Work Text:
Kyoya once told her it was stupid to rely on others.
She had a vague idea of what that meant at the time. After all, she watched Aragami Rouga go about daily in inner turmoil, relying too much on Kyoya’s presence to confirm that he was indeed alive and not worthless. She watched Shido Magoroku cling to his position, his power, his father, and other people’s approval for his own self-worth. She had watched herself rely on Kyoya’s ever constant planning so that her power wouldn’t run berserk. If Kyoya ordered it, she would grant it. That was simple.
So she didn’t follow that one phrase. It wasn’t an order anyways.
But Kyoya lost. He lost when he had been so close to his final goal. Sofia couldn’t do a single thing to help. He lost himself in his work, shutting out the memories of the failure, and stopped plotting his plan B. He ran away from the problem. And she couldn’t do a single thing to help.
If Kyoya wasn’t plotting, he wasn’t giving out orders. And without orders to follow, Sofia wasn’t sure what she was going to do.
Kyoya was right.
Relying on others was stupid.
Sofia steps into Kyoya’s office with a tray of sandwiches, and almost falters. It’s sweltering hot, making it hard to breathe, and it reminds her of the Fuji Mine incident, where the particle accelerator generator was overheating and so close to blowing up and ruining everything but she couldn’t do anything about it. The heat always made her uneasy.
“Oh, Sofia. Just leave them on the ground. I’ll get to it later.” Kyoya looked up at her, then immediately went back to writing on one of the many documents scattered on his desk.
What a bad lie. She didn’t care if others lied to her, since she could always force the truth out of them. But Kyoya lying to her felt off. He would tell her to leave it on the ground, since he would eat it later, and every night when she came by to pick up the tray she would see it untouched and Kyoya asleep on the desk, passed out from exhaustion.
“Are you really?” Sofia says, striding across the room and placing the tray onto the desk, right on top of the document he had been reading. “Kyoya-sama, please forgive me for speaking out, but you need to eat.”
“I will. Later. After I finalize this business deal.”
“Now.”
Kyoya finally looks, actually looks, at her, then smirks. “Are you ordering me, Sofia?”
“I apologized previously.”
He must have seen something in her eyes, because he sighs, spins around in his chair, and gazes out the wall-to-ceiling windows that lined the back wall. “The world is big, isn’t it?” He says, not particularly to her. “I almost had it in the palm of my hand. But I didn’t. It’s too big to fit in these tiny hands of mine. Bringing about Disaster didn’t work.”
The majority of the members of Disaster had already moved on. Gremlin, Aragami Rouga, and the girl known as Kuchinawa Terumi were nowhere to be found. Shido Magoroku and Yamazaki Davide had gone forwards, going back to their normal lives before the formation. Kabala Elf and Sofia were the only ones left.
“Sofia, do you want to see how big the world truly is?”
She gazes at Kyoya in confusion. “Not really.”
“You should. I miscalculated. My theories weren’t wrong; I just missed a few points along the way. I couldn’t see the whole picture.” It feels like the temperature in the room is rising. “Was Rouga able to see more than me? Is that why he acted out? What did he know that I missed?”
“I really do not think it is good to leave you by yourself in this state.” She says simply, her eyes gesturing to the sandwiches on his desk again.
“Then how about a deal. That’s my specialty anyways.” He leans back into his chair and crosses his legs, facing her fully. “I’ll eat if you if you go out into the world a bit more. You can come back every once in a while, and report back any new findings. I’ve been pretty interested in the recent sightings of the Hundred Demons anyways.”
He wants to get rid of her. He needs a step outside more than she does. Kyoya drums his fingers on the desk, with his business face on that she’s witnessed at many conferences, right when he knows he’s pushed the other into a corner where they can’t refuse.
“Is that an order?” She asks. Kyoya blinks, then laughs.
“Sofia, it’s okay if you just do what you want every once in a while.”
She doesn’t understand. But that’s her dismissal, so she bows and turns to exit the room. “I wonder what’s Rouga’s doing right now…” Kyoya mumbles, and Sofia hears it.
“Should I find out and inform you of that as well?” She asks.
It’s the first time she’s seen that sort of expression on Kyoya’s face: a smile, curled up in his chair from laughter but at the same time, ridden with pain and guilt and nails digging into his palm in frustration. “Please,” he says, “don’t tell me.”
How stupid. Kyoya couldn’t follow his own advice.
Sofia finds the Hundred Demons and follows them, while reporting back the information to Kyoya every Sunday. It’s not particularly hard. The boy Ikazuchi is too preoccupied with Yamigedo’s revival to ever wonder if his new subordinates have an alternate agenda. The work isn’t hard. Just more buddyfights, more sneaking around, nothing too different from Kyoya other than how Ikazuchi is more of a loose cannon and unstable both mentally and physically.
