Did you know that on page 27 in the Guinness Book of World Records, it explicitly states Edo Phoenix has the World's Longest Stick shoved up his rectum...what?

Foreword, by Yuuki Juudai (Retake #2)

The Power of FUN is worth an expired coupon at KFC.

Foreword, by Yuuki Juudai (Retake #3)

Friendship is important. Like I always say: Bros before hoes, man.

...wait a minute, that would leave out Asuka.

"Aniki! Aniki! ANIKI! Hurry and get up already-su!"

Small hands grasped my arm and sharply tugged me out of my peaceful slumber. Is Chronos' class over already? Over or not, my dazed brain sent signals to my muscles to go back to rest mode and I complied obediently. Waking up had never been one of my strong points, anyway.

"Mah? Just five more minutes, okaasan…" The words left my mouth before I had a chance to comprehend their meaning or who they were directed towards.

"Aniki!" shouted another voice, this one much deeper and more mature in volume. "Neither Marufuji-sempai nor I are your mother! Now get up 'cause class is over, da' don!"

In the back of my sleep-induced mind, I vaguely pondered what 'da don' was supposed to mean in addition to why '-su' is used as a sentence ender. How come people had sentence enders anyway? Everyone from Shou to Daitokuji to Napoleon had a sentence ender but me! Jeez, I felt left out…

"Juudai," suddenly said a third voice. "If you don't open your eyes right now I will take this pencil and shove it in your ear, sleepyhead…"

My eyelids flew open like rolled-up window shades. A hand was holding a pencil inches away from my face and all I could see was a giant pink disk. Apparently, my friends were going to manually open my eyelids had their threats been futile. Pfft, some friends.

"…Johan?"

He prodded my nose with the eraser.

"Class is over," said him. "We should be going."

"Right, right…" I ran my fingers through my hair and ruffled it up a bit before following the lot out the door.

"Have you seen O'Brien lately?" Johan asked as we strolled through the hallways to the Osiris cafeteria; it was lunch time.

It had been four days since the hostage/duel fiasco and I haven't seen heads or tails of that kid. Two days after our encounter with O'Brien, Kenzan's butt found itself encountering the jaws of a crocodile—which somehow led to a duel with Jim Crocodile Cook, and though Kenzan did go crazy at the beginning thanks to electro-waves or something, overall, it was be an enjoyable game. Apart from that, nothing else worthwhile mentioning happened. (I mean, I got two delicious, affectionate, love-filled bentos from Rei and Asuka but is a description on how I stuffed my face full really relevant…?)

I suppressed a yawn. "Nah. He's probably doing some warrior training of his. He's an alright guy now that he doesn't want to kidnap Shou anymore…"

"Hmph." Shou crossed his arms and muttered something finishing with a '-su'. There were those sentence enders again. Kenzan seemed to find Shou's comment funny because he snickered into his hand.

"G'Morning!" somebody suddenly cried. We saw a cowboy hat bobbed up and down through the crowd of students before Jim stopped in front of us. He plastered a charming smile on his face as he tipped his hat and hailed each of us a greeting in turn. "Juudai. Johan. Marufuji-kun." He paused at Kenzan, smile widening. "Dino boy! Nice to see you up and well!"

"I see you've already recovered from our Dis-Duel," Kenzan replied gruffly but with a fond underlining.

Jim beamed. "Likewise."

Kenzan's eyes shifted to the crocodile strapped to his back. "Karen...is good?"

"She's dealing with the electro-waves quite well. She's such a beau, and a strong one, too…aren't you now, Karen?" he cooed his 'family member' and petted her under the chin.

"Heh." Kenzan rubbed the back of his head, wearing a crestfallen grin. "Shame that ain't the case with me-saurus."

"What?" Jim's face was confronted by surprise. "How can you say that? Let me tell you this, dino boy: you're one of the toughest sports I've had the fortune of meeting and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. You get what I'm saying?"

"Erm, che, thanks."

"No problem!" A thumbs up.

I tried to conceal my amusement. Had I been a standard onlooker, I would have thought from simply looking at Kenzan's reactions that his liking towards Jim barely stemmed past politeness—except I wasn't a standard onlooker. I knew Kenzan, and I knew though he and Jim may have had different views on archeology and fossil preservation, no one could deny the sliver of a smile he wore on his face when he fell unconscious.

"We're just about to eat," I told Jim. "You wanna join us?"

"Sorry, but no can do. I've got a lunch-date with Karen."

(A what…?)

"That's too bad. Catch you later then?"

"Definitely! See you!"

(Gods. Engrish.)

"Hey, you guys. You wanna crash here for lunch?" said Johan once Jim had skipped off to host a candlelight meal with his crocodile and probably instigate obscene things afterwards. Johan jerked his thumb at the empty picnic table resting under the shade of some leafy trees with two benches on opposite sides, each one having the capacity of holding three people. Perfect.

So we sat down and ate. Shou nearly blinded himself with his chopsticks out of shock when Kenzan went into berserk antediluvian mode on a fly that landed in his food. He gripped the table, reared his head back, and roared loud enough to put Simba to shame, making the fly buzz away harmlessly in exchange for Shou receiving a watery eye. In the meanwhile, Johan and I were chatting about random things that didn't make an ounce of sense to anyone else in the vicinity, but were as clear as crystal (no pun intended) to our genius minds. The two of us just click, you know? I've only known Johan for a month, but I felt like I've known him for a lifetime. We had just exhausted the topic on how Amon was actually an undercover super sleuther secret agent ninja spy in disguise ("Impossible!" "I know right? That's why it's so funny!") when Johan decided to bring up another topic, one that had been pushed to the recess of my mind for the past couple of days.

"Remember that story you told me about Edo Phoenix and his friend, Saiou?" he asked out of the blue. I nodded at him, mouth full of lunch. "Why don't you finish it now? We have plenty of time on our hands before our next Dis-Duels and nothing warms up a tale like polishing off a good turkey sandwich!"

I was about to reply how my kogeta mezashi pawned his thanksgiving goose when Kenzan interrupted, "Back up. What's all this I'm hearing about a story-saurus?"

"Yeah," mumbled Shou, holding his swollen eye. "How come you never told it to us?"

I blinked at them, surprised they were listening. Insert sheepish laugh here. "Uh, I forgot," said me, Liar of the Year.

"Then this is a great chance for us to catch up."

"And start from the beginning 'cause it ain't fair for us folks who haven't listened to the entire thing-saurus!"

Despite Shou and Kenzan being my best buds and all, I wasn't exactly optimistic to enlighten them on the omitted events that happened the previous year. I know most people would say I'm a hypocrite, but in my defense, Johan wasn't here, so telling him is ok because he's not biased or anything.

"Uh…"

"C'mon tell us, Aniki!"

"We were there when you dueled Saiou last year. We'll understand!"

I rest my case.

Then as if things couldn't get any more stressful, Asuka made her grand entrance from behind a tree and voiced her opinion. "I agree. It's just not a story without a beginning."

