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beestriker015 · 1 month ago

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Rio x male s/o headcanons

It’s no secret that Rio Kastle is incredibly popular with the boys at Heartland Academy.

Despite this, there’s only one boy that the blue haired girl is interested in, and that’s her close friend s/o, whom she met when they were both first year students.

“You’re new here too huh? My name’s s/o, what’s yours?”

He introduces himself and greets her with a friendly smile, which she returns.

“I’m Rio. Nice to meet you s/o.”

After their initial meeting, it didn’t take long for s/o and Rio to become friends, especially since he was one of the select few male students who wasn’t constantly fawning over her, much to her appreciation.

Being friends with Rio means it was inevitable for s/o to meet her brother Shark, who at first didn’t like the idea of his little sister hanging out with some boy, but after seeing how much the two care about each other, he eventually grew to like and accept s/o.

“You’re an ok guy s/o, but if you try anything funny with my sister I’ll make you regret it. Got that?”

“She’s my best friend Shark, I’d never do anything to hurt her. I promise you that.”

Hearing the seriousness in his words, the male water duelist cracks a smile.

“Good, because I’d hate for Rio to lose the only person willing to put up with her.”

The two chuckle at this and soon enough become friends as well.

As time passes, it becomes clear that Rio and s/o have started to see each other as more than friends, but before either could confess their feelings, tragedy strikes.

Rio is rushed to the hospital after a duel related accident, much to the horror of both Shark and s/o.

Tears fall from s/o’s eyes as he stares at his friend/crush, who is currently unconscious and lying in a hospital bed.

“Rio, I swear Shark and I will make whoever did this to you pay! Just please, don’t leave me.”

When the time finally comes that Rio awakens from her coma and is cleared to leave the hospital, she is quickly greeted by a relieved and emotional s/o.

“Shark told me the news! Rio, I’m so glad you’re ok!”

He proceeds to pull her into a tight embrace, causing the younger Kastle sibling to blush before she hugs back.

“Thank you s/o, I’m happy to be up and about too, especially because it means I can see you again. There’s something I wanted to tell you, but didn’t get the chance to. I don’t want to wait any longer, so here it is. S/o, I….I really like you.”

Knowing what she means, he looks at her with a big smile.

“I feel the same way Rio. So, are we like…a couple n-”

She cuts him off by pulling him into a kiss, thus marking the beginning of them indeed being a couple.

Despite dating each other, not much really changed between Rio and s/o due to how close they already were besides being more affectionate with each other.

Jealousy is pretty much exclusive to s/o, but only to the extent of him getting annoyed at how his male peers continually simp over his girlfriend.

“Ugh, they know we’re together, so why are they still drooling over you babe?”

“What can I say s/o? That’s the kind of thing guys like you have to deal with when their girlfriend is so pretty.”

She says with a giggle as s/o sighs.

“I guess, but just so you know Rio, pretty is an understatement. You’re absolutely gorgeous.”

This causes his girlfriend to smile and blush as the two leave school to go on a date.

Speaking of dates, they pretty much consist of the usual things young couples do like going to the movies, the carnival, etc.

However, since Rio and s/o are both duelists, their favorite way of spending time together is having a nice friendly duel, which usually ends up with Rio winning.

“I beat you again s/o. Better luck next time.”

She gloats as her boyfriend pouts.

“Hey! I’m getting better, so next time will be different!”

“Whatever you say babe.”

Being the superior duelist, Rio absolutely gives her boyfriend pointers and tutors him on how to better his dueling skills, which is something the two of them enjoy quite a lot.

“Thanks so much for mentioning me Rio. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

He tells his girlfriend as she smiles and wraps her arms around him.

“Hopefully you never have to find out. You’d be so lost without me.”

She says to him teasingly, both unaware of what’s soon to come.

Once Rio and Shark discover that they’re actually Barians and decide to join them, s/o is utterly heartbroken.

“N-no….why Rio? Why?”

