4. Chapter 4 (1/2)

series: collars and keeping||story title: runawaycharacters: yuuri, shun, asuka||pairing: n/achapters: 4-8||words: 2,514||total: 10,301genre: drama, friendship||rated: pgchallenge: diversity writing challenge, ygo arc-v shun & yuuri, j4, 7-15 chapters; advent 2015, day #1, write about time getting away from someone; easter egg basket advent 2016, day #12, pair up 2 characters not seen together in the franchise & give them a common task (asuka & shun); endurance challenge (updated once a week)notes: for the purposes of this story: the fusion invasion into xyz took place roughly six months earlier. asuka hasn't yet defected from academia, but is deeply troubled about what it's doing. some of the high-ranking academia warriors have been given the right to take one captive each instead of carding them. yuuri took advantage of that right after capturing ruri.summary: yuuri's favorite pet has run away and he's looking to

ing shun back. shun, meanwhile, is lost in a place with no friends, tenative allies that may or may not be able to help him, no deck, and no way home.

yuuri picked the half-dozen cards he'd just created and cast a critical eye at them all. they weren't great duelists by any means, though some of the less skilled academia people might've struggled for a turn or two. compared to him, of course, they were nothing.

at least they could serve a purpose now. he divided the stack in half, tucking three into the pocket he kept cards he turned over to the professor and taking the other three in one hand. in the other he now held another card from his deck.

then, with a singsong, "good-bye!" he tore those three cards into shreds and tossed their remains to the wind.

super fusion, he had learned, thrived off the acquisition and consumption of souls. putting people in cards alone wasn't good enough, though it did make for a nice, clean death.

yuuri didn't care much about killing people but he loathed having to clean up after himself. carding made everything so much easier.

he had to strain to feel the power that slept within this strange card, but he could do it. every time he offered more cards – more souls to it, super fusion grew stronger. keeping it in whatever deck he planned to use helped as well. he'd mastered the art of switching it from one to another without being seen.

but with that taken care of, he checked the time. his little plant pet had had plenty of time to track down kurosaki, or possibly even someone had seen him and was willing to offer information in exchange for not being carded.

which meant that since he'd already accomplished his mission in being here, it was time to go back.

he almost didn't want to. he didn't get a chance to scour the xyz dimension for prey, since his first mission had been to capture that girl the professor wanted. there would be other targets he had to

ing in without harming – much – but until the professor told him who they were, he had to stick to the occasional mission here to help clean up the leftover trash.

i did find kurosaki, so there are a few pieces of polished quartz around here, he mused as he made his way through the rubble-filled streets. honestly, he still couldn't understand why kurosaki got so angry with him. he'd given his slave everything: a place to live that wasn't a tent that could blow over in a stiff

eeze or a half-destroyed building that could switch to fully destroyed at a moment's notice. kurosaki had plenty of good food to eat, once he earned it, instead of whatever could be scrounged up from the rubble and shared out with far too many others. he even had decent clothes to wear and those were washed and dried on a regular basis, and didn't include that horrible red scarf.

what in any world did he have to complain about and what had led him to run away?

it doesn't matter. i'll just have to train him to accept his good fortune when i get him back. all pets needed training. kurosaki apparently more than most.

he didn't bother waiting for the patrol that started out the same time that he had. he'd ditched them within the first five minutes and as far as he knew, they'd all been defeated. maybe they hadn't been. maybe he underestimated them.

but he doubted that very much.

yuuri's plant hunter crouched outside of the door to the garden. master would be back soon. then it would convey what he wanted to know, would take him back to where master's prey huddled in terror, and all would be well.

but master seemed to take forever to get back and the tracker wilted a tiny bit more as time ticked by. water wasn't enough to sustain it and it couldn't leave the area now, not without risking missing master's return. that limited intelligence kept it right where it was.

"well, what are you? something else of yuuri's that got out?"

scents the tracker could recognize. but voices it couldn't, and it had only heard this one once or twice.

not many people could enter yuuri's private garden without his permission and this was one of them.

dennis macfield reached down to pick up the plant fearlessly, turning to look at it.

"oh, i see what you are. i bet yuuri sent you out to find kurosaki."

the words meant little, save for 'yuuri'. that, the plant knew, was master, and it tried to wiggle a bit.

"got something to tell him?"

again that meant nothing. what did mean something was that the tracker now could smell the being that held it, and some of that scent was that of the master. this, then, could be someone sent by the master. again it wiggled, harder this time.

dennis put the tracker back down. "all right, tell me what you can."

the tracker wiggled a little more, then gathered up all of its strength and started along the trail. this one, labeled now as master's servant for lack of anything else, would have to do in lieu of master.

dennis followed yuuri's weird little tracker through the corridors, wondering where it would lead him. he'd seen the posters and notices about kurosaki's running away. it didn't surprise him at all to see that one of yuuri's plants apparently had been sent to find him.

and it definitely wanted to tell him something, or to tell yuuri something, or someone something. so he followed along.

yuuri should be back soon. i hope, anyway. i'd hate to leave without telling him.

yuuri could be mildly annoyed when he couldn't put his finger on what he considered his, and dennis counted among those, if only as 'his only actual friend'.

i suppose i could've told kurosaki how possessive yuuri is. oh, well.

it offered entertainment of a sort academia seldom could to keep distant track of kurosaki's escape. dennis didn't know where he was, but seeing how upset yuuri was at someone who wasn't him? that was more than he'd ever bargained for.

but when they came close to the section of academia's dorms set aside for the female students, dennis hesitated a fraction.

"are you sure?" he didn't really expect a proper answer from the creature, but it kept scurrying on, not waiting for him. dennis shrugged. as long as he didn't go inside one of the dorms, it should be all right.

yuuri's tracker led him through a couple of corridors and finally stopped outside a door. it flopped over right away and didn't move, nor look as if it would ever move again.

"oh, man, yuuri's going to hate it if you died," dennis groaned before he picked up the tracker and tossed it over his shoulder. "don't be dead. i'll get you back to him."

he glanced at the door, then checked his pda cautiously. tenjoin asuka. he'd seen her duel before. she was amazing, strong and independent in a way that most academia students weren't. rumor had it she'd be sent to either xyz or synchro soon enough, possibly even heading her own battalion. other rumors held that edo phoenix wanted her for his troops in holding down xyz. her options were many.

but if yuuri's tracker had followed kurosaki here, then she bid fair to be in some kind of trouble. either from what kurosaki might do or from what the professor might do if treachery lurked in her mind.

or worse, from what yuuri might do if she actually sheltered his pet from him.