Title: Unwilling To Fight
Characters: Juudai, Neos||Pair: N/A
Words: 1,000/1,000||Chapters: 1/1
Genre: General||Rated: G
Challenge: Diversity Writing: GX canon: B17, major character
Timeline: After Haou starts his reign, before anything else.
Summary: Haou decides to trim his deck. He doesn't need cards that won't work with him. But one of those cards objects.

Haou sorted out his deck, examining the cards with an eye to how they would work in his revised strategies.

Revised probably wasn't the right word. New came much closer. Always before he'd planned how to enjoy his duels and very little else. He'd liked winning and he'd tried to plan for that. But ever since he'd come to this world and made up his mind on bringing it to heel…

Now winning and killing meant everything.

This is for the best. He'd long since made up his mind on this.

His armored hands brushed across the pile of cards that he intended to take out of his deck. They weren't right now and would only take up space he would need for other cards.

I never thought that I'd remove them once I had them. He'd needed to evolve his deck once before. Now he evolved it again, but in a different direction.

Those cards hadn't even been in his deck for a full year. But now he removed the Neo-Spacians, and he couldn't feel a single bit of regret.

An image flickered to the side and he turned to look Neos in the eyes. The silver warrior stared back at him in silence. His features were hard to read at all times, but Haou knew a disapproving look when he saw one.

"You're making the wrong choice," Neos's voice was very low and very concerned. "These Evil Heroes are not meant for your deck."

Haou's lips thinned. "They're of more use to me than you Neo-Spacians now. When was the last time you helped me?" His eyes sparked for a breath. "Against Brron, wasn't it?"

Neos folded his arms over his chest. "Mass murder and destruction won't bring your friends back."

Haou wasn't at all certain if he held back because he'd created Neos and he didn't want to destroy someone that he'd made or because he knew that Neos was right. Because Neos was right, whether he liked it or not.

But regardless, he turned his head to the side. "No. But it will prevent any of the rest of them from dying."

Neos did not turn away. Haou didn't need to look at him to be aware of that. The weight of Neos' gaze never changed.

"Will they thank you for any of this? None of your deck wants this to happen. Would your human friends?"

Haou's fingers tightened, metal scraping against metal. The last words he'd heard from Shou and O'Brien rang clearly in his memories. Shou's insistence that all he'd done was just to make himself king. O'Brien insisting that he shouldn't have tried to rescue his friends while still on his own.

What else was I supposed to do? I couldn't wait for them. Brron would have killed them that much sooner if I hadn't.

A silent breath pulled in and he raised his head, turning back to Neos.

"I don't care. They already left me." Haou laid out the truth in frosty words. "We are not friends now or ever again. But I will let no harm come to them or anyone else who has not earned it."

"Such as by attempting to slaughter everyone in their path and conquering this world?"

In the time that he'd known Neos, Haou hadn't ever known his words to taste of such acidic sarcasm. But he did not back down.

"This world needs a monarch. Without it, there will be nothing but slaughter done by everyone. When I rule, that won't happen."

He wasn't going to kill everyone. Just the people who deserved it. Just enough people to create Super Fusion in the first place and to get rid of anyone who had any ideas about saying that he couldn't do it in the first place.

Without having to think or look, he reached over to pick up Super Fusion. Or the card that would become Super Fusion. It still wasn't entirely fleshed out. He could feel the power that pulsed within its heart, the power that would allow him to fuse anything at all.

It still needs more souls. He would have to kill more people. There were a few villages still in range that were likely to have enough duelists to take several steps closer to completion.

Neos moved closer to him. "You feel as if you've failed people."

He started to say something else. Haou's head jerked up, eyes blazing sheer gold.

"Enough! I've heard enough out of you, Neos." He brought himself to his feet, silently pleased that no one would bother him when he worked on his deck. "What I do, I do because it's the right thing to do. It might not have been before, but it is now. This is the darkness I need to burden myself with and there is no going back."

With quick, sharp movements, he slammed his deck back together, taking care to add Neos' card to it. "And if you have to watch me in order to understand that, then that's what you'll do. Watch and say nothing until I allow it."

In the back of his mind, Haou considered that he hadn't said so many words in one fell swoop for what seemed like forever. He'd not thought he would need to.

To back up his words, he flexed the power at his fingertips, and shadows wrapped themselves around Neos. As he'd decreed, Neos would not speak or emerge from his card until Haou decreed otherwise. But he would see and hear everything that Haou did, and he would understand.

Haou then picked up the other Neo-Spacians. He wasn't sure why they were so resistant, never coming to his hand, but if that was how they wished to play, then he wouldn't have them in the deck. He set those cards on one of his shelves, before he returned Super Fusion to the deck.

Then Haou stalked out of the room to summon his Death Duelists. There was work to be done.

The End

Notes: One of the few times you see Haou's deck, you see Neos and there's dark energy all over him. So… here we go?