[Epilogue]
When Yusuke returned home, he found that no time had passed there since he had found himself in Econtra. This was not unexpected, of course - he’d heard that that was usually the case, and he was actually rather glad for that fact.
When he reached Fubuki’s room and greeted him as he usually would, however, Fubuki was puzzled, unable to recognize him and, in fact, stricken with a sudden headache that hurt him so much that Asuka, who was in the room with him at the time, had to ask Yusuke to leave in order for it to go away. This was the first blow in a series of several that would follow - just as it had been when he had arrived in Econtra, Fubuki didn’t remember him.
It also wasn’t helping matters that every time he called home to try and contact his parents, he got the machine. The first couple of days, it was somewhat justifiable, but after the fifth or so, he began to wonder… Ryou, also, was unable to be contacted - heck, no one even knew where he was at this point.
If that weren’t bad enough, strange things started happening at the Academy. Suddenly, without any explanation as to why, many of the students’ duel disks stopped responding when they played their cards on it - or, perhaps it’s more accurate to say, the cards stopped registering on the disks. All the cards that their owners didn’t care about - especially those that the duelists blamed for their losses, or had other bad feelings centered about - had become tainted with shadows, somehow. Darkness’ shadows of nihility.
Yusuke had more important things to focus on than the other students’ cards suddenly not working, however, as he suddenly found himself under attack. Without explanation, the being known as Trueman - Yusuke easily remembered him, and his lookalikes, as Darkness’ trusted servants - appeared and tried to kill him. Certainly, Judai appeared at that time and decided to take it upon himself to duel Trueman in Yusuke’s place (despite the fact that Yusuke, in his own opinion, would probably have been able to handle it), but that didn’t change that it had happened, and this perplexed him. Trueman took orders directly from Darkness, after all, and why would Darkness want him to die before his time?
Not that he would have much time to figure this out, either, because the next evening, he was suddenly accused of having attacked Fubuki, despite the fact that he had been in his room in Osiris Red at the time of the incident - Judai wasn’t there to be a witness to this, having been busy facing Trueman by the volcano at the time, but he was certain of his innocence as well. (Though, Yusuke had been giving Pharaoh attention, so make of that what you will.) O’Brien, however, insisted that Yusuke had been Fubuki’s attacker, which just brought more confusion.
Add to this, of course, the small fact that Honest’s spirit had mysteriously gone quiet, while the Clear monsters hadn’t. The next night (around the same time that Fubuki asked Judai to duel him while he was wearing Darkness’ mask in order to see if that would help him uncover his memory), Yusuke decided that this was definitely worth worrying about, and decided to go look for him.
He found Honest… in the Abandoned Dormitory’s basement. Somehow, he had acquired a skill that he’d never revealed (even before having come to Econtra - perhaps this was why he didn’t come out of his card) - he had gained the ability to materialize in the human world and transform into Yusuke’s image, albeit for a somewhat limited time. (He also had developed minor telepathic and telekinetic abilities, as a side note.)
The mystery of Fubuki’s attacker now solved, Honest revealed himself, and tried to explain himself and his reasoning for what he had done - while he admittedly had gone overboard (and was using untested, mildly uncontrolled abilities), he had merely wanted to jog Fubuki’s memories himself - but Yusuke would hear none of it (especially given Honest’s once-more continued insistence of calling him ‘Master’).
This was what finally made him snap, and in his state of unbridled negative emotions, he plucked Honest’s card from his deck, discarded it (he didn’t throw so much as let go and let gravity do the work), and fled into the forest. (Incidentally, he managed to arrive just late enough that he didn’t learn that Fubuki’s memory had returned. Would that have changed things, if he had learned that? We may never know.)
