[YGO!/HL, AU] “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (09/15)
Title: “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (09/15)
Fandom: Highlander, Yu-Gi-Oh!, with some ideas borrowed from The Dresden Files.
Author: darkjediprinces (Hi there, that’s me!)
Feedback: IS ALWAYS WELCOME, THANK YOU~! <3
Rating: R/M
Word Count: 3,275
Characters: Yami/Atemu, Yugi Mutou, Ryou Bakura, Methos, Yami Bakura/Malik, Duncan MacLeod, Joe Dawson, Kronos, Adam Pierson (OC), Seshata-per-say (OC)
Pairings: Yami/Yugi, Yami/Persy (OC)
Warnings: Maleslash/Shounen-ai, violence, gore, swearing.
Summary: Five thousand years ago, Pharaoh Tepeysa-Yami lost his closest friends in a ritual to imprison the enemy that threatened to tear about his people and country, while he continued to live, an Immortal destined to outlive all of his mortal lovers and friends. Now, something has drawn him to the sleepy town of Seacouver, Washington, and while he’s not sure what it is, events are certain to make what was once a boring little town on the west coast of the United States a place of chaos and death…
Disclaimer: I don’t own Yu-Gi-Oh! or Highlander. Yu-Gi-Oh! is most definitely the property of Kazuki Takahashi. I don’t know who owns Highlander, but it ain’t me. Ideas borrowed from The Dresden Files belong to Jim Butcher. Seshata-per-sey/Persy/Phoebe Vance belongs to my dear friend kawaiispinel. <3 I do, however, own Adam Pierson :). Sort of. You’ll see. Anyway, this is just a wacky place-swap AU for one of my other stories. No money is being made, etc etc.
Author’s Notes: A bit more of Yami's past here... I'm not sure what possessed me to add it, but it seemed to fit him. You'll see what I'm talking about...
Crosspostings: card_crossings, yami_no_hikari, highland_cross, crossoverfic
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For Whom the Bell Tolls
Chapter 09: Shadows
“Beaten, what for? [What for?]
Can't take much more
One - Nothing wrong with me
Two - Nothing wrong with me
Three - Nothing wrong with me
Four - Nothing wrong with me
One - Something’s got to give
Two - Something’s got to give
Three - Something’s got to give
Now
Let the bodies hit the floor”
- “Bodies” by Drowning Pool
When I woke up, the clock read 6:30 AM and I actually wasn’t all that tired. Yugi was still fast asleep and clinging to me as though I might abruptly vanish. I chuckled a bit at that and closed my eyes again, taking several deep breaths as I did. I managed to fall asleep again not long after, despite not being very tired, and dreamed when I did.
In my dream, I was in a city in broad daylight, but it was still very dim out; bright enough to be able to see, barely, but also incredibly gloomy. Like Seacouver, it was a sea-side town; unlike Seacouver, it was much larger. I vaguely recognized the place; perhaps I’d passed through it on my way to Seacouver, though I couldn’t specifically remember.
The sky was clouded over. Completely clouded over, and not with water vapour clouds, either. These clouds appeared to be made of ash; they let very little light through. I felt something in my left hand; when I checked, I found myself holding, of all things, a Geiger Counter.
Whispers came from the shadows behind me, indistinct but somehow sinister. I closed my eyes, shivering. When I closed my eyes, the whispers became more distinct, and I could make out words.
“Remember Hiroshima?” the words said, and I started as a flash of phantom pain went through a scar on my neck, leftover from a shard of glass piercing my throat on a sweltering August day in Japan, in 1945. “Remember the misery, the pain? You brought that on the rest of the world, Pharaoh! Now the whole world knows what it was like!”
The shadows engulfed me, and I woke with a cry from the nightmare, cold sweat on the back of my neck, the clock now reading 8:39 AM. I woke Yugi up at the same time, and he blinked sleepily at me before an alarmed expression crossed his face.
“Yami?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
I took several shaky breaths, closing my eyes for a moment. “Nightmare,” I said after a moment. “Bad one.”
He looked concerned. “You… wanna talk about it?” he asked.
I wasn’t about to shut him out of this part of my life; sometimes the dreams I had were more than just dreams, and I had a feeling that this was one of those. “I…” I took a deep breath and continued, “In the dream… I was standing in a seaside city. The sky was covered in ash.” I closed my eyes. “Whispers in the dark said…” I choked up for a moment. “…Said I’d brought the world into a nuclear winter.”
He blinked. “I… can see how that would bother anyone, but… it seems worse for you,” he said.
I nodded. “I was at Hiroshima,” I answered, my voice barely more than a whisper. My hand went to the scar on the left side of my throat. “And ever since then, I’ve felt very strongly about nuclear warfare.”
