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(A/N: hello all! here's a new one-shot, Tsubasa Redux! this one tells the story of two friends, Rian Deux and Yuki Mikato, who were caught up on the opposing sides of a war during the War of the Mages described in Tsubasa Reverse. this was written after being inspired by Kira and Athrun's relationship in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, so you might find some similarities, but this is an original story at its core. as always, i would love reviews! enjoy!)
TSUBASA REDUX
A short story by
diamonddust08
5677 Imperial Age
10th Turn,
22nd Sun
War of the Mages
It was the last year of the War of the Mages. Halifiene and Sindthar had long been destroyed when the desperate Escaldani had erected Avalon, their last stronghold of bone-white spire that reached to the clouds. Avalon had flashed its devastating blade of light at Sindtharese cities and the remnants of the retreating Halifienish forces, disintegrating everything and laying everything around it to waste. Now the only remaining power strong enough to put an end to Escaldan—Felgarde—had mobilized the last of its armies to destroy Avalon before it scoured the world of humanity’s existence.
Rian Deux walked through the cavernous double doors fashioned in the shape of a lance, feeling small and insignificant as his footsteps echoed in the gloom before him. The Divine Antechamber, as this room was called, was so huge the massive fluted pillars that lined the walls went up to a height that was lost in darkness, inaccessible to any kind of light source that he might have brought. He was an ant inside a mansion of a lord, and at the end of this endless row of columns Rian knew he would find the door to the Eye of the Storm—the pinnacle of Avalon, which had destroyed Sindthar and Halifiene a Turning ago.
And he knew that his friend of friends, the one who had been with him as far back as his memory went, would be there, to fight for the Escaldani—his country, and his loyalty. Yuki Mikato, now the champion of Escaldan, as he Rian was that of Felgarde.
It was dark, even with the torches set on the pillars. He felt like he was walking through some grand cathedral; quatrefoil and lancet windows decorated the walls as he passed, and firelight glinted against the gold inlay of the building-high pillar bases, smooth as marble. He walked on, turning his head this way and that; the oppressing gloom pressed against him, even with the sunlight filtering through the mosaic windows and the fluttering flames of the torches. He could hear the muted sounds of battle raging around Avalon; the last of Felgarde’s imperial might crashing and breaking themselves against the indomitable tower, desperate and struggling. Their vaunted aerial fleet of the flying battleships called the fortiers was even now unloading their men and soldiers against the defenders of Avalon, or catapulting their fireballs of Azoth against the invincible fortress.
He stopped when he heard a scuffle in front of him.
“Yuki,” he said tentatively, his voice echoing throughout the massive hall, making it seem as if he had a thousand voices. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
“Yes, my friend,” the one called Yuki said, striding into the torchlight, just up ahead. His white-enameled armor was impressive and streamlined, and he held a massive zweihander on his right hand.
Rian’s voice broke. “Why?”
Yuki looked away. “I… I have to do this, Rian. The war should end… there’s no meaning in bloodshed.”
Rian took a step forward. “But you… you don’t have to do this! I don’t want to fight with you!”
“Neither do I,” Yuki said pensively. His voice was pained, strained. “Please, leave Avalon alone. I will ask that it leave Felgarde unharmed, but call back your forces. You know that it is folly to attack us here.”
“Yuki, no!” Rian exclaimed. He leaned forward, gesturing with his hand. “Come with me! Escaldan is drunk from its own power. Don’t you see?”
Yuki was silent.
“Sindthar and Halifiene were not even their enemies, Yuki!” Rian declared, his voice breaking. It filled him with anguish that his friend that he thought would be with him forever would be the one to stand against him now. “Yet Avalon destroyed them all the same! What would it be for us? For the world? Why do you fight for them?”
“Yet, even then, the war must end,” Yuki replied. His platinum hair fell before his eyes, covering nearly his face. “If I can make it end by even just a moment earlier… a Sun, or even a Turning, I will do so. Countless lives had been lost, Rian.”
