Chapter 8: Contemplation and Discoveries

Kaiba is too hot; this he knew for certain and the certainty did little to take away the pain. The glowing of his eyes and the eye of horus on his forehead had all but disappeared and faded. Instead, the swallowing of this light and the dampening of its brightness on the outside of himself led to an internalized intense feeling of heat. The light didn't like to be trapped and caged by him, who tried to shove it into the darkness of his mind, body, and soul he knew so well after years of torment and struggle under people like Gozaburo and Pegasus. It was this part of himself, the larger darker part of himself, that was there before the light, the one that was also connected to his old, former self known as Seth, that makes him think, believe, know, that this was a mistake. It needed to be fixed. But all his former self had to offer was a sob story about his beloved who was wrongly killed in saving him. He detested the idea that he would die the same way.

He never did see Seth exemplify anything light related, in the memories available to him, and the young brunet thought of himself in the same way, a being closer to darkness, but he never needed a light, did he? But, then again, he never had to share a body and balance his soul with another. Some could say Mokuba was his light, but he doesn't feel the hum of another soul alongside his in the background that occasionally comes with unwanted thoughts filtering in, being communicated to him. No- Mokuba was his balancer, of sorts. He kept him fighting the world and kept some of his morals in check after the whole mind-crushing incident that resulted in a hospital stay. He was still a dick, he could admit that. No one ever credited him on his social skills- but he didn't need to be grounded in quite the same way as Yami did. Or, at least, he used to not have to. Now, he was much too light and he found himself craving and fearing the darkness Yami presented as they tried to further sort out their balance.

Kaiba knew, though, on a personal, deep, primal level, that this was still wrong. What he agreed to wasn't mixing as well as he was sure Yami had hoped. He could see the strain around the eyes of Yami even as he was smiling at him, still bedridden, forcibly keeping them in balance when that was not how a partnership was suppose to work. (Even the former CEO knew that much, as much as he preferred the contrary of working alone.) The burning that the light bestowed upon him and brought forth was hot but tainted. Untrue and forced. It hurt like a bad ache, which he hadn't realized before Yami's energy took more focus on keeping them balanced after his break down at these newest revelations, with sharp spikes of pain here and there and, again, that unbearable heat as he tried his best to help the balance along. Kaiba forced himself to breath and catalogue the pain while, at the same time. making a vow to keep his unreadable mask on. 'He'd endured worse,' he tried to tell himself, but there wasn't much hiding from an observant ex-pharaoh who had access to one's mind (along with access to eyes, as the younger teen was likely sweating up a storm that had well become apparent to the human eye upon casual observation).

He was currently lying in bed, as a bedridden state implied, surrounded by sheets that did little to ease his pain with an annoyance he still had yet to forgive, who came regularly enough to sit by his bedside for the majority of the days that had to be passing.

'I'm sorry,' the former pharaoh told the brunet, stroking his hair as blue eyes stared pointedly forward. 'But it will ease up as we get used to forming a balance.' He tried to smile reassuringly. 'Me and Yugi had it easy. I could just shut the door in his mind and let his body acclimate him to my powers and balance out naturally.' The implied force needed instead of a natural, less painful process hung in the air and didn't quite go towards Kaiba further forgiving the spikey-haired teen with the sad ruby eyes.

The younger teen didn't want to get used to forming a balance with the ex-pharoah. He didn't want any of this and Yami, Atem, still didn't know how long he had to act as his light- how long he had to suffer. He didn't know when the pain would and could end, as he doubted he'd ever truly accomplish balancing on his own, and without any sort of pain. To top it all off, he couldn't even get himself to keep track of the days that were starting to pass him by as he lay in this painful state. All he knew was what Yami rambled at him as a form of distraction during the day time, when the light intensity, the pain, was brightest. Apparently, the mystery king and queen of the land had been up to relinquishing the country's library from a Flügel, which, he was assured, was like a harpy lady, but was very real and intelligent beyond the capabilities of most of, if not all of, the monsters that could be summoned from the Shadow Realm.

Yami also told him how they came to acquire this manor that was more of a parody of his own residence back in the real world. The only difference, he felt, was the colors giving the space more life than his manor ever managed to feel, even with his giving Mokuba free reign to redo certain rooms. No rooms ever felt this homey or colorful, none except the rooms Mokuba touched could ever begin to achieve such an atmosphere.