"But Asuka, you were there—" I started when Captain Trenchcoat raised the attendance count by yet another digit. Two was good company, four was a party, and six was just trampling the welcome mat with an elephant.

"If Tenjoin-kun wants to hear this story then tell her the entire thing," Manjyome ordered stiffly with an undertone of a threat creeping into his voice. "Or else."

Ignoring what the 'else' could have meant for my bones, I protested, "You were there too!" I was rewarded with blank looks. "…don't you guys remember anything?"

"Remember what?" Manjyome demanded in a sense I had just asked him to recite the periodic table backwards.

"Oh, never mind," I grumbled. I glanced at the others. "Do you guys know what we're talking about?"

I expected a simultaneous four-way 'no'.

"Yes!"

"Completely-saurus!"

"I'm sure I'll figure it out."

"Who cares?"

Lovely. I shot Johan an apologetic look but he simply grinned and shrugged his shoulders. Then I turned back to face the four kids, bowing my head and putting my clasped hands between my legs. I took a deep breath.

"Well. It all started after Manjyome defeated Gergo…"

I talked quickly, sweeping over the more grisly events and glossing over the finer details, not even noticing when Asuka sat down to hear me better and that Manjyome took a seat next to her when I got to the part where he nearly punched my lights out.

"…then he flung the covers over his head and we slept in silence until dawn. That's where I'm up to with Johan."

There was a collective sphere of silence following my conclusion. I half-expected Manjyome to scoff, turn up his nose disdainfully and retort how that was a half-witted, crack-a-jack excuse of a lie and how he would have never done such things and how they should leave these fools to wallow in their own stupidly, Tenjoin-kun—

"I don't remember doing that," Manjyome said, much to my surprise. "I don't remember doing any of that."

"Me either," Asuka agreed quietly. "If what you said is really true, I'm sorry…"

"Saiou tried to kill Edo-su?" was Shou's daunted remark.

"But you have to remember he was being controlled by the Wave of Light," pointed out me. I took a quick glance at my watch only to realize I don't wear one. I forced my lips into a grin. "Ah, well, seeing as lunch is almost over…"

Nobody shared my enthusiasm. Nobody budged from their seat.

"We're not leaving," Manjyome spoke firmly on everyone's behalf, surprising me for the second time in a thirty seconds duration. "Continue the story, dropout boy. I want to hear what happens next."

I gawked at Manjyome. "That's…uh…real nice that you want to hear it, but, um..."

Asuka hesitantly added, "Most of our peers are injured from the Dis-Duels. Satou-sensei can't teach half a class so we might as well skip out this one time…"

As a very belligerent coke-addict-turned philosopher once said: When you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

I expelled a sigh. "Alright. You said you wanted to hear what happens next?" Manjyome gave me an incriminating stare. "Well, you're what happen next."

Part II. Your smile has always saved me, you can cry now; I'll stay here with you…

There was a conspiracy in the school over the next couple of days that Saiou Takuma had lost his marbles after the gigantic storm swept through the academia. Many people believed the winds blew away his sanity and the rain poured into his empty skull once the brains dripped out of his ears. I wasn't surprised. For about a month straight Saiou sent numerous students, assassins, and Pro League duelists after yours truly. Then all of a sudden—"Why in the world would Saiou-sama allow those two losers to sleep in his room? Saiou-sama hates Juudai! Saiou-sama hates Edo Phoenix! They're obstacles to eternal light and world purification! Why in the seven hells is he doing this?"

Manjyome didn't understand Saiou's intentions. To be truthful, he wasn't alone.

At the crack of dawn the following morning, I woke up to Asuka slamming down a tray of breakfast on my thighs, provoking a loud "OWWW" from me as I woke up to pain, panic, and a pair of large breasts.

I rubbed my eyes groggily, trying to get the feeling back into my legs and not ogle Asuka's E-cups in the process. "…A…Asuka? Wuz up? Wuz time iz it?" Then I realized who the owner of the room, couch, breakfast tray I was sleeping in/on/lying on top of my lap was. "Where's Saiou?"

Asuka 'hmph'-ed. "Saiou-sama has better things to do than entertain you losers... Look here when I'm talking to you!" she screamed when my head swerved sideways to see if Edo was up and at 'em yet.

My head riveted back to Asuka. "...sorry," I squeaked.

She twitched, and then expelled a sigh. "Anyway. Even though Saiou-sama thinks you are a complete waste of time..." Her expression turned uncomfortable as she closed her eyes and knitted her eyebrows. "...he believes letting his two biggest obstructions stay in his sacred dorm allowable so I'm willing to tolerate you boys for the time being."

That being said, she pointed to the tray. There were two dishes on it: the left one was a bowl of porridge while the right was a plate with food that looked like it had been massacred, mutilated, and then dragged through the mud. I stared at the plate blankly.

"Eh?" said me, blunter than the top end of a baseball bat. "What the heck is this?"

Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut because Asuka looked furious. "What's your problem?" she snapped. "We're housing you, feeding you and all you can say is that? You're real grateful. I can't believe Saiou-sama can even stand a jerk like you. I can't believe—"

I raised a finger, unaffected by her PMS-induced rant. "Nah, that's not what I meant…" I began benignly.

"—then what did you mean?" she demanded, cutting through my flippant attitude like Wildman's sword through Armed Dragon LV10. Rawr, kitty has claws. Asuka was never this aggressive in her pre-Kessha stage.

"Asuka, your hands are burnt," I pointed out, emphasizing 'hands' and 'burnt' in a gentle, yet direct way. I poked my index finger in the direction of her hands which she was keeping and had kept behind her back ever since she put down the tray. "You were the one who made this breakfast for us, aren't you?"

She wasn't prepared for my keen sense of discernment. (Let's just say I have a good nose.) "I—had an accident," she quickly replied, flustered, but it didn't take Einstein to figure out she was lying. "I mean, why would I waste time cooking for a bunch of dorks like you? I don't even know how to cook!"

I wasn't impressed. "Asuka. Why didn't you go to Kabayama-sensei if you couldn't get anyone to cook for us?" I asked.

She blinked.

"You know he loves company and all. The guy's more than kind enough to make you a meal...two meals, I mean, if you just asked him to. …I mean, c'mon." I shrugged like shrugging was the über-awesome solution to all questions of the universe.

Asuka averted my eyes when I looked at her. "Look. They refused to cook for an Osiris student and a traitor so I was forced to make breakfast myself. ...it's not because I care about you guys or anything. Because I don't."

"Oh, um, mmkay. Anyway..." I stabbed the fork into the crisp sin-of-nature, broke off a piece, and stuffed it in my mouth. I nodded. "...this is pwetty grud," I commented with a full mouth of black.

Asuka's flustered expression returned and she swerved her head away to hide it. After another stretch of awkward silence, she coughed into her hand. "I…never used a spatula before."

"I couldn't tell."