He exhaled sharply. “You… were…”
“…Living in Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945,” I answered, nodding. “That day was… the second worst day of my life. The first being the day I lost Malik and Methos.”
He frowned, apparently in thought. “What… do you think prompted the nightmare? I mean… it’s November, not August. Hiroshima Day was more than three months ago.”
“I’m not entirely sure it was just a nightmare,” I said with a sigh. “Like Odd Thomas I also sometimes get prophetic dreams. I’ve got a bad feeling this was one of them.”
Yugi swallowed. “Oh… crap… That’s… really bad.”
I nodded. “If there’s a nuclear winter in our future… that’s way more than bad.”
“Yeah. Gotta agree with that.”
I exhaled sharply. “That reminds me. I know I said Immortals can’t get sick or poisoned, but there’s one exception to that rule.”
“Oh God,” Yugi guessed, “radiation poisoning?”
I nodded. “Radiation kills living cells, so it still affects us. Our cells won’t stay dead, but we can get radiation poisoning and we can die from it. We just won’t die permanently.”
“You were at Hiroshima,” Yugi began, trailing off, catching on to the source of my information.
“And I wasn’t very far from the hypocentre.”
“So…” he looked a little queasy. “…You’ve died from it, haven’t you?”
“Four or five separate times after Hiroshima. Once after Chernobyl.”
He choked. “You were at Chernobyl too?”
“I got a bad feeling about what was going to happen,” I sighed, “and managed to get out before I suffered enough damage to die multiple times from A.R.S. Still wasn’t pleasant. Got a bad feeling before Hiroshima too, but didn’t trust it.” I shook my head. “That was the last time I ever ignored my instincts.”
“That had to have been… horrible. Just… horrible,” he whispered.
“Agonizing,” I agreed. “But dying from a piece of glass flying into my throat and then from third degree burns-twice, in that case, once from the heat wave and again from the conflagration-was worse.”
He touched the scar on my neck. “Is that where…?” he began. I nodded. “Whaddya mean by ‘the conflagration’?” He asked a moment later.
“After the bomb went off, everything caught on fire,” I said. “And I mean everything. Another side effect of nuclear weapons. The heat’s just so intense… Dry roasted me during the initial blast, then happened again when I woke up a few minutes later and got caught in the fires. The same thing didn’t happen at Nagasaki, but that was because the Fat Man was off-target and actually landed outside of the city. Wasn’t much to light on fire there. Anyway, the spontaneous fires igniting all over are known as a conflagration.” I shook my head. “Dying via side effects of nuclear weapons is one of the most painful ways to go. Hope you never have to experience it.”
He lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry you did have to experience it.”
I smiled grimly and got out of bed, stretching. “It was a long time ago,” I said. “More than a thousand years at this point. For the most part I’ve been able to move on. Topic’s depressing to talk about, though,” I added with a somewhat less grim smile, “so perhaps we should change the subject?”
“Good idea,” Yugi agreed. “What’s on the agenda today?”
I thought about it for a moment as I pulled on a long-sleeved shirt and tied my hair back into its usual ponytail. Then I said, “I think you might actually be teaching me today, instead of vice-versa.”
Yugi blinked. “What?”
“The card game, Duel Monsters,” I said with a wan smile. “I need to know more about it. The rules, everything.”
“If it’s based on the Shadow Games, wouldn’t you already know the rules?”
“I know the rules of a Shadow Duel,” I answered, shrugging. “The rules of the card game will have some differences.”
Yugi nodded. “Okay. Well, then, Adam and Bakura can help me teach you. And so can Malik and Methos. They’ve learned the game too.”
I smiled. “Then let’s go down and see them, shall we?”
Yugi grinned back. “We shall.”
We went down to the second floor and gathered up Adam and Bakura. It was cramped in either of our rooms for a card game lesson, so we went downstairs to where the tournament was being held. The four of us (Malik and Methos opted to remain within Bakura and Adam’s bodies for the time being) sat at the sidelines, watching the duels for a moment before Yugi started describing the rules to me.
“Every duelist has at least two separate decks,” Yugi told me. “Main deck and Side deck. Main deck has a minimum of forty cards in it. Max is sixty. I keep mine at forty, because it’s more likely I’ll draw the card I need that way.”
I nodded. “Fewer cards, higher probability of the card you want being the one on top,” I deduced.
Yugi grinned and nodded. “There are six kinds of cards: regular monsters, effect monsters, fusion monsters, ritual monsters, magic cards, and trap cards.” He went on to describe the differences between each kind of card. I listened intently, taking mental notes the whole time.
“I’m guessing it’s a bad idea to have only monsters in your deck,” I said with a small smile.
“Oh yeah. Joey made that mistake when he was starting out on the game. Had to set him straight on the matter,” Yugi answered with a grin. “It’s recommended that you have a roughly one-to-one monster-to-magic/trap card ratio.”