Just this not being the same Fubuki he could have learned to deal with. Heck, add this world’s version of Ryou not being the one he loved (which was looking increasingly more likely to be the case), and he might have learned to deal with it, or at the very least he would have been able to gather enough concentration to figure out a way to discover a way to locate Ryou’s world and go there. (He didn’t have the specific ability to create portals, but that wouldn’t stop him from finding a way.) Even adding on the fact that his parents were unreachable, he would have been able to stay at least reasonably calm. And Trueman… well, there was probably a reason for that that he just didn’t know. Any combination of a couple of those, and he would have been okay.
But with all of them combined, all hitting at the same time, and adding in Honest’s ‘betrayal’, Yusuke fell into complete despair. Certainly, he still had the Clear deck as companions, and the Cubes tried to cheer him up, but it was as though the rest of the world had abandoned them, and this time he didn’t have the Entropi’s mind games to blame on it - it was actually happening this time.
It was while he was in this state that Darkness appeared before him - not quite the same as the last time they had met, if the newly added goat skull helmet was any indication, but undoubtedly Darkness. The Clear monsters tried to protect him, but Yusuke didn’t have any mental strength left in order to fight, and Darkness revealed what Trueman had really been looking to do - Darkness had become bored by Yusuke, and therefore the decision was that payment was due. Trueman, of course, had been trying to kill him and collect it so Darkness didn’t have to, but Darkness had no qualms with collecting it while Yusuke was still alive, either - in fact, for some reason, this way seemed to be what Darkness preferred.
And thus, Yusuke’s soul was stripped from his body and taken back to the world of Darkness, while his body was left behind, now an empty shell in a coma. The Clear monsters were distraught, especially the Cubes, and while they refused to leave Yusuke’s body’s side, they turned a cold shoulder to Honest, who they figured deserved punishment for what he had done. Judai picked up Honest’s card and decided that it would be best if he keep the angel’s card with him for the moment - Honest, ashamed, didn’t argue.
There was reason, however, why Darkness had wanted to collect Yusuke’s soul in this manner, and when the Truemen were ordered to begin casting the entire world’s population into nihility, this reason was realized. Yusuke’s body still belonged to his soul, but his soul belonged to Darkness; therefore, by association, so did his body. Had his body died, there would have been no use for it, but in this manner, his soulless body made a perfect vessel in which Darkness could walk the earth.
It was only after the Truemen had done their job that Darkness did so, but by that point, there were only a few duelists left standing worldwide - Judai, Johan, Fubuki, Ryou (who had washed up on the island around the same time Darkness had claimed Yusuke’s soul, incidentally), and approximately three specific legendary duelists who, seriously, would never be beaten by Trueman that easily (I mean come on) but have little-to-no actual importance to the plot in this instance. (Also Pharaoh, but he’s a cat.)
Fubuki and Ryou thus got into a Battle Royale duel with Darkness!Yusuke. It was a difficult fight, and it also invoked Fubuki’s mask of Darkness (which, incidentally, proved to be not quite the same entity as the Darkness they were fighting - long story short, the Darkness in the mask, called Shade from here on out for simplicity, was a piece of Darkness that broke off when Fubuki was first possessed), but eventually Fubuki and Shade decided to work together, and they managed to effect a three-way tie, sending all three of them to the world of Darkness together. (Why no, Clear Vice Dragon’s Deus ex Machina effect does not come into play here, so as to avoid another ending to episode 174, thank you very much.)
By the time Judai and Johan got to the scene, however, Darkness had brought Yusuke’s body back from the realm of Darkness, still possessing it. The punishment for losing, after all, was going to the realm of Darkness, and Darkness could come and go on a whim. And thus did a second Battle Royale occur, this time between Judai, Johan, and Darkness!Yusuke, which worked out at least in terms of game mechanics in the same way as in canon. Though, there was less discussion of bonds, no mention of dead parents (because they didn’t die), and when Darkness!Yusuke tried to summon the Cubes, each of them in turn struggled to avoid being summoned, eventually pleading with Judai to save Yusuke.
