History :: Manjoume Jun (Anomaly) :: for crucible_rpg
Manjoume Jun has two older brothers. His oldest brother, Chousaku, is highly influential in the world of politics, while the other, Shouji, is just as influential in the world of finances and economics. Therefore, Manjoume has always had a lot of pressure on him from the rest of his family to succeed as well, in his area of expertise: the card game Duel Monsters.
As such, he attended the finest dueling preparatory school that money and his talent could obtain admission to, and then when he was fifteen, he began attending Duel Academy. His talent, as well as his fine grades at the affiliated school, allowed him to start in the Obelisk Blue dormitory, reserved for the top students.
But much to his chagrin, he found an unexpected rival in Yuuki Judai, a fellow first-year student in the Osiris Red dormitory, reserved for the students least likely to succeed. Somehow, this kid managed to defeat Chronos de Medichi, one of the top teachers in the school and head of the Obelisk dormitory, and even with his significantly more powerful cards, not even Manjoume could stand up to him in an early test duel. (Or in the practice duel that they attempted to have earlier, but couldn't finish because it was against the rules to be up that late at night, not to mention that it was an ante duel, which was definitely against the rules.)
His frustration at having lost to a low-ranked duelist like Judai, and then losing again to Misawa Daichi, a first year in the middle-ranked Ra Yellow dormitory, caused Manjoume to decide to leave Duel Academy. Unfortunately, in the middle of the ocean his boat began to sink, and he wound up accidentally falling off into the water; however, he was saved by a submarine that happened to be driving past. This is how he met Ojama Yellow - the yellow spirit managed to wake him up (because unlike most other people, he could see it), and a mysterious man on the submarine gave him the Ojama's card after dunking the rest of Manjoume's deck in a puddle. Yellow decided to accompany Manjoume, much to the boy's chagrin, in the hope that by doing so he could be reunited with his missing brothers.
Manjoume then found himself on the iceberg that was home to North Academy, another dueling school and Duel Academy's rival. In order to enter the school, one had to have a full deck of forty cards, and Manjoume only had one. Not that they were impossible to come by - it was set up so that there were cards scattered around the island in various locations, the rarer and more powerful ones being the ones that were the hardest or most dangerous to obtain (for example, set on top of hard-to-reach icebergs).
Eventually, Manjoume managed to obtain a deck of forty cards, gained entry into North Academy, and defeated fifty students there, along with the current King. Because of this, he was named the new King of North Academy (also earning the title of Manjoume Thunder for reasons having to do with misheard honorifics) and given the opportunity to represent that school in the upcoming School Duel with Duel Academy, the representative of which would be Judai.
Of course, his brothers televised the duel, and Manjoume lost. His brothers told him off for being a failure, but Judai and Chronos stood up for him. After that, Manjoume decided to return to Duel Academy, though he would be demoted to Osiris Red for having missed so much of the year.
It was only a short time before Principal Samejima called Manjoume, as well as four other students - Judai, Misawa, another first year named Tenjoin Asuka, and a third year honors student named Marufuji Ryou (commonly referred to as Kaiser for his skill, unsurpassed in his class) - and two teachers - Chronos and Daitoukuji, the head of the Osiris Red dormitory - to his office to request their help. Duel Academy had been built atop the place where the three Phantom Demons - cards endowed with great power that could be used, in the wrong hands, to completely destroy the world - had been sealed. This seal could only be opened using seven keys, which could each only be claimed by winning a duel with them as the ante.
Samejima had recently received information that seven duelists would be coming to Duel Academy. Known as the Seven Stars, they were an organization intending to obtain all seven of these keys and use them to obtain the demons' power for themselves. In order to protect the keys from them, therefore, Samejima wished to entrust them to the seven best duelists on the island.
The first Star to appear was a masked man who went by the name of Darkness. He challenged Judai to a battle atop a volcano, the stakes being that the victor won the key, and the loser would have their soul sealed inside of a blank card. Judai won, of course, and Darkness was sealed, but his was not the original soul in the body. As it would turn out, Darkness had merely been controlling a young man: Tenjoin Fubuki, Asuka’s missing older brother.
The second Star was a vampire named Camulla who sealed the souls of her victims inside of dolls. She faced Chronos first and won, taking his key and turning him into a doll. However, she didn't like how the doll turned out, so she discarded it, and Manjoume wound up taking care of it - he could still hear Chronos’ soul trapped inside of it. Camulla then went on to defeat Kaiser in a duel (but only because she had taken the soul of his brother, Sho, as a hostage), but she lost when she faced Judai, who had been given the half of an amulet that Fubuki had been carrying and was therefore able to cancel her ability to hold others' souls hostage - as soon as Camulla was defeated, the dolls returned to human form.
Unfortunately, in this particular universe, shortly after Judai defeated Camulla, Fubuki's body was too drained from having the power of Darkness inside of it for so long, and he died.
Some effects were immediate: Asuka was removed from Duel Academy due to her parents' fears that they might lose their other child as well. Her key, after discussion amongst the key holders and upon Judai’s suggestion, was given to Ayanokouji Mitsuru, the third-year captain of the tennis club who had exceptional grades. After the situation was explained to him, he was quite willing to help out, especially because it was for Asuka, who he’d had a crush on.
Samejima resigned from his role as Principal as a way of taking the fall so that the school didn't have to, leaving Chronos as the new one in his place. Daitoukuji, meanwhile, not only resigned from his position as the alchemy professor, but also from his position on the Seven Stars - because yes, he had secretly been leading a double life. He had been willing to experiment on students in order to extend his own life (because he was dying of illness and afraid of doing so), and therefore had joined the Seven Stars under the pseudonym of Amnael, but he drew the line at others dying so that he could live. As a result of his decision, his body turned to dust and he died himself, without telling any of the students the truth about how he had been the seventh Star, or even where he had hidden his key, and leaving only his cat, Pharaoh, behind. Kagemaru, the leader of the Seven Stars, then began to search for a replacement, but it was in vain, and before he could find one, he also passed away of his old age (for he had sought the demons’ power in order to obtain eternal youth).
Fairly soon after that, Manjoume's brothers decided that they wanted to purchase Duel Academy because, since they had determined that their youngest brother was unable to become the top of the Duel Monsters world, they would do so instead. The conditions set up by Kaiba Seto (CEO of Kaiba Corporation, which among other things was the school’s main sponsor), however, were that in order to purchase the school, the purchaser would have to defeat a student of the school who was using a deck of monsters that had less than five hundred attack points. Their choice for an opponent was, obviously, their youngest brother.
Ojama Yellow was the only card of his that met the conditions, but some of the third-year students offered up a rumor of a well where the cards that duelists threw away because they were too weak went. Rumor had it that this well was filled with their vengeful spirits, unhappy to have been simply tossed aside like that, but Manjoume went anyway.
This was how he met Ojamas Green and Black - they were in the well and asked if Manjoume knew who had thrown them down there, complaining that they missed their brother. Yellow then appeared and was reunited with his brothers at last, and Manjoume decided that he would take in all of the cards that had been thrown into the well. After all, he kind of had to, really, if Duel Academy was to be saved from his brothers.
Manjoume won that duel against Chousaku, even though he didn't use any monsters that had a single base attack point, and he learned two valuable lessons. The one that he admitted to was that he had learned how to deal with being considered at the bottom. The one that he did not, at least aloud, was that he had learned that even the weakest cards could be powerful in the right situations. From that day onward, in fact, he played a deck that combined the powerful, evolving dragons that he had inherited from North School (and never returned), and his original deck, the union VWXYZ transforming robots, with his Ojamas and support spells for them.
Taniya, the third Star, attacked, and Judai defeated her after Misawa failed. Manjoume defeated the Black Scorpions and their leader, Don Zaloog, while Judai defeated Abidos. Ayanokouji faced the sixth Star, Titan, and put up a good fight, but lost the duel and his key; Manjoume, however, was able to defeat Titan. (Incidentally, Ayanokouji was fine afterward and went on to graduate normally. His only penalty was losing his key.)
The remaining holders of the keys - just Judai and Manjoume at this point - waited expectantly for the seventh of the Stars to show their face and attack. However, months passed, and not a word of the seventh reached any of their ears. It began to seem unlikely that the seventh was even coming, but this could be a new tactic, to catch them off their guard. So even as their second year of school dawned, they continued to protect the keys, waiting for their final enemy to appear.
Little did they know that he actually would appear - by accident (or perhaps destiny?), in Saiou Takuma.
