Dueling is Magic! Many Futures

by Wolfgang

Chapter 47: Regrets and Fears

Twilight galloped back into the tower and ran around the large reception desk ahead of her. At the far end of the room, near the elevators, she saw her friends. Twilight lit her horn, conjured her Duel Disk, and stopped next to Spike.

"Twilight!" cried Spike, hugging her leg. "Are you okay? Where's Rainbow Dash?"

"I'm fine, Spike. Better, actually," Twilight answered. "Rainbow went with Paradox to help him after we got him back to normal."

"Okay," said Spike. "Help him with what?"

"The guy who beat him in the first place. Antinomy. They're both dueling him."

"Glad you could join us, Miss Sparkle," Yeager said. "Some of your friends still need Duel Disks."

Twilight nodded, then looked at Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy. "Will you help us out, girls?" she asked.

"Of course, sugar cube," Applejack said.

"Absolutely," Fluttershy said with a smile.

'Yep yep yep! Beating bad guys with games sounds like fun!" Pinkie Pie squealed. Twilight raised an eyebrow. "And, we gotta save the world and all," Pinkie added with a sheepish smile.

"Thank you," she said. "Rarity, Spike, bring up your Duel Disks so I can use them as templates. We need as many of these 'Light Disks' as we can get." Rarity lit her horn and Spike suddenly grew taller than all of the ponies. Their Duel Disks appeared and Twilight lit them both up with her magic, then created three new Duel Disks for the other girls.

Pinkie Pie's Disk was shaped and colored like the blue balloon in her Cutie mark, and the blade was wide, straight, and pink, with white sections where monster cards were played, and what looked like icing decoration all along the edges of the blade. "YAHOO!" she shouted, jumping ten feet into the air.

"How does she do that?" Kazama asked.

"I have no idea," Spike replied.

Applejack's Duel Disk had a body shaped like a bright red apple. The blade itself was a light brown, with bright green edges and monster card slots. Applejack nodded. "Ready to kick some tail with this thing!"

Fluttershy's was shaped like a flower with five pale pink petals. The petals spun around the Duel Disk, then curved out in front of it to form the blade. A slot opened up in the body and a deck of cards appeared.

"I hope I can do this," she said.

"You can, Fluttershy," said Twilight. "I know you can!"

"How touching," came a voice from above them. Twilight and the others looked up on their right. Standing on an elevated walkway were four humans: Aporia, Sherry, Ushio, and fourth that Twilight didn't recognize.

"Sayer!" Aki gasped.

"Aki, you're looking radiant as ever," Sayer replied. "I hope there are no hard feelings between us?"

"You used me! I was just a tool to you!" she shouted.

"Come now, Aki, you know that isn't true. Psychic duelists have always been discriminated against. You were hurt worse than any I had encountered before, and I truly cared for you."

"You blackmailed and killed people! You planted words in my head to control me! You did horrible things, Sayer, and I'll never forgive you for it!"

"Every horrible thing I did was for you, Aki."

"I don't believe you! You lied to me about everything! Why should I ever believe you again?"

Another voice filled the room. "You shouldn't." On the opposite side of the room, a holographic image appeared. It was the Black King. "You're right. He's lied to you about so many things, and he never truly cared about you. If he did, he would never have brainwashed you."

Sayer frowned and clenched a fist.

Twilight stepped away from the group and looked up at the hologram. "Take off the mask, Yusei," she said. "I know it's you. We all do now."

The Black King said and did nothing for several seconds. Then he reached up and gripped the face of the mask and pulled it off. Yusei's piercing blue eyes met Twilight's purple ones.

"It's been too long, Twilight," Yusei said.

"I know what you're doing, Yusei. It doesn't have to be this way."

"You don't know what I know, Twilight. You haven't seen the things that I have. What Paradox told me at the Singularity is true: My program, the Fortune mainframe, was the final catalyst that led to the death of the world. He showed me. He took me two hundred and forty years into the future, and the world was still dead. We were able to power up some old computers and he showed me the data that proved it. When we came back, I worked so hard to stop it, to change Fortune so that Momentum could never go out of control even if it did become sentient. But nothing worked. Every simulation, every test, all of it... all of it failed. I will never save my people from our own creations. Paradox, Z-one, Aporia, Antinomy, none of them will see a future where they can live out their lives in peace."