“I know that! Then why do you keep fighting?!” Rian demanded. His shock of coal-black hair quivered as he spoke. “What is it that you fight for, Yuki Mikato?!”
“Rian, I—” Yuki began, but then his voice trailed off. “I can’t stay still knowing that you will invade my homeland, Rian.”
“We are not invading you, Yuki!” Rian’s voice reverberated throughout the Divine Antechamber like the clamor of a ghostly army. “We are fighting for the right to live! Why don’t you understand that?”
“Then why don’t you understand our right to live, as well?!” Yuki shot back.
Rian clenched his fists and ground his teeth.
“It was Felgarde who killed my parents, Rian, have you forgotten that!” Yuki shouted, and then his voice broke. He sobbed; crystalline tears poured from his eyes and he bit his lower lip, trying to contain his surging emotions. “You said… you said that together we will find justice for them! But I cannot reach you now, Rian… because you’re in the same side that killed my father and Laina!”
“This is the only way to keep the war from spreading, Yuki,” Rian responded, his voice plaintive and stretched. His eyes were watery; he knew that both of them were in pain. “Please. Let me through so this war will end.”
“NO!” Yuki cried out. “It will not end until you do not call your forces back! Rian, retreat now, or I will be forced to cut you down!”
Rian slowly crouched to his battle stance. “Yuki, no. We don’t need to fight! Just let me through… please.”
Yuki hesitated. “I don’t want to fight." He shook his head. "Do not make me fight you, Rian. Stop this folly and retreat.”
“I cannot.”
Yuki narrowed his eyes. “Then I will defeat you!”
It was too fast to see. One moment the white-garbed warrior was in front of him, and the next Yuki was above, a globe of incandescent light surrounding him. Azoth, Rian thought dully, as Yuki sped downward at the speed of a lightning strike. Both of their faces were contorted both in grief and maddening anger, and Rian knew that both of them were lost.
Shit, he’s fast, Rian thought, and darted out of the way, launching himself into the dark air. He saw Yuki terminate right on the floor, and a dazzling explosion of light and energy promptly radiated outwards like a sudden sunrise. The ground was immediately vaporized to a fair-sized crater, Yuki at the center of it, as his silver hair flapped wildly. Rian’s eyes widened.
Yuki catapulted again from his position, flinging destroyed pieces of rock away and trailing a jet of gold-white light from his feet. Rian gnashed his teeth; Yuki was aiming directly for him, his scintillating zweihander filled with the essence of Azoth’s unadulterated power. He had no choice; he was high up in the air, and Yuki was ascending at an alarming rate towards him.
“YUKI, STOP THIS!!!” Rian yelled. A massive wrist-blade like contraption as large as he was tall materialized in a shower of violet sparks at his right arm, and he trained its tip at the approaching enemy, who was once his friend.
Yuki’s eyes, now only the color of crimson because of his communion with the Azoth, contracted as he saw the point of the massive arm blade directed at him. His velocity was too high to stop the assault, and once he did that he would die. With a wordless snarl he continued on, fanning the zweihander to one side as he streaked upwards like a comet.
“You bastard!” Rian held the materialized device with both hands and it whirred for less than a split second, symbols in red pulsating and coalescing on its length, and a blast of scarlet light lanced out from its tip like the breath of a dragon. The finger of light raced straight for Yuki, but he rolled on air, and the ray sailed past harmlessly along him, singing his armor. The finger of light smashed unceremoniously on the ground like the hammer of the gods, and as the hall shivered in the explosion Rian saw with horror that Yuki was already before him, swinging the pale-bladed zweihander for a glancing blow that would slice his head off.
“Ugh…!” There was no time to dodge, so Rian did what the fastest way he could to survive. He shielded himself with his massive arm contraption, but the zweihander sheared at it as easily as an axe chopping through firewood. His weapon crumbled and shattered in a show of stardust, and vulnerable, Yuki saw this opportunity and executed a roundhouse kick in midair.
