The sky was ashen grey as massive clouds were clumping together, forming large, intimidating forms that covered the steely heavens, like bees amassing around their hive, to protect their home from any and all intruders. The clouds actually seemed to be growing by the very second, and it would only be a matter of minutes before they would release their watery payload upon the grounds below.

The sharp winds howled through the branches of a lone tree that was swaying in the wind. It was an eerie sound, not much unlike the kind you would hear in an ominous horror movie, like where someone just entered a large, abandoned building, letting the door slowly creak open as their progressively weakening source of light danced through the empty corridor. Vivid, almost purely terrifying images of what would happen to them in just a moment's notice would fill their heads as they would slowly but surely approach their impending, inevitable end, possibly at the hands, or claws, of some unspeakable, exalted horror lurking in the dark.

That was pretty much the precise feeling one would feel from a scenery such as this. However, all was not completely devoid of life.

Just beside the lone tree was a street. It was a suburban area, and the street ran all the way past houses; all the way from the nearby highway and then into the city. Close to one of the entrances to the local subway station was a cemetery. It was fairly large, with rows and rows of various assorted tombstones inscriptions of all those who had passed away for one reason or another, and these stones served to forever preserve the memories of these people.

Although this part of town seemed to be very quiet and almost deserted, there was movement of living beings. Two people had come out of the nearby subway station, looking about the empty streets.

Both seemed to be fairly young, probably teenagers or soon to be adults.

One of them was a boy. He had a stern face, with a furrowed brow, looking like he was scowling constantly. He had dark eyes and jet-black hair with only the very slightest touch of grey, just like charcoal, stylized in a spiky manner. He was wearing an almost pitch black trench coat, with shoes and trousers of the same color.

The other one was a bit on the opposite side. First of all, it was a girl, so the contrast between them was quite noticeable. She looked a lot softer than her male companion. Her face was emotionless, except for extreme sadness. She looked almost like she was about to cry. It was as if she was about to do something that she absolutely dreaded, that she wouldn't want to do for all eternity.

Her white and blue shirt was becoming slightly ruffled in the wind, loosely swaying in the wind. She desperately pulled the black jacket she wore above her shirt in an effort to shut the cold air out, as its edges flapped about in the wind like the flag of a sailing ship in a sharp gale. Her thin jeans didn't offer the best protection from the weather, as the cold wind crept very close, very thoroughly through the not very resistant fabric of the pants, making her shiver and covering her skin in goose bumps.

The two of them walked down the street, towards the cemetery. None of them felt like dealing with small talk, for heavy with sorrow their hearts were in the face of what they were about to do.

Rounding the corner of the cemetery, their booted feet slowly hitting the pavement, they came ever closer to a rusty old gate that seemed to be the only entrance to the lonely graveyard. Maintenance around these parts didn't seem much prioritized.

"We're here." The boy in black said shortly, trying to hold a straight voice, but somewhat failed as emotion leaked through. He sounded sad and almost resigned in a way; almost the way people sounded like when they had given up on the biggest goal in everyone's eyes, which was life itself.

He was depressed through and through.

"Where are all the others?" Her blonde hair lay along her back, moving lightly on course of the wind, her voice tainted with despair and depression. She held her head low, her gaze drilling into the ground, not looking up for one second. The boy placed his hand on the gate's handle in silence, and pushed. The gate slowly swung open with an uncomfortably loud squeal of complaint, rust coming off the hinges as the boy jerked his hand away in disgust at only the very touch of the iron handle that allowed entry and escape from the graveyard.

"Damnit! Don't they have any service for the only graveyard in the entire city?" The black haired teen exclaimed in aggravation as he instinctively wiped the dirty palm of his hand on the thigh of his black trousers, leaving a faint but still visible brown stain on the dark fabric. This only earned the otherwise empty air around the two a volley of swears from the boy in black. The blonde girl didn't react to his misfortune at all, staring into the ground, gaze and soul empty alike. The boy was suddenly reminded his companion's question, recovering from his sudden, explosive spike of anger. His furious demeanor serving only to be amplified by the feelings of the absolute despair and sadness because of what they were about to do.

