[YGO!/HL, AU] “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (03/15)
Title: “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (03/15)
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: 2,963
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: 5,000 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: The title of this chapter is in Ancient Egyptian. It means “My Old Friends”.
Crosspostings: card_crossings, yami_no_hikari, highland_cross, crossoverfic
<- Previous || Next ->
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Chapter 03: Khenmesu-is-i
“Wasn’t I
Always by your side
When you tried to hide
When your heart had died?
Didn’t I
Take away your pain
Take out all the blame
Even change your name?
And how
Can you throw everything away that you knew?
In spite of all the things I’ve done for you?
Don’t you care about what you’ve become?
You’re going back to everything I saved you from”
- “Everything I Saved You From”, Manic Bloom
I stayed at Joe’s bar for awhile, drinking and talking things out with Joe and Duncan. They turned out to be great sounding boards, and I was immensely grateful for their help and company.
As evening neared, I stood, raking a hand through my hair. “Okay,” I said, quietly. “I need to… I don’t know. Look at what’s going on during this tournament. Would you mind terribly, Joe, if I lurked in the back for awhile?”
“Long as you’re as inconspicuous as you can be,” he answered with a nod.
“I’ll do my best,” I answered. Then I slipped behind the bar and into the back area, lurking just beyond the door frame.
After Joe opened up, a lot of people came in, some adults, but most of them teenagers, and started playing games. An hour or so in, three people came in who caught my attention.
My eyes widened.
I’d seen two of them before. They were some of the Pekheretey-cher-New. As I recalled, their names were Adam Pierson and Ryou Bakura.
What had struck me when I had first met them was how much they looked like Methos and Malik. Adam had the same facial structure as Methos, with a few minor differences. His chin was slightly shorter than Methos’s had been, his cheekbones less prominent, and his eyes weren’t the same colour, but they were similar in shape, if a bit larger.
Like Adam, Bakura looked strikingly similar to Malik. Both were albinos (a term I hadn’t known about at the time I first met him, thousands of years ago, but had learned later), both had brown eyes with an upturned shape, but like Adam, Bakura’s eyes were larger than Malik’s. Malik’s hair was also messier than Bakura’s was. Bakura’s features weren’t as harsh as Malik’s, and were also decidedly more Asian, which included his yellowish skin tone.
That wasn’t what surprised me, though.
What surprised me was that they were wearing two of the Millennium Items. In fact, they wore the same Items Malik and Methos had worn during the ritual: the Ring and Puzzle, respectively. The Puzzle was the Item that was supposed to have been in the chest on the table in the temple. It hung around Adam’s neck on a leather cord, completed. The Millennium Ring hung on a similar string of cord around Bakura’s neck.
The third person with them surprised me the most. I got a faint hum from him; not a full-blown Buzz, but just a quiet hum. He was pre-Immortal. If he died a violent death, he would become a full Immortal. But… he was very familiar. Not because he resembled someone I knew… but because he strongly resembled me.
There were, of course, some minor differences as well. His eyebrows were thicker, facial features rounder (though still based in roughly the same structure as my own), eyes round in shape as opposed to almond-shaped, but they had roughly the same downward turn at the outer corners. His irises were a bright violet, and his hair had the same colouring as mine does: blond at the bangs, the main body a brown-black colour, and red at the tips. It was also just as messy and spiky as mine had once been. (I had, a couple of millennia ago, discovered a way to make my hair lie flat on a more-or-less permanent basis.) He was also shorter than average, and skinny, just as I was.
It was… sort of creepy, actually, how close the resemblance was. And I had no idea why it was so close.
I watched as they sat down at one of the vacant tables, each drawing out a deck of cards. They didn’t start playing each other, though; they were apparently all friends, and so waited for someone to approach and challenge one of them.
I closed my eyes and Listened again, focusing intently on them.
“We should’ve gone to the one at the hotel,” murmured the voice of Adam Pierson, a tenor with a strong Welsh accent. “None of us is of age yet.”
“Not in America,” corrected Bakura, who was also a tenor, but with an English accent. “Back home, in England and Wales, is a bit different.”
Adam snorted.
“I don’t know why,” Bakura continued, “but Malik wanted to come here. Said it was a feeling he had, that he didn’t know what it was, but he said we needed to be at this venue.”
I stiffened. Malik? That’s… impossible, I thought, immediately. It can’t be. He couldn’t possibly mean my old friend, my former Vizier.
