Yu-Gi-Oh Fic: Come Together.
OK, it's time for another bit of fic.
I think this is OK though it could do with more work. Basically it's a set of nine drabbles, I'm going to let people read them and then I might explain a bit more later, if it confuses people. Let's just say it was kinda born from something LeDiz said in her Puzzle-Shipping essay.
I'm calling it Come Together at the moment, but it's only a working title.
Here we go! PLEASE comment if you like it. I need feedback on this one!
Come Together
He is a pharaoh’s son in Ancient Egypt, playing games with his father.
He curses the knucklebones again, as the roll over the Senet board.
‘I’m no good at this game,’ he growls, ‘why do we play it?’
‘Do not give in.’ His father says, making the winning move. ‘Puzzles and games speak through the ages, through lifetimes. It is through them we advance, come together, rise to completion.’
The child pharaoh is unconvinced, ‘I’m no good at this,’ Atem repeats, forlornly.
His father leans closer, hands touching the golden puzzle upon his son’s neck.
‘You will be.’ He promises.
It’s the three hundredth and thirty third year before a messiah is born, and he is a simple peasant in the town of Gordium.
His life is dull, excepting when a man, Alexander, comes.
He watches as Alexander cuts the sacred knot, uncaring of the craft. ‘What does it matter how I loosen it?’ the conqueror asks.
Everything, he knows. And he feels the echo of disgust in his belly,
This man will go on to rule all of Egypt, some will claim he is the son of a pharaoh, the son of a god.
He knows gods don’t cheat.
Over a hundred years later and he is a Greek man.
In his youth he travels to Alexandria and feels the tug of home, even as he learns his craft. He invents screws to empty boats and runs down streets naked with elation. When war comes he is a bastion of hope for his people and his cunning hands create both engines of destruction and equations of sand.
He meets his end at the hands of a roman soldier, asking only that his circles not be disturbed.
His is a good life. But, in truth, only half a good life.
Now he is in China, and still causing problems when he sits before the Emperor, a chess set between them.
‘This new game of yours,’ the Emperor says, ‘is most favourable. What reward would you wish?’
‘A grain of rice,’ replies he, ‘on the first square, and two on the second, and four on the third, and eight on the forth and so on.’
It is when the Emperor realizes this would equal more rice than his country could ever afford, and when the headsman is called forward he reflect that, perhaps, he was too smart for his own good.
The time in western terms is alien here. The time that matters is that in this lifetime. He is becoming a man. It is time for his Walkabout.
He saunters across the scalding red desert, playing hide and seek with his real self.
Sometimes, as the heat assails him and time, western or otherwise, looses all meaning he finds familiar visions in the rise and fall of the landscape. The pail echoes of pyramids and temples of a land far, far away, hallucinations of forgotten gold glinting in darkness.
But that is all.
He walks onwards alone, casting no shadow.
He’s a poor pilgrim in Paris, pretending he is somewhere else; the centre of the world perhaps?
The floor of Chartres is a maze, curves and circles twisting onto one another, a metaphor for the spirituality and rebirth
Softly, slowly he treads the steps like a dance, seeking sweet fulfilment. The end promises a cleansing, enlightenment unmatched outside the walls of Jerusilem.
Step by step he dutifully follows the lines, turning and twisting and finally stumbling. His small form, tender from starvation, is forced away by other eager pilgrims. He walked out half a man, cleansing lost beyond all hope.
The year is fifteen thirty two and he is in a mysterious city of gold, deep in foreign jungle. Alone in a band of one hundred and seventy five men, he watches Commander Pizarro steals a kings crown.
The golden circlet clatters to the floor and the strange barbarian bargains for his life.
He thinks it disgraceful.
A civilised war commences, but barbarian slaughter follows.
The king offers a room of gold for his life and in that room he dies.
Watching, he ignores the ache in his heart, as the blood stains the Aztec gold a strangely familiar shade.
It is Christmas of nineteen fifteen and he is playing football with the Germans. His current opponent is a man named Stephan, tall with brown hair and piercing eyes. He plays well and afterwards they sit down together in the mud and share cigarettes, pictures and stories.
Peace is transitory, the next day the war games begin again. They go over the trenches and continue the battle.
Happenstance has it that the next time he meets Stephan, it is down his gun barrel.
They level their guns at one another.
Who walked away from that match is irrelevant. Both lose.
He is a lonely, worried child in the twenty first century.
He spends his time solving puzzles and playing games, pretending that that is enough.
The puzzle he fits together now is his comfort and treasure, he feels a connection to it. It is as if all the pieces of his life, and all those lives before it, are scattered before him. Then come together like the pieces of the golden puzzle he holds in his hands, the final part slotting into place.
As the light overcomes his senses he feels, for the first time in three thousand years… complete.
End
EXPLENATION: This story bascially utilises an idea that Yu-Gi-Oh uses the ancient Egyptian idea that upon death the soul (or Ahnk) is divided into to parts, Ka and Ba (spirit and Human) and what the Pharoah did, all those years ago, was seal his Ka into the puzzle whilst leaving his Ba to contnue to be reincarnated. Thus only Yugi, the reincarnation of Atem's Ba, could complete the puzzle.
This concept led me to wonder what happened to the Ba, the reincarnation of the Pharoah, through all those years, which led me to write this. Simple, eh?
Anyway, I'd like to know what you think, so please reply to this if you liked/hated it or had any other feedback.
