Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's: Rainbow Stardust (OLD)

Chapter 9: Real Memories, Real Friends

TW: Violence and abuse mentions, emotional trauma, other non-bueno things

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Yusei didn't understand what had changed in Sylvia. When she had first woken up, his friends were insistent that she needed help. Rally wanted to patch up her scarred arm, and despite their lack of resources in the Satellite, he had done a surprisingly good job doing so. Tank took care of Sylvia's valuables while she was asleep, Rally made sure she was breathing and lowered her fever, when she had one, and Blitz and Nervin took care of her cards and helped Rally carry her back to the base.

Apparently, Rally had originally found her on the side of the road, clutching her Duel Disk with her deck already inserted into its slot, curled up to appear even smaller than she already was, heavily injured. He hadn't thought much of seeing her at first. Actually, he originally thought she'd get in his way of achieving his dream. It wasn't the first time Yusei had thought so self-centeredly.

But the first thing Sylvia did when she woke up was apologize and try to leave. She probably sensed that she was intruding, especially given the high quality of her belongings in contrast to the rest of Satellite. She was a walking target with all of those things she had. Her Duel Disk was a hybrid, which had caught his friends' attention, and her deck was unique. Despite her lack of memory, she seemed to be decent at dueling, except that she was broken down by her own internal fears when she tried to duel for the first time.

When Sylvia had gotten lost, Rally begged Yusei to save her, so he did. Ever since then, Sylvia claimed she felt indebted to him, and that she had to help him achieve his goal. Yusei was surprised when she seemed to know the basics of a Duel Runner's functions and tuning, and her suggestions, rare as they were, were helpful. Having an extra pair of hands and eyes never hurt anyone, either.

The day Rally was discovered with the CPU acceleration chip, however, Sylvia fell into a short coma. Yusei had thought it was simply exhaustion, given her situation, but now that he thought back... Her scars were very peculiar. Some of them were gruesome and hard to look at, but there were a select few scars that didn't look necessarily deep, but dark in comparison to the others, almost like a scarred tattoo.

One in the same pattern as a Signer mark.

Sylvia had woken up again on the day Yusei was scheduled to leave through the pipe, and she seemed genuinely afraid for her friends, who weren't around when she awoke. It was only when he appeared that she relaxed at least a little and tried to gain some information. Then, she proved to everyone that she was a capable Turbo Duelist by winning her Runner back and spontaneously joined Yusei in his trip.

And then... Yusei tried to remember. The last time he had seen Sylvia was that night, he realized. That night when he dueled against Jack at night, to win his Stardust Dragon back. He should've paid closer attention to her. She was supposed to be in the bleachers, watching the duel.

But she wasn't caught with Yusei. No, Yusei was sent to the Facility alone, and out of the both of them, only he had a criminal mark. When he was thrust into a jail cell, he'd heard some of the guards chatting casually about how "the other kid" went missing, nonchalant and uncaring. Yanagi and Tanner became his closest allies in the cell after he won using Yanagi's deck, but then came the "searching" of his body for the mark.

As if using electrical and radiation scans for "research" could justify what I went through, Yusei thought with a scowl.

Yusei wondered which would've been worse: Sylvia going through potentially the same treatment as he did in the Facility, but staying together with him, or this.

Goodwin had arrived at the Facility to give some self-righteous speech about how "Satellite and New Domino City stay separate for a reason," and how "Peace can only be maintained in this way," and "That is how we keep the memories of our citizens protected," and all sorts of other sugar-coated garbage that he could spout within only an hour.