gust fiercely

“If that’s the case, then it doesn’t hurt to be optimistic about the issue getting resolved. It would be a huge let-down after all the excitement if it wound up stuck in some kind of legal limbo".

He hums, a little disappointed that there was no grounds to vouch for the Stars against the accusation — how rather it fell perfectly in line with their behaviour. “They don’t have anything to worry about and most of their jokes are harmless, but they’re still at risk of playing with fire where those who wouldn’t appreciate their teasing are concerned”.

“Eeeeh, optimism in these sorts of systems is definitely commendable.” He scratches the back of his head, shrugging. “Can’t blame ya for wanting to be. I’m pretty new here, so the lengths these people are willing to go after kidnapping is kind of an unknown.”

Aki looked at Crow, surprised. “You don’t think Yusaku was a hallucination?” It felt a little strange to say his name now that she wasn’t sure he was even real. “I thought that- I mean logically, it makes sense that he would be part of the hallucination too… but if it wasn’t a hallucination-”

Shaking her head, she took a deep breath. She didn’t like the idea of her mind being toyed with again, but there were other things to worry about at the moment. “Either way, first things first. We won’t be able to help anyone if we’re dead.”

“And just ‘Aki’ is fine.” She smiled despite herself, “hearing you say any term of respect is just too strange for me right now.”

When Crow mentioned taking a car she hummed thoughtfully rather than disapprovingly. “Hm. I don’t see why it would be a problem so long as we bring it back. It is an emergency after all. One minute.” Patting down her pockets, she found a pad of paper she usually used to write prescriptions and jotted down a note: “We’re borrowing your car. If you have a problem with that call me at ###-###-####. -Dr. Aki Izayoi”

She placed the note on the sidewalk next to a car, making sure to weigh it down with a rock. “All right. Let’s take this one.”

“I’m finding it hard to say that none of this is a hallucination, so it’s kinda hard to say the kid is any different. If we decide this is real, then the kid is probably real, right?”

Despite everything that they had all gone through all those years ago, it was still kind of hard to reconcile. Okay, so he knew Yusei and Bruno and Sherry had gone into some ‘other world’, and there had been that illusion that Sherry had used on Aki and himself, but this was...

A whole different scale. Nodding at her, he laughed, returning back to his usual level of cheer. “Just kidding, just kidding. It’d be way too weird to keep calling you Dr. Izayoi forever. Especially since it seems like it’s just the two of us stuck here.”

Letting out a whistle at how impressive both her politeness and desire to steal were, he made quick work of the locked door. “Just because we’ve gone all professional, doesn’t mean we can’t do what we gotta, right?” A wink and he was in, popping the lock and unlocking the passenger door for her before he popped open the underside of the dashboard.

“Man, this is some old tech here. Not old-old, but still, you’d have to work pretty hard to install anything here - gas? This thing has a gas tank? I’m not the mechanic, but I think anyone would be shocked to see that.” For all his talking, the engine roared to life. He may not be a mechanic, but, well, he’d stolen way more complicated things in his time.

"I did, but its a bit vague. Some of the things in it seem a bit confusing, like timing.” The fact this seemed familiar to him was a relief, even if it might be a slightly different.

“I have a starter deck..”

“Well, as the name would indicate, that’s a good start. Did it come with a rulebook? It’s usually best to know what types of cards you’re dealing with.”

Aki ‘woke up’ already frowning.

Brow furrowed, she glared at the announcement until-

“Crow!” She trilled back. “It’s been too long. I only wish we could have reunited under better circumstances.” Crossing her arms, she began to frown again. “I can only assume we’ve had the same… well, hallucination is the most logical explanation, but that wouldn’t explain this,” she gestured to the notice on her phone, “or the fact that we’ve woken up… where ever this is.”

She looked around, clearly disturbed despite Crow’s cheerful presence. “I thought we’d put all of these types of events behind us finally.” Looking at her arm, she felt compelled to make sure she couldn’t see her Signer mark.

It was strange how unfair this all felt to her. She had memories of a life where she was normal, memories of a life that only was recently normal – because she had fought tooth and claw to make it so – and now she found herself in a situation that was anything but normal. There were too many thoughts, feelings, and experiences mixed up inside of her; too many for one person, surely, and she didn’t want to dwell on them right now.

“Assuming there are copies of us and they are slowing losing their lucidity, it would be best to find them as soon as possible while we can still reason with them.” Aki straightened up and began walking with purpose. “The clinic and our- their house would be good places to start. After that-”

She thought of the green-eyed teen she had called her son. He was probably just a product of her hallucination, but she couldn’t help but miss him like she had just lost someone she’d known for a long time.

“After that, we can deal with everything else.”

None of this made any sense, and he could only rub the back of his neck in frustration as he tried to keep things at least a bit more lighthearted. But it...Was difficult to try and reconcile their circumstances. Crow himself had lived a whole different life, with a whole different set of people. And he remembered everything, so Aki must, too. They had basically spent most of their lives together, and that kid...

It must mean that kid was someone they would run into, too. Was there another copy of him? Probably...

And looking at Aki, while he was already struggling with it, he couldn’t imagine how she was feeling.

“Yeah...Though I’m way more worried about that kid than I am about either of us. Even in a whole other world, we can handle each other. He could be out doing anything, being a teen and all.” He frowns. “And we don’t have a quick way to get there.”

...Unless - he’d left most  of that behind him, buuut...

"Excuse me, can you help me? I'm trying to get into this card game, but I'm rather lost on the rules." 

“Eh?” He looked over, a bit hopefully, if he was being honest, aaaand....

“Eh?” It was like...

It was odd. It was so odd. Like waking up from a dream, but it wasn’t a dream, but it definitely had to be a dream because the last thing you remember was setting Lua up with his new riding duel team you can make your way to the next one.

But then there was a whole other life. And there was no Yusei and Jack and instead there was...Aki. And it felt just as normal and growing up around Yusei and Jack, leaving high school with Aki, and then watching her get her degrees extraordinarily quickly while he made sure she didn’t have to work too-too hard to get those degrees. And that kid...

His head hurt. It was all too much. And then he “woke up” in that same place.

He couldn’t even be bothered trying to decrypt what that message meant, especially since nearby was - “Aki!”

“It was one time....Three times!” He scratched the back of his head, feet up on the desk in the garage-slash-storage space. It was definitely not the biggest clinic, but considering it was mostly a small operation, it made sense. But that also definitely meant doing multiple runs to multiple vendors and sometimes he just, “Sometimes I just happen to be on the bike, and if it’s not too bad, there’s no reason not to rush them on over. That one kid said it was the best ride of his life.”

“And I’m always careful - I’m probably the safest driver on this island.” Yusaku could attest to that, since he was most often taken to school in or on his vehicles. Although when he looked over the teen just gave him that tired look that bespoke of not angering his mother.

CROW HOGAN | SUBVERSION AU

Crow drives the ambulance for his best friend’s clinic, and maybe does some delivery work on the side, pretty much whatever’s needed.

Are you in trouble? Call Blackwing Emergency Services!

Pretty much serves all of Spirale, and he’s one of the fastest drivers on the island. One of the safest too!

Someone once said the ambulance flew.