Due to a small interpretation error, Manjoume remained in the Osiris Red dormitory, though he was qualified to return to Obelisk Blue. An American duelist from the Pro Leagues, Edo Phoenix, defeated Judai in a duel, and because his manager, the aforementioned Saiou Takuma, was a psychic who had taken an interest in Judai and wanted to control the power that he had hidden inside of him, Saiou had laced Edo's final attack with his power. This was enough to cause Judai to lose the ability to see the images on his cards, though not enough to bring him under Saiou's control. (Incidentally, Judai had left his key in his room that day.)
Due to this, Judai left the island (and had an adventure in a place called Neospace where he obtained the Neo-Spacian cards). While Judai was away, Saiou came to the island, trying to find a different duelist to suit his purposes because his initial plan hadn't worked out. And when he came across Manjoume, who at the very least held the same ability to see spirits as Judai, they dueled.
Manjoume lost that duel, but not before Saiou had played his share of mind games with him. For a while now, Manjoume had seen Judai as a rival, someone he had to grow strong enough to defeat, but lately, he'd also been seeing him as a friend, and these conflicting feelings had created an inner confusion that he usually had tried to ignore, but Saiou brought to the forefront. This was how Saiou's power reached him, by taking advantage of his confusion and promising that he could become strong enough to defeat Judai if he stopped looking at him as a friend and relied on Saiou's power - the power of the Light of Destruction.
After this, Manjoume began wearing only white clothing and talking about an association for those who had been embraced by the Light - the Hikari no Kessha.
There was a second significance to this result, however - the key that Manjoume had carried now technically belonged to Saiou. And when he asked what it was, the now blindly-loyal young man explained about the three demon cards, and Saiou officially made it his goal to obtain the seven keys. Four of them were already placed in their slots and could still be used, therefore, to unlock the demons, and now Saiou had Manjoume’s as well; it would just be a matter of getting the last two.
Once they were in Saiou’s hands, the power that the demons held would be in the best care they could be in, right? At least, this was what Manjoume was made to believe.
At first, most everyone just shrugged Manjoume off as having finally gone off the deep end. But then, he started dueling everyone in the Obelisk Blue dormitory, and every student that lost to him became brainwashed by Saiou's power into joining the aforementioned cult. He had dyed most of the Obelisk Blue dormitory white, and even a bit of Ra Yellow, when Judai decided to try and knock him back to his senses.
Judai lost that duel, not due to lack of skill. In fact, he could have won. However, due to the guilt that he still felt for being the one to defeat Darkness and therefore, in his mind, deal the final blow that killed Fubuki (despite the fact that, in this particular world, it would have happened even if Darkness had decided to duel anyone else - even Asuka, for instance), somehow he managed to begin to believe that, if he were to duel anyone who had been brainwashed or otherwise under some outside mental influence (which, at this point, it was obvious that Manjoume was), he would only manage to kill them in the end. (Perhaps this was a side-effect of the Light’s earlier, failed attack that had caused him to temporarily lose the ability to see the images on his cards, or perhaps it was an unrelated mental breakdown. One cannot be sure.) Because he didn’t want to kill his friend, he purposefully lost; his own hidden internal powers of gentle darkness once again kept him from being brainwashed by the Light, but he lost his key.
Seeing Judai purposefully lose to Manjoume, Sho, who was now technically in Ra Yellow but tended to stay with Judai in Osiris Red anyway, lost a significant part of his faith in Judai, and decided that if the Hikari no Kessha was going to be stopped from spreading, someone else would have to do it. So he challenged Manjoume, he lost, and his desire to be worthy of being the Kaiser’s little brother was manipulated enough that he was brainwashed by the Light and joined the Hikari no Kessha.
Misawa then dueled Manjoume, not out of particular desire to be noticed, per se (though this was the desire that the eventual brainwashing would latch onto anyway), but, like Sho, because he figured that the spread of the Hikari no Kessha couldn’t be a good thing, and they couldn’t rely on Judai. He put up a good fight, and lost fairly (as opposed to canon, in which he specifically chose to lose).
After this duel, Manjoume decided that keeping the Ojamas around was a waste, especially because the Light gave him so much more power than they ever could, and he tossed them to the wind. The moment the cards left his hand, the Light’s power held him so strongly that his ability to see and hear spirits disappeared - this unnerved him for a second, having gotten used to hearing them all the time, but the Light assured him that it was not only fine but a good thing, and he believed the Light.
Incidentally, because Samejima was no longer the Principal, there was no Genex tournament. Therefore, there was no reason for Prince Ojin to come to Duel Academy, and no opportunity for Saiou to obtain the keys to SORA, a laser satellite that could, in theory, destroy the Earth (which, being a very solid planet, casts a shadow and therefore blocked the Light’s power from becoming supreme in the universe). However, that wouldn’t be needed, if Saiou was capable of obtaining the final key and the demons’ power.
But then again, that seemed a nearly impossible task. Daitoukuji had hidden it well, and perhaps there were other supernatural forces on the island that fought to keep it hidden. Even Saiou’s power couldn’t locate it, and he himself admitted that, perhaps, only the spirits of the island would be able to do so at this point. Not that the entire Hikari no Kessha would give up trying, of course.
And so it went. Judai and a few of the students and teachers who had managed somehow to resist the Light's influence on the island were rumored to have formed an underground resistance group, though Judai was willing to do little for fear that he would mess things up even more than they already were. Edo attempted to defeat the Light that was possessing Saiou in a duel, but he failed, and his and Saiou’s souls were removed from their bodies - the Light that had been possessing Saiou took full control, and Edo’s body became nothing but a puppet. The entire island became saturated in Light energy - visitors who didn’t have a deck were brainwashed easily and almost immediately, and while those with a deck had to be dueled into submission, the Light had so many powerful students on its side that this didn’t matter much. The island's administration wound up with its hands tied - Chronos would very much have liked to have contacted the proper authorities to bring help to the island (say, Kaiba Corporation?), but there were hundreds of students in the Hikari no Kessha, thanks to Manjoume, and only one of him, and he valued his life.
Manjoume’s third year commenced. There would be an exchange program for the first half of the year - four students and a teacher from the various dueling academies around the world were to attend Duel Academy for a semester. Chronos had tried to convince Professor Cobra, from West Academy, that now wasn't the best time, but Cobra was very insistent.
In order to provide the best welcome they could, Chronos decided that he would have an up-and-coming Japanese idol singer hold a concert on the island the first night that the exchange students were there - Cobra had suggested a duel instead, and it would have made sense, but Chronos wanted to avoid exposing the exchange students to the Hikari no Kessha if possible. And so, he hired a relatively new voice in the business who was still relatively popular nonetheless, a young woman who went by the stage name of Asuryn, to perform.
Saiou (that is, the Light in Saiou’s body, but for simplicity’s sake at this point they were essentially the same thing) soon got wind of this plan and decided to use it to his own means. Asuryn would be spending about a week on the island before the concert - during that time, Manjoume would show her around, keep her company, do what she wanted him to do for her, stuff like that, and make sure that she was convinced of the Light’s superiority. This woman was no duelist, after all, and therefore could not be convinced through cards, and more… drastic measures would risk damaging her charisma and popularity, so relying on the island’s aura would have to do.
Once she was a member, she would use her music to spread the Light's influence to all those who listened to her voice, not just duelists. She had already made it onto the top singles charts several times, so it was obvious she had a large fan base, even for being young and relatively new to the field, so the message would spread quickly. …At least, so went the plan.
So the week before the concert was supposed to happen, Manjoume met the boat that came to Duel Academy, only to discover that the idol Asuryn was actually Tenjoin Asuka, who had chosen to take a singing route in memory of her brother (who had always said that, should dueling not work out, she should do so) when her parents had forbidden her from continuing to follow any career involving dueling.
Manjoume did as he had been asked to by Saiou - he accompanied her around the school, showed her all the things that had changed, told her about everything that had happened while she had been away, and most importantly of all, kept her company. However, the afternoon of the third day of this, it became obvious that the result would not be how Saiou had anticipated - somehow, Asuka remained unaffected by the Light's power that was spread throughout the island, and Manjoume was beginning to have doubts about his own affiliation with the Hikari no Kessha.
Why did he have such faith in the Light, anyway? What had it ever done for him, really? He hadn't gotten to defeat Judai yet, not really anyway, since the coward had thrown that one duel - in fact, with every passing day that goal seemed more and more pointless, the other less and less willing to duel with all of his strength. He had wanted to become strong enough to defeat Judai himself, not weaken his resolve for an easy or false win!