Thanks!
I think this is OK though it could do with more work. Basically it's a set of nine drabbles, I'm going to let people read them and then I might explain a bit more later, if it confuses people. Let's just say it was kinda born from something LeDiz said in her Puzzle-Shipping essay.
I'm calling it Come Together at the moment, but it's only a working title.
Here we go! PLEASE comment if you like it. I need feedback on this one!
Come Together
He is a pharaoh’s son in Ancient Egypt, playing games with his father.
He curses the knucklebones again, as the roll over the Senet board.
‘I’m no good at this game,’ he growls, ‘why do we play it?’
‘Do not give in.’ His father says, making the winning move. ‘Puzzles and games speak through the ages, through lifetimes. It is through them we advance, come together, rise to completion.’
The child pharaoh is unconvinced, ‘I’m no good at this,’ Atem repeats, forlornly.
His father leans closer, hands touching the golden puzzle upon his son’s neck.
‘You will be.’ He promises.
It’s the three hundredth and thirty third year before a messiah is born, and he is a simple peasant in the town of Gordium.
His life is dull, excepting when a man, Alexander, comes.
He watches as Alexander cuts the sacred knot, uncaring of the craft. ‘What does it matter how I loosen it?’ the conqueror asks.
Everything, he knows. And he feels the echo of disgust in his belly,
This man will go on to rule all of Egypt, some will claim he is the son of a pharaoh, the son of a god.
He knows gods don’t cheat.
Over a hundred years later and he is a Greek man.
In his youth he travels to Alexandria and feels the tug of home, even as he learns his craft. He invents screws to empty boats and runs down streets naked with elation. When war comes he is a bastion of hope for his people and his cunning hands create both engines of destruction and equations of sand.
He meets his end at the hands of a roman soldier, asking only that his circles not be disturbed.
His is a good life. But, in truth, only half a good life.
Now he is in China, and still causing problems when he sits before the Emperor, a chess set between them.
‘This new game of yours,’ the Emperor says, ‘is most favourable. What reward would you wish?’
‘A grain of rice,’ replies he, ‘on the first square, and two on the second, and four on the third, and eight on the forth and so on.’
It is when the Emperor realizes this would equal more rice than his country could ever afford, and when the headsman is called forward he reflect that, perhaps, he was too smart for his own good.
The time in western terms is alien here. The time that matters is that in this lifetime. He is becoming a man. It is time for his Walkabout.
He saunters across the scalding red desert, playing hide and seek with his real self.
Sometimes, as the heat assails him and time, western or otherwise, looses all meaning he finds familiar visions in the rise and fall of the landscape. The pail echoes of pyramids and temples of a land far, far away, hallucinations of forgotten gold glinting in darkness.
But that is all.
He walks onwards alone, casting no shadow.
He’s a poor pilgrim in Paris, pretending he is somewhere else; the centre of the world perhaps?
The floor of Chartres is a maze, curves and circles twisting onto one another, a metaphor for the spirituality and rebirth
Softly, slowly he treads the steps like a dance, seeking sweet fulfilment. The end promises a cleansing, enlightenment unmatched outside the walls of Jerusilem.
Step by step he dutifully follows the lines, turning and twisting and finally stumbling. His small form, tender from starvation, is forced away by other eager pilgrims. He walked out half a man, cleansing lost beyond all hope.
The year is fifteen thirty two and he is in a mysterious city of gold, deep in foreign jungle. Alone in a band of one hundred and seventy five men, he watches Commander Pizarro steals a kings crown.
The golden circlet clatters to the floor and the strange barbarian bargains for his life.
He thinks it disgraceful.
A civilised war commences, but barbarian slaughter follows.
The king offers a room of gold for his life and in that room he dies.
Watching, he ignores the ache in his heart, as the blood stains the Aztec gold a strangely familiar shade.
It is Christmas of nineteen fifteen and he is playing football with the Germans. His current opponent is a man named Stephan, tall with brown hair and piercing eyes. He plays well and afterwards they sit down together in the mud and share cigarettes, pictures and stories.
Peace is transitory, the next day the war games begin again. They go over the trenches and continue the battle.
Happenstance has it that the next time he meets Stephan, it is down his gun barrel.
They level their guns at one another.
Who walked away from that match is irrelevant. Both lose.
He is a lonely, worried child in the twenty first century.
He spends his time solving puzzles and playing games, pretending that that is enough.
The puzzle he fits together now is his comfort and treasure, he feels a connection to it. It is as if all the pieces of his life, and all those lives before it, are scattered before him. Then come together like the pieces of the golden puzzle he holds in his hands, the final part slotting into place.
As the light overcomes his senses he feels, for the first time in three thousand years… complete.
End
EXPLENATION: This story bascially utilises an idea that Yu-Gi-Oh uses the ancient Egyptian idea that upon death the soul (or Ahnk) is divided into to parts, Ka and Ba (spirit and Human) and what the Pharoah did, all those years ago, was seal his Ka into the puzzle whilst leaving his Ba to contnue to be reincarnated. Thus only Yugi, the reincarnation of Atem's Ba, could complete the puzzle.
This concept led me to wonder what happened to the Ba, the reincarnation of the Pharoah, through all those years, which led me to write this. Simple, eh?
Anyway, I'd like to know what you think, so please reply to this if you liked/hated it or had any other feedback.
Thanks!