Not long afterwards, s/o confronts Rio, who is one of the Seven Barian Emperors and now goes by Marin.

“R-Rio?! Why are you and Shark doing this?!”

He exclaims while looking at his girlfriend in her Barian form.

“I am no longer Rio. My name is Marin, and my brother is Nash. The girl you knew is gone s/o, but if you insist on challenging the Barians, then prepare to duel!

She tells him sternly, breaking s/o’s heart even more before he gains a look of determination and readies his duel disk.

“Fine then, but if I win….I want the old you back!”

Unfortunately, s/o stood no chance against Marin’s Chaos Number and is easily defeated, causing him to drop to his knees.

“I lost. Rio…I’m sorry.”

Before he is sent to Barian World, Marin transforms back into her human form and stares at him sadly.

“I love you s/o.”

She leans down and kisses him before he disappears, tears rolling down her cheeks once he does.

Once Astral uses the Numeron Code to bring everyone back, including the former Barian Emperors who are now human again, Rio and s/o continue their relationship as normal.

“After everything we’ve been through, I’m still glad to have you as my girlfriend. I love you Rio.”

“And I wouldn’t want anyone else as my boyfriend but you s/o, I love you too.”

The two look at each other lovingly and share a passionate kiss, both knowing they’ll always be together from that point forward.

#yugioh #yugioh x reader #yugioh x male reader #yugioh zexal #yugioh zexal x male reader #male reader #yugioh rio #rio kastle #rio kastle x reader #rio kastle x male reader #barians

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raemanzu · 5 months ago

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Duel Nature

@zexalmonth

D - Duel

This little one-shot takes place basically during the last episode of the series, because I felt kind of cheated by how rushed the ending was.

Yuma wants to connect with Vector after all the Barians are revived, and what better way than a duel between friends? But Vector already has enough battles to fight.

----

They materialized on the school roof, of all places. All of them at once, coming to on the ground, like they’d all been part of some bullshit revival meeting—ha, revival, literally—and only fainted, not straight-up died.

For a moment, Vector thought to himself that this had to be some new form of hell. Perhaps the last dying gasp of his consciousness was playing tricks on him, or whatever fragment of him still remained within Don Thousand was being kept as a plaything—it would be fitting. But there was Astral, the smug glowing bastard, descending from the sky like the saint every one of his kind thought they were.

Wait. No, he wasn’t there, not fully. Vector couldn’t feel his presence like he normally could.

“What the hell?” Nasch was standing up, in his stupidly teenage body holding his head of stupidly teenage hair in his hands and grimacing. “We’re alive?”

We. Oh no. Oh, no, no, no.

Vector reached out to create a portal, to get away from Nasch and the other emperors before they all inevitably turned their attention to him, the guy who’d stabbed every last one of them in the back, and—nothing happened.

There was nothing there.

Don’t panic. Vector affixed a manic grin onto his face and shoved his errant hands into the pockets of his pants, noting with relief that at least he hadn’t been revived in the idiotic school uniform. Instead his favorite black and white coat was a reassuring weight on his shoulders. Small mercies. Think.

The last thing he remembered was the torrential wind, the rock crumbling under his fingers, getting sucked into… well…

Vector felt as if that same invisible hand was squeezing his core again and sucked in a breath, arm twitching with the urge to cover his chest with one hand. Bright red eyes flashed in his memory, and his empty stomach twisted.

No, there was something else. A sense of time passing, like he’d merely been asleep. And he’d felt Astral’s presence somewhere close, unmistakably. That unnervingly clear resonance, artificial, perfect.

“I have used the numeron code to revive all of you,” Astral was saying, “because that is Yuma’s wish. These human bodies are yours to use as you desire, and will age and die the same as other humans’. Earth is your home now.”

Nasch looked stunned by this, until Yuma leapt down from who-knows-where like a whooping cannonball. “Shark!! Alito! Shark sis! Ahh, Astral, it worked!!”

The sound of his so-happy-I-could-cry voice shouting out the rest of their names was like razors in Vector’s chest.