And furthermore, there was something about Asuka that he had never noticed when she was at Duel Academy. Now that he was actually hanging out with her and talking with her, he was beginning to see how brilliant a person she really was, even without being one with the Light. If someone that amazing existed outside the Light, then what truth was there to the Light's superiority to everything?
The fact that Asuka hadn't converted yet failed to escape Saiou's notice, and deciding that drastic measures were unavoidable, Saiou ordered Manjoume to bring Asuka to him so that he could expose her to the Light's full power and convert her that way. However, rather than being the ever-willing brainwashed servant, Manjoume actually argued against Saiou's order, unwilling to let her get hurt. After all, among other reasons that may or may not have existed, hadn't that been Saiou’s initial intention, to convince her without resorting to drastic measures?
As punishment for his insubordination, Saiou used his full power and overwhelmed Manjoume's mind, draining all of his free will from him - the piece of the Light inside him was no longer a fixation, but a force, strong enough to essentially possess him. And so, no longer in control of his thoughts or actions, Manjoume brought Asuka to Saiou, who pushed her against a wall and used his full power to attempt to reach her mind.
Only it still didn't work as Saiou had planned - all it did was cause her intense pain, and the Light still didn't reach her mind. She went into a bit of delirium from the pain, calling her deceased brother's name as if in an attempt to beg for help from him. (Not that it was, apparently, working, but.)
Manjoume, still not in control of his actions, stood there, blankly watching on. Something inside of him began to hurt as well though: the longer he watched, the more of Asuka's suffering he saw and heard, and the more his heart began to awaken and decide that he really should do something to stop it.
Soon, Asuka began to call out not only Fubuki's name, but Manjoume's as well. It was a simple request for forgiveness for whatever it was she had done to him that he would get so upset that he would bring her here, to this torture.
The breaking point for Manjoume was when she begged him to help her, calling not his family name as most people usually had, but his given name, Jun.
Somehow, hearing that one simple word was all that Manjoume needed in order to break all of the enchantments that Saiou had placed upon him, to remove all of the brainwashing that he had undergone. He remembered everything he had done during that time, and his first feeling was one of utter revulsion at how he, the great Manjoume Thunder, had stooped so low as to serve a guy like Saiou, and to do all of those things. He could see clearly now - everything Saiou had promised had been a lie. How had he not seen that before… how could he have listened to him like that?
But he forced himself to focus on the matter at hand first before yelling at himself - first, he needed to help Asuka. Saiou had no time to react as Manjoume's leg swiftly kicked him in his back, knocking the wind out of him and causing him to collapse to the ground, and more importantly, to lose focus on Asuka. It was a simple matter from there for Manjoume to pick her up - since she had fallen unconscious from the shock of everything by this point - and carry her away to the one place on the island where he knew the two of them would be safe.
The infirmary was specifically neutral ground - Ayukawa Emi, the nurse, gym teacher, and head of the Girls' Dormitory, was adamant about that. No one fought there, and members of both the Hikari no Kessha and the (ever-shrinking) resistance group were permitted there to get treatment for any injuries or diseases that they would happen to get.
Not that there were many injuries. Usually, if fights broke out, they were duels.
Judai happened to be there as well - he had tripped and sprained his ankle, and so Tyranno Kenzan, a Ra Yellow student entering his second year who was rumored to have not been converted even having lost to Saiou himself in a duel thanks to a piece of a dinosaur bone buried in his leg, had brought him so that he could recover. Not that he was in much danger, being more or less immune to the Light's influence, but it was still better for him to be in neutral space while he couldn't run. Manjoume made an attempt to ignore him, sickened by what he'd been reduced to due to his delusions that, somehow, everything was his fault. (While, of course, denying the fact that he felt exactly the same way about himself.)
It became a bit difficult to ignore him later that night, however. Asuka was asleep on a hospital bed next to Judai's, and she wasn't going to wake up until morning at the earliest, or so Ayukawa had said. And yet, Judai was talking to someone - Manjoume couldn't tell who - who was at least in the general direction of Asuka's bed, and it was apparently a human someone, judging by the boy's tone.
When Manjoume, his curiosity getting the best of him, asked who he was talking to, Judai looked at him strangely and wondered aloud if he had lost his ability to see spirits. After all, sitting on Asuka's bed was the spirit of her brother, Fubuki, who had been haunting the Swing of Memories - a particularly special card between the two of them that he had asked Ayukawa to give her if he died - ever since Asuka had set foot on the island again. And, of course, having unwillingly been taken over by the power of Darkness for so long, he kept a bit of it inside of his soul, and had been using it to protect Asuka from being overcome by the Light's influence.
Or at least, Judai claimed that Fubuki was there, and that he had said that. Not that Manjoume was particularly inclined to believe him at this point.
The next morning, after Manjoume had changed into one of his (much more comfortable) black uniforms, Asuka woke up. After the two boys managed to explain things to her, and after a heartfelt apology from Manjoume, the three of them decided that the best course of action would be to try to find the last of the keys, the one that Daitoukuji had hidden. Finding the final key would allow them to make sure that Saiou couldn't get his hands on the demons, and possibly give a plausible reason to challenge him. However, Manjoume, in his stubbornness, was unwilling to work with Judai, believing that he would just get in the way, and Judai also expressed his unwillingness to duel.
By this time, the other members of Judai's resistance group had arrived. It was tinier than even Manjoume had expected - the only ones left were Judai himself, Kenzan, Momoe and Junko (a pair of girls entering their third year who had been good friends of Asuka’s during the brief time she had attended the school), and Kabayama (the often-forgotten head of the Ra Yellow dormitory). Kenzan was furious to see Manjoume there, and he tried to convince Asuka to leave him behind, that he was untrustworthy, and that the only way to defeat Saiou and save everything would be to come with them. But she declined, stating that Manjoume had saved her life, and so she wouldn't leave him behind.
As the resistance group left, Manjoume and Asuka decided that it would still be the best course of action to attempt to find the final key, even if it was just the two of them. The only question was where to start looking. Saiou had once told Manjoume that it was likely only the spirits on the island would know where it was, and though he didn't like to admit that any of what he had done had happened in the first place, he did bring up that possibility - and his former ability to see spirits - with Asuka, who formed a plan. If Manjoume could no longer talk to spirits himself, and they needed to do so in order to find the key, why not talk with one a different way?
After all, communication like that - specifically, the usage of Ouija boards - wasn't unheard of at the Academy: back in their first year, Takadera - another Obelisk student - and his friends had attempted to use one. With mildly disastrous consequences, but that didn't mean that rumors that it had been done hadn't circulated.
And so, they decided that the best way to proceed was to go to the library and attempt to find a book detailing spiritual communication. Asuka would search through the books herself while Manjoume stood guard outside - it was likely that Saiou had members of the Hikari no Kessha looking for them, and Manjoume could at least defend himself and make enough time for Asuka to escape.
While Asuka searched through the library, Manjoume found himself accidentally drawn into a duel. The entire Hikari no Kessha, by this point, had learned of Manjoume's betrayal, and they had, as expected, been given orders to bring him and Asuka to Saiou if found. And who should come across Manjoume but Misawa, who the now-black-jacketed student had converted personally.
And would un-convert personally as well - this duel between Manjoume and Misawa was a rather quick one, which Manjoume won. In fact, by the time Asuka emerged from the library with the necessary book, there were hardly any signs that any duel had been performed at all, save a white coat having been hastily thrown to the ground. (Just the coat, mind you.)
They decided to contact the spirits in the one place that no one connected to the Light would ever think to look - the Abandoned Dormitory. The incidents that had taken place there, which had led to the disappearances of various students in Kaiser and Fubuki’s first year, as well as what Titan had done, had tainted the place with dark energy - surely the Light would shy away. (Not to mention, it was still off-limits to the general student population, including the Hikari no Kessha. Chronos would understand why they had to go there though, right?)
It was a full moon that night, providing just enough light for the two of them to see by in the Abandoned Dormitory's lobby. They set up their makeshift Ouija board - a piece of paper with the proper markings in the proper places and a coin to use as a marker - and called forth the spirits of the island to ask them where they would find the seventh key.
What they did not realize until it was too late, however, was the fact that it was really only the basement of the dormitory that was infected with darkness, and the Light's power still managed to get into the lobby and interfere with the reading. With their heightened level of connection to all things spiritual, if nothing was done, the two of them would have easily fallen to the Light's influence.
Would have, except that at the last second, Asuka pulled Manjoume's and her own hand away from the board and fled to said basement, dragging a mildly stunned Manjoume along with her.
