Chapter Text
Taking off the mask feels like getting out of bed in the cold winter morning. Aki feels her brain groan through the process, leaving the comfort of the witch persona to emerge into the reality of Izayoi Aki.
It's grudging work, becoming Aki again, but it's necessary if she wants to find somewhere to stay for the night. Aki will be accepted places the witch is not, until somebody discovers the truth of what she is again. Then she'll leave and find somewhere else she isn't yet recognized, and again…
Somewhere above, the echoing thump of footsteps on metal breaks the silence of a disaster zone from which everyone else has already fled.
"Who's there?" The cursed mark burns her forearm as Aki calls out to the empty alley. There's nobody there, but…
Aki looks up, and sees a man watching her from the third story of a fire escape. He waves far too casually, once he realizes she's found him. "Yo."
"Who are you?" Aki keeps her voice cool and controlled. If she has nothing to give him, maybe he'll simply go away.
"Huh, that's a good question actually." The man scratches his cheek, looking off to his side thoughtfully. "I guess right now, I'm…a concerned upperclassman? No, I guess the word is alumnus." He jumps down, landing far too gracefully on his feet for a three-story drop. "The name's Yuki Judai. I went to Duel Academia years ago, the original campus. I'm kind of doing my old principal a favor. Mostly, I'm looking for you."
Aki scoffs, turning away from the man. "What do they want with me?"
"You scared a bunch of people when you ran away. Some of them want to make sure you're all right."
"I'm alive." Aki starts to walk away. The man can report she's still in one piece, and that's all the school ought to care about. Liability, making sure they don't get in trouble with Pap—the senator. They want her to be alive, but they won't want her back. And if she tries to go back…well. She knows very well how things will turn out.
The same footsteps on concrete, rapid now. Yuki jogs ahead of her and turns around to face her. "Hey, hey! Wait up. Don't just say that and walk away. You okay, kid?"
The condescension sinks under her skin, and Aki grits her teeth. "I said I'm alive. What else do you want to know?"
"Lots of things. Are you healthy? Do you have food? A place to stay for the night? Uh…" He glances to his side again, tilting his head as if listening to an unseen person. "Are you safe?"
"You won't be safe with me," she mutters as she pushes past him. "Go back to Duel Academia and tell them I'm still alive. That's all they need. They won't be looking to take back a monster into their classes."
"You…" Behind him, she hears Yuki fall into silence before muttering something she can't make out to himself. "I can't accept that, Izayoi."
Reluctantly, Aki turns around to face him again. "Why not?" Cold. Controlled. If Yuki knows what's good for him, he'll walk away and nobody will get hurt.
Yuki's eyes are too steady. He doesn't know anything, but somehow she feels like he knows too much anyway. "Because my job is to make sure you're safe and satisfied with where you are. And right now, you aren't."
"I'm fine."
"Are you?" His eyes narrow just slightly. "Where are you going right now?"
"Just back off!" She sweeps out an arm, gesturing for him to leave. The duel disk attached takes that movement as an activation and fans out. That wasn't her intent, but…
She brandishes her duel disk and braces herself. "Or I'll make you."
"Oh, a duel?" Far from being deterred, Yuki’s arrogant grin says he's actually intrigued by her challenge. "Sounds like fun. I think it might be the fastest way to get to know each other, too."
He's talking nonsense. "We'll see about that."
Cold. Controlled. Aki slots her deck into her disk with rote motion, vaguely observing the fluidity with which Yuki handles his own. It's an old model, but evidently maintained well enough to stand the test of time. Yuki had said he was an alumnus of the original Duel Academia campus. It's reasonable to assume he has no small amount of skill and practice behind his deck.
It won't be enough, against her. Just this one duel, and then she can be off again.
"Duel!"
Yuki turns out to run a fusion-based deck, a strange choice in the modern day.
"Think of me as a classic kind of guy," he laughs. "Even after people started using Synchro summoning, fusion just always suited me best." He turns his head a fraction to the side, looking at nothing in particular she can see, and the corner of his mouth quirks. "Hey, Izayoi. You know they say a duelist's deck is his soul, right?"