Asuka was finally staring at me rather with her blonde hair cascading over her face. Her eyes were cold yet passionate; her lips sported into a pout that wasn't scornful, but rather yet, it was indifferent, if not almost kind.

"By the way—what's a spatula?"

"Baka!"

Something among the lines of, "Oh snap, she's gonna hit me!" ran through my head and I automatically scrambled back 'cause I valued (whatever was left of) my brain cells in tact. I ended up going too far and fell off the bed. I was groping around for something to hoist myself to standing position when Asuka hastily hurried over and extended her hand towards me.

"…here." She sounded breathless.

I took her hand. "Thanks."

She quickly let go once I was on my feet, averting my eyes once again. By doing so, I got the impression she didn't want me here.

"You don't want me here, do you?"

"No, not really," Asuka said, her lips twitching with a mini-scowl. "You're a waste of the oxygen in the room."

Most people would deflate after getting smacked with an insult from a pretty girl. I simply brushed it off. "Huh. Ok. We'll leave. I mean, I don't want you to get in trouble for helping the enemy. You're still my friend though," I added earnestly.

I glanced to my left. I almost forgot Edo was here for he hadn't made a single sound or movement even after Asuka arrived. He was sleeping like a log with his sheets drawn up way over his head so not even a tuff of silver hair showed. He must have really wanted his privacy. I reached over to wake up the Edo-log when Asuka suddenly slapped it away. Startled, I looked at her for an explanation. She pursed her lips.

"Don't. He's...really tired from Yesterday's events. He needs his sleep."

"But you just said you didn't want us here..." I began to protest, but Asuka cut me off by raising her hand.

"You'll be allowed to leave before noon. I promise. For now just stay here and finish your breakfast. Saiou-sama wants to talk to you soon. I'll leave you alone."

"But didn't you just say..."

She shut the door behind her.

The fact Asuka actually considered what Americans did and did not eat for breakfast overshadowed her inability to prepare food. Burnt eggs, American toast, and sausages plus a not-so-successful attempt in hiding swollen fingers behind her back brought relief to my heart that she hadn't lost all of her humanity to the light. Though it was a shame Edo was still asleep. Of course, my gratitude died once I realized I couldn't breathe from the stench of the burnt food, let alone finish eating it and ended up tossing the dish out a nearby window. Asuka threw a hissy fit when she discovered all her hard effort had been chucked out the window thanks to Gin Ryusei bursting in the room at the exactly wrong moment with his hair looking like cow spots. I never heard the word 'baka!' used in a single sentence so many times and miraculously, Edo slept through all of that too.

Half an hour later, Asuka ninja-poofed for the second time and came back hauling stacks of paper in her arms to see me sitting on her Saiou-sama's bed with my not-quite-clean shoes tucked snugly in the folds of the bed sheets, and constructing paper cranes out of scrap paper, except the scrap paper were in fact napkins so the cranes were all deformed and poofy like they had undergone a nuclear explosion.

For a moment, she looked like she was going to burst like an atomic weapon. But she didn't. Instead, she simply compressed her emotion like a hydrogen bomb and began doing her work.

"...d'you actually enjoy it here?" sez me, once I had run out of warfare similes to work off of.

She regarded my question by clicking her pen. Click. Click.

Undaunted, I tried again. "All I've been seeing you do is paperwork."

This time she answered. "A society this expansive requires a lot of organizing." Scribble. Scribble.

"That sounds boring."

Ignore. Ignore.

"You wanna have a duel sometime? You know, just for fun?"

"I don't believe in such things. Either you duel me to join the Hikari no Kessha or we don't duel at all." Click. Click.

"That sounds really boring."

"Idiot." Scribble. Scribble.

"Why don't you drop by the Osiris dorms some time? Say hello. Visit. Leave us a line." When all I got was an Ignore. Ignore. I took a breath and continued ragging, "I miss you. Fubuki misses you too. So do Momoe and Junko and Shou and Kenzan...a whole lot of us miss the old you."

"I'm an Obelisk White now," she replied tartly, creasing a document and slipping it into an envelope. "Your dorms don't interact with our dorms."

"You're sounding a lot like Manjyome."

Click. Click. Scribble. Ignore. Scribble. Click. Ignore.

"Did you know that the only way to make white is to take all the colors in the world and mix them up?"

She sighed. "Look, Juudai... you're a good guy. But you just don't understand. Things change. People change. Just because you're happy with always doing the same things, seeing the same friends...doesn't mean the rest of us enjoy it too."

"You have some hair in your face," I pointed out, raising a hand to push the winding strand of hair out of her face.

Asuka blinked. "Juudai," she whispered, staring at me softly. I stared straight back at her.

"...the Hikari no Kessha must be really bad if you don't even have the time to wash your hair," I said.

Something about Asuka's body language told me she was trying her best to restrain the urge to stab my eyes out. We had a Berlin wall between us for the next fifteen minutes until a Hikari no Kessha student came by with a rather startling message.

"Asuka-san, we have visitors—ahh."

He took notice of the Osiris brunette and sneered at my confused expression. Thankfully, Asuka quickly shooed him out and even went as far as to stomp over to the doorway to yell at him as he fled down the hallway.

Once he was gone, she shut the door and slouched against it. Both of her eyebrows arched to the sky. "Right. Visitors." Something about her movements suggested uneasiness.

But I didn't question this. I just cocked my head to the side and put on my 'Oro?' expression. What visitors could I possibly have here?

A minute later, I got my answer. Kenzan and Shou burst into the room and found me mutilating dinner stationary next to Edo who was pretending to be a log in his bed, and Asuka who was stabbing at her homework at a desk on the opposite corner of the room. From the dumb expressions on their faces, apparently they were every bit as shocked as me at the uncanny circumstances. They stared at me, stunned, as if I had just announced that hotel shampoos were actually a byproduct of too much gas fumes combined with liquid nitrogen. Shou said, "ohmygodanikiIcantbelieveyouarealivewehavebeensoworriedaboutyousu" followed by a shove and "marufujisempaiwaslookingunderneathrocksandinholessaurus" followed by a return shove and "shutupdinobrain" followed with a snarl, the dilation of pupils and a "nobodyaskedforyouopinionshrimpy" and so on and so forth. For next fifteen minutes, pure chaos reined the room. Eventually the hysterics pureed into one gigantic screaming fest in where the only comprehendible words anyone on campus could make out were, "-suuu", "-saurus", accompanied by the occasional wail of, "Aniki! Kenzan-kun just BIT me!"

Then Asuka lost it, went NO EFFING WAY on all of us, and firmly stated that she was not going to tolerate Shou and Kenzan if they were going to be so loud. She asked all three of us to leave. I said I wasn't leaving without Edo. Shou protested they would stick together no matter what. Kenzan asked if she had a heart. Then Manjyome came in, shot icicle glares at the two, snapped his fingers and a dozen cronies appeared out of nowhere and surrounded them. Both Kenzan and Shou looked like they were going to be stubborn and allow themselves to be pounded into mincemeat just to stay with their Aniki (I was almost in tears) and it sort of continued that way though the pounding was mostly verbal insults from Manjyome and exasperated sighs from Asuka.