“In a forty-card deck, twenty monsters and twenty magic or trap cards.”
We watched a duel between a pair of teenagers for a few moments before someone approached us and challenged Adam to a match. Adam smirked a bit at us and said, “Long as you don’t mind my friends here watching.”
His opponent didn’t mind. They set up cross-legged on the floor, each setting up a mat consisting of fourteen card-sized rectangles spread evenly into two rows, shuffling their decks before setting them down on the right-hand side of each of their mats. Adam removed a fifty-pence coin from his pocket and showed it to the young man he was facing.
“Call it,” he said.
“What currency is that?” his opponent asked, curious and entirely polite.
“British pence. I’m from Wales. Heads or tails?”
“Tails.”
Adam deftly flicked the coin into the air, catching it as it came down and slapping it onto the back of his hand. The coin came up heads, and Adam smiled. “You’re first, mate,” he said. Then he drew the top five cards from his deck. His opponent mirrored him, and the duel began.
Adam maintained an almost meditative level of concentration throughout the whole duel. I was certain he and Methos were strategizing together for most of it, though Methos never actually took visible control of Adam’s body. Apparently he preferred to hang back and act as an advisor.
Unfortunately for Adam’s opponent, two heads were always better than one, and Methos had always had a good mind for strategy. Not quite as good as I had been at it, but still above average. Though it was close towards the end, Adam won the duel. To my surprise, once they’d finished, both Adam and his opponent gathered up their cards, reshuffled their decks, and began again.
“Match is best two out of three,” Yugi whispered to me when I gave him a slightly confused look. I nodded and continued to observe, still taking mental notes. I was impressed with Adam’s ability to focus on the duel even while he mentally conversed with my old friend. He was quite the multi-tasker; had it been me, I’m sure I would’ve looked a little hazy while I was doing the whole mental conversation thing.
I glanced over to Bakura, who looked somewhat distant himself. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to Malik or if maybe it was the voices Malik sometimes heard echoing in his own ears. “Bakura?” I asked quietly.
He blinked. “Yes, Ate-er, Yami-sama?” he asked after a moment.
I smiled a bit. “Old habits die hard, eh?”
He gave me a bit of a half-smile. “Apparently.”
“You were looking a bit distant just now,” I noted.
“Oh,” Bakura said with a sigh. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m not nearly as good at multi-tasking as Adam is. Malik was hallucinating again… I got distracted.”
I grimaced. “The voices,” I said, quietly. “He believes them to be the Shadow Games?”
Bakura nodded. “I’m not sure they’re not,” he admitted.
A feeling of uneasiness came over me. For the moment, I tried to ignore it and pay attention to the duel. Adam’s second game came to a draw, and they reset for the next duel, flipping the coin again to figure out who would go first, since neither had won the previous game.
By now I had a pretty good grasp of the rules and procedure of the game. I continued to watch anyway, in case I’d missed something. Adam won the final game in the match, and thus won the match as well. He shook hands with his opponent, smiling congenially.
“Good match,” he said. “Nice playing with you.”
His opponent departed, and Adam sighed, leaning against the wall as he put his deck away. “Did that help, Pharaoh?” he asked.
I arched an eyebrow at him. “I keep telling you guys, I’m not Pharaoh anymore.”
Adam gave me a lopsided grin. “Old habits die hard.”
I snorted. “That helped. Thanks Adam.” I frowned a bit at him. “Methos was helping you, wasn’t he?”
Adam shrugged. “A bit. Usually I’ll only ask him for help if I’m stumped. Sometimes he has something to say regardless, though.”
I nodded slowly. “I have to ask,” I said, smiling just a bit, “because I’m kind of curious… What’s it like, sharing a body with him?”
Adam frowned, apparently considering his answer. “It’s… really odd. Especially when he’s in control. Being aware of everything going on around me, but I don’t have control of my own limbs or anything else. There’s… nothing I can really compare it to. Except perhaps the concept of a backseat driver.”
I snorted.
“Methos says the experience is the same for him when I’m in control,” Adam added with a small grin. “But also adds that it’s my body, so that’s just something he has to put up with and get used to.”
“Well at least he’s being polite about it,” I said with a small chuckle.
Adam shrugged, still smiling. “Sometimes I pick up on his thoughts when I don’t mean to. And vice-versa. That can be a bit unsettling at times. And it’s always startling when he suddenly decides he has something to say after several minutes or hours of being quiet.”
I snorted quietly. “I can imagine.” I turned to Bakura. “I can also imagine that it’s much worse for you.”
Bakura nodded. “When I first got the Ring, Malik wouldn’t even tell me his name,” he said, quietly. “I ended up calling him Spirit most of the time, and when Otosan found out about him, he’d refer to him as Mou Hitori no Ryou.”
“Huh?” Adam and Yugi chorused.