Adam sighed, apparently shuffling his deck, but didn’t say anything.
A very light tenor, with a generic American accent and presumably belonging to their companion, asked him, “And… what does Methos think of it?”
“I don’t know, Yugi,” Adam answered with a sigh. “He’s closing me off. Won’t talk about it, except with Malik.”
My breath caught in my throat. There was my other friend’s name too. This can’t be real. It’s impossible.
Something in the back of my head told me I was in denial. I refused to listen to that voice. My friends had died. They were happy in Duat. There was no other way it could possibly be.
…Right?
The three were silent for a moment. Yugi seemed to fish around for a new topic. “We, uh… don’t seem to have any challengers,” he said after a moment, sounding rather glum.
Adam snorted, and Bakura said, “The night is young, Yugi-kun. We’ll have takers eventually.” There was something of a reassuring smile in his voice. He’d added a Japanese honourific to the end of Yugi’s name, the one normally used with colleagues or classmates. If I recalled correctly from the first time I’d met Bakura, shortly before Malik and Methos had both died, he was actually one-third Japanese, and spoke the language fluently. He’d kept calling me “Atemu-sama” back then.
I sighed sharply, and stopped Listening, opening my eyes and peeking out from behind the door frame. I motioned sharply to Joe, who stepped into the back to join me.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“The three young men who just entered,” I whispered. “Two of them are wearing Millennium Items.”
He arched his eyebrows. “And?”
“And, that might be the reason I’m here in Seacouver,” I said. “I need to talk to them.”
“So go talk to them.”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a total stranger, for one. For another…” I swallowed. There was no denying it any longer. “I have reason to believe a pair of old friends of mine are among them. Friends I believed were dead, and who probably believe the same in my case.”
“There are only three people at that table.”
“No, not physically with them.” I frowned, not sure how to describe it. “More… spiritually.” Specifically, I suspected that, if Malik and Methos really were around, they shared bodies with Bakura and Adam, respectively.
Joe frowned, and squinted at them. “That one kid,” he said, jerking his head slightly at Yugi. “He looks… really similar to you. Almost shockingly so.”
I smiled tightly. “I noticed.”
“So… what do you want to do about this?”
I sighed. “Something subtle,” I answered, thoughtfully, after a long pause. “More or less. Lemme help you with the bartending for a bit. And send those three a couple of sodas from me.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Be more specific?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know what they like, in terms of drinks. Ask them what they’d like, tell them it’s on a friend.” I paused and frowned. “A friend in the darkness before the dawn,” I added, thoughtfully.
The other eyebrow went up.
“It’s a play on my name,” I said. “In Archaic Egyptian, ‘iami’ means ‘dawn’. In Japanese, ‘yami’ means ‘darkness’. If my suspicions are correct, they’ll know what it means.”
He stared at me, then asked, “How can you be sure?”
“I remember hearing the white-haired one speaking Japanese when I first saw him. And if my friends are with them, they’ll know what the ‘dawn’ part means.”
Joe nodded. “Okay then. Come on. I needed help with the bar anyway.”
I grinned, and took off my coat, revealing the simple, wine-red dress shirt and black slacks beneath it. Joe went out into the main area, gimping over to the three boys’ table, while I went out behind the bar and began taking orders and serving drinks. I’d done some work as a bartender in the past, so it was a familiar process. Duncan came behind the bar to help me, and between the two of us, we did a fairly good job of keeping up. Whenever I got the chance, I took the opportunity to Listen to Adam, Bakura, and Yugi.
When Joe had initially gone over to them, he’d done as I had asked. He leaned down over the table and said, “Heya gents. Someone told me to give you some drinks on him, but he didn’t know what you’d like, and told me I should ask. Anything you’d like to drink?”
The three of them looked at each other, unsure and probably a little suspicious. “From who?” asked Adam, that suspicion clear in his voice.
Joe smiled, and said, “A friend in the darkness before the dawn,” just as I’d asked him to.
Adam and Bakura immediately stiffened, both looking a bit distant. Yugi looked up at them, unsure and confused. “Guys?” he asked, clearly apprehensive.
Adam looked over at Bakura, then over towards the bar. I took the opportunity, glancing back over at him for a moment, before turning to remove a glass from one of the stacks behind the bar. Adam’s lips parted for a moment, then he said, something strange in his tone of voice, “Root beer, please. No ice.”