When they were safely in the basement and certain that the Light wouldn't follow them, it became apparent that Asuka wasn't herself. In fact, she had been possessed - by the ghost of her older brother, Fubuki (naturally proving, much to Manjoume’s chagrin, that Judai had been right). Through her, he told Manjoume the true location of the final key - it was in a specific clearing in the forest, not notable except for a single small boulder in the center. The key would be found with its lanyard encircling the bottom of the rock, though it would be hard to spot. No one had yet found it because there were indeed spirits working to keep it from being detected.
After promising Fubuki that he would do what he could to protect Asuka from the material dangers that the Light's power held (while Fubuki protected both of them from the intangible ones - ever since Manjoume had broken free of the Light's influence with his own power, he had been under Fubuki's protection, which prevented him from succumbing to its control again), the deceased young man left, leaving his sister unconscious, in need of rest.
Asuka didn’t wake up until around noon the next day, giving Manjoume some time to rest as well, even if he didn’t get much sleep. When she was ready, however, Manjoume explained what he had learned (though he left off the fact that Asuka had been possessed by her brother), and the two of them made their way to where Fubuki had said.
Indeed, the key was there, exactly where he’d said it would be. However, they weren’t alone - another student was there, who challenged Manjoume to a duel for the right to take it. And, of course, Manjoume accepted the challenge, thinking that this was just some random student he’d never seen before whom someone else had converted to the White dorm, and a duel began.
Something felt off, though, during the duel. At first, Manjoume brushed it off, not allowing himself to lose focus on the duel and obtaining the key so that Saiou couldn’t. But the longer it went on, the more this feeling of wrongness nagged at him, and it eventually got to the point where he decided he had to pause for a moment in order to figure out exactly what it was.
Except, he found that he couldn’t stop - in fact, he hadn’t been completely consciously controlling his moves for a while now. Those with a deck had to be dueled into service of the Light, but it also worked the other way around - to be completely free of the Light’s influence, one who had been brainwashed through a duel had to lose another duel against someone who was opposed to the Light. And while Fubuki had been keeping Manjoume from succumbing to its power again, apparently either that protection wasn’t working right now or he was purposefully lowering it.
Either way, this duel suddenly became an internal battle, as well as a seemingly lose-lose situation: win the duel, the key was his, but the Light would continue to have a hold on him, and as was being demonstrated, Fubuki’s protection wouldn’t always be there. Lose the duel, the Light would be gone, but it would have the key.
It all came down to a single play - Manjoume had two traps on the field, one of which would win the duel for him immediately, but he would lose immediately if he didn’t play it. Whatever it was that was actually dueling, naturally, went for this trap, but deciding that protecting Asuka and fulfilling his promise to Fubuki was more important than the key, and that he couldn’t protect her if the enemy was inside himself, Manjoume wrenched sufficient control for just enough time and managed to play the other trap instead:
Ojama Trio.
One of the key cards in his Ojama strategies, and the only one that could really be used effectively without the corresponding monster cards, by playing this trap, not only did Manjoume overcome his internal struggle, throw the duel, and free himself of the Light completely, but it was also a more or less conscious affirmation, and acceptance, of the fact that yes, in fact, he did need the Ojamas.
He fainted after his life points hit zero, his mind unable to handle the mental strain of everything. After all, the Light had been in there for several months, now - to remove it all at once just like that, especially after it had held him so firmly in its grasp at one point, couldn’t come without consequences, and Manjoume’s mind had been made somewhat fragile, not having had time to re-strengthen itself after being shattered so many times. It was several hours before he awoke (judging, at least, by the fact that it had been mid-afternoon when the duel had occurred, but was after sundown when he awoke), with only spotty memory of what had happened during the duel, to find that Asuka and the other student (who, in fact, was not wearing a uniform from the White dorm but, rather, from the discontinued Honors dormitory that Kaiser and Fubuki had been a part of) had been talking. The student’s name, supposedly, was Fujiwara Yusuke - he had been a friend of Kaiser and Fubuki, also able to see spirits, who had agreed to help Fubuki free Manjoume completely.
Incidentally, upon his waking up, Manjoume found himself able to see Fubuki’s ghost sitting next to Asuka - when the Light had left him for good, his ability to see spirits had returned. He could also tell that Fujiwara wasn’t being completely truthful in his identity, judging by the pair of angel wings, invisible to all but those who could see duel spirits, protruding from his back: in fact, this was the spirit of the duel monster Honest, who had been Fujiwara’s partner before he had died because of his own experiments with Darkness. Somehow, Honest had developed the ability to take his master’s form and appear in the human world, albeit for a somewhat limited amount of time.
Either way, however, that didn’t change the fact that he had still been helping Fubuki, and now that Manjoume was completely free of the Light’s influence, Honest gave him the key, stating that the best course of action now would be to challenge Saiou, and then left to recover his energy, for he had been transformed for a good while now.
Of course, at this time of day, it was too late to do that, and so Manjoume and Asuka decided to set up camp where they were. Asuka slept; Manjoume, having been out for most of the day anyway, kept watch. Or at least, he meant to, except that he couldn’t help hearing crying voices from nearby, voices that sounded familiar.
And so, convincing himself that it was all right to do so because nothing would happen while he was away, Manjoume followed the voices toward the same old well he had been pointed toward in his first year, where all the weak cards wound up when their owners abandoned them. Climbing down to the bottom, he found the three Ojamas - his partners, he would even go so far as to say the aces of his deck, who he had so foolishly thrown away - and after a short talk that involved awkward apologies, Manjoume took the Ojamas’ cards and added them back into his deck. (This, of course, was only after the three of them decided to tackle him in a group hug, much to his chagrin. They had missed him so much, after all.)
Things were looking up - at least, until Manjoume got back to where he and Asuka had set up camp, because while he had been reuniting with the Ojamas, Edo (that is, the Light that was using Edo’s body as a puppet, but for all intents and purposes at this point they were the same) had managed to sneak up on Asuka while she had been asleep, capture her, and bring her to Saiou. (Not that being awake would have done her much good anyway - she would have fought back, but she had no deck and couldn’t duel, and the Light didn’t feel physical pain and therefore wouldn’t particularly care if its puppet’s body was injured.)
This only fueled the fire further, and Manjoume made his way toward where he knew Saiou would be, challenging him as soon as he arrived. If Manjoume won, Asuka would be free, and the Light would be forced to leave. If Saiou won, the key would be his, Manjoume would be his mindless slave again, Asuka would fall under the Light’s influence herself, the Light would have possession of all seven keys, and in general the world would be more or less doomed. Saiou claimed that Destiny had already determined that the latter would be the case, and therefore there was no need to fight; Manjoume, however, decided that even if it was ‘destined’ to end badly, he would still fight with everything he had.
Thus, they dueled. It was the most difficult duel that Manjoume would ever fight, and there were times where he was driven into such a corner that his loss seemed imminent, but with moral support from the Tenjoins and the Ojamas, he held his own, refusing to give in, and eventually he managed to pull off exactly the right combination of cards, winning the duel.
With that, the Light was forced to leave Saiou’s body, and its aura on the island dissipated as well. Saiou and Edo’s souls were released from where they had been held, free to return to their own bodies, though Saiou was in rather critical condition from being possessed for so long, and had to be taken to the infirmary (which Manjoume grudgingly agreed to do, on Asuka’s request that he not be left to die). Only Daitoukuji’s key had been wagered, and it had not been won, so the demons’ seal remained intact.
Of course, there was still the matter of the White dorm, which would require dueling each member individually in order to remove their brainwashing. Or at least, there would have been, except that by the time that Manjoume was ready to do so, the White dorm was no more - perhaps it had been his discussion with Fubuki that had inspired him, perhaps it was something else, but Judai had somehow managed to work up the courage to duel the White dorm’s members in order to free them. It had started with only one or two of the ones on whom the Light’s hold was obviously weakest, but eventually he had regained enough confidence that he (with the help of Kenzan and Kabayama) managed to erase the Light’s hold on every White duelist on the island while Manjoume was dueling Saiou.
(Well, all of them except for one - the Light inside of Edo had instead been taken out by Kaiser Ryou, now calling himself the Hell Kaiser due to various incidents involving an almost-fall from the Pro Leagues and various underground duels involving electric shocks, who had returned to the island to be present at the concert on Asuka’s request.)
With the Light’s threat gone, the performance the next day went off without any problems, and it was in general a day of celebration, meeting the exchange students, and well-deserved rest from anything involving the fate of the world. When it came time for Asuka to leave, Manjoume saw her to her ship, and they promised to keep in touch.