The thought of Mokuba again sent a stab of guilt and bitter-sweetness into his heart. His last blood relative that he would ever recognize and love so fully, raised as his own child, was gone. He failed him again by disappearing, abandoning him and enjoying it. He could admit he was enjoying himself in this world up until Yami did this-

But that wasn't the older teen's fault either, now was it?

It was stupid magic's fault. What a stupid concept, a stupid hindrance to have, to be so dependent on someone. He felt, at the very least, he and Mokuba could survive on their own. -Maybe not happily- but they could survive on their own. 'And, to think, he was on his way to achieving happiness in this world without Mokuba, too. He hadn't thought about the young teen as often as he knew he probably should have. He was only just getting the hang of being a good brother again when he was forced to leave.'

Something was off, but Yugi Motou didn't know how that was, outside of the obvious.

It was now a week and counting since Yami Motou and Seto Kaiba went missing. And the puzzling thing was that their disappearance was from within the Kaiba manor. Mokuba Kaiba was puzzled, most of all, since he was the one who had initiated the meetings between his brother and the ancient spirit in an effort to sustain what few 'friendships' Kaiba grudgingly allowed himself. The raven haired teen was beside himself with worry, wondering how such a secure meeting place could become compromised, not that the younger Kaiba anticipated a kidnapping nor that this was the reason for their meetings mainly consisting of being at the Kaiba manor. However, it did beg the question of whether or not any Kaiba residence was safe. They'd had security breaches before, but none this sufficient in leaving almost no trace. The only thing Mokuba and his security team could find was the computer chair tipped over.

It was at this point that the younger Kaiba brother came to suspect the use of magic and made the decision to call in Yugi. And, from there, the real mystery began.

At being called by a frantic Mokuba in the early morning the following day, the young blond was shocked. He had not stayed awake to witness Yami's coming home the previous evening, since his darker half tended to stay out late due to his darker nature. The small teen was distressed to have not felt anything along his link to Yami of something being amiss. He wondered how he slept through his kidnapping. Granted, Yugi and Yami's tethering to each other, as light and dark, was now less than it had been upon sharing a body, the bond was still there. But, where did it go to cause its younger half to feel nothing? He felt nothing pulling at him or leading him to the former pharaoh like he ordinarily would when doing some literal soul searching. All he felt was... whole...? Like before Yami came into the picture of his life, which seems so far away, like a distant memory. And, that's not to say he never felt whole to begin with, but he didn't feel that otherness, that more than wholeness he used to share with Yami. It left him feeling oddly disjointed and out of touch with reality, the more normal one he'd come to know after him and Yami split into two bodies.

Even when being brought to the crime-scene, the scene of the disappearance, he felt nothing or, at least, nothing substantial other than a general humming of some foreign magical energy he could just barely identify as being present.

The spikey-haired teen felt useless at this failure, but Mokuba didn't seem to fault him for it. The younger teen just nodded in understanding and grabbed his hand to lead him to a different part of the manor to place a call to Ishizu and her brothers, people who's entire lives had been dedicated to studying the writings and the magics that surrounded beings like the ancient, former pharaoh.

In hindsight, Yugi knows that Mokuba bringing them in was supposed to make him feel better, even Jonouchi, Honda, and Anzu, who all came over to the Kaiba manor a bit later once they heard the news from Yugi's grandpa, were telling him as much. But, it didn't. It just made him feel like he should be able to say the same rituals, the same spells, and sense the same things the Ishtars could easily appear to do. Watching Ishizu enter the room, where his other half was abducted, and immediately declare that they were dealing with a foreign, powerful entity on par with a god did not make Yugi feel any less useless. 'How on earth could he not have sensed a god? A literal god?!'

She then went on to say, with her brothers affirmation, that her sensing abilities told her that Yami was likely not on this world, but a different, altered version of it with more intense magic than what either of the Ishtars had ever seen. It was actually a surprise to see the stoic raven haired woman then, suddenly, fall to her knees in the center of the room, right beside the overturned chair, and stare in awe at something none of the other occupants in the room could see beyond the giant monitor against the opposite wall. Odion had to shake her hard to get any semblance of a reaction out of her after her staring had gone on for more than thirty seconds. Their younger brother, Marik, had looked close to tears and torn on what actions he should take beyond yelling for his sister to return to him and for Odion to do something.