“Diet cola,” Bakura answered a moment later, “also no ice.”
Joe nodded, wrote that down, and glanced at Yugi. “Regular Coke,” he said instantly. “With ice.”
Joe grinned. “Gotcha. Back in a minute.” He returned to the bar, leaning onto it in front of me. “You catch that?” he asked me, whispering.
“Yep.” I poured the three sodas and slid them over to him, along with a note scrawled in hieroglyphic cursive on a sheet of paper. It read, If you are who and what I think you are, show me. -Atemu. My Court Name was encircled in a cartouche, which were only used with the names of Pharaohs. “Give that to the brunette and the albino,” I told Joe softly. Joe eyed me, then nodded, gimping back over and setting the drinks down in front of each of them. Then he slid the note over to Adam and Bakura, face down, giving them both a significant look.
“Enjoy,” he said, before returning to the bar.
I Listened some more. Yugi sipped at his soda, watching his two friends with intense curiousity. I had to admit, Yugi intrigued me quite a bit, and not only because he looked so much like me. He was a Pre-Immortal. I’d had students before, Persy among them, but it had been quite awhile since the last time I’d taught a new Immortal. I strongly desired the chance to teach again.
There were… other… reasons too, but they struck me as being somewhat narcissistic, given his resemblance to me.
I focused mostly on Adam and Bakura, who were reading the note in stunned silence. Bakura’s voice suddenly adopted an entirely different tone than what it had carried before, though otherwise it was unchanged: still English-accented, still tenor-pitched.
“This. Is. Impossible,” he said, flatly, without emotion, except for perhaps a dark, angry tone. “He’s dead.”
“You’re overreacting,” Adam said, voice similarly flat, a slight change in his accent. Otherwise, he sounded the same. But something in both tones of voices told me that something had changed about them. Something was different.
Perhaps in the form of someone else controlling their bodies.
Yugi looked at them uncertainly. “Uh… what are you guys talking about?” he asked, quietly.
“Not now, Yugi,” they both answered, in unison. Yugi immediately quieted, looking over to me as I handed a pair of alcoholic drinks to a pair of adult duelists after checking their I.D.s. I smiled back at him for a moment before returning to the bartending work, continuing to Listen.
“You’re masquerading again,” Adam sighed to Bakura. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” Bakura asked, scornfully, rolling his eyes at Adam.
“It’s still not that good. You can tell the difference in your tone of voice. You might as well not bother.”
“Do you have a point, khenmes?” he asked.
The word spoken in Egyptian (meaning ‘friend,’ when directed at a man) was a dead giveaway. This was not actually Bakura speaking. I’d been right; someone else had taken control of his body.
Adam hissed. “Malik!” he said, reproach in his voice. “You’re making the difference even more obvious. Stop it.”
Abruptly, Bakura’s features changed. His hair became wilder, sticking up in clumps at the top of his head, his facial features leaner and sharper; his eyes became somewhat smaller, narrower, something cruel and… and… insane behind them.
That scared me, especially since I recognized all of those features. They belonged to my former Vizier, Malik.
Yugi started slightly, taking in a sharp breath. Malik glanced aside at him and rolled his eyes.
“You startle much too easily,” he told Yugi, his voice deeper than Bakura’s and perpetually hoarse, but with a similar accent that had a slightly Arabic-esque tinge to it.
Adam leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “You’re impossible, Malik. I swear.”
“Methos,” he said, quietly. “You can’t possibly be believing this.”
Adam gestured to the note. Or, I suppose, Methos did. Nothing had changed about the way Adam looked, and Methos was apparently much better at impersonating Adam than Malik was at impersonating Bakura. “It’s his handwriting.”
“Why would he sign by his Court Name? We’ve never called him by it and he knows it.”
“Because he already dropped us a hint using his real name?” Methos/Adam suggested. “He’s here, Malik. I saw him.”
“What?! Where?!”
“Bartending.”
I snorted quietly, amused at the sheer non-chalance with which Adam/Methos had replied, and hid the expression by a faked sneeze. Though I couldn’t get sick, the customers wouldn’t know that, so I washed my hands before resuming work. I felt Malik’s gaze on my back, and turned to face him, and quickly mouthed a phrase to him in Archaic Egyptian: “Nedj-kheret-k, khenmes-is-i.” Greetings to you, my old friend.
He stared at me, mouth agape. I dried off my hands, laid a hand on Joe’s shoulder and gave him a meaningful nod, then headed over to their table, grabbing my coat along the way and tugging it on.