That night, as he went to sleep (needing earplugs in order to successfully do so for the first time in far too long), he expected to wake up in the morning to a new year of classes which, while certainly promising to be anything besides dull, at least promised to take place at Duel Academy (at least, he could hope). However, when he awoke, he wasn’t on Duel Academy Island anymore…
As such, he attended the finest dueling preparatory school that money and his talent could obtain admission to, and then when he was fifteen, he began attending Duel Academy. His talent, as well as his fine grades at the affiliated school, allowed him to start in the Obelisk Blue dormitory, reserved for the top students.
But much to his chagrin, he found an unexpected rival in Yuuki Judai, a fellow first-year student in the Osiris Red dormitory, reserved for the students least likely to succeed. Somehow, this kid managed to defeat Chronos de Medichi, one of the top teachers in the school and head of the Obelisk dormitory, and even with his significantly more powerful cards, not even Manjoume could stand up to him in an early test duel. (Or in the practice duel that they attempted to have earlier, but couldn't finish because it was against the rules to be up that late at night, not to mention that it was an ante duel, which was definitely against the rules.)
His frustration at having lost to a low-ranked duelist like Judai, and then losing again to Misawa Daichi, a first year in the middle-ranked Ra Yellow dormitory, caused Manjoume to decide to leave Duel Academy. Unfortunately, in the middle of the ocean his boat began to sink, and he wound up accidentally falling off into the water; however, he was saved by a submarine that happened to be driving past. This is how he met Ojama Yellow - the yellow spirit managed to wake him up (because unlike most other people, he could see it), and a mysterious man on the submarine gave him the Ojama's card after dunking the rest of Manjoume's deck in a puddle. Yellow decided to accompany Manjoume, much to the boy's chagrin, in the hope that by doing so he could be reunited with his missing brothers.
Manjoume then found himself on the iceberg that was home to North Academy, another dueling school and Duel Academy's rival. In order to enter the school, one had to have a full deck of forty cards, and Manjoume only had one. Not that they were impossible to come by - it was set up so that there were cards scattered around the island in various locations, the rarer and more powerful ones being the ones that were the hardest or most dangerous to obtain (for example, set on top of hard-to-reach icebergs).
Eventually, Manjoume managed to obtain a deck of forty cards, gained entry into North Academy, and defeated fifty students there, along with the current King. Because of this, he was named the new King of North Academy (also earning the title of Manjoume Thunder for reasons having to do with misheard honorifics) and given the opportunity to represent that school in the upcoming School Duel with Duel Academy, the representative of which would be Judai.
Of course, his brothers televised the duel, and Manjoume lost. His brothers told him off for being a failure, but Judai and Chronos stood up for him. After that, Manjoume decided to return to Duel Academy, though he would be demoted to Osiris Red for having missed so much of the year.
It was only a short time before Principal Samejima called Manjoume, as well as four other students - Judai, Misawa, another first year named Tenjoin Asuka, and a third year honors student named Marufuji Ryou (commonly referred to as Kaiser for his skill, unsurpassed in his class) - and two teachers - Chronos and Daitoukuji, the head of the Osiris Red dormitory - to his office to request their help. Duel Academy had been built atop the place where the three Phantom Demons - cards endowed with great power that could be used, in the wrong hands, to completely destroy the world - had been sealed. This seal could only be opened using seven keys, which could each only be claimed by winning a duel with them as the ante.
Samejima had recently received information that seven duelists would be coming to Duel Academy. Known as the Seven Stars, they were an organization intending to obtain all seven of these keys and use them to obtain the demons' power for themselves. In order to protect the keys from them, therefore, Samejima wished to entrust them to the seven best duelists on the island.
The first Star to appear was a masked man who went by the name of Darkness. He challenged Judai to a battle atop a volcano, the stakes being that the victor won the key, and the loser would have their soul sealed inside of a blank card. Judai won, of course, and Darkness was sealed, but his was not the original soul in the body. As it would turn out, Darkness had merely been controlling a young man: Tenjoin Fubuki, Asuka’s missing older brother.
The second Star was a vampire named Camulla who sealed the souls of her victims inside of dolls. She faced Chronos first and won, taking his key and turning him into a doll. However, she didn't like how the doll turned out, so she discarded it, and Manjoume wound up taking care of it - he could still hear Chronos’ soul trapped inside of it. Camulla then went on to defeat Kaiser in a duel (but only because she had taken the soul of his brother, Sho, as a hostage), but she lost when she faced Judai, who had been given the half of an amulet that Fubuki had been carrying and was therefore able to cancel her ability to hold others' souls hostage - as soon as Camulla was defeated, the dolls returned to human form.
Unfortunately, in this particular universe, shortly after Judai defeated Camulla, Fubuki's body was too drained from having the power of Darkness inside of it for so long, and he died.
Some effects were immediate: Asuka was removed from Duel Academy due to her parents' fears that they might lose their other child as well. Her key, after discussion amongst the key holders and upon Judai’s suggestion, was given to Ayanokouji Mitsuru, the third-year captain of the tennis club who had exceptional grades. After the situation was explained to him, he was quite willing to help out, especially because it was for Asuka, who he’d had a crush on.
Samejima resigned from his role as Principal as a way of taking the fall so that the school didn't have to, leaving Chronos as the new one in his place. Daitoukuji, meanwhile, not only resigned from his position as the alchemy professor, but also from his position on the Seven Stars - because yes, he had secretly been leading a double life. He had been willing to experiment on students in order to extend his own life (because he was dying of illness and afraid of doing so), and therefore had joined the Seven Stars under the pseudonym of Amnael, but he drew the line at others dying so that he could live. As a result of his decision, his body turned to dust and he died himself, without telling any of the students the truth about how he had been the seventh Star, or even where he had hidden his key, and leaving only his cat, Pharaoh, behind. Kagemaru, the leader of the Seven Stars, then began to search for a replacement, but it was in vain, and before he could find one, he also passed away of his old age (for he had sought the demons’ power in order to obtain eternal youth).
Fairly soon after that, Manjoume's brothers decided that they wanted to purchase Duel Academy because, since they had determined that their youngest brother was unable to become the top of the Duel Monsters world, they would do so instead. The conditions set up by Kaiba Seto (CEO of Kaiba Corporation, which among other things was the school’s main sponsor), however, were that in order to purchase the school, the purchaser would have to defeat a student of the school who was using a deck of monsters that had less than five hundred attack points. Their choice for an opponent was, obviously, their youngest brother.
Ojama Yellow was the only card of his that met the conditions, but some of the third-year students offered up a rumor of a well where the cards that duelists threw away because they were too weak went. Rumor had it that this well was filled with their vengeful spirits, unhappy to have been simply tossed aside like that, but Manjoume went anyway.
This was how he met Ojamas Green and Black - they were in the well and asked if Manjoume knew who had thrown them down there, complaining that they missed their brother. Yellow then appeared and was reunited with his brothers at last, and Manjoume decided that he would take in all of the cards that had been thrown into the well. After all, he kind of had to, really, if Duel Academy was to be saved from his brothers.
Manjoume won that duel against Chousaku, even though he didn't use any monsters that had a single base attack point, and he learned two valuable lessons. The one that he admitted to was that he had learned how to deal with being considered at the bottom. The one that he did not, at least aloud, was that he had learned that even the weakest cards could be powerful in the right situations. From that day onward, in fact, he played a deck that combined the powerful, evolving dragons that he had inherited from North School (and never returned), and his original deck, the union VWXYZ transforming robots, with his Ojamas and support spells for them.
Taniya, the third Star, attacked, and Judai defeated her after Misawa failed. Manjoume defeated the Black Scorpions and their leader, Don Zaloog, while Judai defeated Abidos. Ayanokouji faced the sixth Star, Titan, and put up a good fight, but lost the duel and his key; Manjoume, however, was able to defeat Titan. (Incidentally, Ayanokouji was fine afterward and went on to graduate normally. His only penalty was losing his key.)
The remaining holders of the keys - just Judai and Manjoume at this point - waited expectantly for the seventh of the Stars to show their face and attack. However, months passed, and not a word of the seventh reached any of their ears. It began to seem unlikely that the seventh was even coming, but this could be a new tactic, to catch them off their guard. So even as their second year of school dawned, they continued to protect the keys, waiting for their final enemy to appear.
Little did they know that he actually would appear - by accident (or perhaps destiny?), in Saiou Takuma.
Due to a small interpretation error, Manjoume remained in the Osiris Red dormitory, though he was qualified to return to Obelisk Blue. An American duelist from the Pro Leagues, Edo Phoenix, defeated Judai in a duel, and because his manager, the aforementioned Saiou Takuma, was a psychic who had taken an interest in Judai and wanted to control the power that he had hidden inside of him, Saiou had laced Edo's final attack with his power. This was enough to cause Judai to lose the ability to see the images on his cards, though not enough to bring him under Saiou's control. (Incidentally, Judai had left his key in his room that day.)
