Collection Title: Under Comet's Tale||Title: Walk In The Mind
Characters: Juudai, Elemental Hero Blume||Ship: N/A
Collection: 3-6||Story: 1-1||Words: 3,015
Genre: Drama||Rated: G
Challenges: Diversity Writing, GX canon, I24, 1-shot collection centering around 1 person: Juudai
Notes: Again, during Juudai's rule over Dark World.
Summary: Attempting to poison Haou means a very special punishment. The first of its kind – but not the last.

Haou-sama's throne room remained absolutely silent. It shouldn't have been. Silence wasn't the natural state of a room packed to the rafters with monsters. But not one of them dared to so much as whisper a word, and only those who needed to breathe did so.

Haou-sama stood at the far end of the chamber, surrounded by the pale light of the comet. There wasn't a hint of anything but flawless health in him. Few had seen him during his recent bout with poison and there were those who wondered if he'd even been poisoned at all and wasn't just doing this for some reason they couldn't fathom.

That was something else no one dared to voice. The story of what Haou-sama did to Goldd and Sillva grew in the telling, let alone the villages he'd demolished, and no one wanted to be the next person to feel his wrath.

Without warning, the great doors to the throne room swung open, and two Daemon Soldiers entered, carrying Elemental Hero Blume between them. Her wrists were shackled together behind her back but the Daemon Soldiers kept a firm grip on her arms regardless. Snoww followed, her staff pointed at the captive, ready to freeze her again in a second should that become necessary.

As they came up to where Haou-sama stood, Snoww moved to one side and gracefully bent her head to her liege lord.

"We have brought the prisoner, as per your command, Haou-sama."

Haou-sama turned the full attention of his glittering golden gaze onto Blume, sliding his helmet's faceplate up as he did. At first all he did was stare and Blume fidgeted only for the space of three breaths before bursting out in rage.

"Kill me if you want to, monster! I'm going to kill you as soon as I can! I've seen you duel! I know you have an Elemental Hero deck! Why you claim you can use it is beyond me! How dare you!"

Haou-sama barely twitched an eyelash. Instead, he turned his head a fraction, to empty space. A moment later, Elemental Hero Neos stood there.

"Blume," Neos said, voice sad and weary. "That isn't how a hero acts. You know that."

She shook her head, lips curved in contempt. "I don't care what you say, Neos. You're new. You don't know what it's like to truly be a hero. None of you do if you support him."

"Blume. I may be new compared to you, but I know Yuuki Juudai. He's fought to save all of creation from the Light of Ruin before."

Soft whispers raced through the entire room. Those who'd heard tales of the Light of Ruin passed them along to others as quickly as they could. No one wanted to miss a word of this odd trial.

"I don't care what he's done in that other world. I care about what he's doing. He's murdered people since he came here. Sure, I don't care about what he did to Brron or Goldd or Sillva, but what he did to my people? And for what?"

"For Super Fusion." Haou-sama spoke. He moved forward to stand before Blume. She stood a fraction taller than he did, but flinched back at that calm voice. "Because it needs to exist."

"I don't care." Blume spat the words out, trying to surge forward, only for the Daemon Soldiers to keep a strong grip on her. "I've lost people who I can never replace because of you."

Again silence reigned, broken by Haou-sama. "So have I. I've lost people who I can never replace." His lips pressed together in a thin line. "And I too kill to avenge them. And to make certain this will not happen to any others."

Blume shuddered; the mirrors weren't lost on her. Neos leaned forward.

"I can't stop whatever he chooses to do. You don't even know who he is."

Neos's words broke off with Haou's raised hand interrupting.

"What I am is in charge here," Haou-sama said, moving to stand right in front of Blume. "And you are right as well. I can't be stopped. And you have no idea of who I am."

Blume's lips parted once more but Haou-sama shook his head and the words froze there. Her eyes rounded in fear as he took another step closer. No one else would have ever wanted to be that close to him.

His eyes glowed. Those weren't just words; a shimmering golden light enveloped them and all of the shadows in the room danced and swirled and drew in closer, wrapping around Blume and Haou-sama. The Daemon Soldiers fell back, as did Snoww, staring at what had never happened before.

Neos vanished. All of those else in the room murmured and worried, casting glances at one another and at the tall column of shadows where the two of them had been.

Blume saw only Haou-sama. Her throat dried and her heart beat even faster than before. She'd never seen a figure so imposing or so terrifying or so ruthless in all of her life.

She raised her head and swallowed, gathering her courage in all of her mental hands. "Do you intend to execute me?"

"No. You can be useful to me. I have no need to kill you." Haou-sama's lips quirked into a move that wasn't entirely a smile and which sent more cold shivers down Blume's spine than anything Snoww tried ever could. "At least not right now."