Rian caught Yuki’s foot square in the chest, and he immediately coughed up blood as the force of the impact sent him plummeting to the ground, his eyes dilated and unfocused, his mind reeling that his closest friend that he had played with, laughed with, had grown up with was about to kill him. He crashed loudly onto the hard and cold floor of the antechamber, gouging right into it if he was a monstrous rock dropped from the heavens. Shards of destroyed marble, rock and stone spewed around him when he landed on his back, and he stared at the abysmal ceiling in shock.
Yuki landed near the edge of the crater Rian’s fall had made, and brandished the sword to point at his friend. “Stop… stop this Rian… please… I don’t want to kill you.” Yuki’s eyes streamed tears. “Look at you… I’m sorry. Just leave me alone!”
Rian shifted his gaze at his friend, and smiled through his bloodied face. “Yuki, you idiot…”
“Wha—”
An immense blade, like the one Rian had worn before, rent air as it swung straight at Yuki’s back, but his quick reflexes made him quickly turn around and put his zweihander between him and the rapidly-closing six-foot-long and a foot-wide blade to block it. However, the mere contact of it sent an invisible wave, like a mirage, and it brought Yuki howling straight to a pillar, where the blade buried itself and Yuki beneath it to the sturdy stone of the column. The antechamber once again shuddered as cracks swiftly meandered throughout the face of the fluted column, threatening to fall down from the impact.
Rian stood up groggily, spitting globs of blood, and held out his hand. The large blade flew out of the rubble of the column and returned to him as if a boomerang, and the torch on that pillar fell down, along with Yuki, dazed and reeling. Blood spouted from a wound on his forehead, and he fell to his knees, coughing and spitting blood.
“This is senseless,” Rian said angrily, hoarsely. “Why must we be fighting? We are not enemies, Yuki! Why do we fight?!”
Yuki stood up. “You told me we would find the answer… to that,” replied the white-haired man, as he unclasped his broken armor and threw it aside. It made an ominous clanging sound across the entire hall. “I don’t know, Rian. Who is the real enemy? Which one of us is right?”
“Let’s stop this, and let me through, Yuki,” Rian said weakly.
“If I let you through, you will kill more people again with Felgarde’s victory!”
“Yet if you win, would it guarantee the end of the war?!” Rian hotly replied. “Answer me!”
“I DON’T KNOW!!!” Yuki screamed, the pain in his heart trying to tear him in two. “Let us end this then, so we know who is the right one, and the wrong!”
“Yuki, stop it!”
Rian’s pleas fell on heedless ears. Yuki extended the sword from him as if in prayer, pointed it at Rian, and at once light blossomed out of the blade itself like the falling leaves of autumn, or the flying petals of spring. Feathery splinters of light erupted from Yuki’s determined form, and Rian sadly resigned himself to the fact that they had gone past the point of no return.
“Are we going to end this now, Yuki?”
He didn’t answer.
“No matter the victor, Yuki, please try to remember what we were, and what we had gone through,” Rian said. He released his black armor and let it fall on the ground, but the wheezing, pulsing sound of the floating feathers of light around Yuki like some gigantic pair of wings drowned its report. “No matter which one of us is right, do not let the world once again be consumed in the flames of war.”
Yuki nodded. A tear ran from his eye, and dropped, and was lost in the conflagration of his power.
“Then let us fight, for the last time.” Rian brushed tears from his eyes.
The feathers lanced outwards, like the trailing movements of stars across the sky during the entire night—lines, endless lines, of myriad lights showered outward and fell like a storm of swords to Rian.
He remembered the first time they had met. Rian had rescued Yuki from the beatings of a group of bullies, and had extended his hand to him when they were both scratched. And they laughed, and became fast friends from then on.
