority, that he was meant to be king. Now that he knows that’s all a myth, he just feels wretched.
A duel only has three possible outcomes. He is used to planning for just one.
Now, he doesn’t know what to aim for. All he knows is he needs to bring her back. And he does, for a few minutes. Since he lost to Yusei, he’s never felt quite as triumphant as he does when he rides up to her side and sees that her eyes are hers again.
He has no idea how these evil gods and their possession work; it’s not like duel monsters where he knows the rules, knows the best tactics to win. So when she’s possessed again, he almost thinks things are hopeless.
But he can’t turn away from her again. He already did it twice: first, when she was staring at him on the rooftop, asking to go with him; second, when she was staring back at him in Satellite, calling him her beloved.
He doesn’t have any plans. He doesn’t know how any of this even works. But if she is able to hear him at all, he wants to be able to answer her courage.
Somehow, it works.
x x x
He does not plan on telling her the words again for a long time. But when she wakes up, she doesn’t remember anything.
There is little to do, she says, in a hospital rooms; they don’t have her favorite dramas on the TV, she doesn’t have any new books to read, and Jack keeps his summary of the happenings when he was away brief and mild. After she listens, she tells him she’s just happy he is safe and back with her, but he doesn’t miss the disappointed and inquiring look in her eyes.
He duels her like before to distract her. Seeing her clumsy dueling and silly-looking fortune fairies is almost a relief.
“See, Jack, I knew you’d think they’re cute after a while!” Carly tells him in the middle of their duel when she catches him staring at one for too long.
It’s such a dumb idea that he can’t resist lightly bumping her on the shoulder, even though she’s still covered in bruises.
She fakes a yelp of pain, so exaggerated it can’t be real, and for a second, he’s there again, in that geoglyph track, and she’s just suffered the damage of his dragon’s attack and veered into the flames and isn’t answering him.
It’s only when he feels her hand, reassuringly warm, on his that he realizes he let out a gasp. He’s trembling.
“Jack. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he says automatically, and he catches the sadness in her eyes when he looks away.
“I’m not going to press you right now, but. . . you’ll tell me what happened eventually, right?” Her voice is small, and she’s still holding his hand.
“I promised, didn’t I?” he thinks of quipping. It’s what he had been planning to say.
But she’s impatient. In his jacket her old glasses are still nestled, one of the ends pricking at him, and he remembers her sacrifice. She’s stronger and braver than she could ever have imagined; she defied destiny, overpowered a god.
Only now he realizes what she needed from him on that rooftop—not a promise, exactly, and not someone snapping at her for being reckless, though she does need that once in a while. Only now he realizes that no amount of planning back then could have readied him. Only hard experience.
So he turns to her. He puts his free hand on hers, he meets her eyes and tells her gruffly, honestly, the words she needs to hear.