"Syrus and Hassleberry already came by and dropped some flowers. They asked if they should stay and wait for us, but I told them we'd be better off alone. Bastion said he'd drop by tomorrow with someone, didn't say who. " The jet black haired boy explained, voice raspy and still touched by the anger of his recent outburst.

The blonde girl just nodded quietly, not lifting her head and still letting her gaze effectively bury and isolate itself beneath the loose, soiled ground of the graveyard just ahead.

"What about Atticus, then? And Zane?" It was the boy in black's turn to ask about the whereabouts of certain people. The blonde girl finally looked up, her eyes dull and blank and devoid of the spark of life they had so joyously harbored before, during the time they spent at Duel Academy during their second year.

"Atticus doesn't even know…" The girl began, absentmindedly folding the fingers of her hands down by her waist. "Zane had a match today, but he said he'd come by tomorrow…" The girl sounded unstable, her voice close to cracking. She had an increasingly hurting lump growing in the base of her throat. It seemed as if she would break down into tears in a moment's notice. She tried to loosen up the painful knot in her throat by swallowing and sighing a couple of times, but it was to no avail. The boy in black then reached into his pocket, his fingers coming out again being closed around a rolled up sheet of paper.

"I got a map. It shows the location of… His grave." The boy in black forced the last two words out of his mouth, almost as if when he was about to speak them, his mouth was glued shut by some unknown force, and that he had to use every last ounce of his willpower to bypass the power of that force. However, the boy in black knew perfectly well what this unknown force was.

It was his own, fully fledged silence.

They passed through the gate to the graveyard, following the map the boy in black held in his hands. It wasn't a very complicated map, with not a lot of details on it, depicting the entire graveyard, only with the details for the area where the goal of their search was. There was a bit of explanatory text, with a bunch of arrows for guidance along the paths neatly written down in red on the paper.

Walking in silence, the blonde girl continuously staring down into the ground and the boy in black staring down into the map, speaking only to direct them the right way. They passed row after eerie row of tombstones, all with some kind of inscription on their surface, and most with bouquets of flowers around their bases, and candles adorning and illuminating their ominous presence.

It didn't take long to reach the correct row of tombstones in the graveyard. Not that they had expected it to, but somewhere deep inside them, they just wished that they could just continue walking forever, without ever getting anywhere at all. However, they knew that they could not do so, and they really had to get this done with.

"It's here." The boy in black said shortly and matter-of-factly. They had come to a stop by a single tombstone. It wasn't very big, maybe a foot and a half in height, situated at the very end of one of the rows. Just below the tombstone were a few items sitting on the dried, crusty grass. There were a few candles in protective jars, so as they would not be snuffed out thanks to bad weather. They swayed weakly in the moving air current. There was also a bunch of roses that still seemed quite fresh. They were presumably the "gift" left behind by the grave's previous visitors.

There was also a photo neatly placed inside a simple wooden frame, and a normal supporting stand behind it, supporting its leaning against the ground below and behind it. The photo showed a young boy, perhaps mid-to-late teens. He had brown hair that was styled in a matter that almost seemed to defy gravity in some way. He had chocolate brown eyes that sparkled with life and he smiled a smile that was so genuine and brightly shining that he looked like someone who couldn't ever be sad about anything.

The travelling companions seemed to freeze in their very composures as they stared at first the photo of the boy, and then at the inscription written on the tombstone.

Here lies Jaden Yuki, professional duelist and aspiring student at Duel Academy. Loved by all who knew him, had friends everywhere. Saved the world from utter destruction twice. 1996-2014.

Requiescat in pace, Jaden Yuki. May your soul be at peace forever.

The couple continued staring at the grave, silent, and completely immobile, not even appearing to be breathing. The clouds that had been growing so increasingly in size and also volume started to feel like they would release their watery payload any second. Then, electricity rapidly built up in the clouds' undersides, like a battery that was being recharged by the power of the interactions between of electrons and protons, but only much faster and with much more sheer power behind it than a simple battery.

A bolt of lightning suddenly appeared. Fairly far away, a flash of light with only a split second's duration only, but the unexpectedly fast appearance of the lightning bolt, and the thundering boom that followed only a matter of seconds later was more than enough to startle the boy in black and make the blonde girl flinch on the spot.