"We're not going to leave Aniki!" Shou cried and possessively wrapped an arm around my leg. "You'll never be able to make us leave!"

"Don't make me laugh, Marufuji. Like this: Hahaha, you're short. Now. Get. Out."

"I won't!"

"Me either-saurus!"

"Shou, Kenzan, this is your last warning. You have the count of three before I call every single guard within a fifty meter radius and have them physically remove you from the premises," Asuka said stiffly, looking like she was in withdrawal from crack cocaine. She flipped her index finger into the air. "One."

It was then I began to panic.

Asuka is just kidding

Her middle finger rose. "Two."

and even if she isn't

"C'mon, can't I just kill them? Saves the trouble of counting down to three," groaned some random Kessha-ian radiating bloodlust in a way that pretty much confirmed every single member of the Hikari no Kessha was deranged. (Asuka excluded because she brought me food.)

Manjyome rounded to him, the irritation shining clear as broad daylight on his face. "You're not killing anybody! Blood stains are hell hard to get off these uniforms and the last thing we need is spilling filthy, ugly red" —daggers were shot in my direction; I suspected it was symbolic reference to my uniform— "on the carpet of Saiou-sama's room."

we're just unarmed kids

"Aww, but Manjyome-san..."

"Two and a half—"

"...and if anybody's killing Marufuji, it's gonna be me," King Buzzsaw muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

"Gee, thanks!" said the boy in question.

plus nobody can commit open murder in a school

"—two and three quarters—"

...except Saiou's eighteen and has a satellite cannon.

Reality hits people in their sweet spots real hard and in my case, I was only thankful I was born with enough brains to realize we were in deep doo-doo lest somebody did something stat. So just as Asuka was about to shoot the cork bullet out of the athletics starting gun, I leapt in brandishing the official title of the peacemaker.

"Oi, Manjyome! Manjyome-san! Um, err, if I duel you right here and now—uh, will you let Shou and Kenzan stay?" (and totally not curb their life expectancy rate by half a century?)

Both parties stared at Manjyome, whose cheeks were inflated like balloons, flaming hot chili pepper red, and looked like they were just about to lose a 'see who could hold your breath the longest' contest. He would have probably fainted on the spot if he wasn't interrupted when a burly, second-year Hikari no Kessha student rounded the corner with the most disgustingly smug smile plastered on his face. He was big and lardy and looked as if his favorite hobby was to sit on babies to see if they would squish. Oblivious to the three non-bleached people in the premises, he began to move his lips up and down, producing burbling syllables that I recognized as slurred words.

"…heh, heh…Manjyome-san, you're missing out on the games."

Clearly, Manjyome was not pleased. "We're busy right now."

"You should come. Ditch the bitch and join the fun. It's a freakin' blast we're having here."

"Shut up!" Manjyome snarled, his onyx eyes suddenly ablaze with retribution.

"What's going on?" I asked, curious, intrigued, and, tense all at once.

The kid laughed without even looking at me. "Oh, it's rich! Really rich! Hear me out—hear me out. So it's like this—you know the meeting we're supposed to have today in the big room with the piano? Well, we had the meeting and crap, and halfway through the meeting, Phoenix walks in and begins screaming some shit at Saiou-sama. What a dumb bastard. So—so—Saiou-sama gets angry and says something about…well…says something, then he says, you know what he says? Get this: He says we're allowed to thrash Phoenix as much as we'd like! And then, like, everyone jumped on him and beat the crap out of him! What a dumb bastard! Am I right? C'mon, tell me I'm right!"

Silence. No one told him he was right.

He looked from Shou to Kenzan to Manjyome's blazing black eyes to Asuka's stunned expression to the Osiris Red who was clicking the puzzle pieces in place…and then his smile faded. In horror, he put one plus one equals royally F-U-C-K-E-D for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His jaw dropped half an inch to form an amorphous gape as in "I didn't know" or "I thought..." but he never got the chance to utter his excuse because at that exact moment, I skidded over to Edo's bed and flung off the covers to reveal a heap of pillows stacked one on top of the other in a human-shaped lump.

People tell me I'm stupid. And it's true; I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed.

But I'm smart enough to know when I've been tricked.

With no time to rev up a Kuribohmobile, my feet were moving before my mind could comprehend that it sent nerve receptors to my calf muscles. I sprung through the pudgy-knobbed moron without giving him a second glance, and by the time he blinked, my fleet-footed footsteps had already rounded the corner and were resounding down the corridor like muffled bells.

"Dropout boy, get the hell back here!" Manjyome called distantly behind me. I ignored him.

The thudding of heavy army boots gave me a distracted sense of reassurance that it was Kenzan behind me, and not the Hikari no Kessha cronies snapping at me heels. An indignant cry followed by an "oomph!" said Shou had successfully freed himself from an assaulter who got wise and decided to take a hostage. An exchange of "-saurus"'s and "-su"'s suddenly made me so grateful that I had friends that were there for me through thick and thin.

I had no knowledge of the dorm's layout so I just followed my ears and ran towards the direction where the shouting grew louder. Piano, I remembered. Where was there a piano? I dove back into my mental rolodex and tried to map out in my mind the vague direction where someone was playing the soft-sad lullaby the previous night. Go, Juudai, go! I told myself. You gotta be the hero!

Eventually, I spied a white door in the general vicinity of Saiou's room and from which jarring sounds were coming through. I pretty much uppercut the door with my shoulder and burst into a room which I wished I hadn't burst into once I saw what was in the room.

I think a nerve receptor exploded upstairs like a fistful of neon lights and made me hurt in my brain-place.

I think part of me died, rotted away, and bombed the eco-terrorists with yucky Juudai-remains-manure that stunk up the environment.

I think…well…the thing was I didn't think—I couldn't think—because all I could do was watch in pure, unrestrained helplessness through an Acme brand glass wall of emotion as a dozen bleach-white boys circled around the human sack of wheat that was Edo, verbally and physically abusing him, hurling words of endearment laced with bitter mockery and sarcasm, all the while ramming their foots into various parts of his body.

I felt anger like never before and it impaired my memory even to this day, but I could still recall things like "weak pussy" and "lil' maggot getting in the way" spat like haunting mantras and even a particularly painful instance when one of them reached down, dug his nails into his hair, and hauled Edo up by the roots of his hair just to spit in his face before dropping him down.

"Ah. So the hero finally arrives."

It was Saiou. He materialized from a sea of white, and for a moment, I thought he was going to stop me with an outstretched hand like during my meeting with Prince Orgene or try the psychic-glowy-eye-paralyzing thing he did yesterday. But Saiou had no magic tricks to show off today. I never labeled Saiou as the sanest egg in the basket, but the plug wasn't even in the socket this time. The feral shone in his eyes, raw and brutal, with not a glimmer of humanity present. I wasn't looking at Saiou Takuma any longer. I was looking at who or whatever was currently controlling him.