While this was going on, however, something else entirely was going on in the world of Darkness itself. Fubuki (with Shade’s help) and Ryou (“I told you before, Fubuki, I never fell to the darkness”) managed to stay conscious within the ocean of people, and deciding that they needed to locate the real Yusuke, they traveled together. Eventually, they did locate his soul - akin to how Manjoume’s inner darkness was connected with Ojama Yellow, or Asuka’s with Double Passé, or Sho’s with Power Bond, Yusuke was found by locating a single spell card: Beckoning Light, the anniversary gift from his beloved fiancé.
Upon locating it, Fubuki and Ryou found Yusuke trapped within his own memories - most specifically, memories (mostly ones that were sad and negative) pertaining to the two of them, and yet not the two of them, because they would have remembered stuff like what they were seeing. One of the most prevalent, in fact, was something that seemed impossible, because how on earth could Ryou, of all people, ever be brainwashed?
(Not that either Fubuki or Ryou wanted to learn the answer to this, in particular, of course. Especially since they had enough to deal with right now.)
It took a bit of time, a lot of convincing, and a heck of a lot of effort, but eventually, Fubuki and Ryou managed to convince Yusuke that, no matter what had happened or would happen, the three of them were still friends, nothing would ever change that, wallowing in despair wasn’t a very good thing to do, and possibly most importantly, he wasn’t alone. Eventually, Yusuke managed to gain enough control of his emotions and calm down enough so that he became conscious of what was going on.
Now. Darkness’ goal, at this point, was to defeat Judai - he was the herald of Gentle Darkness, after all, and with Gentle Darkness defeated, Nihility would be the only Darkness in the world. Using Yusuke’s body was a viable strategy because it could be pulled time and again from toe world of Darkness after being defeated, limitlessly. However, this only worked as long as Darkness held a claim on Yusuke’s soul, and that only happened as long as the contract between them was valid.
Therefore, with Fubuki, Ryou, and admittedly Shade’s help (as well as that of one of the Truemen, specifically the one who had tried to kill him - he had been trying to avert the very thing Darkness was doing right now, believing that it really wasn’t in Darkness’ best interests to let it happen), Yusuke shattered the original contract and destroyed the powers he had been given. Because of this, when Judai defeated Darkness!Yusuke (unfortunately Johan also lost), Yusuke took back his body, forcing Darkness out of it with the help of the Clear monsters’ and Honest’s spirits. Sure, he wound up stuck in the world of Darkness again, but now Darkness held no hold over his body or soul, meaning that in order to duel Judai again, Darkness would need to appear solidly in the human world, and wouldn’t be able to come back that easily after a defeat.
Lots of further things happened while Yusuke was stuck in the world of Darkness (along with most of the rest of the world - only a few people (essentially, Asuka, Manjoume, Sho, Kenzan, Johan, Fubuki, Ryou, and maybe a couple of others) returned at first). Most of what happened between when Judai defeated Darkness’ true form and when Darkness was restored to normal (because Darkness had been corrupted by the goat skull helmet. Parts of it were formed from a large amount of a stone called Labradorite. If you look here and here, you can probably guess what happened) he doesn’t know all the details of. The Cubes know some of it, but not all of it, and they haven’t decided that they want to talk about it yet, so. (Also, I have yet to figure out most of this part, so.)
When Darkness was restored to normal, however, everyone, including Yusuke, was returned to the human world, and Darkness apologized for everything that had happened and offered to restore one branch of power to him, free of charge. Yusuke, while not really holding all that much against Darkness, declined to accept this offer, deciding that he would find out what he could do with his own strength from now on, not rely on others.
As for Yusuke’s parents, finally the school managed to get into contact with them - they had been on an unannounced business trip, and therefore hadn’t been able to access their home phone. They immediately came to the Academy when they heard the news that their son had returned, and Yusuke was so very glad to see them.
In the months ahead, Yusuke decided to do research on traveling to other worlds through alchemic means - that was how he had stumbled across how to reach the world of Darkness in the first place, after all. Eventually, his endeavors were successful, and after checking his notes on the matter several times in order to make sure that it definitely would work the way he wanted it to, he had created a technique that would allow him to travel to his fiancé’s world, and to return from there to his own and go back and forth whenever he wanted to.