“‘The other Ryou’,” I translated.
Bakura blinked. “You speak Japanese?”
“I lived there for awhile,” I answered. “Mostly during and after World War II. I make it a point to learn the native language of whatever country I happen to be staying in, if I don’t already know it.”
Bakura winced and nodded. “When I finally learned Malik’s name,” he continued, “it was from Methos, during the Duelist Kingdom tournament.”
I arched an eyebrow. “How long was that after you acquired the Ring?”
“A little more than two and a half years.”
I rolled my eyes. “Malik,” I said, raising my voice slightly, “you’re an ass.”
Bakura choked back a laugh, then replied, “Uhm, he says he’s not going to dignify that with a response.”
“He just did,” I countered with a sly grin.
Bakura choked back another laugh. “He’s glaring at you right now.”
I laughed. “Ah, I missed bantering with them. Though honestly it’s a little awkward when I have to work through an intermediary.”
Bakura’s face broke into a genuine, albeit closed-mouthed, smile, an expression which was positively radiant on him. Probably because he didn’t seem to smile very often.
“You should smile more often,” I told him, smiling myself. “Yours is a good one.”
His smile turned a bit sheepish. “Hard to smile these days,” he said quietly.
I exhaled slowly and nodded. “Understandable.”
I started to notice that feeling of uneasiness again right about then, and it was growing stronger. I grimaced.
“Something wrong?” Yugi asked.
“I sense a disturbance in the Force,” I murmured.
“I’m assuming you mean that metaphorically,” Adam replied. I nodded.
“I do have a bad feeling,” I said.
“And?” Adam asked.
“We have intuition for a reason,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t ignore my instincts anymore; there’s a reason for this.”
The timing of the whole thing was incredibly contrived. Just as I said it, I felt a Buzz, signalling the approach of an Immortal. Yugi had just turned in the direction of its source when he was seized by the neck.
By Kronos.
Kronos held Yugi against his chest, one arm locked through Yugi’s to prevent him from reaching for a weapon (not that Yugi had one on him). The other held his claymore, resting against Yugi’s neck, clearly threatening decapitation.
Malik and Methos abruptly replaced Adam and Bakura, standing immediately as I leapt to my feet too and drew my sword. Or rather, Methos replaced Adam. Malik appeared beside Bakura, apparently fully solid.
Kronos sneered at me. “I’d’ve thought you would see this coming, Pharaoh,” he said. I glowered, sliding my left foot forward just a bit. “You know what I’m looking for,” he continued. “Or rather, who.”
“Persy won’t ever go back the Horsemen,” I growled to him. “You must know that by now.”
Yugi stared at me, eyes wide and frightened. Kronos just smirked at me. “You have no way of knowing that for sure,” he countered. “There’s darkness in her soul, Pharaoh. It’s always been there.” His voice lowered to a dangerous whisper. “You should never have taken her from me. I’ll pay you back tenfold for that.”
Methos snarled and stepped in front of me. “Try it,” he growled to Kronos. “I dare you.”
Kronos glowered at him. “This is between me and the Pharaoh,” he snapped. “Whoever you are, stay out of it if you know what’s good for you.”
Methos scowled. “Any quarrel you have with him, you also have with me and Malik,” he snapped. “And if it were just between you and Yami, you wouldn’t be holding Yugi hostage.”
“Yes he would,” I countered. “He doesn’t care about anyone. People’re just tools to him. Or animals to be slaughtered for fun.” I turned back to Kronos. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” I told him, voice lowering in volume to a quiet, even tone. “Unhand Yugi this instant, or face the consequences.”
Kronos laughed. “I’m fully aware of your capabilities, Pharaoh. You don’t scare me.”
I smiled grimly at him. “But you’re not aware of the capabilities of my friends here,” I said. Out of the corner of my mouth, I asked Methos, voice pitched so only he could hear it, “You have a sword, right? Tell me you have a sword…”
“Nope,” Methos sighed, just as quietly.
Apparently Malik could hear us too, for he muttered something under his breath and tossed a conjured khepesh to Methos. “Careful with that,” he warned.
Methos rolled his eyes but grinned, brandishing the weapon with a flourish. Bakura set his jaw and lifted his right hand, bearing a brass ring set with a garnet around his right ring finger. Malik spoke a single word in Archaic Egyptian, and his staff, long, straight, silver, and topped with a deep blue gem, appeared in his right hand.
Kronos’s eyes flicked from me to Methos, to Malik, to Bakura, and then to the Millennium Puzzle and Ring. His eyes widened in shock and recognition.
And fear.
And there was my proof. Kronos could only have recognized the Millennium Items if he’d been told about them by someone else. I hadn’t ever said a word to him about it. He knew about them, though, and that meant…
…It meant that Kronos was, indeed, in league with the Shadow Games.