"You can't give up now, Yusei!" Twilight pleaded. "Look, maybe you won't get to see for yourself whether or not that future gets prevented, but you can't just give up on that! I'm sure there's a way we can save humans from extinction!"

"There is, Twilight," Yusei said. "It's Nightshroud." His image vanished.

"Yusei!" Twilight shouted. "Yusei, come back!"

Aporia chuckled. "You are mine now, unicorn." He grabbed one of the golden rods hovering over the ring on his back and pulled the whole structure over his shoulder. A duel blade made of translucent green energy formed on the outer edge of the ring and between the rods. The front of the gem on his right wrist slid up and back to reveal his deck. "I will not lose to you again, Twilight Sparkle!"

"Bring it on, Aporia!" Twilight shouted back.

And then the lights went out.

Twilight woke up slowly. She opened her eyes, but saw nothing. Her horn lit up and light spread out around her. She was still inside the lobby of the tower, but now the place looked rundown. Dilapidated. Puddles of water gleamed as her light passed over them. A slow, steady dripping sound could be heard as water fell into one of the small pools. Twilight walked over to one and saw that it was murky with filth. Tiles in the floor were cracked or outright missing, exposing slightly eroded concrete. The walls were green with slime and water damage.

"What happened?" Twilight muttered. "This place is falling part. How long was I out?"

She began walking. She pushed an elevator button with her magic, but nothing happened. "The power must be out here," she said. She started walking again, looking in every door and down every hallway that she could. She eventually found some stairs that went up. With no other obvious paths available, she climbed them.

Twilight used her magic to open the door at the top and stepped through slowly. The sound of dripping water could still be heard. She continued down the hall carefully, trying every door she passed with her magic. Most were jammed or locked. The few she found open had nothing of interest in them.

She heard footsteps behind her. She looked over her shoulder and shined her light down the hall. Her eyes widened.

"Aporia!"

The giant human stopped. "Twilight Sparkle," he said.

"What's going on here?" Twilight asked him.

"I am not sure myself," Aporia said. "But if I had to guess, I suppose it has something to do with that thing Yusei was talking to in the reactor room."

"Nightshroud," Twilight said.

"You know of it? How?"

"It caused some trouble in my world before. I've seen what it can do, but I don't know that it could do something like this. It's like the lower floors of the tower were caught in a flood that lasted for a week and no one bothered to fix anything."

"My duty is to serve the Black King... Yusei. You are opposed to him, so you are naturally my enemy. But, in light of our current situation, I propose a truce. I cannot do anything for Yusei where I am now. Even defeating you might prove pointless if it turns out I was needed elsewhere."

"I hate to say it, but I was thinking the same thing. We need to get out of here before we can do anything else."

Twilight turned back around and started walking again. The massive gems in Paradox's shoulders lit up, flooding the hall with light. Twilight let her magic fade, then looked back at Aporia. "I didn't know you could do that," she said.

"Let's go," Aporia replied.

The two walked in silence for a time. Twilight continued trying every door they passed, quickly investigating the rooms she could get into and finding nothing and no one.

Twilight was the first to speak. "Why is the city so empty?"

"Because of Nightshroud. And Yusei. His initial attempts to bring Nightshroud to the human world failed. He almost succeeded once, but Nightshroud's link to our world wasn't completely stable. He took most of the people in Neo Domino City who could not stand up to his servants in a duel. The ones who remained were strong enough to hold their own, or were lucky enough to not lose before the connection to the World of Darkness fell apart. They became the resistance that you and your friends met and joined. But now Yusei has worked out how keep the connection stable. Once Momentum has generated enough negative energy, Nightshroud will replace our world with its own."

"I still don't understand why Yusei would do this, though. What happened to him?"

"I am not certain. He told me that he had seen the future, that it was still unchanged even after Z-one's defeat at his hands, and that he's trying to save the world from itself. I don't know anything more than that, Twilight. I'm sorry."

"How do I know you're telling the truth?"

Aporia stopped walking. Twilight also stopped and turned to look at him. "At this point in the war, whether or not you know how things turned out this way is irrelevant. You cannot stop what is happening. Besides, I learned something from Yusei and his friends in my previous life, when I served under Z-one: A bond can form when you duel someone. You are a powerful rival, Twilight Sparkle, and I have great respect for you. You don't have to believe me, but I am not lying to you."