When Ishizu finally came out of her trance, it was to inform them of a colorful world which housed many a creature only thought to exist in the game of Duel Monsters and the Shadow Realm it drew from. She could give nothing more detailed in her description as she seemed to be having a hard time apprehending all that her vision had shown her, appearing tired and exhausted as she struggle to come to a standing positioned. She promised to transcribe what she saw come the next day as Odion helped her to stay standing and lead her to the exit. Her worried younger brother trailed behind them.

It then became five days after the two other game masters of Japan and beyond, besides Yugi, had been gone. It became apparent that Ishizu's vision would not become clearer with time and she failed to see anything else of relevance. Instead, she led her brothers in the search for a way to retrieve the teens through means of ancient spell books. Meanwhile, Mokuba did his best to run Kaiba Corp. in his brother's stead while covering up the true matter of his brother's absence. Again, through all this, Yugi could do little but sit by and watch. He found some comfort in being a friend to Mokuba, but he couldn't replace his older brother nor remain a constant by the younger teen's side. Of course, their other friends were also there, doing their part at being there for their two smaller friends, but Yugi could tell they were feeling just as useless and frustrated as him.

So, it came as a surprise, not long after this renewed feeling of helplessness set in, that this was when Yugi suddenly felt something.

It started as a small shiver, the kind you get on occasion for seemingly no reason. Yugi had found it odd, of course, but didn't think beyond that until it wouldn't stop. It then became a shivering ache, the kind you get as your developing a cold and your body is trying to maintain homeostasis. But, then, that intensified until the shivering was seemingly disrupting his vision, causing flashes of color to pop in and out of his awareness. He almost thought he was seeing another world, flashes of pink cloud cover and, wait, was that red form a dragon?

As suddenly as the shivers started, they stopped, the world seemingly righting itself to the reality he more commonly knew.

"Are you okay?" Mokuba was looking down at him in worry. At some point during the shivering, the spikey-haired teen had fallen to the ground. He'd been stopping by the young teen's office, which happened to be the one his brother had used, though the younger Kaiba brother refused to use the desk and, instead, set up shop on his brother's office couch. The young Motou had just arrived to see if Mokuba had heard anything else about the progress to save their loved ones from the Ishtars and if the shorter male was in need of any extra help managing the company. He'd only gotten to standing before his friend, getting done with common pleasantries, when the odd sensation struck.

"I'm fine. Must have gotten dizzy." Yugi smiled self-deprecatingly, rubbing at the back of his neck with a nervous laugh.

The younger Kaiba didn't look convinced. If anything, his suspicion only grew. "Are you sure? Because it looked like you suffered from it more violently than I did."

"What?" The older teen found himself leaning forward. "Wait, you felt it, too?"

The raven haired male nodded, mouth set in a hard line. "Shivers, right? And then bright colors?"

Yugi nodded, a smile taking over his face as he sprung back to his feet. "Do you know what this means?" He started pulling at the younger boy to stand up, helping him quickly push his laptop and papers aside.

The tri-colored haired teen's excitement was contagious. Mokuba found himself smiling and giggling, too, as he let himself be pulled up and spun around. "What? What?"

All motion stopped as Yugi held the raven haired teen at arm's length, strong grip on his arms, pausing to collect his thoughts. "It means that we saw into the other world." The teen licked his lips, looking away, anxiously trying to put the pieces together. "We have a connection. We were the closest with Yami and Kaiba. We're still connected, somehow."

Mokuba blinked, confusion causing a wrinkle in his brow. "But what does that mean? And why could we only see it now?" Silence met his questioning as he stepped out of the older teen's loosening grip, seeing the other male's face fall with his arms. "That didn't feel pleasant."

Yugi shook his head, staring off in thought to the side. "You're right. Something doesn't seem right. Something seems off."

The raven haired Kaiba stepped closer to one of the many large, floor length windows in the office, his shadow elongating in the the fading sunlight. "I think they're in trouble."