My life is starting to get way too complicated.
* * *
<- Previous || Next ->
Fandom: Highlander, Yu-Gi-Oh!, with some ideas borrowed from The Dresden Files.
Author: darkjediprinces (Hi there, that’s me!)
Feedback: IS ALWAYS WELCOME, THANK YOU~! <3
Rating: R/M
Word Count: 3,275
Characters: Yami/Atemu, Yugi Mutou, Ryou Bakura, Methos, Yami Bakura/Malik, Duncan MacLeod, Joe Dawson, Kronos, Adam Pierson (OC), Seshata-per-say (OC)
Pairings: Yami/Yugi, Yami/Persy (OC)
Warnings: Maleslash/Shounen-ai, violence, gore, swearing.
Summary: Five thousand years ago, Pharaoh Tepeysa-Yami lost his closest friends in a ritual to imprison the enemy that threatened to tear about his people and country, while he continued to live, an Immortal destined to outlive all of his mortal lovers and friends. Now, something has drawn him to the sleepy town of Seacouver, Washington, and while he’s not sure what it is, events are certain to make what was once a boring little town on the west coast of the United States a place of chaos and death…
Disclaimer: I don’t own Yu-Gi-Oh! or Highlander. Yu-Gi-Oh! is most definitely the property of Kazuki Takahashi. I don’t know who owns Highlander, but it ain’t me. Ideas borrowed from The Dresden Files belong to Jim Butcher. Seshata-per-sey/Persy/Phoebe Vance belongs to my dear friend kawaiispinel. <3 I do, however, own Adam Pierson :). Sort of. You’ll see. Anyway, this is just a wacky place-swap AU for one of my other stories. No money is being made, etc etc.
Author’s Notes: A bit more of Yami's past here... I'm not sure what possessed me to add it, but it seemed to fit him. You'll see what I'm talking about...
Crosspostings: card_crossings, yami_no_hikari, highland_cross, crossoverfic
<- Previous || Next ->
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Chapter 09: Shadows
“Beaten, what for? [What for?]
Can't take much more
One - Nothing wrong with me
Two - Nothing wrong with me
Three - Nothing wrong with me
Four - Nothing wrong with me
One - Something’s got to give
Two - Something’s got to give
Three - Something’s got to give
Now
Let the bodies hit the floor”
- “Bodies” by Drowning Pool
When I woke up, the clock read 6:30 AM and I actually wasn’t all that tired. Yugi was still fast asleep and clinging to me as though I might abruptly vanish. I chuckled a bit at that and closed my eyes again, taking several deep breaths as I did. I managed to fall asleep again not long after, despite not being very tired, and dreamed when I did.
In my dream, I was in a city in broad daylight, but it was still very dim out; bright enough to be able to see, barely, but also incredibly gloomy. Like Seacouver, it was a sea-side town; unlike Seacouver, it was much larger. I vaguely recognized the place; perhaps I’d passed through it on my way to Seacouver, though I couldn’t specifically remember.
The sky was clouded over. Completely clouded over, and not with water vapour clouds, either. These clouds appeared to be made of ash; they let very little light through. I felt something in my left hand; when I checked, I found myself holding, of all things, a Geiger Counter.
Whispers came from the shadows behind me, indistinct but somehow sinister. I closed my eyes, shivering. When I closed my eyes, the whispers became more distinct, and I could make out words.
“Remember Hiroshima?” the words said, and I started as a flash of phantom pain went through a scar on my neck, leftover from a shard of glass piercing my throat on a sweltering August day in Japan, in 1945. “Remember the misery, the pain? You brought that on the rest of the world, Pharaoh! Now the whole world knows what it was like!”
The shadows engulfed me, and I woke with a cry from the nightmare, cold sweat on the back of my neck, the clock now reading 8:39 AM. I woke Yugi up at the same time, and he blinked sleepily at me before an alarmed expression crossed his face.
“Yami?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
I took several shaky breaths, closing my eyes for a moment. “Nightmare,” I said after a moment. “Bad one.”
He looked concerned. “You… wanna talk about it?” he asked.
I wasn’t about to shut him out of this part of my life; sometimes the dreams I had were more than just dreams, and I had a feeling that this was one of those. “I…” I took a deep breath and continued, “In the dream… I was standing in a seaside city. The sky was covered in ash.” I closed my eyes. “Whispers in the dark said…” I choked up for a moment. “…Said I’d brought the world into a nuclear winter.”
He blinked. “I… can see how that would bother anyone, but… it seems worse for you,” he said.
I nodded. “I was at Hiroshima,” I answered, my voice barely more than a whisper. My hand went to the scar on the left side of my throat. “And ever since then, I’ve felt very strongly about nuclear warfare.”
He exhaled sharply. “You… were…”
“…Living in Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945,” I answered, nodding. “That day was… the second worst day of my life. The first being the day I lost Malik and Methos.”