Blume wanted to move back. She'd held no fear of poisoning him; it would have ended with his death and even if she'd died doing it, she would have done so knowing that she'd brought down a monster well on his way to becoming worse than Brron.

But to have failed so hard, to not only fail at killing him but to fail to escape his clutches – she couldn't imagine what fate lay ahead of her.

Nor could she understand why the Elemental Heroes of his deck supported him. She'd sealed it before she'd made the attempt to poison him – it hadn't been that difficult. A few whispered words and they couldn't have emerged from it to stop her. The seal only lasted a few hours; if he'd died from her poison, she would have stolen the deck and burned it to release the spirits from that bondage.

Perhaps she still could. What power would he have if he didn't have a deck? Would any of those who served him still obey him? It was just the two of them here. Surely she could do it.

But when she made an attempt to move forward, she found that her muscles refused to obey her. She stayed exactly where she was, her heart thudding in her chest.

"What did you do to me?" Blume spat out the words, raging at this monster with all of her might. This had to be his doing. What else could it be?

Haou-sama regarded her with frozen distance. "I said that I won't kill you. I said I had other uses for you."

Blume found that for the first time in all of her very long life, she wanted to flee. She'd never been this close to outright panic as she stood now. Even when she'd fought some of the most powerful enemies she'd seen in her life, she'd never been this terrified.

What was this monster? How could he do this? How could he be this and still look like a mere human child? She'd already wondered that before and dismissed it in favor of simply killing him. Now staring into his eyes – having those eyes stare back into her -

Blume didn't know what to think. Haou's words from before echoed over and over.

He'd lost people due to his own actions. People that he'd never seen again. She didn't know how that happened; she'd not done a great deal of research into what he'd done before beginning to cause mass deaths.

He's lost people. He's taken away people from everyone else. He's done great evil and had it done to him.

It didn't matter. What he did wasn't right. She didn't want to feel even the faintest bit sorry for him. She wanted to rage and be furious and to sink her claws into him, to tear his heart out and see if it kept on beating or if it wasn't anything more than a dead lump of rock.

She thought it might be. But she couldn't move, couldn't do anything but stare into those eyes and feel all the rage that coiled up inside of him storming before her.

Blume didn't want to help him. Didn't want to feel anything at all for him. And yet she found her knees crumpling and her mind growing blank and empty.

But not empty for very long. All of the anger that sustained her from the moment she'd first seen the ruins of her village faded away as if it had never been there to begin with. All she knew now was that she knelt before Haou-sama, her lord and master, the one she would do anything at all for.

All around her, the throne room and all of the monsters within it slowly returned bit by bit. Faint noises of surprise ghosted along at the sight of the Poison Rose, rumors of whom raced throughout Dark World for quite some time, humbly kneeling before Haou-sama.

"You will obey me," Haou-sama declared and Blume bent her head submissively.

"Command me and I obey, my master," Blume murmured, entire being warming at the thought of being of service. Whatever Haou-sama wanted of her, she would accomplish.

Haou-sama gestured and she rose to her feet, the shackles around her wrists vanishing as if they'd never existed in the first place. "I'll have more detailed orders for you later. For now, whatever Snoww tells you to do, obey her as you would me."

Blume wasn't certain if she especially liked those orders but she obeyed regardless. Haou-sama's word would eternally be her law.

Juudai dismissed all of the gathered monsters and turned his own steps towards his personal quarters. He'd recovered a great deal from Blume's attempted poisoning of him, but Heather – Holy Elf, he sharply reminded himself – told him that he wasn't completely recovered yet. He could push himself too far. If he didn't listen to her, then he probably would.

Another reason that he needed assistants. He'd considered using Blume as one, but what he did to her was so very new that he didn't trust her, not as of yet.

What did I do to her? He wasn't even certain. The dark and the shadows called and he'd listened, enfolding the two of them in their deepest depths.

He'd changed her. He'd determined that Blume would do what he wanted her to do and he'd impressed that onto her, over and over, wiping away anything he could find in her mind that would imply she wouldn't obey him. He'd disposed of every memory she had of her old home and her old friends. They didn't matter. Just listening to him mattered.

And he had no idea of how he'd done it. He'd just done it, acting as naturally as he had since the ending of his duel against Brron. The darkness told him how to do things and he did them.

He stared down at his hands, still encased in his armor. Not for a moment did he consider that this might be someone else's power working through him. He'd seen how that worked with Saiou. He wasn't Saiou. He'd made all of his own decisions and this wasn't like the Light.

This was the Darkness. Not Fubuki-san's Darkness either.

A name floated out of the reaches of his mind, mildly taunting, but not getting close enough so that he could grasp onto it. A sense that he knew the name of this Darkness and if he grasped it, then he would understand so much more that he didn't now.