Due to this, Judai left the island (and had an adventure in a place called Neospace where he obtained the Neo-Spacian cards). While Judai was away, Saiou came to the island, trying to find a different duelist to suit his purposes because his initial plan hadn't worked out. And when he came across Manjoume, who at the very least held the same ability to see spirits as Judai, they dueled.
Manjoume lost that duel, but not before Saiou had played his share of mind games with him. For a while now, Manjoume had seen Judai as a rival, someone he had to grow strong enough to defeat, but lately, he'd also been seeing him as a friend, and these conflicting feelings had created an inner confusion that he usually had tried to ignore, but Saiou brought to the forefront. This was how Saiou's power reached him, by taking advantage of his confusion and promising that he could become strong enough to defeat Judai if he stopped looking at him as a friend and relied on Saiou's power - the power of the Light of Destruction.
After this, Manjoume began wearing only white clothing and talking about an association for those who had been embraced by the Light - the Hikari no Kessha.
There was a second significance to this result, however - the key that Manjoume had carried now technically belonged to Saiou. And when he asked what it was, the now blindly-loyal young man explained about the three demon cards, and Saiou officially made it his goal to obtain the seven keys. Four of them were already placed in their slots and could still be used, therefore, to unlock the demons, and now Saiou had Manjoume’s as well; it would just be a matter of getting the last two.
Once they were in Saiou’s hands, the power that the demons held would be in the best care they could be in, right? At least, this was what Manjoume was made to believe.
At first, most everyone just shrugged Manjoume off as having finally gone off the deep end. But then, he started dueling everyone in the Obelisk Blue dormitory, and every student that lost to him became brainwashed by Saiou's power into joining the aforementioned cult. He had dyed most of the Obelisk Blue dormitory white, and even a bit of Ra Yellow, when Judai decided to try and knock him back to his senses.
Judai lost that duel, not due to lack of skill. In fact, he could have won. However, due to the guilt that he still felt for being the one to defeat Darkness and therefore, in his mind, deal the final blow that killed Fubuki (despite the fact that, in this particular world, it would have happened even if Darkness had decided to duel anyone else - even Asuka, for instance), somehow he managed to begin to believe that, if he were to duel anyone who had been brainwashed or otherwise under some outside mental influence (which, at this point, it was obvious that Manjoume was), he would only manage to kill them in the end. (Perhaps this was a side-effect of the Light’s earlier, failed attack that had caused him to temporarily lose the ability to see the images on his cards, or perhaps it was an unrelated mental breakdown. One cannot be sure.) Because he didn’t want to kill his friend, he purposefully lost; his own hidden internal powers of gentle darkness once again kept him from being brainwashed by the Light, but he lost his key.
Seeing Judai purposefully lose to Manjoume, Sho, who was now technically in Ra Yellow but tended to stay with Judai in Osiris Red anyway, lost a significant part of his faith in Judai, and decided that if the Hikari no Kessha was going to be stopped from spreading, someone else would have to do it. So he challenged Manjoume, he lost, and his desire to be worthy of being the Kaiser’s little brother was manipulated enough that he was brainwashed by the Light and joined the Hikari no Kessha.
Misawa then dueled Manjoume, not out of particular desire to be noticed, per se (though this was the desire that the eventual brainwashing would latch onto anyway), but, like Sho, because he figured that the spread of the Hikari no Kessha couldn’t be a good thing, and they couldn’t rely on Judai. He put up a good fight, and lost fairly (as opposed to canon, in which he specifically chose to lose).
After this duel, Manjoume decided that keeping the Ojamas around was a waste, especially because the Light gave him so much more power than they ever could, and he tossed them to the wind. The moment the cards left his hand, the Light’s power held him so strongly that his ability to see and hear spirits disappeared - this unnerved him for a second, having gotten used to hearing them all the time, but the Light assured him that it was not only fine but a good thing, and he believed the Light.
Incidentally, because Samejima was no longer the Principal, there was no Genex tournament. Therefore, there was no reason for Prince Ojin to come to Duel Academy, and no opportunity for Saiou to obtain the keys to SORA, a laser satellite that could, in theory, destroy the Earth (which, being a very solid planet, casts a shadow and therefore blocked the Light’s power from becoming supreme in the universe). However, that wouldn’t be needed, if Saiou was capable of obtaining the final key and the demons’ power.
But then again, that seemed a nearly impossible task. Daitoukuji had hidden it well, and perhaps there were other supernatural forces on the island that fought to keep it hidden. Even Saiou’s power couldn’t locate it, and he himself admitted that, perhaps, only the spirits of the island would be able to do so at this point. Not that the entire Hikari no Kessha would give up trying, of course.
And so it went. Judai and a few of the students and teachers who had managed somehow to resist the Light's influence on the island were rumored to have formed an underground resistance group, though Judai was willing to do little for fear that he would mess things up even more than they already were. Edo attempted to defeat the Light that was possessing Saiou in a duel, but he failed, and his and Saiou’s souls were removed from their bodies - the Light that had been possessing Saiou took full control, and Edo’s body became nothing but a puppet. The entire island became saturated in Light energy - visitors who didn’t have a deck were brainwashed easily and almost immediately, and while those with a deck had to be dueled into submission, the Light had so many powerful students on its side that this didn’t matter much. The island's administration wound up with its hands tied - Chronos would very much have liked to have contacted the proper authorities to bring help to the island (say, Kaiba Corporation?), but there were hundreds of students in the Hikari no Kessha, thanks to Manjoume, and only one of him, and he valued his life.
Manjoume’s third year commenced. There would be an exchange program for the first half of the year - four students and a teacher from the various dueling academies around the world were to attend Duel Academy for a semester. Chronos had tried to convince Professor Cobra, from West Academy, that now wasn't the best time, but Cobra was very insistent.
In order to provide the best welcome they could, Chronos decided that he would have an up-and-coming Japanese idol singer hold a concert on the island the first night that the exchange students were there - Cobra had suggested a duel instead, and it would have made sense, but Chronos wanted to avoid exposing the exchange students to the Hikari no Kessha if possible. And so, he hired a relatively new voice in the business who was still relatively popular nonetheless, a young woman who went by the stage name of Asuryn, to perform.
Saiou (that is, the Light in Saiou’s body, but for simplicity’s sake at this point they were essentially the same thing) soon got wind of this plan and decided to use it to his own means. Asuryn would be spending about a week on the island before the concert - during that time, Manjoume would show her around, keep her company, do what she wanted him to do for her, stuff like that, and make sure that she was convinced of the Light’s superiority. This woman was no duelist, after all, and therefore could not be convinced through cards, and more… drastic measures would risk damaging her charisma and popularity, so relying on the island’s aura would have to do.
Once she was a member, she would use her music to spread the Light's influence to all those who listened to her voice, not just duelists. She had already made it onto the top singles charts several times, so it was obvious she had a large fan base, even for being young and relatively new to the field, so the message would spread quickly. …At least, so went the plan.
So the week before the concert was supposed to happen, Manjoume met the boat that came to Duel Academy, only to discover that the idol Asuryn was actually Tenjoin Asuka, who had chosen to take a singing route in memory of her brother (who had always said that, should dueling not work out, she should do so) when her parents had forbidden her from continuing to follow any career involving dueling.
Manjoume did as he had been asked to by Saiou - he accompanied her around the school, showed her all the things that had changed, told her about everything that had happened while she had been away, and most importantly of all, kept her company. However, the afternoon of the third day of this, it became obvious that the result would not be how Saiou had anticipated - somehow, Asuka remained unaffected by the Light's power that was spread throughout the island, and Manjoume was beginning to have doubts about his own affiliation with the Hikari no Kessha.
Why did he have such faith in the Light, anyway? What had it ever done for him, really? He hadn't gotten to defeat Judai yet, not really anyway, since the coward had thrown that one duel - in fact, with every passing day that goal seemed more and more pointless, the other less and less willing to duel with all of his strength. He had wanted to become strong enough to defeat Judai himself, not weaken his resolve for an easy or false win!
And furthermore, there was something about Asuka that he had never noticed when she was at Duel Academy. Now that he was actually hanging out with her and talking with her, he was beginning to see how brilliant a person she really was, even without being one with the Light. If someone that amazing existed outside the Light, then what truth was there to the Light's superiority to everything?