But the couple standing in front of the grave paid it no further mind as they continued staring at the grey tombstone before them, still in silence.

The blonde girl now felt that the lump previously in her throat had increased in size tenfold as it seemed. She tried to open her mouth, maybe to speak, but the only sound she could emit was a weak croaking noise, that made her throat hurt so much, that it actually made her moan from the pain, bringing one hand up to her neck by instinct.

The boy in black had a very troubled look on his young face. He was still somewhat scowling, but he only looked sad, and not that angry anymore. He looked like he was biting down onto something as hard as he could, almost as if he tried to get his jaws connected together, only that his teeth were in the way.

"Jaden…" The blonde girl seemed to finally have found the ability to speak without too much pain in her throat, however the name that was uttered by the young girl's vocal cords still sounded that they were spoken not without great difficulty. She then shut her eyes, feeling a massive quantity of tears stinging in the corners of her eyes. When she opened her eyes again, the tears started falling freely, slowly rolling down and off of her cheeks, dropping down into the dried out ground below them.

The boy in black slowly walked up to the gravestone, closing the only step of a distance from the gravestone. It was now his turn to hold his head low, eyes close to watering up as he shut his eyelids in a vain attempt to keep those tears from abandoning the ships that were his eyes. He stood just in front of the grave, gritting his teeth together and forcing his eyes open again, fresh tears finally breaking the barrier, their salty essence poking the sensitive nerves on the surface of his eyes painfully.

The boy in black fell down to one knee with a huff of his shaking voice. He rested his arm on the one knee with his other arm hanging limply by his side. He stared down at the photo of the boy, the amassing tears in his eyes allowing the weakly lit candle to reflect themselves in his teary gleamed eyes, the flames moving in a dying, gracious dance.

The boy in black sniffed once, before the first tear fell, dropping and plummeting down towards the ground, landing in the dried grass just in front of the picture. Still on one knee, the boy in black opened his pitch dark coat and reached into a pocket inside, fumbling around for a few seconds while gripping for something. However, it took no more than a few moments before his hand came out of his pocket, fingers wrapped around what appeared to be a deck of playing cards, held together by a long rubber band. The cards had a brown back, as their faces weren't visible. The brown color looked like it was swirling together with other shades of the same color and forming a vortex of some kind, which together formed an oval shaped black hole.

The boy in black set the deck of quite unique playing cards down just beside the photography, in a way that could be likened to a way of reverence. However, after he had placed the deck on the ground, his hand remained on the top card, lingering, almost like he felt something in that particular card that intrigued him. With the slightest trace of hesitating, he drew the card, and looked at it…

His lips parted and out through them came a quick but audible gasp.

The boy in black felt an entire wave of memories and pain completely wash over him, just by looking at the card. He had lost so many duels before because of that one last.

The card itself depicted some kind of unarmed, very muscular in a white attire of sorts. There were seven small stars neatly aligned just above the card's picture. There was also a name written in shiny, golden letters, just above aforementioned stars.

Elemental Hero Neos.

The boy in black cringed, almost as if looking at the card brought him physical pain. But, it was only his sorrow threatening to completely engulf and overwhelm him. His breath caught up in his throat, as he blinked repeatedly to clear out the rapidly amassing tears stinging in his eyes. Putting the car back facedown with the rest of the deck, the boy in black got up to his feet, gaze fixed on the picture of the poor diseased soul of a young boy. He couldn't possibly bring himself to speak. Instead, he simply turned around, head low. He started walking with fast steps, crunching some dried leaves on the ground. He passed the blonde girl a few seconds later without so much as one single word. His intention was to call a cab to pick them up and take them back to where they lived, but he spoke nothing of it. Tears ran down his cheeks freely as he almost jogged past the blonde girl.

She stared after him from out of the corner of her eye, turning her head slightly. Had this been so much pressure for the boy in black that he couldn't even speak? But she couldn't blame him. Right now, she felt a similar feeling, deep inside her chest, a painful knot of sadness slowly suffocating her from the inside.

