Aftermath is a short one-off written by StarfallRaptor. It was posted on May 31 2010 at 12:46 AM and can be read here.
Synopsis[]
Neku stands on a lonely hill and observes the graves of his closest companions: Cale, Ryu Kagetora, Roy Hawkeye, Slash and Agito. He reflects on what they meant to him and how they died:
- Cale had fallen in love with Aimee, but when she hooked up with Aydin he joined Dragonstorm and found a new mate, Kayra. He attacked his former allies, but when Kayra attacked Aimee he killed her and then died from injuries sustained.
- Kagetora recieved secret orders to kill anyone with knowledge of Dragonstorm, and to that effect gunned down "three members of the newly-reunited team" before being killed himself.
- Hawkeye refused to betray his comprades and so was killed by Cale.
- Slash and Agito stood by each other even as the team self-destructed from within, but were both killed by Kayra.
Neku reflects on how he had hoped to marry Snow after everything was over, but she had left him saying that "he had changed, and was not the one she loved any longer".
The story ends with Neku uttering a single thought: "Evolution is cruel. It doesn't care for the people it kills, shows no mercy to anyone...and so, I fade into obscurity, just another relic of the past..."
Relationship to canon[]
Starfall himself declared this story non-canon roughly two hours after posting it. As it all turned out, none of the events chronicled in this story came to pass; canonically Neku died but all of his friends survived, Neku left Snow and not the other way around, and the character Kayra never existed, instead being replaced with Roux, a more sympathetic character.