The fact that Asuka hadn't converted yet failed to escape Saiou's notice, and deciding that drastic measures were unavoidable, Saiou ordered Manjoume to bring Asuka to him so that he could expose her to the Light's full power and convert her that way. However, rather than being the ever-willing brainwashed servant, Manjoume actually argued against Saiou's order, unwilling to let her get hurt. After all, among other reasons that may or may not have existed, hadn't that been Saiou’s initial intention, to convince her without resorting to drastic measures?
As punishment for his insubordination, Saiou used his full power and overwhelmed Manjoume's mind, draining all of his free will from him - the piece of the Light inside him was no longer a fixation, but a force, strong enough to essentially possess him. And so, no longer in control of his thoughts or actions, Manjoume brought Asuka to Saiou, who pushed her against a wall and used his full power to attempt to reach her mind.
Only it still didn't work as Saiou had planned - all it did was cause her intense pain, and the Light still didn't reach her mind. She went into a bit of delirium from the pain, calling her deceased brother's name as if in an attempt to beg for help from him. (Not that it was, apparently, working, but.)
Manjoume, still not in control of his actions, stood there, blankly watching on. Something inside of him began to hurt as well though: the longer he watched, the more of Asuka's suffering he saw and heard, and the more his heart began to awaken and decide that he really should do something to stop it.
Soon, Asuka began to call out not only Fubuki's name, but Manjoume's as well. It was a simple request for forgiveness for whatever it was she had done to him that he would get so upset that he would bring her here, to this torture.
The breaking point for Manjoume was when she begged him to help her, calling not his family name as most people usually had, but his given name, Jun.
Somehow, hearing that one simple word was all that Manjoume needed in order to break all of the enchantments that Saiou had placed upon him, to remove all of the brainwashing that he had undergone. He remembered everything he had done during that time, and his first feeling was one of utter revulsion at how he, the great Manjoume Thunder, had stooped so low as to serve a guy like Saiou, and to do all of those things. He could see clearly now - everything Saiou had promised had been a lie. How had he not seen that before… how could he have listened to him like that?
But he forced himself to focus on the matter at hand first before yelling at himself - first, he needed to help Asuka. Saiou had no time to react as Manjoume's leg swiftly kicked him in his back, knocking the wind out of him and causing him to collapse to the ground, and more importantly, to lose focus on Asuka. It was a simple matter from there for Manjoume to pick her up - since she had fallen unconscious from the shock of everything by this point - and carry her away to the one place on the island where he knew the two of them would be safe.
The infirmary was specifically neutral ground - Ayukawa Emi, the nurse, gym teacher, and head of the Girls' Dormitory, was adamant about that. No one fought there, and members of both the Hikari no Kessha and the (ever-shrinking) resistance group were permitted there to get treatment for any injuries or diseases that they would happen to get.
Not that there were many injuries. Usually, if fights broke out, they were duels.
Judai happened to be there as well - he had tripped and sprained his ankle, and so Tyranno Kenzan, a Ra Yellow student entering his second year who was rumored to have not been converted even having lost to Saiou himself in a duel thanks to a piece of a dinosaur bone buried in his leg, had brought him so that he could recover. Not that he was in much danger, being more or less immune to the Light's influence, but it was still better for him to be in neutral space while he couldn't run. Manjoume made an attempt to ignore him, sickened by what he'd been reduced to due to his delusions that, somehow, everything was his fault. (While, of course, denying the fact that he felt exactly the same way about himself.)
It became a bit difficult to ignore him later that night, however. Asuka was asleep on a hospital bed next to Judai's, and she wasn't going to wake up until morning at the earliest, or so Ayukawa had said. And yet, Judai was talking to someone - Manjoume couldn't tell who - who was at least in the general direction of Asuka's bed, and it was apparently a human someone, judging by the boy's tone.
When Manjoume, his curiosity getting the best of him, asked who he was talking to, Judai looked at him strangely and wondered aloud if he had lost his ability to see spirits. After all, sitting on Asuka's bed was the spirit of her brother, Fubuki, who had been haunting the Swing of Memories - a particularly special card between the two of them that he had asked Ayukawa to give her if he died - ever since Asuka had set foot on the island again. And, of course, having unwillingly been taken over by the power of Darkness for so long, he kept a bit of it inside of his soul, and had been using it to protect Asuka from being overcome by the Light's influence.
Or at least, Judai claimed that Fubuki was there, and that he had said that. Not that Manjoume was particularly inclined to believe him at this point.
The next morning, after Manjoume had changed into one of his (much more comfortable) black uniforms, Asuka woke up. After the two boys managed to explain things to her, and after a heartfelt apology from Manjoume, the three of them decided that the best course of action would be to try to find the last of the keys, the one that Daitoukuji had hidden. Finding the final key would allow them to make sure that Saiou couldn't get his hands on the demons, and possibly give a plausible reason to challenge him. However, Manjoume, in his stubbornness, was unwilling to work with Judai, believing that he would just get in the way, and Judai also expressed his unwillingness to duel.
By this time, the other members of Judai's resistance group had arrived. It was tinier than even Manjoume had expected - the only ones left were Judai himself, Kenzan, Momoe and Junko (a pair of girls entering their third year who had been good friends of Asuka’s during the brief time she had attended the school), and Kabayama (the often-forgotten head of the Ra Yellow dormitory). Kenzan was furious to see Manjoume there, and he tried to convince Asuka to leave him behind, that he was untrustworthy, and that the only way to defeat Saiou and save everything would be to come with them. But she declined, stating that Manjoume had saved her life, and so she wouldn't leave him behind.
As the resistance group left, Manjoume and Asuka decided that it would still be the best course of action to attempt to find the final key, even if it was just the two of them. The only question was where to start looking. Saiou had once told Manjoume that it was likely only the spirits on the island would know where it was, and though he didn't like to admit that any of what he had done had happened in the first place, he did bring up that possibility - and his former ability to see spirits - with Asuka, who formed a plan. If Manjoume could no longer talk to spirits himself, and they needed to do so in order to find the key, why not talk with one a different way?
After all, communication like that - specifically, the usage of Ouija boards - wasn't unheard of at the Academy: back in their first year, Takadera - another Obelisk student - and his friends had attempted to use one. With mildly disastrous consequences, but that didn't mean that rumors that it had been done hadn't circulated.
And so, they decided that the best way to proceed was to go to the library and attempt to find a book detailing spiritual communication. Asuka would search through the books herself while Manjoume stood guard outside - it was likely that Saiou had members of the Hikari no Kessha looking for them, and Manjoume could at least defend himself and make enough time for Asuka to escape.
While Asuka searched through the library, Manjoume found himself accidentally drawn into a duel. The entire Hikari no Kessha, by this point, had learned of Manjoume's betrayal, and they had, as expected, been given orders to bring him and Asuka to Saiou if found. And who should come across Manjoume but Misawa, who the now-black-jacketed student had converted personally.
And would un-convert personally as well - this duel between Manjoume and Misawa was a rather quick one, which Manjoume won. In fact, by the time Asuka emerged from the library with the necessary book, there were hardly any signs that any duel had been performed at all, save a white coat having been hastily thrown to the ground. (Just the coat, mind you.)
They decided to contact the spirits in the one place that no one connected to the Light would ever think to look - the Abandoned Dormitory. The incidents that had taken place there, which had led to the disappearances of various students in Kaiser and Fubuki’s first year, as well as what Titan had done, had tainted the place with dark energy - surely the Light would shy away. (Not to mention, it was still off-limits to the general student population, including the Hikari no Kessha. Chronos would understand why they had to go there though, right?)
It was a full moon that night, providing just enough light for the two of them to see by in the Abandoned Dormitory's lobby. They set up their makeshift Ouija board - a piece of paper with the proper markings in the proper places and a coin to use as a marker - and called forth the spirits of the island to ask them where they would find the seventh key.
What they did not realize until it was too late, however, was the fact that it was really only the basement of the dormitory that was infected with darkness, and the Light's power still managed to get into the lobby and interfere with the reading. With their heightened level of connection to all things spiritual, if nothing was done, the two of them would have easily fallen to the Light's influence.
Would have, except that at the last second, Asuka pulled Manjoume's and her own hand away from the board and fled to said basement, dragging a mildly stunned Manjoume along with her.
When they were safely in the basement and certain that the Light wouldn't follow them, it became apparent that Asuka wasn't herself. In fact, she had been possessed - by the ghost of her older brother, Fubuki (naturally proving, much to Manjoume’s chagrin, that Judai had been right). Through her, he told Manjoume the true location of the final key - it was in a specific clearing in the forest, not notable except for a single small boulder in the center. The key would be found with its lanyard encircling the bottom of the rock, though it would be hard to spot. No one had yet found it because there were indeed spirits working to keep it from being detected.