She certainly had heard that at Duel Academia, but why he's bringing it up doesn't make sense. "What do you mean?"
Yuki grins. "I activate my trap, Eternal Favorite! Now I'll summon my discarded Yubel from the grave." He throws a hand into the air. "The eternal knight of devotion, a vow shaped into flesh and scale! Shelter us with your supreme aegis of thorns! Come, the other half of my soul! Yubel!"
A new monster emerges from the ground alongside Yuki's Elemental Hero, a strange demonic dragon-creature with mismatched features and an all-seeing third eye. Yubel looks out of place among the mix of superheroes and aliens Yuki's played until now, but he seems even more invigorated now that it's on the field.
Yubel has zero attack points, but recklessness on Aki's part gets Violet Witch destroyed and herself down a chunk of life. It costs Yuki his Wild Wingman to keep Yubel on the field, but overall he comes out on top in that interaction. Aki grits her teeth. Fine.
"I activate Ring of Destruction!" She'd planned to use the trap on one of Yuki's more powerful fusions, the effect damage useless when used on a zero-attack monster, but she doesn't like where this is going.
The destruction effect goes through, and the card Yuki called his soul is wiped away. The draconic being looks back at their master with a cock of the head, seemingly uncaring of the horrible collar upon them, before shattering into dust.
But Yuki only smirks. "When Yubel is destroyed, they evolve to their next form: Yubel - Das Abscheulich Ritter."
Despite Aki's attempts to remain composed, she can't help a quiet gasp. "What?"
Yuki's side of the field hums with power as the particles that had once been Yubel swirl around on the field and reform into something new. Something larger.
A new dragon materializes out of the remnants, a massive two-headed dragon with the same all-seeing eye staring out from its chest. One of the heads roars while the other remains still, its own eyes fixed squarely on Aki.
It speaks, and Yuki's voice comes out of its mouth.
"You know, Izayoi, you're not the only one who made a lot of trouble for Duel Academia in their day. Actually, I did worse than break a couple of legs. A lot worse."
The other head speaks now. This one is not Yuki's voice; instead, it's a deep man's voice resonating with and melding into that of a woman. "Izayoi Aki. If you wish to believe yourself a monster, then you are in good company."
Aki's legs feel weak all of a sudden, and she has a sneaking suspicion that she's just learned what it feels like to be on the other end of the witch's power. She stares up at the dragon's heads, and then at Yuki. He's surveying her just like the head that spoke with his voice, his eyes glowing the same orange-turquoise as the original Yubel's own.
"What are you?" she asks. The fact that the same has been asked of her before…does not escape her.
"Someone with powers not all that different from yours," Yuki says through the dragon's mouth. He speaks next with his human form. "Someone who made a lot of trouble for his Duel Academia in his day. Someone who almost ran away because of it." He sighs, and makes a face. "Honestly, I only graduated because a lot of people were supporting me back then. Both my human friends and teachers, and also Yubel here."
"He barely scraped by all the same," teases the other head. "But it took the effort of many people to get him to stay. Judai hopes to extend the same support he was given to you, Izayoi Aki."
"I…"
Aki wants to ask why. Why would he do something like that for her? He can't be telling the truth. This has to be a lie somehow, a trick—
But as she stares the human Yuki in the eyes, she knows he's telling the truth. Aki has somehow found someone as monstrous as her, and for some reason he wants to help.
The duel disk deactivates as she falls to her knees, the battle insignificant in the face of her new reality. Yubel - Das Abscheulich Ritter does not fade away, but melts into a dark shadow that envelops Yuki and sinks into his skin. He sighs lightly and stretches, like he's just woken up from a nap, and steps forward to offer a hand to Aki. She gapes up at him for a second, finding only warm brown eyes and a lopsided smile.
"Come with me, Izayoi," Yuki says. "I've got a place for both of us to go."