“It’s Rio,” Merag snapped. “Or Merag, pick one!”

Yuma was too busy jumping Nasch, who honestly might have hit his head and lost all power of speech judging by the incoherent noises coming from his mouth.

Vector took a step backward, unable to tear his eyes off the sight. Yuma, the last hand that had touched his, promising to—

He turned abruptly for the door to the stairs, skin prickling with chills.

His hand touched the knob. “Vector,” Mizael said, and that’s the push he needs to hurry up and yank it open, slipping through before anyone else can say a thing.

With the door closed, he couldn’t hear their voices anymore. Still not a whisper of resonance, either.

Just humans, now? Forever? Until he dies again—what, of old age? The thought was so wrong Vector heard a breathless laugh escape him as he hurried down the stairs.

The laugh quickly turned to an embarrassing squawk as a glowing yellow hand gripped his arm and threw him against the wall. Ow. Fuck.

“Where are you sneaking off to?” Mizael’s pompous voice always made Vector fantasize about snipping off that stupid hair-wing (ear??) with a little concentrated chaos, and he wondered if it had that effect on anyone else. It had to, right?

“Ohoh, Miza-chan, you already miss me that much?” Vector strained to keep a suave voice. That was the problem with human bodies. They had inconvenient things like lungs and throats and flight instincts. And were too easy to pin against walls by someone with a body of condensed energy and crystal.

And why the hell was Mizael Barian anyway?!

“Don’t bother to lie. You’re always up to something.”

“Too bad, our private time is already getting interrupted~!” Vector hated the frayed edge of his own voice and forced his face into a foxlike grin as he saw the unmistakable burst of light and color heralding the arrival of several other Barians.

One, two, three, four, five.

And Astral, floating in through the ceiling.

Vector realized with a bitter taste in his mouth that the only human heart pounding in this damn stairwell was his. And no matter how desperately he reached for that easy familiar power, it was gone.

“Let him go, Mizael,” Nasch ordered calmly.

Mizael made a reluctant noise. “And what? Let him slink off to scheme up even more ways to betray the rest of us?”

Ugh, he could feel Nasch’s eyes on him. That much hadn’t changed. That pompous, benevolent stare, measuring him up, deciding just how much pre-emptive disapproval to dish out. Vector looked carelessly toward the ceiling instead, keeping everyone in his periphery, and sighed as if this was all just a minor annoyance.

“The war for Barian world is over,” Nasch mutters. “We lost.”

Vector thought he had no feeling left in him for Barian world. But something about the defeated voice Nasch just used really pissed him off.

“Oh, Astral, you really wiped it all out?” A tiny hint of Shingetsu’s whiny voice broke through. “Then just took the seven of us back home to be your pets? I didn’t know you had such a taste for the exotic~”

Right then the sound of Yuma’s feet pounding on the stairs above them made Vector’s stupid human heart literally skip a beat, and not in a cute way—in fact it made him wonder if it was trying to stop entirely. That would have been convenient.

“Wait up, guys!” Yuma panted desperately.

Mizael let go of Vector’s arm with a hmph, but Girag had moved his bulk to block the path going down, so all Vector could do was straighten up and think fast. Nasch turned human again first as Yuma approached, then the others, but not so fast that Yuma didn’t catch sight of the transformation as he rounded the corner, panting and rosy-cheeked.

“W-what’re you all in such a hurry for?” Yuma laughed. “I mean, you can do whatever you want now that you’re alive again, but since the big fight is over, I was hoping we could all just be friends!”

Awkward silence. Nasch and Alito started to talk at the same time, then stopped and gave each other looks.

“To answer your question, Vector,” Astral said solemnly, “I did not destroy Barian world. It has been merged with Astral world, and all the souls that existed within each world now exist side by side.”

“All except for us,” Durbe said thoughtfully, adjusting his glasses.

Astral nodded once. “Yuma thought you all deserved a second chance, considering the way your human lives were cut short by Don Thousand’s manipulations.”

