Cardfight!! Vanguard: Heiwa - Volume II

-Part 3

One's loss meant the separation from his friends and the continuation of the other's life's work.

One's victory meant the continuation of a peaceful life with his friends and the end of the other's dream.

Filled with the bone-crushing fear of losing everything, but with the determination needed to still risk it all, Izuru slammed open to doors between him and his fate.

"ENDO!" Izuru roared, grinning. "Here I am!"

"So it would seem." Endo mused. While typically he'd have the annoying, businessman-like cocky smile when confronting Izuru, this time, he embraced the importance of the confront and kept a stern look on his face. "Allow me to ask you something."

"Shoot it." The black haired replied, setting himself on the other end of the fighting table.

"Why? Why do you want to stop the work that has been done in Heiwa? You saw the results yourself, all I did resulted in the bettering of Heiwa, so why do you want all of that to be gone?"

"That's a tough one... My problem isn't the results. As far as I'm concerned, the results are good. But that doesn't mean I like how things were done. I don't like the controlled habitat you made out of this school. But that isn't fair to say, because as far as I'm concerned... Heiwa can burn in hell."

"What?" Endo asked with a narrowed glare.

"Heiwa was just a meeting place. This could have gone any other way. I could have met them in Hagiwara, Setsuna, Seigatsu, any other school. Heiwa isn't what's keeping us together, no matter how much my fears say otherwise." Izuru chuckled, looking at his hand. "But even so, this is a place we like. I'm not fighting for Heiwa or for everyone that is there, I'm only fighting the people I care about."

"Then you must know that I'm doing is the right thing. Heiwa was a bottomless pit that destroyed the lives of most of the people to set foot in it. I and Enomoto-san may have ended up differently, but many of the people we know turned out as toxics wastes for society. Our friends, our teachers, Minami's mother. If allowed to grow without any control, Heiwa will once again bloom into that curse."

"Heiwa doesn't belong to either of us." Izuru stated. "It's not mine to protect, nor yours to control. You're giving people everything they need for this phase of their lives, serving them everything on a silver platter, but what's next?"

"They'll learn how to handle themselves from what they learned in Heiwa." Endo answered.

"They will destroy their own lives one way or the other." He retorted. "What's the different between the Heiwa's from now and the past? Just because things are being done differently doesn't mean the results will change. You're raising people like domestic animals and then releasing them into the wilds filled with predators."

"That is-"

Izuru grabbed a deck of student cards, all of them belonging to people who had graduated from Heiwa during Endo's time as a headmaster, and scattered them into the air, before they were blown away by the winds.

"The truth you've been rejecting, Endo." Izuru said. "You can say that this is just a different version of the Nature vs Man argument."

"If allowed to grow without control, Nature will overtake and destroy Man."

"And if too controlled, Nature will be destroyed by Man. I don't hate every decision you made for Heiwa, but I can't agree with alot of the others. Heiwa is a place we like, the place where we achieved our goals and grew as people, so in regards of that, I'll fight to better it one last time." Izuru declared.

"Then I'll allow you to play hero one last time. Once again, history will repeat itself. If you want to play the hero, Sawada Izuru, then die like one." Endo replied.