Yugi stared at me as I approached, subconsciously drawing a bit closer to Adam. I stopped in front of the table, eyes on Malik and Adam. Malik’s jaw was still hanging loose. Adam just stared for a moment before his features changed, too, into the very familiar face of my friend Methos.
“Yami…?” Methos whispered. His accent was Welsh too, also with a slightly Arabic tinge to it. Since he’d learned to speak English, I assumed he’d picked it up from Adam, and thus would have a similar accent. Same with Malik, only his would be similar to Bakura’s.
“Tepeysa?” Malik asked.
I smiled at them both, scooped them up (in a manner of speaking, I’m actually shorter than both of them) and hugged them tightly, leaning my head into their shoulders. “Khenmesu-is-i,” I murmured into their shoulders. “I’ve missed you both.”
Methos suddenly laughed and hugged me back tightly, hands framing my face as he pulled away. “Yami! Praise the gods, it is you!”
I grinned at him. “Methos,” I said, laughing a little myself. “I never thought I’d see either of you again.” I turned to Malik, still grinning. But that grin faded as I saw the expression of… anger on his face.
“You should be dead,” he said, darkly.
I sighed. “It’s good to see you too, Malik,” I responded, rolling my eyes.
“This is a trick,” he murmured. “The Shadow Games trying to get to me again.” He shook his head. “I’m not buying it,” he growled.
That hurt. That hurt a lot.
Methos sighed. “Let’s step outside,” he said, quietly, to me, Malik, and Yugi. Yugi stood up uncertainly, staring at me with something between interest and uncertainty on his face. Methos placed a guiding hand on my elbow, but I held up a finger to stop him.
“Out back,” I said. “Follow me.” I led them through the back room, nodding at Joe as I did, and outside into the area immediately behind the bar.
Then something I didn’t expect happened. Malik hissed out a short sentence in Archaic Egyptian, stabbing a finger forward. I was, quite abruptly, pummelled in the back with a searing hot ball of blue fire. The pain was immense, and I toppled to the ground, the flames engulfing me for a few minutes.
“MALIK!” Methos gasped, moving to restrain Malik. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
I blacked out.
* * *
<- 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: 2,963
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: 5,000 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: The title of this chapter is in Ancient Egyptian. It means “My Old Friends”.
Crosspostings: card_crossings, yami_no_hikari, highland_cross, crossoverfic
<- Previous || Next ->
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Chapter 03: Khenmesu-is-i
“Wasn’t I
Always by your side
When you tried to hide
When your heart had died?
Didn’t I
Take away your pain
Take out all the blame
Even change your name?
And how
Can you throw everything away that you knew?
In spite of all the things I’ve done for you?
Don’t you care about what you’ve become?
You’re going back to everything I saved you from”
- “Everything I Saved You From”, Manic Bloom
I stayed at Joe’s bar for awhile, drinking and talking things out with Joe and Duncan. They turned out to be great sounding boards, and I was immensely grateful for their help and company.
As evening neared, I stood, raking a hand through my hair. “Okay,” I said, quietly. “I need to… I don’t know. Look at what’s going on during this tournament. Would you mind terribly, Joe, if I lurked in the back for awhile?”
“Long as you’re as inconspicuous as you can be,” he answered with a nod.
“I’ll do my best,” I answered. Then I slipped behind the bar and into the back area, lurking just beyond the door frame.
After Joe opened up, a lot of people came in, some adults, but most of them teenagers, and started playing games. An hour or so in, three people came in who caught my attention.
My eyes widened.
I’d seen two of them before. They were some of the Pekheretey-cher-New. As I recalled, their names were Adam Pierson and Ryou Bakura.
What had struck me when I had first met them was how much they looked like Methos and Malik. Adam had the same facial structure as Methos, with a few minor differences. His chin was slightly shorter than Methos’s had been, his cheekbones less prominent, and his eyes weren’t the same colour, but they were similar in shape, if a bit larger.
Like Adam, Bakura looked strikingly similar to Malik. Both were albinos (a term I hadn’t known about at the time I first met him, thousands of years ago, but had learned later), both had brown eyes with an upturned shape, but like Adam, Bakura’s eyes were larger than Malik’s. Malik’s hair was also messier than Bakura’s was. Bakura’s features weren’t as harsh as Malik’s, and were also decidedly more Asian, which included his yellowish skin tone.