Yuma’s presence was bad enough on its own. But Vector was going to be damned—well, he already was—if he gave the other former emperors time to realize just how short his end of the stick was this time. Assuming they didn’t already know, in which case he wasn’t going to give them time to rub it in his face either.

“Yuma-kun~!” Vector cried out, just the slightest edge of Shingetsu still clinging on. “So you defeated Don Thousand after all?”

“Yeah!” Yuma looks thrilled, though there is a flicker of something in his eyes that Vector instinctively turns away from. “You don’t have to worry anymore. Uh, any of you! So, how about it? We’re not enemies anymore, right?”

“To exist in this world as humans means we will need some form of income,” Durbe said.

Astral pointed to each of them in turn, somewhere near their pockets. “I took the liberty of giving you all a modest starting amount. Yuma reminded me that Shark has quite a lot of money and a rather large mansion as well.”

Nasch makes an odd face with his shoulders tensed, like he’s suppressing his initial instinct to grimace. “Uh, yeah, you guys can crash there until you get your own places I guess.”

“I’m sure it’s for the best if I get a start on looking right away,” Vector said, a sharp edge slipping through the sickening sweet of his voice. “So excuse me please, Girag~”

Girag stepped aside at Nasch’s nod of permission, and with another prickle of feeling all their eyes on his neck, Vector hurried—but not too fast—down the stairs.

“Hey, wait right here, okay guys? I’ll be right back!” Yuma’s cheerful voice was already faint enough Vector could only just hear it.

Shit. Shit shit shit. He’d just been reaching into his pocket to see what Astral thought was a modest amount of cash. Vector looked for somewhere to hide. It would be so easy if he could just portal away like usual.

But there was nowhere except the nearest exit from the stairwell. He rushed for it and was halfway down the hall when the door clacked back open behind him. Ugh. There was no helping it.

At least the others weren’t watching.

“Shinge—ah—Vect—ehh, what should I call you??” Yuma laughed awkwardly as he approached.

“Vector,” Vector said in a low voice, not turning around.

Those puppy-like footsteps stumbled to a halt a little ways behind him. “O-okay, Vector! Hey, I was just coming to say, if you don’t want to stay with the other guys, you can come stay with me!”

This guy. Was he serious?

Heat crept up Vector’s back. Not so strange, really. Yuma was like a human sun, burning into him even when his eyes were closed, and in front of Vector, all that existed was the black scar of his own shadow, distorting the hallway floor like another gateway to hell. Sweat trickled down his back. Ugh. Sweat. The smell of his own fear and human-ness was already rising from inside his jacket. And his stomach felt hollow and cramped.

He was going to have to eat soon. Sleep. Piss. Shower. Get a job… what a joke. Hilarious! Astral sure had a sadistic sense of humor. Either that or he was much more oblivious than Vector had thought, setting Vector up with the perfect excuse to tug on Yuma’s heart strings. It would be so easy.

Pull out the waterworks. Turn around with tears in his eyes. Yuma-kun, I think I’m the only one who can’t access my Barian powers! The others are going to murder me in my sleep if I don’t stay with you. But I don’t want to cause any more trouble….

And then. And then. He would be the fox invited into the hen-house. Curl up and play with the foolish little chick who thought he could be friends with someone who’d just as soon swallow him whole. Bat the dumb kid around a bit while he giggles, not even realizing he’s getting slowly crushed by this “game.” How could Vector do anything else? It was just his nature, like a cat chasing a mouse. And Yuma was such a good mouse.

“Vector?” Yuma’s voice was a little breathless, and too close.

Vector turned sideways with half a glare out the window, still not looking directly at him. Yeah, like the sun… too dangerous to stare at for long.

“Yuma… you’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

Yuma laughed. Of course he did. A sheepish little laugh, scratching his head and waving his hands.

“Everybody says that! But I’m just glad you’re okay now.”