He frowned, apparently in thought. “What… do you think prompted the nightmare? I mean… it’s November, not August. Hiroshima Day was more than three months ago.”
“I’m not entirely sure it was just a nightmare,” I said with a sigh. “Like Odd Thomas I also sometimes get prophetic dreams. I’ve got a bad feeling this was one of them.”
Yugi swallowed. “Oh… crap… That’s… really bad.”
I nodded. “If there’s a nuclear winter in our future… that’s way more than bad.”
“Yeah. Gotta agree with that.”
I exhaled sharply. “That reminds me. I know I said Immortals can’t get sick or poisoned, but there’s one exception to that rule.”
“Oh God,” Yugi guessed, “radiation poisoning?”
I nodded. “Radiation kills living cells, so it still affects us. Our cells won’t stay dead, but we can get radiation poisoning and we can die from it. We just won’t die permanently.”
“You were at Hiroshima,” Yugi began, trailing off, catching on to the source of my information.
“And I wasn’t very far from the hypocentre.”
“So…” he looked a little queasy. “…You’ve died from it, haven’t you?”
“Four or five separate times after Hiroshima. Once after Chernobyl.”
He choked. “You were at Chernobyl too?”
“I got a bad feeling about what was going to happen,” I sighed, “and managed to get out before I suffered enough damage to die multiple times from A.R.S. Still wasn’t pleasant. Got a bad feeling before Hiroshima too, but didn’t trust it.” I shook my head. “That was the last time I ever ignored my instincts.”
“That had to have been… horrible. Just… horrible,” he whispered.
“Agonizing,” I agreed. “But dying from a piece of glass flying into my throat and then from third degree burns-twice, in that case, once from the heat wave and again from the conflagration-was worse.”
He touched the scar on my neck. “Is that where…?” he began. I nodded. “Whaddya mean by ‘the conflagration’?” He asked a moment later.
“After the bomb went off, everything caught on fire,” I said. “And I mean everything. Another side effect of nuclear weapons. The heat’s just so intense… Dry roasted me during the initial blast, then happened again when I woke up a few minutes later and got caught in the fires. The same thing didn’t happen at Nagasaki, but that was because the Fat Man was off-target and actually landed outside of the city. Wasn’t much to light on fire there. Anyway, the spontaneous fires igniting all over are known as a conflagration.” I shook my head. “Dying via side effects of nuclear weapons is one of the most painful ways to go. Hope you never have to experience it.”
He lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry you did have to experience it.”
I smiled grimly and got out of bed, stretching. “It was a long time ago,” I said. “More than a thousand years at this point. For the most part I’ve been able to move on. Topic’s depressing to talk about, though,” I added with a somewhat less grim smile, “so perhaps we should change the subject?”
“Good idea,” Yugi agreed. “What’s on the agenda today?”
I thought about it for a moment as I pulled on a long-sleeved shirt and tied my hair back into its usual ponytail. Then I said, “I think you might actually be teaching me today, instead of vice-versa.”
Yugi blinked. “What?”
“The card game, Duel Monsters,” I said with a wan smile. “I need to know more about it. The rules, everything.”
“If it’s based on the Shadow Games, wouldn’t you already know the rules?”
“I know the rules of a Shadow Duel,” I answered, shrugging. “The rules of the card game will have some differences.”
Yugi nodded. “Okay. Well, then, Adam and Bakura can help me teach you. And so can Malik and Methos. They’ve learned the game too.”
I smiled. “Then let’s go down and see them, shall we?”
Yugi grinned back. “We shall.”
We went down to the second floor and gathered up Adam and Bakura. It was cramped in either of our rooms for a card game lesson, so we went downstairs to where the tournament was being held. The four of us (Malik and Methos opted to remain within Bakura and Adam’s bodies for the time being) sat at the sidelines, watching the duels for a moment before Yugi started describing the rules to me.
“Every duelist has at least two separate decks,” Yugi told me. “Main deck and Side deck. Main deck has a minimum of forty cards in it. Max is sixty. I keep mine at forty, because it’s more likely I’ll draw the card I need that way.”
I nodded. “Fewer cards, higher probability of the card you want being the one on top,” I deduced.
Yugi grinned and nodded. “There are six kinds of cards: regular monsters, effect monsters, fusion monsters, ritual monsters, magic cards, and trap cards.” He went on to describe the differences between each kind of card. I listened intently, taking mental notes the whole time.
“I’m guessing it’s a bad idea to have only monsters in your deck,” I said with a small smile.
“Oh yeah. Joey made that mistake when he was starting out on the game. Had to set him straight on the matter,” Yugi answered with a grin. “It’s recommended that you have a roughly one-to-one monster-to-magic/trap card ratio.”