Without hesitation, he went through.
When he reached Fubuki’s room and greeted him as he usually would, however, Fubuki was puzzled, unable to recognize him and, in fact, stricken with a sudden headache that hurt him so much that Asuka, who was in the room with him at the time, had to ask Yusuke to leave in order for it to go away. This was the first blow in a series of several that would follow - just as it had been when he had arrived in Econtra, Fubuki didn’t remember him.
It also wasn’t helping matters that every time he called home to try and contact his parents, he got the machine. The first couple of days, it was somewhat justifiable, but after the fifth or so, he began to wonder… Ryou, also, was unable to be contacted - heck, no one even knew where he was at this point.
If that weren’t bad enough, strange things started happening at the Academy. Suddenly, without any explanation as to why, many of the students’ duel disks stopped responding when they played their cards on it - or, perhaps it’s more accurate to say, the cards stopped registering on the disks. All the cards that their owners didn’t care about - especially those that the duelists blamed for their losses, or had other bad feelings centered about - had become tainted with shadows, somehow. Darkness’ shadows of nihility.
Yusuke had more important things to focus on than the other students’ cards suddenly not working, however, as he suddenly found himself under attack. Without explanation, the being known as Trueman - Yusuke easily remembered him, and his lookalikes, as Darkness’ trusted servants - appeared and tried to kill him. Certainly, Judai appeared at that time and decided to take it upon himself to duel Trueman in Yusuke’s place (despite the fact that Yusuke, in his own opinion, would probably have been able to handle it), but that didn’t change that it had happened, and this perplexed him. Trueman took orders directly from Darkness, after all, and why would Darkness want him to die before his time?
Not that he would have much time to figure this out, either, because the next evening, he was suddenly accused of having attacked Fubuki, despite the fact that he had been in his room in Osiris Red at the time of the incident - Judai wasn’t there to be a witness to this, having been busy facing Trueman by the volcano at the time, but he was certain of his innocence as well. (Though, Yusuke had been giving Pharaoh attention, so make of that what you will.) O’Brien, however, insisted that Yusuke had been Fubuki’s attacker, which just brought more confusion.
Add to this, of course, the small fact that Honest’s spirit had mysteriously gone quiet, while the Clear monsters hadn’t. The next night (around the same time that Fubuki asked Judai to duel him while he was wearing Darkness’ mask in order to see if that would help him uncover his memory), Yusuke decided that this was definitely worth worrying about, and decided to go look for him.
He found Honest… in the Abandoned Dormitory’s basement. Somehow, he had acquired a skill that he’d never revealed (even before having come to Econtra - perhaps this was why he didn’t come out of his card) - he had gained the ability to materialize in the human world and transform into Yusuke’s image, albeit for a somewhat limited time. (He also had developed minor telepathic and telekinetic abilities, as a side note.)
The mystery of Fubuki’s attacker now solved, Honest revealed himself, and tried to explain himself and his reasoning for what he had done - while he admittedly had gone overboard (and was using untested, mildly uncontrolled abilities), he had merely wanted to jog Fubuki’s memories himself - but Yusuke would hear none of it (especially given Honest’s once-more continued insistence of calling him ‘Master’).
This was what finally made him snap, and in his state of unbridled negative emotions, he plucked Honest’s card from his deck, discarded it (he didn’t throw so much as let go and let gravity do the work), and fled into the forest. (Incidentally, he managed to arrive just late enough that he didn’t learn that Fubuki’s memory had returned. Would that have changed things, if he had learned that? We may never know.)
Just this not being the same Fubuki he could have learned to deal with. Heck, add this world’s version of Ryou not being the one he loved (which was looking increasingly more likely to be the case), and he might have learned to deal with it, or at the very least he would have been able to gather enough concentration to figure out a way to discover a way to locate Ryou’s world and go there. (He didn’t have the specific ability to create portals, but that wouldn’t stop him from finding a way.) Even adding on the fact that his parents were unreachable, he would have been able to stay at least reasonably calm. And Trueman… well, there was probably a reason for that that he just didn’t know. Any combination of a couple of those, and he would have been okay.