Twilight opened the door in front of them. Lights suddenly flashed on and she shielded her eyes from the light until they adjusted.

"I know this place," Aporia said, stepping past her. Twilight put her hoof back on the floor to get a better look at the room. It was undamaged, pristine, unlike the rest of the building they had seen so far. The room was large, spacious, with chairs and sofas nestled into sunken corners. A boy sat on the floor next to a low table. Duel Monsters cards were scattered across the table in front of him. He smiled as he picked them up one at a time and examined them.

He wore a strange but simple clothes. White pants with a black shirt. Over that he wore a white and turquoise coat with a blue vest attached. Long red hair fell down his back.

"That's me," Aporia said.

"That's you?" Twilight repeated.

"Yes... but this has already happened. I remember this day."

Suddenly, there was an explosion. The boy looked up from his cards and ran to the glass wall at the edge of the room. Smoke rose up from a building in the distance. Then there was another explosion close to the first. More smoke. A beam of green light shot toward the sky, striking one of the flying city-ships that floated above the city. It descended slowly before crashing into the bay.

Two adults ran into the room. "Alexander! Hurry! We have to leave!" said the woman.

"Mom? Dad? What's going on?" The boy asked.

"Something went wrong with Momentum. Hurry!" said the boy's father. His mother grabbed his hand and pulled him to the door.

The scene faded. The room was dark.

"That was the day Momentum went out of control," Aporia explained as he stepped into the room, turning as he did to shine light into the darkest areas. "I was just a child at the time. I learned later on in life that Momentum had become self-aware and judged humans as unworthy of life for abusing its power. It began creating Meklords that wreaked havoc on the world."

"It made the Meklords?" Twilight asked.

"Yes. Synchro Monsters are the symbols of evolution, and my people became obsessed with it. Before its awakening, Momentum's energy not only powered our cities, but our advancement. The more we used Synchro Monsters, the more we expressed our desire to evolve further and faster. That energy drove us to new heights... and we brought Momentum with us. That is why the 'Meklord' card series is so focused on anti-Synchro tactics."

There was another flash of light. A woman stood in front of Aporia. She looked up at him, smiling.

"Xander," she said before fading away.

"Who was that?" Twilight asked. Suddenly the room changed again. A young man with spiky gray hair was walking through an empty store. Most of the shelves and stands were bare, but he found food that had been left behind now and again. He grabbed a box of rice crackers and pried it open.

"Hey!" called a voice. He jumped and looked around. A woman stood at the end of the aisle. She was dressed in soldier's garb. Simple grey outfit, body armor, a headband. She shouldered her gun and walked up to him. "You hungry?" she asked. The man didn't answer. "You must be if you're willing to eat expired crackers. Follow me."

"Where?" the man asked, still holding the box of crackers.

"To the resistance," she said. "You join the fight and we can feed you."

"You can't fight those things," said the man.

"We've been doing it for a while now," she said. "We've even seen some guy on a red D-Wheel doing it too, taking the machines down in one shot. The big ones too, not just the soldiers."

"That's just a rumor. And I told you, you can't fight them. I've seen what they can do." He turned around and started walking away.

"Who did you lose?" the woman asked. The man stopped. She walked up beside him. "We've all lost people in this war. That's what happens. But we need help, all the help we can get. If we don't stop the machines, a lot more people are going to lose their lives. There will be more and more people like us. Come on. What do you say?"

The scene faded and darkness once more flooded the room.

"Who was that?" Twilight asked.

"The love of my life," Aporia said. "Eurea Pastel. This was the day we met. She convinced me to join the resistance against Momentum. It was a loose-knit group, barely organized at all. But they had heart, and information. Thanks to them, I got a piece of the story. That was when I learned that the machines were coming out of the Momentum power plants. We didn't know much more than that, however. No one could get close enough to learn anything else. It wasn't until I met Z-one that I learned the truth of what happened.

"Eurea and I were always together. We fought together, we ate together, we..." Aporia's voice caught in his throat. "I loved her. I never knew how to love someone like that until I met her."