She stands before Kenran Suzaku, ready to complete another task. It really doesn’t matter if she wins or loses, as long she can report back information to Kyoya. It’s excessively noisy in the Buddyfight Club and she wants to freeze over the audience just so that she can finally hear herself think. The buddyfight starts off the same as all the others.
And then before her appears the Sixth Omni Storm Lord, Variable Cord. It’s bright golden and shining and she can’t defeat it, and it’s attack charges up, showering hot blasts all around her, and she thinks about how nobody needs a fighter who can’t even win.
“We fought with our Buddy Monsters as the stakes! Now bring out your true buddy!” Variable Cord shoots another supercharged laser at her and the transformation with Gallows breaks. She crashes to the ground, her elbows scraped and arms bruised and she can taste blood in her mouth from where she bit down.
Everyone can see her. Everyone can see her clearly and there’s nothing hiding her and all she can remember is the shame and humiliation that she went through every single day in Russia, being a slave and having to obey every order no matter how demeaning, and not being able to change things no matter how many times she fought it.
“I don’t take orders from you…” She mutters, but nobody hears it.
“I won’t take your life. However, I’ll make it so that you can never buddyfight again.”
“Our Kenran Suzaku is merciless even to a little girl!”
What a joke. She’s never been shown mercy for a second of her life.
Electricity runs through her body and it burns and she’s screaming again.
“You failed orders and this is your punishment” The man smirked, leering over her tiny body as she huddled in the corner trying to make herself disappear, her skin burning from the whip lashes. “You’re just a slave, so know your place!”
She’s been through worse than this and survived. Sofia grits her teeth and waits it out, staying put in the little prison cell she’s forced into. She waits and watches the fight between Kenran Suzaku and Ryuuenji Tasuku. And like before, it works, and she’s released from her restraints when Ryuuenji wins. And then Variable Cord disappears into the future with Jackknife Dragon.
Sofia leaves to report the news.
She follows orders, and winds up not anywhere near Ryuuenji’s intended location. There’s a ruined future spread before her, the one she imagines Kyoya had always envisioned. It’s overrun by Hundred Demons, with no sight of human life for miles around. Yamigedo must have succeeded in this future. It’s barren and broken and Sofia thinks the only thing stopping it from being perfect is how hot it is.
The Hundred Demons attack. Ryuuenji falls off the building, and Sofia almost thinks it’s a shame before it comes after her next.
“I cast Breathen Gard!” Sofia yells, squeezing the life of the dragon in her hands. The plan had failed. Ryuuenji Tasuku was nowhere to be seen and neither was Jackknife Dragon. She might as well take the reporter girl and head back to the present to report the news.
“If we take her to Boss Gratos, we might get a reward!”
“Gratos?!” That skeleton was still alive? She quickly throws a dummy Dark Core onto the ground when the second monster lunges at her, and they easily fall for the bait and think she’s defenseless. They carry her right off to their headquarters. Too simple.
She gets stuffed in a heated bubble there.
“Gratos! Do you really not remember me?!” She yells through the walls to the skeleton perched on the throne below. He looks ridiculous. Plus this Gratos was a lot more laid-back compared to the one in the present, constantly barking orders to serve Yamigedo. It was as if he was drunk, judging from the glass of wine in his hands. Could skeletons even drink?
Judging from the ruin around them, and how Gratos was sitting on a throne, she guessed that Yamigedo had run free in this timeline after no one was around to seal it up properly. She got what she wanted to know. She didn’t care what happened to the future. All she needed to do now was to report the news and await for new orders.
Sofia needs a way out. She couldn’t rely on Ryuuenji Tasuku to come along and save her. Sofia slips out her real Dark Core from her poncho, then lets the power flow through her. “Breathen Gard!” She slams the demonic fire into the side of the bubble, and it rebounds and burns her.
“That’s useless.” She finally decides to pay some attention to the other skeletons below. One of them is laughing at her attempts. “We’ve long created technology to combat whatever power you humans come up with.”
They were nothing but bones, what did they know about her. “Star Bow, Artemis Arrow!” She tries to pierce the side of the prison, but the arrow dissipates as soon as it touches the edge.
“Great Fate, Frozen Stars!” Sofia plants her hand on the bubble, feeling the ice run through her veins into the wall. “Freeze!” The ice prickles her fingertips, and then it gets rejected and she’s blown back, hitting the backside of the bubble and cringing, cradling her bruised arm. She could feel the bone inside crack slightly, and casts the spell again very lightly, freezing the crack inside her flesh together. It would heal, but not anytime soon. She has one useless arm, bruises and burns everywhere, and blood inside her mouth. The skeletons are laughing again.