"Hold him." The command curled from his tongue.

Cronies the size of apes grabbed me and towed me back.

"…Saiou…you scum..." I gritted. "Why did you do it? Why did you have your people hurt him like this? What about all the things you said yesterday? You let us stay in your room—"

"—out of good will. I am a gracious host, after all. It was raining outside and I offered you shelter. You were a good guest, Juudai-san. But this little brat was ungrateful of my services and had the audacity to disturb an important conference I was having with my organization. You should have seen him; he was wild. Completely uncivilized. Came in and began screaming obscenities. I had to call security to ensure the safety of my valued members."

"Fine!" I shouted, completely not caring what spurred Saiou to hate Edo or whatever. I just wanted to get away. I just wanted to free Edo from Saiou's clutches and take him somewhere far, far away from here and heal him until he was back to his bitchy, sarcastic self, not broken like this. I wasn't used to watching others physically harmed for I lived a life constantly playing a card game thoroughly blurred the line between reality and holograms. "Whatever you say! But you're punished him enough so just like him go already!"

"On the contrary… Edo hasn't received a quarter of the punishment that he deserves. Did you know that he called me some disgusting things? Such disrespectfulness calls for just desserts. No wrong deed gets away unpunished." Saiou reached down and held up a familiar object. "What do we have here? A deck of cards?"

"SAIOU!" I roared. "Leave Edo's cards alone! If damage so much as one corner—"

"—you'll what?" he sneered, and suddenly, I had wanted nothing better to do than to punch the sonofabitch in the face. Break his nose with one blow. "What will you do when I do this?"

…

Y'know, I once played a practical joke on Shou on April Fools Day by pretending to rip up his precious Power Bond right under his nose, only to have it backfire and have my glee transform into panic when I saw Shou's face scrunch up in the most wretched expression ever before I was forced to hastily explain it was just a dumb spell card that I had another 11 copies of stockpiled in my binder. The aftermath consisted of Shou repeatedly pummeling me with his Black Magician Girl blow-up doll and the two us laughing about his gullibility for hours to end. You could say what I was currently experiencing mirrored the little incident last April, y'know, except without the laughing part.

There was nothing remotely funny about the situation now, and never in my life had the ripping of cardboard drove a spear so deep into the nadir of my heart.

The two halves descended to the ground from Saiou's careless reach like dead leaves, landing a foot apart from each other on the cold marble. The bottom half was flipped over. The top half depicted words shone in clear letters: D-hero Diabolicguy.

And Edo… Edo died. He shattered like a glass menagerie figurine. It was almost laughingly ironic how that kid could tough a series of severe beatings and insults without shedding a single tear, but would sob himself silly when a slip of cardboard was torn under his nose. He won a gold medal for Most Pathetic. He was shredded, broken, and wasted as the card that lay decapitated on the floor.

And just—

And just—

Oh gawds, I was so fucking angry I couldn't think of sarcasm.

"Still determined to side with evil, I see," Saiou purred. "I have shown you nothing but hospitality, I let you sleep in my own room, complimented you for your good manners, and even had one of my most esteemed members cook you breakfast. You were given the signal to leave and be free with your two best friends. Yet you remain here, steadfast to protect a boy who won't even see you as his equal despite that he's levels below you. So tell me, hero. Just what spurs you to protect this pathetic scum?"

Answers flooded my mind ranging from, "I can't stand to see someone get hurt like this" to "It's the right thing to do". Yet, I banished them all from my realm of conscious. I said the only thing that made sense, despite all its clichés and hero's paradigms.

"Because…he is my friend."

"What's that? I can't hear you." Saiou's taunting tone grated my nerves.

"Because he is my friend."

A feeling overwhelmed me like none before. I ripped one arm out its constraints with unforeseen strength.

"Saiou…unlike you…I've made many friends during my stay at this school. They are my precious, irreplaceable persons…the ones I can call 'just for me'…and, you, Saiou…you have no right to cause them pain!"

Whispers. Muttering. Gasps. It was all a whirlpool to me, pureed into nothingness.

My peripheral vision intensely blurred. There was a hot, stinging sensation in the back of my eyeballs, like a hundred-thousand bolts of electricity charging in my sockets, unable to find a medium to release all the energy building up in the enclosed space. Dizziness threatened to knock me out. I blinked to clear my vision, but no eyelid-hot squeeze of tears came.

"If kindness has no meaning to you—if I have to rely on the power of darkness to achieve justice—if I have to go as far as to become a devil—THEN I WILL. Mark my words, Saiou, I will not let you harm my friends any longer!"

Silence.

"…J…Juudai?" someone then said.

I didn't recognize the voice as from Saiou, or Shou, or Kenzan, or even Edo. It was from Asuka. Her voice was shaky and uneven.

"Juudai, c-calm down. We're sorry—I'm sorry."

And then the puzzle pieces fell into place. I had wondered how Shou and Kenzan knew I was in the Obelisk White dorms. They were set up. The entire thing was a set up. That's why Asuka grabbed my hand when I tried to shake Edo awake. And her cooking breakfast...wanting me to stay...it was a ploy to trick me into forgetting about the reason I came here in the first place. Slowly, I moved my gaze to meet Asuka's eyes, painfully filled with atrophied regret.

I'm sorry, too, Asuka.

"You only wanted me to stay so I wouldn't interfere with Saiou's plans, isn't that right...Asuka?" I said, my tone coming out much colder than I expected it to, for I hadn't anticipated Asuka to visibly flinch at the mere sound of my voice.

Her expression wavered from hurt to anger with an overtone of FEAR, back to hurt again, and I could tell she was trying to decide whether she should come up with a viable explanation or just sneer. In the end, Asuka remained quiet and it was Manjyome that spoke up.

"Of course, Juudai. Did you actually think for a second we'd let some Osiris Red scum become one of us? Did you really think Tenjoin-kun would want someone like you to stay?" A haughty laugh creeping with undertones of shaky insecurities and FEAR. "She was playing with you the whole time."

I switched my gaze to the raven-haired boy. Thank you, Manjyome, but I wasn't talking to you, so shut up, you freakin' prick.

Carefully masking my feelings of betrayal, I turned around to face Saiou, fearing I might just sock Manjyome in the face if I stared at him for another instant.

"I'm leaving and I'm taking Edo," I told Saiou emotionlessly. "I dare you to stop me."

What I didn't realize was that Saiou was a daring fellow.

"Behind you!"

By the time my mind had registered Edo's words, I was barely able to skid to the side in order to avoid two Hikari no Kesshians plowing into me like battering rams.

My eyes locked with Edo's. I watch, stunned, as he lifted up his frail body from the floor, still sore from his most recent assault, With one arm clutching the wall for support, somehow, someway he got to his feet. He held his head up high and stuck out his chin with inerasable, unexplainable pride; his eyes were icy, caustic, and held a razor-edge so sharp that it nearly sent whitewater chills up the spines of anyone who looked at him.

