[25] oops, relapse
[Fire.
Fire.
So very much of it, burning inside and out; it's like he's been thrust into his own funeral pyre prematurely -- or perhaps it really is his time to die -- and it hurts. He can hear a scream, a familiar scream; he sees great, leathery, demon-like wings enfold his conflagrating body (it is really his body?), but they, too, succumb to the all-consuming heat and flames in a short time. There's just nowhere to run.
It's almost as though he can hear a conversation going on in the background, both participants sounding so very familiar to him. In his head, someone asking him -- no, not him, someone else -- what price will have to be paid to make it all stop.
"Will you give me your body?"
"Yes... but please make it stop..."
"Your soul?"
"Yes!"
"...Will you give me Juudai?"
The pain escalates.
"Give me Juudai."
"No... no, I cannot give you Juudai. I love him more dearly than all of this."
The voice comes again:
"You have no choice."
Control flows out, light flows in.
Light.
The same Light that was, by its very nature, his enemy.
He sees himself holding that one card that ever mattered to him for one last time, its placement inside a supposedly space-resistant capsule, and then a spaceship lifting off while he watched--
And something inside his head snaps.
That little glittery bubble that is everything you are, that precious jewel that hides all your secrets and hopes, that tiny pearl of existence that makes you wake up and say you want to live today... it just snaps. He feels it, and yet he cannot scream no to everything that pours through his head.
"Please let the forces of justice in space turn Yubel into a good spirit... please, please, please..."
Those were his prayers... but instead...
Instead, the one thing that could've gone wrong, did go wrong.
She'd been tainted.
That wasn't the last he saw of her, however. Every night, in dreams, she came to him, always engulfed by fire, and crying, begging for his help, asking why, why he would do this to her... and then he would wake up then and draw himself into an impossibly small ball of a frightened little boy, unsure what he could possibly do to make it stop.
His parents worried for his mental health. They took a different approach to the situation, paying for him to undergo a technological treatment to seal off his memories of Yubel and the entire incident... and he would continue to live without her. The nightmares stopped. And continue to live he did, up until his third year of high school...
But now he had the knowledge back once more, and finally realized how his foolish and naive mistake had affected them both. She had succumbed to the Light... but she wouldn't have ever been exposed to it in the first place had he not thought such a thing would help her.
And yet other things come to mind as well. Someone had asked him once what his purpose for dueling was. To him, that was like asking him what his purpose for living was... but...
...He remembered the man telling him that he himself had never once dueled for his own sake. He ultimately couldn't hold up in the Pro Leagues, although he tried; he had to earn small amounts of fight money for his poor family, and it made him physically unwell as a result... but despite this, his beloved monster kept fighting with him, time after time. He became a teacher after retiring from the Pro Leagues, however... no one paid any attention to his lessons. He had claimed that it was Juudai's fault that they constantly ignored him, that the students' spirits had been taken from them, and that he had only ever dueled for himself, that he would never understand his words if he had no purpose to duel for, to continue living for.
And then, when the duel was over... he had fallen down the crevasse to his death, together with his beloved hero Scab Scarknight.
Professor Satou...
Finally, he comes to the conclusion that the truth was in his instinct all along. The people around him only ever end up meeting terrible fates; death, or worse than death.
He can only now hope that the fire may eventually burn everything, including his body and his soul, and that it can be left at that... because if it doesn't, if this is all just another cruel illusion by the island, the same thing will continue to happen over and over again, and his only choice will be to close in on himself tighter than ever to avoid inflicting any more damage on anyone else.
Swearing away from any and all emotional attachment for the last time, he sets out for no reason at all other than to make a futile attempt to get away from everyone and anyone, despite seeing and feeling the flames eating away all the while at his skin, his clothes, his hair... his mind.]
((OOC: Juudai will be wandering around in random places outside, moving carelessly and sluggishly with a dazed, slightly broken look on his face. As if the kid wasn't a big enough angstbucket already, ahaha. :|b
His nightmare is experiencing the same thing Yubel went through in space (burning up in the atmosphere), that he now remembers thanks to the magic of Memento Eden. Everything is set ablaze, except people, who he perceives normally. He himself feels as though he's burning in these fires as well, physically and otherwise, and looks to himself as though his very being has caught fire as well.
1% spent on remembering sending Yubel into space, 1% on parts of episodes 113-114 (the two Satou duel episodes, FOR EXTRA ANGST), and 1% on more advanced dueling skills that weren't mentioned here.))