She’s trapped. Even if Ryuuenji Tasuku found the hideout and used the extra Dark Core she dropped, they had technology to combat it. Four drunk skeletons weren’t about to listen to two humans.
She’s trapped.
The heat concentrates inside the tiny bubble, and Sofia feels like she’s going to suffocate. She hates it. She hates the sun, she hates the moon, she hates the Omni Lords and the Hundred Demons and everything in-between. She hates it she hates it she hates it. She’s not a slave anymore, so why is this still happening?
The weather in Russia is sweltering even in the winter, and Sofia is burning again. The sunlight is reflected off the snow in blinding amounts and turns the mansion into a greenhouse and Sofia just wants to shatter it apart. She’s forced to the ground to bow, and bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from screaming until she tastes blood. She wants to freeze the entire palace into ice and just crush it.
“Do not act out! You’re just a slave!”
“What do you think you’re doing! Follow orders!”
“Get back to your station and do what you were ordered to!”
“You’re a slave, so do your job properly!”
She was going to crush them beneath her foot like the ants they were.
“That’s how you brainwashed Tasuku-senpai! That’s how you’re controlling his heart!”
“You can’t replace the loss of your brother with Ryuuenji, Mikado Gao.”
“Jack is my Buddy. I’ll get him back!”
“You’ll break if you clinging to that, Ryuuenji Tasuku.”
“Everything I ever did was for your sake, Kyoya!”
“You’re an idiot, Aragami Rouga, one who relies too much on others for your own worth.”
“Relying on others is for the weak. They’ll just let you down in the end. You have to do things yourself.”
“Kyoya-sama, you aren’t even capable of following your own advice.”
“What’s holding you back?”
“I haven’t been ordered to fight back.”
“Sofia, it’s okay if you just do what you want every once in a while.”
She wants to get out of this bubble.
A glowing card floats out of her deck case, hovering in front of her, and then Stellar Deity Astraeus is facing her. The only constant in her life. Silent enough for her to hear, but hot enough to burn her. The bone in her arm is cracked. Her favourite dress is ripped. Her throat is dry and her legs feel weak. She hates contradictions. She wants to rip them apart. But Astraeus is here.
“I don’t need others. I don’t need to rely on others.” She says to him, sweat dripping down her face. “I don’t need you either.”
Shido Magoroku, Hyoryu Kiri, Kuchinawa Terumi, Omori Retsu, Todoroki Genma, Yamazaki Davide, Kirisame Shoshetsu, Kisaragi Zanya, and Kurodake Tetsuya. Mikado Gao, Ryuuenji Tasuku, Aragami Rouga, and even Kyoya. Each one of them clinging to each other, to their precious cards, to the world and the people in it. They’re all such fools, she feels like she’s going to be sick. She didn’t need any of them.
Astraeus blinks, then glows with blinding light, and when Sofia can see again, there’s a new card in her hands, and a man with burning red hair and the sun behind him floating next to her. “Colossal Deity of Phantom Star, Astraeus.” She says slowly, reading the name of the new card. “This is your true form?” The man nods silently.
“So you’ve been lying to me all this time.”
Another nod.
“You’re despicable.”
Nod.
“Just like the rest of them.”
Nod.
“You’re all disgusting.”
Nod.
“The worst.”
Nod.
“Nobody would miss any of you if you were gone.”
Nod.
“I’m getting out of this disgustingly hot timeline now.”
Astraeus opens his mouth. His words are surprisingly cool for a man with the sun on his back, and it’s the one bit of relief in this scorching hot bubble. “You haven’t been ordered to leave this bubble.” He says. Those are the first words he ever says to her. How stupid.
“I want to.” Sofia says.
The man smiles at her gently before shrinking down into a card, floating back into her Dark Core. “Disaster Force, activate.”
The tip of her toe touches the bottom, and the bubble enclosing her bursts apart, raining broken shards of frozen glass everywhere. She doesn’t give the four Knights of Apocalypse time to react and calls on the next card, and blinding light fills the room before the roof is blown off the tower, the explosion blasting the other three skeletons out into the air, flying to the ground. Sofia doesn’t care if they’re dead or not.
“Great Fate, Frozen Stars!” She yells, the entire tower freezing in an instant. She strolls leisurely over to where Gratos is kneeling in pain, his legs frozen to the floor. Her heels click cheerfully, echoing through the air. With every footstep the world freezes over more. There’s snow falling now, despite the sky being completely clear and scorching yellow just before. She can see Hundred Demons below panicking before freezing, watches the ice stretch towards the horizon, and wishes it could freeze the sun itself. She would settle for just the earth for now.
“I am Sofia Sakharov.” She says above Gratos, allowing the temperature to drop further, until ice coats the inside of her lungs and frost clings to her hair almost lovingly. “You’re going to regret your existence now.”
She could finally breathe.