Lightning and thunder came crashing down from the skies above. The boy in black was nowhere to be seen as the girl failed to prevent the muscles in her legs from giving in, making her collapse down to her knees, only feet away from the photography. Her knees were lightly scraped by the rough ground, but she paid the light pain no further mind. Her eyes locked on the text written on the tombstone. Even though she knew that what had happened could not ever be undone, it still felt so strange, so out of place. It was such an abnormal feeling that she didn't know if she would ever manage to learn to cope with it.

Despair tightened its wrenching hold on her heart, hurting her so much that she knew that she couldn't possibly hold it in anymore. She had to let it out.

And she did.

She finally let it all out in the form of elongated, completely helpless wails of absolute misery. Tears in great quantity fell down her face, rolling down along the soft skin of her cheeks. She sobbed very loudly, her breath getting trapped right in her throat multiple times. She was forced to go down on all four, her sorrow completely drowning her and clouding her senses, the ground covering her hands and knees with dust. The clouds above then no longer hold their watery payload, and with one last bolt of lightning and one last boom of thunder, the rain poured down on everything below, soaking the grieving blonde girl in just a single minute. In a few moments only, the tears running down her face still was heavily mixed with the substance known as H2O that was falling from the sky in increasingly large amounts.

"Jaden…! No…!" The blonde girl continued weeping as she cried his name in her distress. She cried for minute after minute, finding no comfort on the cold, wet ground or in her soaked clothes. But, she couldn't possibly find any valid escape from her dolor. She was trapped. Just like an animal in a cage. Only that her cage was made out of her own hellish anguish that slowly corrupted her from her heart, inside and outwards.

The blonde girl didn't think she would ever stop the watery cascade coming out of her eyes. She had lost so much, in what could be seen as so little in some people's eyes, as it was actually only one person the had departed from this realm of being in such an unfortunate way. However, to this particular girl, this single person meant so much, mattered to such an extent in her life that she had had an increasingly harder time imagining an everyday life without him I it. Sure, the boy in black was a loyal companion of hers, and the often spent time together whenever they could. Yet, it would never be the same…

Still on her knees, the blonde girl coughed a few times. Now that she had been out, fairly scantily clad, in non-stop downpour, she felt freezing to the very bone. Her teeth chattered, and she lost her feeling in her hands and, to a smaller amount, her feet. She still sobbed once every few seconds, her breath still not quite having managed to escape the confines of her throat. She shakily got up on her feet, head held low and arm crossing over her abdomen, holding her other arm by the elbow. Then, she looked up.

And there he was.

He stood there, smiling with joy just beside the grave, not more than a single meter away from her. His very being seemed to radiate a warm light, his gravity defying brown hair and his red jacket two familiar traits of his that she could recognize anywhere, any day of the week. At this very moment, it seemed so unreal, too good to be true, yet was the only thing in the world that mattered to her right now. As her eyes trained themselves on him, she could feel her own face break into the biggest smile she had ever smiled before in her life.

She did not even think for one second as she closed the two step distance between them, immediately throwing her arms around him, wanting to feel safe in his warm embrace, his arms around her and holding her tight, and feel his breath hitting her neck while she could bury her face in his, and just cry her heart out to him without having to worry about anything else.

But she didn't experience anything of that. She realized something was very wrong.

She felt her arms touch nothing. She pulled her upper body limbs back and retreated backwards a step. He was still standing there, still smiling the warmest smile ever at her, but her heart skipped half a beat when she understood that it was all just a figment of her imagination, a last desperate attempt of her heart to cling onto the last bit of hope.

But… He seemed so real.

"That was a really fun duel, buddy! We gotta do that again sometime!" He then said with yet another smile and a laugh of his always joyous voice, whilst pointing both his middle and index finger at her; his trademark gesture. "Gotcha!" He laughed happily, before waving at her for a bit and turning around, taking off in a sprint into the night.

"J-Jaden! Wait!" Her raspy voice called out to him, a painful cringe spreading throughout her entire face as the last pieces of her broken heart shattered into smithereens, completely obliterating her from the inside as she brought her still numb hands towards her chest, looking down at them through empty and given up eyes.

"I love you…"

But her voice was nothing except a whisper in the wind. An answer didn't come, and she knew that one never would. Damaged beyond any kind of repair, her heart gave out as she silently walked away in the rain.