“In a forty-card deck, twenty monsters and twenty magic or trap cards.”
We watched a duel between a pair of teenagers for a few moments before someone approached us and challenged Adam to a match. Adam smirked a bit at us and said, “Long as you don’t mind my friends here watching.”
His opponent didn’t mind. They set up cross-legged on the floor, each setting up a mat consisting of fourteen card-sized rectangles spread evenly into two rows, shuffling their decks before setting them down on the right-hand side of each of their mats. Adam removed a fifty-pence coin from his pocket and showed it to the young man he was facing.
“Call it,” he said.
“What currency is that?” his opponent asked, curious and entirely polite.
“British pence. I’m from Wales. Heads or tails?”
“Tails.”
Adam deftly flicked the coin into the air, catching it as it came down and slapping it onto the back of his hand. The coin came up heads, and Adam smiled. “You’re first, mate,” he said. Then he drew the top five cards from his deck. His opponent mirrored him, and the duel began.
Adam maintained an almost meditative level of concentration throughout the whole duel. I was certain he and Methos were strategizing together for most of it, though Methos never actually took visible control of Adam’s body. Apparently he preferred to hang back and act as an advisor.
Unfortunately for Adam’s opponent, two heads were always better than one, and Methos had always had a good mind for strategy. Not quite as good as I had been at it, but still above average. Though it was close towards the end, Adam won the duel. To my surprise, once they’d finished, both Adam and his opponent gathered up their cards, reshuffled their decks, and began again.
“Match is best two out of three,” Yugi whispered to me when I gave him a slightly confused look. I nodded and continued to observe, still taking mental notes. I was impressed with Adam’s ability to focus on the duel even while he mentally conversed with my old friend. He was quite the multi-tasker; had it been me, I’m sure I would’ve looked a little hazy while I was doing the whole mental conversation thing.
I glanced over to Bakura, who looked somewhat distant himself. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to Malik or if maybe it was the voices Malik sometimes heard echoing in his own ears. “Bakura?” I asked quietly.
He blinked. “Yes, Ate-er, Yami-sama?” he asked after a moment.
I smiled a bit. “Old habits die hard, eh?”
He gave me a bit of a half-smile. “Apparently.”
“You were looking a bit distant just now,” I noted.
“Oh,” Bakura said with a sigh. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m not nearly as good at multi-tasking as Adam is. Malik was hallucinating again… I got distracted.”
I grimaced. “The voices,” I said, quietly. “He believes them to be the Shadow Games?”
Bakura nodded. “I’m not sure they’re not,” he admitted.
A feeling of uneasiness came over me. For the moment, I tried to ignore it and pay attention to the duel. Adam’s second game came to a draw, and they reset for the next duel, flipping the coin again to figure out who would go first, since neither had won the previous game.
By now I had a pretty good grasp of the rules and procedure of the game. I continued to watch anyway, in case I’d missed something. Adam won the final game in the match, and thus won the match as well. He shook hands with his opponent, smiling congenially.
“Good match,” he said. “Nice playing with you.”
His opponent departed, and Adam sighed, leaning against the wall as he put his deck away. “Did that help, Pharaoh?” he asked.
I arched an eyebrow at him. “I keep telling you guys, I’m not Pharaoh anymore.”
Adam gave me a lopsided grin. “Old habits die hard.”
I snorted. “That helped. Thanks Adam.” I frowned a bit at him. “Methos was helping you, wasn’t he?”
Adam shrugged. “A bit. Usually I’ll only ask him for help if I’m stumped. Sometimes he has something to say regardless, though.”
I nodded slowly. “I have to ask,” I said, smiling just a bit, “because I’m kind of curious… What’s it like, sharing a body with him?”
Adam frowned, apparently considering his answer. “It’s… really odd. Especially when he’s in control. Being aware of everything going on around me, but I don’t have control of my own limbs or anything else. There’s… nothing I can really compare it to. Except perhaps the concept of a backseat driver.”
I snorted.
“Methos says the experience is the same for him when I’m in control,” Adam added with a small grin. “But also adds that it’s my body, so that’s just something he has to put up with and get used to.”
“Well at least he’s being polite about it,” I said with a small chuckle.
Adam shrugged, still smiling. “Sometimes I pick up on his thoughts when I don’t mean to. And vice-versa. That can be a bit unsettling at times. And it’s always startling when he suddenly decides he has something to say after several minutes or hours of being quiet.”
I snorted quietly. “I can imagine.” I turned to Bakura. “I can also imagine that it’s much worse for you.”
Bakura nodded. “When I first got the Ring, Malik wouldn’t even tell me his name,” he said, quietly. “I ended up calling him Spirit most of the time, and when Otosan found out about him, he’d refer to him as Mou Hitori no Ryou.”
“Huh?” Adam and Yugi chorused.
“‘The other Ryou’,” I translated.