That wasn’t what surprised me, though.
What surprised me was that they were wearing two of the Millennium Items. In fact, they wore the same Items Malik and Methos had worn during the ritual: the Ring and Puzzle, respectively. The Puzzle was the Item that was supposed to have been in the chest on the table in the temple. It hung around Adam’s neck on a leather cord, completed. The Millennium Ring hung on a similar string of cord around Bakura’s neck.
The third person with them surprised me the most. I got a faint hum from him; not a full-blown Buzz, but just a quiet hum. He was pre-Immortal. If he died a violent death, he would become a full Immortal. But… he was very familiar. Not because he resembled someone I knew… but because he strongly resembled me.
There were, of course, some minor differences as well. His eyebrows were thicker, facial features rounder (though still based in roughly the same structure as my own), eyes round in shape as opposed to almond-shaped, but they had roughly the same downward turn at the outer corners. His irises were a bright violet, and his hair had the same colouring as mine does: blond at the bangs, the main body a brown-black colour, and red at the tips. It was also just as messy and spiky as mine had once been. (I had, a couple of millennia ago, discovered a way to make my hair lie flat on a more-or-less permanent basis.) He was also shorter than average, and skinny, just as I was.
It was… sort of creepy, actually, how close the resemblance was. And I had no idea why it was so close.
I watched as they sat down at one of the vacant tables, each drawing out a deck of cards. They didn’t start playing each other, though; they were apparently all friends, and so waited for someone to approach and challenge one of them.
I closed my eyes and Listened again, focusing intently on them.
“We should’ve gone to the one at the hotel,” murmured the voice of Adam Pierson, a tenor with a strong Welsh accent. “None of us is of age yet.”
“Not in America,” corrected Bakura, who was also a tenor, but with an English accent. “Back home, in England and Wales, is a bit different.”
Adam snorted.
“I don’t know why,” Bakura continued, “but Malik wanted to come here. Said it was a feeling he had, that he didn’t know what it was, but he said we needed to be at this venue.”
I stiffened. Malik? That’s… impossible, I thought, immediately. It can’t be. He couldn’t possibly mean my old friend, my former Vizier.
Adam sighed, apparently shuffling his deck, but didn’t say anything.
A very light tenor, with a generic American accent and presumably belonging to their companion, asked him, “And… what does Methos think of it?”
“I don’t know, Yugi,” Adam answered with a sigh. “He’s closing me off. Won’t talk about it, except with Malik.”
My breath caught in my throat. There was my other friend’s name too. This can’t be real. It’s impossible.
Something in the back of my head told me I was in denial. I refused to listen to that voice. My friends had died. They were happy in Duat. There was no other way it could possibly be.
…Right?
The three were silent for a moment. Yugi seemed to fish around for a new topic. “We, uh… don’t seem to have any challengers,” he said after a moment, sounding rather glum.
Adam snorted, and Bakura said, “The night is young, Yugi-kun. We’ll have takers eventually.” There was something of a reassuring smile in his voice. He’d added a Japanese honourific to the end of Yugi’s name, the one normally used with colleagues or classmates. If I recalled correctly from the first time I’d met Bakura, shortly before Malik and Methos had both died, he was actually one-third Japanese, and spoke the language fluently. He’d kept calling me “Atemu-sama” back then.
I sighed sharply, and stopped Listening, opening my eyes and peeking out from behind the door frame. I motioned sharply to Joe, who stepped into the back to join me.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“The three young men who just entered,” I whispered. “Two of them are wearing Millennium Items.”
He arched his eyebrows. “And?”
“And, that might be the reason I’m here in Seacouver,” I said. “I need to talk to them.”
“So go talk to them.”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a total stranger, for one. For another…” I swallowed. There was no denying it any longer. “I have reason to believe a pair of old friends of mine are among them. Friends I believed were dead, and who probably believe the same in my case.”
“There are only three people at that table.”
“No, not physically with them.” I frowned, not sure how to describe it. “More… spiritually.” Specifically, I suspected that, if Malik and Methos really were around, they shared bodies with Bakura and Adam, respectively.
Joe frowned, and squinted at them. “That one kid,” he said, jerking his head slightly at Yugi. “He looks… really similar to you. Almost shockingly so.”
I smiled tightly. “I noticed.”
“So… what do you want to do about this?”