After promising Fubuki that he would do what he could to protect Asuka from the material dangers that the Light's power held (while Fubuki protected both of them from the intangible ones - ever since Manjoume had broken free of the Light's influence with his own power, he had been under Fubuki's protection, which prevented him from succumbing to its control again), the deceased young man left, leaving his sister unconscious, in need of rest.
Asuka didn’t wake up until around noon the next day, giving Manjoume some time to rest as well, even if he didn’t get much sleep. When she was ready, however, Manjoume explained what he had learned (though he left off the fact that Asuka had been possessed by her brother), and the two of them made their way to where Fubuki had said.
Indeed, the key was there, exactly where he’d said it would be. However, they weren’t alone - another student was there, who challenged Manjoume to a duel for the right to take it. And, of course, Manjoume accepted the challenge, thinking that this was just some random student he’d never seen before whom someone else had converted to the White dorm, and a duel began.
Something felt off, though, during the duel. At first, Manjoume brushed it off, not allowing himself to lose focus on the duel and obtaining the key so that Saiou couldn’t. But the longer it went on, the more this feeling of wrongness nagged at him, and it eventually got to the point where he decided he had to pause for a moment in order to figure out exactly what it was.
Except, he found that he couldn’t stop - in fact, he hadn’t been completely consciously controlling his moves for a while now. Those with a deck had to be dueled into service of the Light, but it also worked the other way around - to be completely free of the Light’s influence, one who had been brainwashed through a duel had to lose another duel against someone who was opposed to the Light. And while Fubuki had been keeping Manjoume from succumbing to its power again, apparently either that protection wasn’t working right now or he was purposefully lowering it.
Either way, this duel suddenly became an internal battle, as well as a seemingly lose-lose situation: win the duel, the key was his, but the Light would continue to have a hold on him, and as was being demonstrated, Fubuki’s protection wouldn’t always be there. Lose the duel, the Light would be gone, but it would have the key.
It all came down to a single play - Manjoume had two traps on the field, one of which would win the duel for him immediately, but he would lose immediately if he didn’t play it. Whatever it was that was actually dueling, naturally, went for this trap, but deciding that protecting Asuka and fulfilling his promise to Fubuki was more important than the key, and that he couldn’t protect her if the enemy was inside himself, Manjoume wrenched sufficient control for just enough time and managed to play the other trap instead:
Ojama Trio.
One of the key cards in his Ojama strategies, and the only one that could really be used effectively without the corresponding monster cards, by playing this trap, not only did Manjoume overcome his internal struggle, throw the duel, and free himself of the Light completely, but it was also a more or less conscious affirmation, and acceptance, of the fact that yes, in fact, he did need the Ojamas.
He fainted after his life points hit zero, his mind unable to handle the mental strain of everything. After all, the Light had been in there for several months, now - to remove it all at once just like that, especially after it had held him so firmly in its grasp at one point, couldn’t come without consequences, and Manjoume’s mind had been made somewhat fragile, not having had time to re-strengthen itself after being shattered so many times. It was several hours before he awoke (judging, at least, by the fact that it had been mid-afternoon when the duel had occurred, but was after sundown when he awoke), with only spotty memory of what had happened during the duel, to find that Asuka and the other student (who, in fact, was not wearing a uniform from the White dorm but, rather, from the discontinued Honors dormitory that Kaiser and Fubuki had been a part of) had been talking. The student’s name, supposedly, was Fujiwara Yusuke - he had been a friend of Kaiser and Fubuki, also able to see spirits, who had agreed to help Fubuki free Manjoume completely.
Incidentally, upon his waking up, Manjoume found himself able to see Fubuki’s ghost sitting next to Asuka - when the Light had left him for good, his ability to see spirits had returned. He could also tell that Fujiwara wasn’t being completely truthful in his identity, judging by the pair of angel wings, invisible to all but those who could see duel spirits, protruding from his back: in fact, this was the spirit of the duel monster Honest, who had been Fujiwara’s partner before he had died because of his own experiments with Darkness. Somehow, Honest had developed the ability to take his master’s form and appear in the human world, albeit for a somewhat limited amount of time.
Either way, however, that didn’t change the fact that he had still been helping Fubuki, and now that Manjoume was completely free of the Light’s influence, Honest gave him the key, stating that the best course of action now would be to challenge Saiou, and then left to recover his energy, for he had been transformed for a good while now.
Of course, at this time of day, it was too late to do that, and so Manjoume and Asuka decided to set up camp where they were. Asuka slept; Manjoume, having been out for most of the day anyway, kept watch. Or at least, he meant to, except that he couldn’t help hearing crying voices from nearby, voices that sounded familiar.
And so, convincing himself that it was all right to do so because nothing would happen while he was away, Manjoume followed the voices toward the same old well he had been pointed toward in his first year, where all the weak cards wound up when their owners abandoned them. Climbing down to the bottom, he found the three Ojamas - his partners, he would even go so far as to say the aces of his deck, who he had so foolishly thrown away - and after a short talk that involved awkward apologies, Manjoume took the Ojamas’ cards and added them back into his deck. (This, of course, was only after the three of them decided to tackle him in a group hug, much to his chagrin. They had missed him so much, after all.)
Things were looking up - at least, until Manjoume got back to where he and Asuka had set up camp, because while he had been reuniting with the Ojamas, Edo (that is, the Light that was using Edo’s body as a puppet, but for all intents and purposes at this point they were the same) had managed to sneak up on Asuka while she had been asleep, capture her, and bring her to Saiou. (Not that being awake would have done her much good anyway - she would have fought back, but she had no deck and couldn’t duel, and the Light didn’t feel physical pain and therefore wouldn’t particularly care if its puppet’s body was injured.)
This only fueled the fire further, and Manjoume made his way toward where he knew Saiou would be, challenging him as soon as he arrived. If Manjoume won, Asuka would be free, and the Light would be forced to leave. If Saiou won, the key would be his, Manjoume would be his mindless slave again, Asuka would fall under the Light’s influence herself, the Light would have possession of all seven keys, and in general the world would be more or less doomed. Saiou claimed that Destiny had already determined that the latter would be the case, and therefore there was no need to fight; Manjoume, however, decided that even if it was ‘destined’ to end badly, he would still fight with everything he had.
Thus, they dueled. It was the most difficult duel that Manjoume would ever fight, and there were times where he was driven into such a corner that his loss seemed imminent, but with moral support from the Tenjoins and the Ojamas, he held his own, refusing to give in, and eventually he managed to pull off exactly the right combination of cards, winning the duel.
With that, the Light was forced to leave Saiou’s body, and its aura on the island dissipated as well. Saiou and Edo’s souls were released from where they had been held, free to return to their own bodies, though Saiou was in rather critical condition from being possessed for so long, and had to be taken to the infirmary (which Manjoume grudgingly agreed to do, on Asuka’s request that he not be left to die). Only Daitoukuji’s key had been wagered, and it had not been won, so the demons’ seal remained intact.
Of course, there was still the matter of the White dorm, which would require dueling each member individually in order to remove their brainwashing. Or at least, there would have been, except that by the time that Manjoume was ready to do so, the White dorm was no more - perhaps it had been his discussion with Fubuki that had inspired him, perhaps it was something else, but Judai had somehow managed to work up the courage to duel the White dorm’s members in order to free them. It had started with only one or two of the ones on whom the Light’s hold was obviously weakest, but eventually he had regained enough confidence that he (with the help of Kenzan and Kabayama) managed to erase the Light’s hold on every White duelist on the island while Manjoume was dueling Saiou.
(Well, all of them except for one - the Light inside of Edo had instead been taken out by Kaiser Ryou, now calling himself the Hell Kaiser due to various incidents involving an almost-fall from the Pro Leagues and various underground duels involving electric shocks, who had returned to the island to be present at the concert on Asuka’s request.)
With the Light’s threat gone, the performance the next day went off without any problems, and it was in general a day of celebration, meeting the exchange students, and well-deserved rest from anything involving the fate of the world. When it came time for Asuka to leave, Manjoume saw her to her ship, and they promised to keep in touch.
That night, as he went to sleep (needing earplugs in order to successfully do so for the first time in far too long), he expected to wake up in the morning to a new year of classes which, while certainly promising to be anything besides dull, at least promised to take place at Duel Academy (at least, he could hope). However, when he awoke, he wasn’t on Duel Academy Island anymore…