Bonds Beyond Reality

Turn 6 - Shining wings of victory

After some minor treatments and some rest, Yuma can now leave Den City's hospital. He thanks Yusaku and Aoi for bringing him there. Astral asks him to take it easy, but Yuma cannot wait to get back to the action. To which Yusaku interrupts and asks if they can finally have a talk to fill in the gaps of what's going on so far. Astral recommends going to a quiet place since, even though normal people probably understand what they are talking about, they can't ignore the possibility of someone following them. Yusaku accepts and invites him to his place.

When they arrive, Aoi cannot help but criticize Yusaku's messy apartment, with clothes thrown away all over the place, dishes piling up in the sink, dust in every corner, and the building itself looking like it is about to fall apart. Aoi complains that even for a single man, this is ridiculous. Yusaku apologizes; he hasn't been there for the past year, and since his return, he has put all of his attention on the current case, so he hasn't had time to do proper cleaning. To what Yuma replies, he could just buy one of those cleaning bots; he saw a commercial for them a couple of days ago. He also mentions how he also has something like that back at home, and that is kind of like a family member for him. Yusaku and Aoi remain silent for a second with a sad expression on their faces, and Astral tells Yuma to stop talking because, little do they know, they have brought back an unpleasant memory for them.

Finally, they sit down to have a serious talk. Astral begins explaining how they come from another dimension and that, just as many different worlds can exist in the network, the same applies to the physical world itself; there can be multiple realities and different versions of the world they know. Astral and Yuma simply come from one of those, and with that premise, Yuma mentions how back in their world, he and Astral had fought and defeated Don Thousand, bringing peace to the human world and the Astral world, the place where Astral comes from. But after a while, a new thread appeared in the astral world, and it turned out to be creatures like the one they fought last night. They came out of nowhere and started to rapture people from the Astral world, so Yuma and Astral, along with their friends, had to team up again. However, while most of the enemies didn't seem to be as strong as the one they dueled last, there was no end to them; they kept showing up and eventually reached the human world.

Astral briefly mentions the existence of the Numeron Code, the almighty card that can change reality, only to then explain that it was useless against the creatures, not because they were powerful but because they seemed to be immune to it. That's when they understood it: in the same way numbers can only be defeated by numbers, the Numeron Code can only affect those who belong to their dimension. With that limitation on its power, the best they could do was use it to track down the origin of those creatures to Yusaku's dimension and open a portal to come here, leaving behind their friends so they could contain the invasion while Yuma and Astral fixed this issue. The rest is what they already mentioned; they noticed the creatures craved negative emotions in people and looked up for places like that until they eventually met up with Yusaku and Aoi last night.

Yusaku has to be open-minded and accept the fairy tale he's being told, while Aoi, who still can't see nor hear Astral, only gets half of the explanation. Yusaku asks, Why did they go to the location where the lost incident took place? After all, the incident was covered by the authorities, and most people wouldn't know about it. Yuma says it was because most people didn't want to talk to them in the first place because of their suspicious appearance. The only one who wanted to listen to their questions and ended up guiding them to that place was a guy with tomato-like hair and some goggles. Yusaku knows that it had to be Yuya and asks Yuma if he can lead him to where he was, since now he has become even more suspicious. Yuma says it is better to leave it like that. He starts telling them that this situation is extremely dangerous, as they could see last night, and that it's better they leave this to him and Astral and go back to living a normal life. Yusaku stands up and, with a confident smile on his face, tells Yuma to not be confused. The hero of the world right now is Playmaker, and he will not back down from this fight. Excited by Yusaku's sudden fight, spirit Yuma decides he will show them the place where he found Yuya, only to be interrupted by Aoi, who tells them that there's no need to do that. Her brother has reached out to her with interesting news: one of Zaizen's subordinates will come up to pick them up, so they should hurry up and go.