I sighed. “Something subtle,” I answered, thoughtfully, after a long pause. “More or less. Lemme help you with the bartending for a bit. And send those three a couple of sodas from me.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Be more specific?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know what they like, in terms of drinks. Ask them what they’d like, tell them it’s on a friend.” I paused and frowned. “A friend in the darkness before the dawn,” I added, thoughtfully.
The other eyebrow went up.
“It’s a play on my name,” I said. “In Archaic Egyptian, ‘iami’ means ‘dawn’. In Japanese, ‘yami’ means ‘darkness’. If my suspicions are correct, they’ll know what it means.”
He stared at me, then asked, “How can you be sure?”
“I remember hearing the white-haired one speaking Japanese when I first saw him. And if my friends are with them, they’ll know what the ‘dawn’ part means.”
Joe nodded. “Okay then. Come on. I needed help with the bar anyway.”
I grinned, and took off my coat, revealing the simple, wine-red dress shirt and black slacks beneath it. Joe went out into the main area, gimping over to the three boys’ table, while I went out behind the bar and began taking orders and serving drinks. I’d done some work as a bartender in the past, so it was a familiar process. Duncan came behind the bar to help me, and between the two of us, we did a fairly good job of keeping up. Whenever I got the chance, I took the opportunity to Listen to Adam, Bakura, and Yugi.
When Joe had initially gone over to them, he’d done as I had asked. He leaned down over the table and said, “Heya gents. Someone told me to give you some drinks on him, but he didn’t know what you’d like, and told me I should ask. Anything you’d like to drink?”
The three of them looked at each other, unsure and probably a little suspicious. “From who?” asked Adam, that suspicion clear in his voice.
Joe smiled, and said, “A friend in the darkness before the dawn,” just as I’d asked him to.
Adam and Bakura immediately stiffened, both looking a bit distant. Yugi looked up at them, unsure and confused. “Guys?” he asked, clearly apprehensive.
Adam looked over at Bakura, then over towards the bar. I took the opportunity, glancing back over at him for a moment, before turning to remove a glass from one of the stacks behind the bar. Adam’s lips parted for a moment, then he said, something strange in his tone of voice, “Root beer, please. No ice.”
“Diet cola,” Bakura answered a moment later, “also no ice.”
Joe nodded, wrote that down, and glanced at Yugi. “Regular Coke,” he said instantly. “With ice.”
Joe grinned. “Gotcha. Back in a minute.” He returned to the bar, leaning onto it in front of me. “You catch that?” he asked me, whispering.
“Yep.” I poured the three sodas and slid them over to him, along with a note scrawled in hieroglyphic cursive on a sheet of paper. It read, If you are who and what I think you are, show me. -Atemu. My Court Name was encircled in a cartouche, which were only used with the names of Pharaohs. “Give that to the brunette and the albino,” I told Joe softly. Joe eyed me, then nodded, gimping back over and setting the drinks down in front of each of them. Then he slid the note over to Adam and Bakura, face down, giving them both a significant look.
“Enjoy,” he said, before returning to the bar.
I Listened some more. Yugi sipped at his soda, watching his two friends with intense curiousity. I had to admit, Yugi intrigued me quite a bit, and not only because he looked so much like me. He was a Pre-Immortal. I’d had students before, Persy among them, but it had been quite awhile since the last time I’d taught a new Immortal. I strongly desired the chance to teach again.
There were… other… reasons too, but they struck me as being somewhat narcissistic, given his resemblance to me.
I focused mostly on Adam and Bakura, who were reading the note in stunned silence. Bakura’s voice suddenly adopted an entirely different tone than what it had carried before, though otherwise it was unchanged: still English-accented, still tenor-pitched.
“This. Is. Impossible,” he said, flatly, without emotion, except for perhaps a dark, angry tone. “He’s dead.”
“You’re overreacting,” Adam said, voice similarly flat, a slight change in his accent. Otherwise, he sounded the same. But something in both tones of voices told me that something had changed about them. Something was different.
Perhaps in the form of someone else controlling their bodies.
Yugi looked at them uncertainly. “Uh… what are you guys talking about?” he asked, quietly.
“Not now, Yugi,” they both answered, in unison. Yugi immediately quieted, looking over to me as I handed a pair of alcoholic drinks to a pair of adult duelists after checking their I.D.s. I smiled back at him for a moment before returning to the bartending work, continuing to Listen.
“You’re masquerading again,” Adam sighed to Bakura. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” Bakura asked, scornfully, rolling his eyes at Adam.