Doesn't matter, he decided. I have to do this. For them.

He didn't take the card out. He didn't need to. He could feel the power rushing through it, swirling all through his deck, touching each of them. It didn't feel wrong. It didn't feel right. It was simply there.

Something was changing in there. He'd find out, when the time came. He just didn't need to rush about it. He would know when the time was right.

"Juudai."

Neos stood next to him, arms folded over his chest, a worried tilt to his head. His face didn't show expression very clearly but Juudai knew how to read the set of his shoulders and the set of his face.

"I don't want to hear it." He didn't really want to talk to Neos right now. He wanted to make plans. He still wanted to pick out assistants and he had a lot of warriors to choose from. No one from his deck. He couldn't do without them.

Neos looked as if he were about to say a great deal of things that Juudai had already said to himself over the last couple of weeks. About how what he did was wrong and it wasn't going to bring back anyone and he should quit this and try to find Shou and O'Brien and Jim. Juudai just shook his head before a word could be uttered.

He would have to reorganize his deck if this kept going. Already the Neo-Spacians came less and less often to his hand. Once or twice when he'd been in a strong pinch they'd come to help but never like before.

They didn't talk to him. Neos only came out to try and protest what he chose to do to avenge his fallen friends.

He needed new friends. No. Not new friends. A new deck.

A clink of glass against stone caught his attention and he turned to see Holy Elf there. She'd just set a goblet full of steaming liquid on the table near him. Her gentle eyes didn't allow for disobedience as she spoke.

"It's time for your medicine, Haou-sama," she told him. She always made certain he drank it, three times a day. Now he reached for it. He didn't really care to argue with her about it anymore. It wasn't worth the effort.

He thought the base of this might be one of the potions that he'd seen as cards – Red Potion or Blue Potion or something. But it contained other ingredients as well, including something so that he always rested afterwards. He wasn't always certain if he wanted to call it sleep, but when he rose up again, he always felt better, stronger.

Once he finished it and set the goblet back down, Holy Elf nodded in pleasure. "I think after this we can reduce your medicine to twice a day, morning and evening. Your recovery is almost done."

Juudai settled down into the stone chair he most often used when he observed out of his window. This wasn't his sleeping room; he did that in a deeper room of his castle, one where no one else could get to him without his knowledge or permission. Another whisper of the darkness.

"You dealt with Blume today," Holy Elf said after a few silent moments spent putting away the goblet. "What was it you did?"

"She won't try to poison anyone anymore," Juudai said. Was he smiling? He didn't think he was. Had he done something to smile about. Probably not. But he'd eliminated an enemy and made a powerful servant out of them.

Wasn't the first time. Not in the slightest. He wondered for a few heartbeats if Kagemaru and Saiou might try to send him messages while he was gone or if they were both still too busy trying to get better.

He'd probably never know. His PDA couldn't get messages from the Academia here. He'd spent more than a few hours staring at it and wondering if he'd ever get that beep, before setting it up in his closet with his old clothes and almost forgetting that it existed at all.

Holy Elf didn't say anything to that. She simply nodded.

"I'll be back later," she promised, and vanished out of the door.

Juudai stared out of his window. He didn't miss Holy Elf, but he wasn't especially thrilled right now at being alone. He had too much time to think and too much that he didn't want to think about.

With nearly a visible mental wrench, if there'd been anyone there to watch, he forced his thoughts along the path that he'd chosen. Assistants. Servants. Hands that would reach to the places that he couldn't and take care of matters that he couldn't get to because he was busy elsewhere.

Five of them. That would be enough.

He refused to think of the five people that he'd lost already – Manjoume and Fubuki-san, Kenzan and Asuka, Shou. He knew that Shou wandered around the world somewhere, probably with Jim and O'Brien, but those words of Shou's hadn't faded at all since Shou spoke them so harshly. Sometimes he even heard them in those few times when he slept deeply enough to dream.

So Shou was just as gone as they were. In a different way, but gone.

At least he tried not to think of them. It was a lot harder than he wanted it to be, when the card that held their souls lived in his deck, and every action he did was to ensure that they died for something.

Perhaps Jim and O'Brien counted as well. They were alive, but they weren't interested in being his friends again either. So maybe… really… seven?

Seven who would do as he desired and bring about his total, inevitable conquest of this entire world. Seven who would assist in the creation of Super Fusion.

Seven that he would never care for, but who would do what he needed them to do, and he would never, ever have to avenge.

The End

Notes: It was stated that those who didn't agree to serve Haou willingly would be brainwashed. Mildly implied that Haou would do it. So, this was his first time. Also, next week: Rise of the Death Duelists! And coming soon, the Evil Heroes!