And now that Edo was back, I stepped down from the position of the cold-blooded justice bringer. Once again, I played the Fool.

I was torn between my Boy Scout concerns and supporting the weight of the world's safety on my shoulders. My internal struggle must have been clear as broad daylight because Edo's eyes narrowed with understanding and I knew he had just read me like a walking talking open book. He whisked out his metaphorical gun from its holster and aimed it at everyone in the room.

"Juudai! Leave without me!"

My eyes widened. " Edo—"

"Don't think of me as a sacrifice! Do what you have to do to save your friends!"

It didn't occur to me "what I had to do" until Saiou riveted towards Edo with an expression grappled with inhumanity. As Edo drew back involuntarily, a fringe of his hair shadowed the tiniest sliver of fear that appeared on his face, but seeing that glimmer was enough to give me light-years of fore notice to bend my knees and lock my elbows into running position just prior to Edo hollering,

"RUN!"

The world sprung to life again.

I whipped around and ran with a velocity that would put The Flash to shame, zipping through the white deluxe twins without so much as a word of goodbye. Manjyome reacted a millisecond too late and when his finger muscles finally reacted, he had seized only thin air. Asuka hovered at the edge of my vision and I caught a glimpse of her face which flickered of relief; she had no intention to beat the stuffing out of me like her counterpart had. (Shouting at her subordinates to chase after me like Pablo Escobar's evil henchman cruising into Miami notwithstanding.)

With Shou filling in the final seat of Cult Aniki, the three of us ran like mad. I think I caught a glimpse of Misawa…somewhere. I also saw a blur of familiar faces: Kanda Tsugio, and one of Misawa's former Ra Yellow friends, and Gin, and a girl who has a Cybernetic Wyvern in her deck, and a vivid royal blue gave away Rose's identity. We ran and ran and ran down the hallways, and ran through narrow corridors that looked like catacombs, and ran by Saiou's suite with the mussed up bed that once held Edo's sick body, and ran across rooms with pianos in them, and once I had flung myself clear out of the central foyer with the gigantic white staircase and into the campus, leaving sneaker skid-marks and a mist of sweat in my wake, I think my heart finally gave out so I ran no more because I couldn't take another freaking step and that was that. I thanked the Gods it was an overcast day filled with clouds and a slight chance of rain because I would have died if I saw another glimpse of light.

My legs threatened to fall beneath me, so I unceremoniously plopped on the grass, Indian-style, and took a breather from all the running. Kenzan slumped stomach-first against a tree trunk and Shou collapsed to his knees.

No sooner had my volatile heartbeat sagged to a safe level when a black boot crushed the pretty dandelion in front of me. I followed the boot up the leg, trenchcoat tails, torso, neck, and then felt my heartbeat jumpstart again.

"Kaiser?"

That prompted Shou to look up. "Onii-san?"

"It's Hell Kaiser-don…" said the tree-hugging Kenzan.

Hell Kaiser Ryou Marufuji towered unflinchingly over us as the King of Emo and BDSM whose moral compass went a little awry after a subsequent chain of Pro Duel failures and illegal shockwave devices transformed him into this power-happy tyrant. Now, instead of respect, he liked victory. And rather than soft, comfy cotton, he preferred leather soaked in industrial epoxy. I don't think Shou approved of his decisions because the glint in his eye told me he wanted nothing more than to slap his brother with a really big trout.

For the next heaven-knows-how-many minutes, Kenzan and I watched on the sidelines as the Marufuji bros initiated the Longest Silence To Ever Exist In Earth's History Since God Created Sabbath. After what seemed to be eons of exchanging I lost my respect for you, onii-san's and Whatever, little man's through the form of chibi-eyed glares and stiff upper-lip pouts, Ryou finally called a truce to the Mexican standoff and broke the silence.

"…what's going on?" he said.

Wow.

He.

Talked.

" Edo Phoenix-san is hurt and jailed inside the Obelisk White dorms," Shou said in a straightforward, 'su'-less voice.

At that, Ryou blinked.

I don't know if that meant anything for normal people, but Ryou was the Grand Master of showing no emotion whatsoever, so I knew it was important to keep a sharp eye out for even the tiniest flutter of an eyelash. He blinked again. I read the second blink as a conclusion that his little bro's and his little bro's friends' concern of that cocky-ass bastard with a three-foot stick up his ass was completely irrelevant and that Ryou would be ninja-ing away to angst on his existential life (or there lack of one).

To everyone's surprise, he just said two words.

"I see."

He turned around and walked towards the Obelisk White dorms. Kenzan and I exchanged puzzled glances that spoke for itself: Hurray, Kaiser is made up of confusion. Shou, however, had his gaze remained firmly affixed on Ryou's backside with the intensity of a plasma laser beam. It was a wonder that Ryou didn't have a gaping hole where his heart was.

"Onii-san!"

But Ryou didn't stop. Didn't look around, didn't show any acknowledgment that the rubber band which was his little brother's sanity had already exceeded its stretching limit and was this close to snapping because Ryou was too determined to rescue Skipper McDestiny or polish his nails with bleach (either/or) to pay even the slightest bit of attention to Shou.

Clearly, there was more than one socially inept person on this island. If Saiou had a psychosomatic cocktail of schizophrenia, malignant narcissism, delusions of grandeur and boundary issues with silver-haired protégés to the point where a restraining order was of dire need—then Ryou was a rock.

We watched, paralyzed with curiosity, disappointment, and exhaustion as Ryou's black form disappeared behind the doors of the Obelisk White dormitory.

...HURRAY! KAISER IS MADE UP OF CONFUSION!

After that, Shou mumbled something about doing something alone and exited the stage to the right. Kenzan wanted a break from life and exited the stage to the left. With both my friends dealing with their awkward ins and outs, I was the only actor left who wasn't MIA. I glanced at my mental laundry list and decided to spend the rest of the afternoon scavenging around for Manjyome's missing Ojamas. Eventually, I located them in a dank, moss-infested cave thanks to the help of Daitokuji who had been resting inside Pharaoh's body since the previous year. It came to me as a surprise because he didn't come to me in a human form, or even a spirit one.

Datiokuji-sensei came to me as a ball of light. It looked like the exact same ball of light Edo ejected from his body the prior.

And then I understood.

WHY DIDN'T I PLAY MORE FINAL FANTASY AT HOME?

The fact my former alchemy teacher could survive in a materia form never crossed my radar in a million billion years. Had I known that anything of the sort was inherently possible, whatsoever, I would have probably knocked, saying, "I know you're in there. I can hear you 'nya'-ing" or "Dude, how do I upgrade my Omnislash to defeat Sephiroth" or something among those lines.

"Juudai-kun, this is my soul. It's delicate and irreplaceable so quit poking it, nya."

Wait, what? Soul? So it's not command materia?

"...no."

Oh. Ok.