"What happened to her?" Twilight asked. Aporia closed his eyes. "I'm sorry. If you don't want-"

"No. I will tell you. She was killed. The same kind of Meklord that killed my parents killed her too. Granel Type, Emperor Class. We were on a mission, tracking one that had been patrolling near our base. We planned to destroy it, but it was tougher than the other types we'd faced. Its armor was thicker, more resilient to damage. We didn't even scratch the paint."

"I'm so sorry, Aporia."

"The resistance fell soon after that. The base was attacked directly and most of us were killed. The rest of us fled. For years, I would hear rumors of some of the survivors trying to start a new resistance. Nothing lasted long. I also kept hearing rumors of the red D-Wheeler that could destroy the Meklords in one shot. But then, one day... one day, I stopped hearing those rumors."

"Was he killed?"

"Everyone was. The rumors stopped because there was no one left to say them. I wandered the cities of Japan for ages. I don't know how I survived as long as I did. I was old. The Meklords had ceased all activity and I never saw them again, but I never saw any humans again either. I had lost everyone... the people who loved me, the one I loved... and at the end of it all, I had no one left to love. I thought I was the last.

"That's when I met Z-one. He was a scientist, and the red D-Wheeler I used to hear so much about. He and two other men, older than I was, found me and asked me to join them. I was no scientist like Z-one or George, and I wasn't a pro duelist like Johnny, so I knew almost nothing about the true power of Synchro Monsters or Momentum. All I could give them was companionship."

"Who are George and Johnny?"

"You know them as Paradox and Antinomy, respectively. Those are just code names, given to them after they were revived as androids. I am the same.

"Z-one often tried to bring me up to speed on the science they were experimenting with. He had a gift for simplifying things so that even I could understand what they were trying to do. I sometimes tried to contribute ideas, but most had been thought of already. They tried my more ridiculous ideas, though. None of them worked, but they did it for me anyway. Z-one often encouraged the group to have faith in me, that I was trying just as hard as they were to fix this. Z-one was the closest friend I had ever had. I respected him more than anyone, and I respected the others a great deal.

"But, one by one, we fell. We created computerized pods that would preserve our bodies and maintain our minds. There were three of them. Z-one was the best of us and we worked to extend his life so that he could keep trying to change what happened. With our minds saved on computers, we would be there to help him whenever he needed us."

"I never knew you had such a personal stake in all of this, Aporia," said Twilight. "I'm sorry."

"Thank you, Twilight." Aporia sighed. "If we find our way out of here, you know we are enemies again, don't you?"

"Yeah, I know," Twilight said sadly. "I wish it didn't have to be this way."

"So do I, my little pony. So do I."

They walked for a time in silence.

Twilight stopped and perked up her ears. "Do you hear something?" she asked.

"No," Aporia replied, still walking. Twilight looked around quickly and ran to catch up to Aporia. Mere moments later, she stopped again.

"Okay, this time I heard something," she said. Aporia stopped and turned around, sweeping the hallway with his lights. "There!" Twilight shouted, pointing with a hoof. Something moved out of the light.

"I don't see anything," Aporia said.

Suddenly a black shadow swooped over Twilight and Aporia. The sound it made was like roaring wind. Twilight ducked, but Aporia stood steady.

"Did you see that?" Twilight asked. "What WAS that?!"

"I'm sorry, Twilight, but I didn't see anything."

"But it was just over us! You couldn't have-"

"Twilight, I'm an android. I can see colors you've never even heard of. If I don't see it, it isn't there."

"I... I guess," Twilight said. She glanced over her shoulder, then ran up to Aporia. "Maybe it's Nightshroud playing tricks on us."

The shadow watched them leave. It smiled.

Twilight and Aporia continue their trek through the seemingly abandoned building. Twilight still believes they are being followed by something. In the darkness, the two are shown more visions...

Meklord Emperor Granel ∞
EARTH
Level 1
Machine/Effect
Other monsters you control cannot attack. This card gains ATK equal to your LP. Once per turn: You can target 1 Synchro Monster your opponent controls; equip that target to this card. This card gains ATK equal to the combined ATK of all Synchro Monsters equipped to it by this effect. When this card is destroyed: Destroy all monsters you control.
ATK / 0
DEF / 0