Bakura blinked. “You speak Japanese?”
“I lived there for awhile,” I answered. “Mostly during and after World War II. I make it a point to learn the native language of whatever country I happen to be staying in, if I don’t already know it.”
Bakura winced and nodded. “When I finally learned Malik’s name,” he continued, “it was from Methos, during the Duelist Kingdom tournament.”
I arched an eyebrow. “How long was that after you acquired the Ring?”
“A little more than two and a half years.”
I rolled my eyes. “Malik,” I said, raising my voice slightly, “you’re an ass.”
Bakura choked back a laugh, then replied, “Uhm, he says he’s not going to dignify that with a response.”
“He just did,” I countered with a sly grin.
Bakura choked back another laugh. “He’s glaring at you right now.”
I laughed. “Ah, I missed bantering with them. Though honestly it’s a little awkward when I have to work through an intermediary.”
Bakura’s face broke into a genuine, albeit closed-mouthed, smile, an expression which was positively radiant on him. Probably because he didn’t seem to smile very often.
“You should smile more often,” I told him, smiling myself. “Yours is a good one.”
His smile turned a bit sheepish. “Hard to smile these days,” he said quietly.
I exhaled slowly and nodded. “Understandable.”
I started to notice that feeling of uneasiness again right about then, and it was growing stronger. I grimaced.
“Something wrong?” Yugi asked.
“I sense a disturbance in the Force,” I murmured.
“I’m assuming you mean that metaphorically,” Adam replied. I nodded.
“I do have a bad feeling,” I said.
“And?” Adam asked.
“We have intuition for a reason,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t ignore my instincts anymore; there’s a reason for this.”
The timing of the whole thing was incredibly contrived. Just as I said it, I felt a Buzz, signalling the approach of an Immortal. Yugi had just turned in the direction of its source when he was seized by the neck.
By Kronos.
Kronos held Yugi against his chest, one arm locked through Yugi’s to prevent him from reaching for a weapon (not that Yugi had one on him). The other held his claymore, resting against Yugi’s neck, clearly threatening decapitation.
Malik and Methos abruptly replaced Adam and Bakura, standing immediately as I leapt to my feet too and drew my sword. Or rather, Methos replaced Adam. Malik appeared beside Bakura, apparently fully solid.
Kronos sneered at me. “I’d’ve thought you would see this coming, Pharaoh,” he said. I glowered, sliding my left foot forward just a bit. “You know what I’m looking for,” he continued. “Or rather, who.”
“Persy won’t ever go back the Horsemen,” I growled to him. “You must know that by now.”
Yugi stared at me, eyes wide and frightened. Kronos just smirked at me. “You have no way of knowing that for sure,” he countered. “There’s darkness in her soul, Pharaoh. It’s always been there.” His voice lowered to a dangerous whisper. “You should never have taken her from me. I’ll pay you back tenfold for that.”
Methos snarled and stepped in front of me. “Try it,” he growled to Kronos. “I dare you.”
Kronos glowered at him. “This is between me and the Pharaoh,” he snapped. “Whoever you are, stay out of it if you know what’s good for you.”
Methos scowled. “Any quarrel you have with him, you also have with me and Malik,” he snapped. “And if it were just between you and Yami, you wouldn’t be holding Yugi hostage.”
“Yes he would,” I countered. “He doesn’t care about anyone. People’re just tools to him. Or animals to be slaughtered for fun.” I turned back to Kronos. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” I told him, voice lowering in volume to a quiet, even tone. “Unhand Yugi this instant, or face the consequences.”
Kronos laughed. “I’m fully aware of your capabilities, Pharaoh. You don’t scare me.”
I smiled grimly at him. “But you’re not aware of the capabilities of my friends here,” I said. Out of the corner of my mouth, I asked Methos, voice pitched so only he could hear it, “You have a sword, right? Tell me you have a sword…”
“Nope,” Methos sighed, just as quietly.
Apparently Malik could hear us too, for he muttered something under his breath and tossed a conjured khepesh to Methos. “Careful with that,” he warned.
Methos rolled his eyes but grinned, brandishing the weapon with a flourish. Bakura set his jaw and lifted his right hand, bearing a brass ring set with a garnet around his right ring finger. Malik spoke a single word in Archaic Egyptian, and his staff, long, straight, silver, and topped with a deep blue gem, appeared in his right hand.
Kronos’s eyes flicked from me to Methos, to Malik, to Bakura, and then to the Millennium Puzzle and Ring. His eyes widened in shock and recognition.
And fear.
And there was my proof. Kronos could only have recognized the Millennium Items if he’d been told about them by someone else. I hadn’t ever said a word to him about it. He knew about them, though, and that meant…
…It meant that Kronos was, indeed, in league with the Shadow Games.
My life is starting to get way too complicated.
* * *
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