;-;

I did some quick calculations in my head. Behold the Juudai logic: Daitokuji's ball of light equals Soul. Ergo, Edo's ball of light equals soul. And Saiou wants soul because he's a freak of nature? Wholly confused, and disregarding the video game references, I sought to ask Daitokuji a question before Pharaoh was going to skulk out of nowhere to eat him again.

"Can a soul materialize out of a person's body for no apparent reason?" Wow. I was getting philosophical.

"It's not common, nya. But I suppose it's possible if that person is under heavy emotional stress, nya."

"Is that it?"

"Oh, there are probably other factors that account for its possibility, nya. Who they interact with could definitely affect it, having close bonds with certain people…there are also some spells and potions (witchcraft, nya) that can forcibly release souls from human bodies, the misuse of the Sennen items…"

"What about you? Is it because you're an alchemist?"

"Actually, I just know how to tickle Pharaoh's regurgitating muscles."

"...wow."

"Don't forget to do your alchemy worksheets or Pharaoh will eat your deck, nya!"

"Err, I, uh, think I just heard Ojama Yellow call me."

I decided I must ditch my ex-teacher after he pretty much implied THE NUMBER ONE RULE IN LIFE IS THAT EVERYTHING NEEDS MORE HOMEWORK. AND CARROTS. NO EXCEPTIONS. I made a beeline for the exit and then I saw the strangest thing. For a second, I thought my mind was joshing around with me. I rubbed my eyes and incredulously stared at the impossible sight again. There was no way in Heaven, Hell, or Disneyland that I was currently seeing Ryou Marufuji carry in his arms, an unconscious, damsel in distress-esque, Edo Phoenix.

It was the oddest thing I'd ever seen in my entire life. (That's saying a lot considering that I witnessed vampires turning guys into half-naked dolls, busty women transforming into tigers, and hired hitmen getting swallowed by muck goo.) I had expected Ryou to be lugging the kid on his back like I had done, but then realized Kaiser was much taller and stronger by beaucoos and didn't need to degrade himself by giving piggyback rides to Danger-Prone Edo. Ryou boarded the ship and nudged the cabin door open with a boot before slipping in. A few minutes gone by before he finally exited the cabin, holding in his hands nothing but thin air.

Then Ryou left.

And I initiated a five-minute gawking session of WTFery.

"Ah? Was that Ryou-kun I saw back then, nya?" Daitokuji's soul floated to the sea-swept boulders, having finally caught up with me after my attempt to leave him behind. "He looked different. He looked kinda like..."

Daitokuji stopped. What could he have said? Fubuki? Fubuki when controlled by Darkness? The Darkness he personally forced onto Fubuki that overtook his body, mind, and soul?

…

What Daitokuji didn't know was that later that week, Fubuki in fact willingly embraced the influence of his alter ego to duel Ryou. The virtuoso sought to use the strength of Darkness to free his best friend from the 'shadows', yet his hawkbeak mask shattered for good after Armed Dragon – Cyber Dark Dragon pulled off a coup de grâce. The way Ryou reacted to Fubuki's generous offer of his medal was so goddamn cold that people could have built monuments larger than Tōdai-ji to that man's cruelty. Witnessing firsthand just how capably brutal Hell Kaiser was became the perfect painful tableau on to which Shou hosted his honorless brother's duel some time after the incident. It was one of the few duels in my life I didn't enjoy watching. It injured me to see Shou suffer so much, being jolted by electric shocks over and over again, his tormenter being no one other than his own brother. Though…even so, when memories flooded back to me of watching the ectothermic Hell Kaiser cradle Edo ever so gently in his arms, I felt as if everything that man did was a stone-cold lie scathed to uphold a half-hearted pretense.

Of course, I didn't know if this was the truth or not. It was just my interpretation of him. I didn't know what Ryou's true intentions were. I didn't know if he played the Angel's advocate because he was genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of his future-to-be comrade. I didn't know if he was just bored and had nothing to do. I didn't know anything about him, really.

All I did know was this: I sincerely hoped Ryou tucked Edo in that overcast day.

…

"He's just changed a bit," I recalled being my words, when it was clear Daitokuji had no intention of finishing his. "I'm sure he's still the same old Kaiser deep inside."

"Nya," was Daitokuji's only reply.

And that was that.

"Did Ryou-kun really save Edo?"

Having pretty much ensured my probability of acquiring Laryngitis in the next hour or so from sermonizing so much, I chose to ignore Asuka's question and fill my lung sacs with oxygen instead. I glanced around the table. My friends' reactions were something indeed.

Asuka—who for some bizarre reason still insisted on addressing Kaiser by the respective title of '-kun' despite his snowballing maniac depressiveness (Daitokuji wasn't exactly caught up with the times, so he was off the leash.)—was the foremost to recover from the shock after hearing these uncut details. She collected herself with an elegant nonchalance, though the small quivers that coursed through her shoulders ruined the pretense if you squinted hard enough to see them.

Next to her, Manjyome was trying his hardest to look as if he didn't care, except he did care because his eyebrows totally gave it away. He had been doing a weird eyebrow salsa throughout the entire story, going from flat-line hard in the beginning to arched semi-circles midway through to creating panic-stricken motions at the climax. Seriously. He should have invested those skills in a puppet show or something.

Couched diagonally from me was Kenzan with an oh-my-jesus-christ-riding-a-bicycle look going on. His stunned dangling jaw expression seemed to be permanently etched into his face as if he had been repeatedly shocked with a taser while some carried out a botox injection.

Next to statue!Kenzan was Shou who looked like he was going to make sweet love to his chopsticks the way he was clutching those sexy, rod-shaped…objects…ok, I get it. Sexual innuendos are a riot when anyone else says them except for me because Saint Juudai the Altruist can't possible crack a sex joke without Manjyome the Most Rejected Bachelor whispering it in his ear and badgering him to say it to Asuka in exchange for a week's worth of fried shrimp.

...yeah.

And seated next to me was Johan. He had the queerest look on his face. His head was angled slightly to the side, kind of like an owl and he bored the smallest trace of octopus lips, all pouted and puckered, but more curious than surly so the look suited him. I wondered what genius thoughts were running through his mind.

Eventually, the silence wore off and Manjyome decided he couldn't repress the tough guy act any longer lest he burst into a full-bore rampage of comical arrogance and flawed sarcasm that would probably result into the school burning to the ground. Sighing an invisible mushroom sigh, Manjyome raised one hand to gently nip the skin below his forehead and rubbed his temples in a quasi-sophisticated manner while his other hand sunk into his waist so that he looked like a total metrosexual.

"Hell Kaiser grew so much dumber since he graduated the school. If I were him, I would have tossed Phoenix into the sea while he was still unconscious."

Real smooth, Thunder.

"Tsk! Manjyome-kun!"

"That's plain cruel-su."

"Seriously 'don."

"Manjyome—Kaiser doesn't think that way," I said, more accustomed to his brash attitude than the others, but still a little peeved nonetheless. "He doesn't hold grudges. He's not that kind of person."