A dome-like nova of violet energy swirled around him like a storm, and still he kept his eyes locked with those of his friend. The swords, hundreds and thousands of them, kept coming at him at the speed of the wind, and his aura disintegrated everything around him to fine ash.
He
remembered how they caught fish together. Rian remembered when they
were lost in the Weeping Forest, and they had to survive for an
entire week eating nothing. But for all that, they were happy, and innocent still.
Blade-shaped machines, like cannons, appeared one by one around him, all trained at Yuki, their physical forms manifesting into the real world like small crystals materializing into tangible structures. They fanned out around him, behind him, in front of him.
He remembered when Yuki said goodbye to tend to his family that was caught in the Felgarder advance in Escaldan. He remembered that after that, they met again as enemies, spotting one another in the chaos of a blood-soaked battlefield against the setting sun.
Spouts of light appeared on the tips of the cannons. The swords fell to him. Scenes of their lives flashed before their eyes.
Rian rushed forward at great speed, mirroring Yuki who had raised his sword like the brand of a runner. Swords, pale as moonlight and kissed by fire fell around them like rain. Rian’s cannons spewed forth fiery fingers of deadly light about him, reaching out to Yuki which he easily deflected with his sword. The breaking ground, the cracking pillars, the groaning walls, even the endless gloom of the chamber—even the entire war—was lost to them as they closed at one another, intent on ending this farce of a conflict that had pitted them against one another.
They roared. Yuki’s eyes flashing crimson, Rian’s eyes seething blue.
Yuki slashed at the web of cannons in front of him, all the while being peppered by blue lances that erupted out of his back. Yuki’s feather-swords cut through the network of blade-guns hovering over Rian and straight at him, imbedding themselves through his shoulders, his chest, his arms, but still they didn’t feel a nothing as they neared their inevitable conclusion.
“RIAAAANNN!!!”
“YUUUKIIII!!!”
Yuki stabbed his sword. Rian fired off his arm blade.
“Hey, Yuki,” Rian called, as he lay down on the soft bed of grass. “Who do you think will win the war?”
“I don’t know,” Yuki reacted. “Maybe the one who has a lot more to lose.”
“Huh?” Rian snorted. “All four countries have a lot to lose. Their people, their land, you know.”
“Then how do we judge who will win?”
“Hmm. Maybe the one who has a more just reason to win. The evil ones always fall, I think,” Rian said in the simple wisdom of childhood.
“I hope it won’t be Escaldan,” Yuki fretted. “Papa and Mama are there.”
“Don’t worry, Felgarde will protect Escaldan.” Rian laughed. “And I’ll protect you, because you just can’t seem to stand on your own.”
Yuki laughed at that moment too. “I wish we were children forever.”
“Me too.” Then Rian closed his eyes. “I wonder though… what would happen before this war could end…”
Yuki lay
in a pool of blood, Rian cradling the body of his one true friend,
tears freely flowing his eyes, his sobs echoing in the darkness.
“Yuki, no, stay with me… please…”
Yuki looked at him dreamily. “You are strong… you were always strong, my friend,” he said in a rasping voice. “You had always been… my protector…”
“I told you! I told you, you idiot! We don’t have to fight!” Rian told him in between sobs.
Yuki clasped his friend’s hand. “Promise me, Rian,” he whispered. “Promise me… the war will end, that no more… of this sacrifices… will be made. Promise me…”
Rian clutched his friend’s limp hand. “I promise… Yuki, no!!! Don’t leave me, you…! NO!!!”
Yuki smiled for the last time. “Thank you for saving me.” He died.
Rian held Yuki and buried his face in his chest. His grieving cries resounded throughout the hall, as the Elven expeditionary forces had finally arrived and brought an end to hostilities outside Avalon. The fighting had ended, and the War of the Mages had been finished at long last.
“I promise," Rian sobbed. “There will never be a war again, I swear.”
It was the end of the Imperial Age, and the beginning of a new tale in the making.
f i n