EARTHBOUND DESTINY

Chapter 1: Unequalled desire

And I noticed that I had no control any more, neither over me nor about the situation in which I was now.

Everything for what I strove, everything for what I longed was just the ultimate revenge against the one who has betrayed me so disgracefully and who made me go what I am today.

To simply see his face, that was enough to put me into rage, it was enough to let this desire arise in me again.

I hate your beautiful face and these blue sparkling eyes which are so confidence inspiring.

I want to torment you, make you ache, I want to see you wind under the same pain like I once did and like I still do today.

"You are a dead man, you are no more."

And still you really want to send me back where I have come from? Without my last wish coming true?

Because of you I have died so young. Because of you I haven't been able to find after what I have searched so long: the Satisfaction given as an ultimatum.

Now I lie in your arms, dying definitely, and don't know what to feel, what it is that arises in my heart. The only thing I know is that I haven't felt anything like that for a long time now. The only thing I have been capable of was, for a long time, only rage, hate and confusion but now, in the last moment there is something other, new and familiar there as if I would have felt it once already...

Confidence? Friendship?

How ironic, that it is exactly this what I should feel at the last moment of my life once again. By the person whom I wished to destroy so much.

"Was my life senseless? Why was it so short, empty and senseless? Why was I left so?"

Solitude... this is what I must have felt for so long. Emptyness, only filled by my manic insanity and the voices in my head.

When I still lived, I thought I would have had a meaning. To live in Satellite also meant to accept that there was no way out and that everything that we would ever see would be the garbage heaps and this destruction and that we one day also turn into garbage, unused, unloved.

I couldn't accept this. I didn't want this. I made me believe that one always could make the best out of his situation, and that we can lead a content live also here if we only set us a target.

This was the beginning of Team Satisfaction.

"Kiryu ... we are friends, I always will stick by you. You ... are important to me, after all, you also have saved my life how I could let you down there?"

We always stucktoegher, you, Crow, Jack and me. Together we sat down an aim and tried to reach it. Our greatest one of them was the conquest of whole Satellite. It should become our place, only being here to satisfy us and to close the hole in our heart.

We had beautiful moments together and all of you were important to me. I was proud to be your Leader. I would never have let somebody of you down. Especially if it is about the life of my team members. I would never let you down, Yusei, particularly if you threaten to lose your life.

I would want to take your life years later myself.

"Do you remember our laughter? How we had made it? Satellite became ours."

How could I forget this moment of the triumph?

"But after that nothing more was like it was before, right, Kiryu? Everything changed."

Yes, everything got different as we had accomplished the goal that we had sat down as our final one. Because after that there was nothing more. We had reached our borders and had to notice that there was nothing more for us now. This observation broke me inwardly because I could make me believe no more that this place is the one at which I could get really happy. My heart still longed and I noticed quite fast what this was: I wanted power. Power would make the longing of my heart cease, there I was sure and I would give everything for it to get and to keep it for me. No matter at which price, I just had to make the voices in my head cease.

You as the only one seemed to understand how I have felt, Yusei. When Jack and Crow left because they regarded me as unbearable, you were the only one who has stayed with me.

I nevertheless deteriorated inwardly. You watched me dumbly, without knowing what to do,till you in the end also left me.

Why have you let me down? What had become out of our team, what of our dreams? Didn't you want to have power, then? Didn't you want to stay in our team, as best friends who get through everything together, no matter what it is?

Perhaps you also thought that I would give up if I was alone, but something drove me to pull my plan through ,even without your help if necessary. I would fight the Security, I would tear the whole power to myself.

Then you have betrayed me.

You have sold me, you have already planned from the very beginning that my plans fail. Who knows, maybe you have stayed with me for so long only to find out what my realmplans were so that you can anticipate me and deliver me to the Security? At all events your plan has turned wonderfully: I was arrested and taken to prison.

I got the Marker, which so many fear, sign that I am worth nothing and my life doesn't have meaning, of what I had most been afraid. Because I was afraid of my life for a long time. Afraird of the life I was born into, born to eke out around a senseless existence.

"You want to shout, get rid of all your despair but what you have experienced don't let compose in word any more. You wonder why you have suffered so and which meaning pains have in the face of the life and the death and its limit which have already exceeded at least twice."

This was my first end. The laborious wall around my own self was broken and nothing stayed except for the embers which blazed within my heart and which wanted to find a way out so much. My fire has gone out.

It was illusion that I could get happy in Satellite. Illusion that there is something that can really always can help to see the positive side in everything.

This world has rotted, full of pain and solitude and only the stronger ones can win, those who can the most of the pains of others for themselves.

This is what became conscious to me when I woke up as a Dark Signer again. For only this I wanted to live again, for this moment: to break somebody, to cause sorrow to him, just like sorrow had been caused to me.

Especially you, Yusei, the one who is to blame that I have finished my life behind iron bars and a dark corner.

What had you done out of me?

You have killed me but still much painful than every murder could be. You have destroyed my soul except for her core. You, only you have made me to what you can see in front of you now.

"But we are friends Kiryu ..."

Yes, we are beautiful friends. Do all this to me first, and want to know nothing more after that. You make me ill. Seeing, how innocent you can pretend to be after all of this makes me ill and increases my inclination for your pains.

Come on, try to take my life !! Just like you have done it before! I am sure, we both will enjoy it if our life elapses slowly like sand between our fingers.

"Why do you yell so? The tone of your voice tells me that you suffer. Come, take my hand and I will take your pains away from you. Because I am your friend."

Which irony of life. I, who had saved you, and you who had killed me as a thanks, not once, but twice. I feel it. My regained life which I received in the exchange for my soul fades while your Saviour Dragon is pulling its cirlce at the sky. And once again I wonder, why? I feel how you put your arms around me and your eyes fill with tears.

Why only had all this to happen? To which end?

Why I wonder about this if I really cannot bear it any more, the consequences of this.

And although I know that this death will be definite now and that there will be no more turning back now, I am not too sad. I feel weird. So easy, so warm, so heavy, so sad that I must already go now and simultaneously relieved about this. Is it this why your dragon gets called that way? Am I saved now, is my soul whole again?

"Kiryu ... please don't go ... please live ..."

I cannot, I cannot ... if I would have the power, then I would live on, but I simply cannot.

And it seems that this is where our ways will part forever now and that this duel between us really was the last duel of Team Satisfaction.

"Kiryu ..."

Sadly you express my name and I must smile.

You have given back to me at the last moment, what I thought to have lost forever, a gentle smile without hate.

I don't know any more what came after that but I know what you have seen. I have become what all people become when they die - Stardust.

Glittering stardust which somewhere might live again...

And my soul ... will always be someplace there, filled with the longing for life. Weightless ... and boundless. So it will be out there.