“It’s still not that good. You can tell the difference in your tone of voice. You might as well not bother.”
“Do you have a point, khenmes?” he asked.
The word spoken in Egyptian (meaning ‘friend,’ when directed at a man) was a dead giveaway. This was not actually Bakura speaking. I’d been right; someone else had taken control of his body.
Adam hissed. “Malik!” he said, reproach in his voice. “You’re making the difference even more obvious. Stop it.”
Abruptly, Bakura’s features changed. His hair became wilder, sticking up in clumps at the top of his head, his facial features leaner and sharper; his eyes became somewhat smaller, narrower, something cruel and… and… insane behind them.
That scared me, especially since I recognized all of those features. They belonged to my former Vizier, Malik.
Yugi started slightly, taking in a sharp breath. Malik glanced aside at him and rolled his eyes.
“You startle much too easily,” he told Yugi, his voice deeper than Bakura’s and perpetually hoarse, but with a similar accent that had a slightly Arabic-esque tinge to it.
Adam leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “You’re impossible, Malik. I swear.”
“Methos,” he said, quietly. “You can’t possibly be believing this.”
Adam gestured to the note. Or, I suppose, Methos did. Nothing had changed about the way Adam looked, and Methos was apparently much better at impersonating Adam than Malik was at impersonating Bakura. “It’s his handwriting.”
“Why would he sign by his Court Name? We’ve never called him by it and he knows it.”
“Because he already dropped us a hint using his real name?” Methos/Adam suggested. “He’s here, Malik. I saw him.”
“What?! Where?!”
“Bartending.”
I snorted quietly, amused at the sheer non-chalance with which Adam/Methos had replied, and hid the expression by a faked sneeze. Though I couldn’t get sick, the customers wouldn’t know that, so I washed my hands before resuming work. I felt Malik’s gaze on my back, and turned to face him, and quickly mouthed a phrase to him in Archaic Egyptian: “Nedj-kheret-k, khenmes-is-i.” Greetings to you, my old friend.
He stared at me, mouth agape. I dried off my hands, laid a hand on Joe’s shoulder and gave him a meaningful nod, then headed over to their table, grabbing my coat along the way and tugging it on.
Yugi stared at me as I approached, subconsciously drawing a bit closer to Adam. I stopped in front of the table, eyes on Malik and Adam. Malik’s jaw was still hanging loose. Adam just stared for a moment before his features changed, too, into the very familiar face of my friend Methos.
“Yami…?” Methos whispered. His accent was Welsh too, also with a slightly Arabic tinge to it. Since he’d learned to speak English, I assumed he’d picked it up from Adam, and thus would have a similar accent. Same with Malik, only his would be similar to Bakura’s.
“Tepeysa?” Malik asked.
I smiled at them both, scooped them up (in a manner of speaking, I’m actually shorter than both of them) and hugged them tightly, leaning my head into their shoulders. “Khenmesu-is-i,” I murmured into their shoulders. “I’ve missed you both.”
Methos suddenly laughed and hugged me back tightly, hands framing my face as he pulled away. “Yami! Praise the gods, it is you!”
I grinned at him. “Methos,” I said, laughing a little myself. “I never thought I’d see either of you again.” I turned to Malik, still grinning. But that grin faded as I saw the expression of… anger on his face.
“You should be dead,” he said, darkly.
I sighed. “It’s good to see you too, Malik,” I responded, rolling my eyes.
“This is a trick,” he murmured. “The Shadow Games trying to get to me again.” He shook his head. “I’m not buying it,” he growled.
That hurt. That hurt a lot.
Methos sighed. “Let’s step outside,” he said, quietly, to me, Malik, and Yugi. Yugi stood up uncertainly, staring at me with something between interest and uncertainty on his face. Methos placed a guiding hand on my elbow, but I held up a finger to stop him.
“Out back,” I said. “Follow me.” I led them through the back room, nodding at Joe as I did, and outside into the area immediately behind the bar.
Then something I didn’t expect happened. Malik hissed out a short sentence in Archaic Egyptian, stabbing a finger forward. I was, quite abruptly, pummelled in the back with a searing hot ball of blue fire. The pain was immense, and I toppled to the ground, the flames engulfing me for a few minutes.
“MALIK!” Methos gasped, moving to restrain Malik. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
I blacked out.
* * *
<- Previous || Next ->