But with all of them combined, all hitting at the same time, and adding in Honest’s ‘betrayal’, Yusuke fell into complete despair. Certainly, he still had the Clear deck as companions, and the Cubes tried to cheer him up, but it was as though the rest of the world had abandoned them, and this time he didn’t have the Entropi’s mind games to blame on it - it was actually happening this time.
It was while he was in this state that Darkness appeared before him - not quite the same as the last time they had met, if the newly added goat skull helmet was any indication, but undoubtedly Darkness. The Clear monsters tried to protect him, but Yusuke didn’t have any mental strength left in order to fight, and Darkness revealed what Trueman had really been looking to do - Darkness had become bored by Yusuke, and therefore the decision was that payment was due. Trueman, of course, had been trying to kill him and collect it so Darkness didn’t have to, but Darkness had no qualms with collecting it while Yusuke was still alive, either - in fact, for some reason, this way seemed to be what Darkness preferred.
And thus, Yusuke’s soul was stripped from his body and taken back to the world of Darkness, while his body was left behind, now an empty shell in a coma. The Clear monsters were distraught, especially the Cubes, and while they refused to leave Yusuke’s body’s side, they turned a cold shoulder to Honest, who they figured deserved punishment for what he had done. Judai picked up Honest’s card and decided that it would be best if he keep the angel’s card with him for the moment - Honest, ashamed, didn’t argue.
There was reason, however, why Darkness had wanted to collect Yusuke’s soul in this manner, and when the Truemen were ordered to begin casting the entire world’s population into nihility, this reason was realized. Yusuke’s body still belonged to his soul, but his soul belonged to Darkness; therefore, by association, so did his body. Had his body died, there would have been no use for it, but in this manner, his soulless body made a perfect vessel in which Darkness could walk the earth.
It was only after the Truemen had done their job that Darkness did so, but by that point, there were only a few duelists left standing worldwide - Judai, Johan, Fubuki, Ryou (who had washed up on the island around the same time Darkness had claimed Yusuke’s soul, incidentally), and approximately three specific legendary duelists who, seriously, would never be beaten by Trueman that easily (I mean come on) but have little-to-no actual importance to the plot in this instance. (Also Pharaoh, but he’s a cat.)
Fubuki and Ryou thus got into a Battle Royale duel with Darkness!Yusuke. It was a difficult fight, and it also invoked Fubuki’s mask of Darkness (which, incidentally, proved to be not quite the same entity as the Darkness they were fighting - long story short, the Darkness in the mask, called Shade from here on out for simplicity, was a piece of Darkness that broke off when Fubuki was first possessed), but eventually Fubuki and Shade decided to work together, and they managed to effect a three-way tie, sending all three of them to the world of Darkness together. (Why no, Clear Vice Dragon’s Deus ex Machina effect does not come into play here, so as to avoid another ending to episode 174, thank you very much.)
By the time Judai and Johan got to the scene, however, Darkness had brought Yusuke’s body back from the realm of Darkness, still possessing it. The punishment for losing, after all, was going to the realm of Darkness, and Darkness could come and go on a whim. And thus did a second Battle Royale occur, this time between Judai, Johan, and Darkness!Yusuke, which worked out at least in terms of game mechanics in the same way as in canon. Though, there was less discussion of bonds, no mention of dead parents (because they didn’t die), and when Darkness!Yusuke tried to summon the Cubes, each of them in turn struggled to avoid being summoned, eventually pleading with Judai to save Yusuke.
While this was going on, however, something else entirely was going on in the world of Darkness itself. Fubuki (with Shade’s help) and Ryou (“I told you before, Fubuki, I never fell to the darkness”) managed to stay conscious within the ocean of people, and deciding that they needed to locate the real Yusuke, they traveled together. Eventually, they did locate his soul - akin to how Manjoume’s inner darkness was connected with Ojama Yellow, or Asuka’s with Double Passé, or Sho’s with Power Bond, Yusuke was found by locating a single spell card: Beckoning Light, the anniversary gift from his beloved fiancé.