“Yeah….” Vector said distantly, a strange buzzing feeling beginning under his skin. Like an inverted sense of resonance, like a phantom limb, like the part of him that had been Barian had simply gone numb and was coming back as pins and needles. For a moment it excited him, but when there was still no response to his reach for power, he realized he was shivering. No, this wasn’t a sudden awakening. Maybe it was more like a premonition of an addict’s withdrawal.

Yuma, to his credit, hadn’t touched him yet. He wasn’t even quite within arm’s reach. From the little Vector could see out of the corner of his eye, Yuma’s smile wavered for a moment, then burst back brighter.

“What do you want, Yuma?” Vector asked, with false politeness.

“I, uhhhh… I want to duel you!” Yuma burst out.

“Duel?” Vector let the incredulous slant to his voice stay. “You want me to duel you? Again? How long has it even been since you were last dueling for your life? Haven’t you had enough by now?” Something was seriously wrong with this kid. Maybe he really did get off on near-death experiences.

Yuma wasn’t intimidated, still laughing nervously. “But it’s the best way for me to know what you’re feeling right now so—!” He groped for his duel disk.

Vector couldn’t help it. A sick laugh burst from him. “Yuma… What am I supposed to duel you with?” He spread his empty hands, indicating his lack of disk, d-gazer, or even deck. “And what for? To understand one another? I already understand you perfectly!”

But how could he, when Yuma was so beyond logic. Was his will to save Vector actually unbreakable? All Vector knew was that he never, ever wanted to find out. No, there would be no more dueling with Yuma. If that shred of a conscience Yuma believed in really still existed, Vector would have to refrain from taking such bait.

“Well, dueling is fun!” Yuma said stubbornly with a childish pout. “Can’t we just duel as friends for once?”

“Maybe later,” Vector sighed airily, though his lungs felt like they were operating at half-capacity as it was. “I have things to take care of and youhave lots of other friends to catch up with, don’t you? So, I’ll see you at school tomorrow, Yuma-kun.”

Yuma lit up at this reassurance, just as Vector hoped he would. “Yeah!! See you tomorrow, Shi—v-Vector! Ahaha!”

He gave Vector a big thumbs-up and, though it cost him about five years of whatever his new human lifespan is, Vector gave him one back—barely restraining the impulse to cringe when Yuma taps knuckles with him—before turning to walk away.

He didn’t hear Yuma’s footsteps withdraw, and so he didn’t look back over his shoulder until he’s turned the corner toward the building’s exit.

The act was worth it. Even three more minutes of being in Yuma’s orbit might have destroyed his resolve. As it was, his mind still raced with the perverse impulse to think ahead, to anticipate another meeting, another chance to—what?

No. He was going to stay far, far away from Yuma and all the other Barians. And do what? All his ambition, all his drive, it was just the restless energy of a rabid animal. He could duel (once he managed to build a deck, he thought bitterly), but it would have to be with enemies. Enemies or nobodies. People who didn’t matter, who didn’t know what he once was, and didn’t know what he was (what was he?) now. Vector chewed his thumbnail as his shoulders crept up toward his ears, the sun setting to his right as he set out on the nearest path to the waterfront. The water itself was blindingly glittering when he came within sight of it, the light breeze a bit warm. He wanted to close his eyes against it but couldn’t help staring at the dazzling brightness.

It was going to be gone soon. The sun was setting.

To his left, his shadow was so long it crept up a building on the opposite side of the street. And when he looked at it directly, the neon afterimage of the glittering light on the water swam and danced on the darkness of it like mosquito larvae in a pond, expanding and swelling into the reaching pale sickly hands of ghosts.

He closed his eyes, but they were still there, even closer, behind his eyelids, the afterimage burning and burning until he was panting and all he could do was turn back toward the light in desperation.

At a bench on the edge of the water, he sat, watching the sun go down. He let his eyes take in every last ray, knowing exactly what would be waiting for him in the shadows when it was gone.

#zexal #vector #barians #tsukumo yuma #yu gi oh zexal

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