"But he has no trouble putting his baby brother in the hospital?" Manjyome pointed out, prompting Shou to throw a scornful glare in his direction.

"Don't speak of Onii-san that way!"

Prince Snowclone pulled off a stylish shrug. "Whatever. Hell Kaiser struck me as the type who sought vengeance. An eye for an eye. I guess he just wasn't that type."

Shou was mad as a meat axe, Asuka was about to slap him, and even Kenzan looked cross with his sempai, but despite all their fiery reactions, I was the first to reply.

"…Manjyome, that's a really depressing philosophy."

And then Johan, who had been silent for all this time, abruptly broke into the discussion.

"That's right! An eye for an eye just means you keep poking until both of you are blind. Then you stumble around a bit and fall into the nearest well. Why not both people call a truce and keep their sight?" he said, positively beaming with this straightforward, pure, yet determined honesty.

After a pregnant pause, Manjyome broke out into peals of laughter. "What a way to think of it!"

Feeling both relieved and amused, I joined in the merriment, followed by Asuka, and Shou, and Kenzan, and then we were all hooting, laughing second and third years at Duel Academia, crazy and insanely lamesauce because of our mutual agreement that no one could argue with Scandinavian logic despite the fact we Japanese command total ownage over Europeans, Africans, Australians, and Americans by tenfold. (And 'cause it was common knowledge Manjyome would die as a virgin, anyhow).

The bell rang, reminding us to chalk up another cut on our already heavily tainted class attendance sheet since constantly saving the world required sacrifices, and well, ah, that was that. It's safe to say Shou and Kenzan didn't quite agree with my easygoing viewpoints because they went into near-hysterical states of OMFG upon hearing the bell and deserted us the second we blinked. (By golly, they're actually taking school seriously!) I was about to less-than-enthusiastically follow in their steps when Manjyome intersected.

"I'm not going to apologize for what happened last year…because I wasn't in the right mind," he murmured while having his gaze fixed at one the buttonholes on my jacket, acting as if he expected me to sock it to him. Well, maybe I did want to at one time, but as Manjyome said; he wasn't in the right mind, and I hold no grudges against anything that happened in such circumstances of the previous semester.

I just smiled. "I wouldn't expect anything else, Manjyome."

Masking astonishment, he met my eyes. After a moment's deliberation, he strained his mouth into close-lipped smile. "Yeah."

I waved him off as Asuka approached me. Her eyes shifted uneasily towards Johan, which made me question the level of importance of what she had to say because Johan Anderson was the last person on the planet I was going to lose sleep over that he might spread the news bulletin Rei was in fact her and Manjyome's biological love child who came from the distant future in a time capsule or something. The kid was minding his own business, frisking with the cherry-red ladybugs perched on the table and wearing a smile that suggested he had been chain-smoking some brand of analgesic while I told the tale.

Asuka hesitated at sight of the insect-cooing, grass-puffing Scandinavian, but lacking the strength to demand someone so amiable and blameless to make like a tree and leave, she reluctantly decided telling two is no less of a secret than telling one is.

"What's up, Asuka?" I questioned.

Asuka breathed, sounding somewhat nostalgic. "…Juudai. I'm also in his position." She signaled who the 'his' was with a small jerk of her head at Manjyome's retreating form. "I don't remember anything during my time at the Hikari no Kessha. There's a stretch of white space where my memory should be. Sometimes I feel like last year was just a dream."

"Maybe it was," I reassured her quickly. "I know it must be really hard for you to believe that our second year happened when you forgot everything because Saiou brainwashed you. It's alright though. It's all in the past."

Asuka remained unconvinced, which led me to mentally slap myself for being so submissive to my friends' whims. Why couldn't I just have said no when they asked me to play Mother Goose? Why didn't I change the subject? Arggh—this was the reason why I was so reluctant to disclosure the details of my story to anyone who was directly related to incident; I didn't want to shake off the dusty cobwebs of regret. Apologies? I didn't want it. I had long since forgiven Asuka and Manjyome as well as everyone else who fell underneath Saiou's control eons in the past, including Saiou himself.

"Yeah. I shouldn't remember any events that took place while I was in the Hikari no Kessha. Which is why I was so surprised when you began talking of how you shouted at Saiou. Because I remembered that part."

Her eyes darted at Johan once more, who had began to sense something was out of the ordinary, even if I hadn't, even if I only thought Asuka was apologizing for her actions last year. Your memory is coming back? I was going to exclaim, if Asuka hadn't pressed on in the scared, hushed voice she only used once before in her lifetime.

"Juudai, c-calm down. We're sorry—I'm sorry."

"I forgot everything at my stay in the Hikari no Kessha, except for that one moment when you shouted at Saiou—your eyes turned gold, Juudai, I remembered that your eyes turned gold."

Then something broke down in Asuka, a confidence of some sort. She shot a final look at Johan, this time more of a plea than anything else—please stay with him because I can't, and I'm sorry—turned heel and fled leaving a trail of I'm sorry's in her wake. "I'll see you in class!" were her parting words.

She understood that she couldn't understand me, wouldn't understand me this year and the next—and she would never truly understand me even though I thought some part of me really did love Asuka, once, maybe still does, but we were too young to understand the definition of love.

Asuka left, so now it was just Johan, and a fat fluffy chicken called Juudai.

"You're alright with standing next to me...even after all you heard?" I said. "I wasn't able to protect him, Johan. For everything that you heard about me...defeating the Phantoms and the Wave of Light...protecting the earth...in the end, I still failed as a hero and a friend. I'm useless."

I expected him to retort, "You're not useless!" and go off into a pep talk on how I've saved the world from destruction, and how I'm a great guy to be around, and how everyone looks up to me and fuck-de-la-de. Johan didn't.

"Ok, then," he replied, simply. "You're useless. Better than having a cold—then you're contagious and I wouldn't be standing next to you at all."

I laughed, dry and jarring. It hurt my ears to listen to my own laugh. Johan placed a hand on my shoulder as if that gesture could explain everything and free me from the overshadowing surge of feelings I was currently experiencing.

"I accept everything I've learned about you today...because just like you called Edo Phoenix-kun the one 'just for you', I can call you the same for me. If danger ever arises, I will do all in my power to protect you...because you, Juudai, are my precious, irreplaceable friend!"

And he smiled. I tried to smile back. Instinctively, I laid my own hand on top of his and felt the warmth of his hand radiate between my fingers. Back then, all I could remember was thinking that it was nice to have a friend like him.

Foreword, by Yuuki Juudai (Retake #718,234,666)

Genocideisbadgenocideisbadgenocide is—oh wow I must have that bad-ass cape of WICKED AWESOMERY.

…what do you mean I hafta hand over my free will for it? It's just a cape! I don't want to change my name to Haou! I like it the way my name is, thank you very much! What do you—No, I do not want to place a mail-order of Wicked Scriptures!