Upon locating it, Fubuki and Ryou found Yusuke trapped within his own memories - most specifically, memories (mostly ones that were sad and negative) pertaining to the two of them, and yet not the two of them, because they would have remembered stuff like what they were seeing. One of the most prevalent, in fact, was something that seemed impossible, because how on earth could Ryou, of all people, ever be brainwashed?
(Not that either Fubuki or Ryou wanted to learn the answer to this, in particular, of course. Especially since they had enough to deal with right now.)
It took a bit of time, a lot of convincing, and a heck of a lot of effort, but eventually, Fubuki and Ryou managed to convince Yusuke that, no matter what had happened or would happen, the three of them were still friends, nothing would ever change that, wallowing in despair wasn’t a very good thing to do, and possibly most importantly, he wasn’t alone. Eventually, Yusuke managed to gain enough control of his emotions and calm down enough so that he became conscious of what was going on.
Now. Darkness’ goal, at this point, was to defeat Judai - he was the herald of Gentle Darkness, after all, and with Gentle Darkness defeated, Nihility would be the only Darkness in the world. Using Yusuke’s body was a viable strategy because it could be pulled time and again from toe world of Darkness after being defeated, limitlessly. However, this only worked as long as Darkness held a claim on Yusuke’s soul, and that only happened as long as the contract between them was valid.
Therefore, with Fubuki, Ryou, and admittedly Shade’s help (as well as that of one of the Truemen, specifically the one who had tried to kill him - he had been trying to avert the very thing Darkness was doing right now, believing that it really wasn’t in Darkness’ best interests to let it happen), Yusuke shattered the original contract and destroyed the powers he had been given. Because of this, when Judai defeated Darkness!Yusuke (unfortunately Johan also lost), Yusuke took back his body, forcing Darkness out of it with the help of the Clear monsters’ and Honest’s spirits. Sure, he wound up stuck in the world of Darkness again, but now Darkness held no hold over his body or soul, meaning that in order to duel Judai again, Darkness would need to appear solidly in the human world, and wouldn’t be able to come back that easily after a defeat.
Lots of further things happened while Yusuke was stuck in the world of Darkness (along with most of the rest of the world - only a few people (essentially, Asuka, Manjoume, Sho, Kenzan, Johan, Fubuki, Ryou, and maybe a couple of others) returned at first). Most of what happened between when Judai defeated Darkness’ true form and when Darkness was restored to normal (because Darkness had been corrupted by the goat skull helmet. Parts of it were formed from a large amount of a stone called Labradorite. If you look here and here, you can probably guess what happened) he doesn’t know all the details of. The Cubes know some of it, but not all of it, and they haven’t decided that they want to talk about it yet, so. (Also, I have yet to figure out most of this part, so.)
When Darkness was restored to normal, however, everyone, including Yusuke, was returned to the human world, and Darkness apologized for everything that had happened and offered to restore one branch of power to him, free of charge. Yusuke, while not really holding all that much against Darkness, declined to accept this offer, deciding that he would find out what he could do with his own strength from now on, not rely on others.
As for Yusuke’s parents, finally the school managed to get into contact with them - they had been on an unannounced business trip, and therefore hadn’t been able to access their home phone. They immediately came to the Academy when they heard the news that their son had returned, and Yusuke was so very glad to see them.
In the months ahead, Yusuke decided to do research on traveling to other worlds through alchemic means - that was how he had stumbled across how to reach the world of Darkness in the first place, after all. Eventually, his endeavors were successful, and after checking his notes on the matter several times in order to make sure that it definitely would work the way he wanted it to, he had created a technique that would allow him to travel to his fiancé’s world, and to return from there to his own and go back and forth whenever he wanted to.
Without hesitation, he went through.