Chapter 132: Kikawayu and the Dark Game
"This is incredible, Rei!"
On the cross-river bridge in the middle of the night, Kikawayu held tight around Amano's waist from the back seat and let the sound rip into the sky above them.
Amano didn't try to stop him. The bridge at this hour was almost completely empty, and he'd wanted to test the Moonlight Butterfly's top speed anyway. An empty stretch of road at night, no one around to get in the way. Why not.
Whatever Kikawayu shouted, the wind shredded it immediately. There was no one to hear it regardless.
"How long has it been since we just went completely wild like this, Kikawayu?"
Amano had to shout too. At this speed, anything quieter got swallowed before it traveled a meter.
"Ages, Rei. Once we started working, there was never any time. Life is brutal."
Once they started working. That would have been two years ago.
Actually, Kikawayu was probably softening it to be considerate. The more accurate version: the moment Amano's father Yuichi was gone, and Amano had to carry the whole household on his own, he'd stopped having the luxury of being a kid. No more spending whole days running wild with his childhood friend.
But there was something to be said for this. The happiness you accumulate when you're young becomes medicine for the pain you'll face later on. Not just the happiness, either. The hardest stretch after losing both parents, Kikawayu had shown up every single day acting like everything was fine, dragging Amano into nonsense until the worst of it passed.
Amano was genuinely grateful that Kikawayu had been part of this second life of his. Without that, without someone to hold the line alongside him, he probably would have given up on District 32 a long time ago. Settled into the drift like everyone else down there, wasting days without direction, never even thought about clawing his way up through discarded cards.
If there had been one beam of light across the dark first eighteen years of Amano Rei's life, it was Kikawayu.
"Kikawayu. Thanks for always being there."
Too quiet. The wind took it before it got anywhere. Kikawayu gave no sign of hearing.
"What was that, Rei?"
Too embarrassing to repeat at full volume. Let it go.
"Nothing. Hold on tighter, I can still push it."
"Got it!"
Kikawayu squeezed harder and pressed a helmeted head against Amano's back.
"I wish time could just stop right here."
Softer that time. Deliberately soft. The kind of volume that required the wind to do exactly what it was already doing.
After nearly an hour of pushing the Moonlight Butterfly across the bridge, Amano eased off and coasted to a stop. He checked the Eva terminal. Close to midnight.
"Heading back, or do you want more?"
Kikawayu, still holding on after the engine cut out, seemed to notice and reluctantly let go, climbing off the back seat.
"Let's take a breath first. I haven't actually looked at the middle district skyline yet."
Kikawayu leaned arms on the bridge railing and looked out over the river.
The river running through the middle district existed purely for aesthetics. Eden Tower didn't have natural waterways. Everything was constructed, and this one had been built for the view it created: commercial district lights on both banks reflecting in still water, never switching off, flickering endlessly across the surface.
"I still think District 32 has better scenery," Amano said.
"District 32? What scenery does that place have?" Kikawayu looked genuinely puzzled.
"You wouldn't know because you never took the night shifts."
Every time Amano had worked nights, he'd asked Kikawayu to stay with Shio. And Kikawayu had always been awake, no matter the hour, waiting for Amano to come home.
That was the memory. Walking back through empty, unlit streets after a full night of work, exhausted, knowing without any doubt that one light would be on for him. One specific light.
That light had been worth more to him than every lit-up building on this riverbank put together.
Amano stepped off the D-Wheel and stood beside Kikawayu at the railing. "Whatever comes next, if I eat, you eat. That's a promise."
Kikawayu frowned. "Stingy. Why can't I have what you're having? And don't forget to save some for Shio."
Amano laughed. Genuinely, without thinking about it.
And then, mid-laugh, he caught the faint sound of an engine somewhere in the distance, getting closer.
Someone else out testing a D-Wheel at midnight. Somehow that was funny.
Except as the sound grew from distant to close to very close, neither he nor Kikawayu could see a single light coming toward them.
The bridge was dim on both sides, but the road lamps gave enough to ride by safely. Anyone pushing a D-Wheel at speed without headlights at this hour was putting themselves and anyone around them at real risk. The kind of thing that made Amano's goodwill toward strangers run dry very fast.
He was thinking that when the lightless D-Wheel hit the bridge and executed a sideways brake drift directly in front of them, stopping in a spray of momentum.
It was noticeably smaller than a standard D-Wheel. So was the person riding it.
In the dark, a machine and rider that size with no lights would be almost invisible until they were on top of you.
As for who it was, and whether they were more annoyed at Amano or Amano was more annoyed at them, the affection rating system could have resolved the question in an instant.
"Kaiba Chiha? What are you doing ghost-riding out here at this hour?"
"I almost couldn't keep up with you. What is that D-Wheel?"
The tone was wrong. Amano didn't have extensive experience with Chiha, but her manner had left a very specific impression. That particular brand of casual contempt, the kind that invited you to take a swing at her just so she could be more contemptuous about it.
The person in front of him had none of that. She sounded completely normal. Which was its own kind of wrong.
Too wrong. Including the fact that she was here at all.
This feeling was like...
He figured out the source when she climbed off the D-Wheel in a way that didn't look entirely like her own idea.
"The Puppeteer."
"Took you long enough, Amano Rei. It's been a week. I told you I'd find you."
"You're using Kaiba Chiha's body."
Chiha, a Puppeteer vessel. When did she fall this far.
Amano had an instinctive sense of contempt for it, the idea of trading away your dignity as a duelist to chase power through someone else. Then again, Kaiba Corporation had resources that could buy almost any card on the market. What did the Puppeteer's dark cards offer that money couldn't?
"Oh, you want to know?" The Puppeteer seemed amused at the question in Amano's expression. "First time I've ever found someone this easy."
Not dark cards. Something else entirely.
The Puppeteer had spent tonight waiting at the Riding Duel venue for Amano to leave the academy city's jurisdiction. The original plan had been to find a suitable Riding Duelist to settle the score for the burn damage Amano had dealt to his eyes last time.
Then Chiha had turned up looking for work.
One mention of earning money through dueling, and the hook was in. Chiha might not have even understood what she was agreeing to before the Puppeteer had what he needed.
"Rei, who is this? And who's the Puppeteer?" Kikawayu had been following along and had now reached the limit of what context could fill in.
The Puppeteer's eyes moved to him.
Fellow academy student. The Puppeteer recognized him well enough. The Fusion Academy rising star who had used the Three Phantom Demons in both the entrance duel and the joint tournament. Impressive-sounding on paper.
But the Three Phantom Demons Kikawayu used were imitations. Weaker than the originals by a significant margin, and without the supporting cards that made the archetype function. As far as the Puppeteer was concerned, that deck was a massive resource drain that produced a four-thousand attack beatstick and not much else. Chiha's Galaxy-Eyes would chew through it without breaking a sweat.
"Amano Rei, you don't have Rin Seiya backing you up this time. You brought a deadweight along instead. Shall I calculate your survival odds? I'll save you the trouble. Zero."
The Puppeteer's manner was notably different from before. The previous encounters had always been through male hosts, which gave a certain performance quality to the aggression. This time, inhabiting Chiha's body, the affect felt more natural. More genuinely unsettling.
It put an unexpected idea in Amano's head. What if the Puppeteer's actual gender was female?
"Deadweight. Is that me?" Kikawayu pointed at himself, looking more confused than offended. "Rei, I think I just got insulted by someone I don't know."
"You'll regret that attitude very shortly."
The Puppeteer's feet hit the ground, and from that point the Dark Game aura began spreading outward, the barrier expanding to enclose Amano and Kikawayu both.
A two-on-one Dark Game with Kikawayu's deck in the mix was going to drag Amano down. The Puppeteer knew it.
Then the Dark Game did something unexpected.
The barrier, which should have settled around all three of them, shifted. Pulled in one direction. Contracted.
When Amano processed what had happened, he was standing completely outside the barrier. The Dark Game had sealed without him inside it.
The boundary in front of him was thicker and darker than anything he'd encountered before. He couldn't see through it. Couldn't read anything about what was happening on the other side.
"Puppeteer! You coward, you're only pulling Kikawayu in? Get out here right now!"
He was shouting at an opaque wall.
He acknowledged, privately, that he had panicked. He would have chosen to be the one inside without hesitating.
On the other side of the barrier, the Puppeteer was equally confused.
Two people were supposed to be in here. When did it shrink to one?
"So I really was being underestimated."
Kikawayu's voice came from ahead. Every trace of his usual scattered energy was gone.
"Who are you?"
The Puppeteer stared forward and could not hide the shock on Chiha's face.
Kikawayu was supposed to be a boy. Feminine-looking, certainly, but male.
The person standing in the Dark Game was not that. At some point between one moment and the next, the male school uniform and the illusion layered over it had both dissolved. The height had dropped by a full head. What remained was someone who looked nothing like the person who had been there seconds ago.
Red and blue eyes, one of each, like gemstones of two different colors set into a face with proportions that could only be described as extraordinary. Silver-grey hair fell loose behind a slender waist. The white of her legs where they emerged from a short skirt seemed to absorb the surrounding darkness rather than be swallowed by it.
No part of this could be called male by any standard.
"Dark Games." Kikawayu's voice was a girl's voice now, low and cold. "I see. So that's what the mark on Rei's wrist has been. That was you."
The killing intent in her tone was not a performance.
"You know about Dark Games?"
The Puppeteer, feeling a pressure from this girl that had no logical source, had already extended Chiha's Duel Disk.
"We're starting then. Once I finish with you, I'll go deal with Amano Rei. Whatever deck you're hiding under that Three Phantom Demons bluff, Galaxy-Eyes handles it."
"Yubel." Kikawayu spoke quietly.
The spirit surfaced beside her, visible only to Kikawayu, semi-transparent and calm.
"Dark Game means the Eva network can't observe this. Do what you want, Yuu."
Kikawayu reached to the card case strapped against her thigh and drew out the deck she had kept hidden there.
"You just said you were going to deal with Rei after this."
The smile that crossed Kikawayu's face in that moment was not entirely sane.
"Did you actually think you were going to leave?"
***
40+advance chapters at patreon.com/Eatinpieces