Hello, hello! Welcome, welcome, welcome!
So glad you could come, so glad...now, I'll admit that this fic (which I've been working on for - gah - how many years by now?) is my little pride and joy. I've worked very, VERY hard on it.
If you want to see it in it's previous, much messier configuration, the old link is still up. If you're curious, you could check it out...but THIS is the fic as I mean to display it.
Please enjoy!
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Disclaimer: Authoress does not own Yu-Gi-Oh
Claimer: Everything in this fic that was not made up by someone else belongs to the authoress! No stealing!
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Frantically, he flew through the night sky, wide gossamer wings cutting powerful strokes through the chill air and hazy cloudbanks.
'There has to be a way out, there has to be,' he thought as he strained the beautiful appendages to their limits.
He was a lot lower than he would have preferred - just a thin layer of vapor concealed him from the expanse of light marking the human city below. But they would expect him to fly high, and so he flew had to stay low.
The breeze was against him tonight, and it kept blowing his golden bangs into his eyes. The rest of his wild black-and-red hair was managing to behave itself for once. Actually, if not for his wings, Yami was quite mistakable for a human...
He shook the bangs out of face again and tried to flap harder.
The demon swarm that was after him wouldn't rest until their mission was completed, or until they were all dead. And they were resourceful to boot; a braying noise from his left revealed the location of a tracker demon, one who had just spotted him.
Instantly he wheeled and climbed, going straight up while the rust-red demon brayed, calling the rest of the swarm to that location. He had barely broken to clear air before he was surrounded by looming forms in leathery skin and snarling jaws; the rest of the swarm's monstrous demons.
As one they swooped towards him, and the ones that succeeded in seizing hold of him used their scaly claws to clutch at his arms and pin his wings. The sound of more of the bat-like wings heralded the approach of their commander, a she-demon he knew FAR too well.
"And what do we have here?" cackled the she-demon.
"A Ban-Ile? And not just any old Ban-Ile, but the very one we've been searching for all this time! Our dear little friend Yami."
The she-demon was practically purring. The sound made bile start to rise in Yami's throat.
"A most generous prize has been offered to the swarm that brings you in. I wonder, you think we would receive extra if we inflicted some bodily harm?"
The other demons laughed at the joke. Infuriated, Yami could contain himself no longer. His strange violet eyes flashed with rage as he thrashed about, struggling to free himself from the demons that held him in place.
"Damn you - traitor!"
On the last word Yami succeeded in freeing one wing. He flapped it as hard as he could, landing blows across many of the demons' faces. The demons screeched with pain, flapping hard to try and get some distance between them and this newest source of pain; as delicate as those wings might be, even a single feather from a Ban-Ile was harder than a diamond and cut skin like glass.
Yami's other wing was free soon enough, and the closest remaining demons wisely flew off.
This lull didn't last long. Only a few seconds later, the demon swarm regained its nerve - with the she-demon screeching at their tails - and charged forward, claws and fangs bared. Yami knew, even as he struggled, that he didn't have a chance.
The only reason for his escape, and his survival, was that in their rage the demons began squabbling amongst themselves. Lashing out at each other, in their haste the ones that had seized Yami in the fighting accidentally forgot about him, and let go.
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Yuugi Motou wasn't really what you'd call an ordinary child. He did have some friends and lived with his family, which was much like what other children did.
However, when all those other children were off roughhousing with each other and running around, Yuugi could reliably be found elsewhere, letting his mind wander. Usually, Yuugi would spend that time staring up into the sky, at a cloud or some bird that had caught his attention.
When asked, Yuugi had many perfectly logical reasons behind his not participating in intense physical activity - his smaller-than-average stature, for starters. Those reasons were never his real reasons, but they were enough to placate the curious.
Whatever reason he really did have, looking up into the night sky that night might have been a random chance. However, where Fate is involved there is no such thing as mere Chance. And so as Fate would have it, Yuugi Motou was looking up at the night sky when a small silvery something dropped from the bottom of a cloudbank.
Yuugi blinked at the sight, squinting to try and get a better look. It seemed like some sort of weird bird to him.
Fate also employed Curiosity in its plans; that was why Yuugi went outside to investigate. The strange winged silver thing, Yuugi soon discovered, had crash-landed in a nearby park. If it was a bird or something, crashing like that meant it was probably hurt...this in mind, Yuugi went as fast as his admittedly stunted little legs could take him, only to stop dead in his tracks at the sight he had found.
It wasn't a bird at all. It looked like a person..but people didn't have wings...
Yuugi could remember the stories his mother had told him years ago, before she was gone. Some of them had been about people that had great wings and lived amongst the clouds, and were called 'angels' by the humans that saw them.
Well, if this was an angel, it was one that had really been through the meat grinder.
The human body part was bruised and broken, the pale silvery-gray robes it was wearing were ripped and bloody evidence of it. Its wings, however...that made Yuugi pause. One was spread wide open, and though it looked a little bit squished it seemed to be otherwise okay. The other wing was a total mess, crumpled and almost twisted all the way around. Even worse, it was partially stuck underneath the angel-person's own body. It was leaking some liquid that might have been blood - Yuugi wasn't certain, the stuff was as clear as glass.
Yuugi shook his head to dispel some of his shock and wonder - there was no point to just staring at it, he couldn't just leave it here!
He tried pulling the nearly destroyed wing out from underneath the body, only to yank his hand away as quickly as he had put it down. Yuugi stuck a sliced-up finger into his mouth with a wince - those feathers were so sharp! Like shards of broken glass, or something.
Going much more slowly and trying his best to keep from slicing himself up any further, Yuugi finally managed to free the wing that was being crushed.
It was another of Fate's tricks, more commonly known as Coincidence, that kept any creature from seeing Yuugi carrying the other one home on his back.
Grandpa wasn't back yet when Yuugi got home; thankful of avoiding a confusing explanation Yuugi quickly hauled the angel-person - he wasn't sure what else to call him - up the stairs to his room.
Yuugi's room was really more of a loft consisting of the entire top floor, so there was plenty of room for another person. Yuugi laid the angel-person out on a spare mat as gently as possible, trying to think of what he should do now.
The first aid kit came to mind, and Yuugi scampered downstairs to retrieve it. When Yuugi opened it to see if there would be enough supplies in there, he remembered his finger was still bleeding a little and got himself a band-aid for it.
Once that was done, and Yuugi had brought the kit back upstairs, the angel-person occupying his bed regained consciousness. He - for it was most definitely a 'he' - moaned softly first. Then his eyes shot wide open and he tried to get up. Discovering the hard way how that wasn't an option right now he settled for crouching instead, staring at his surroundings with all the intent of a wounded animal. His eyes went a little wider as he caught sight of Yuugi.
"Where am I? Who are you?" he demanded.
Feeling confused, Yuugi spent a moment just looking back, wondering what he should do. Then, with very hesitant motions, Yuugi responded in the only way he could - a series of gestures his nimble hands easily performed.
Yuugi sighed as he was mutely blinked at. Just as he had thought, the strange injured angel-person didn't understand it at all.
Frustrated but undaunted, Yuugi grabbed a pencil and a pad of paper. Hoping that this strange person could read at least, the mute teen quickly wrote his words out, before sliding the pad and pencil both across the floor. The pad stopped a short ways out of arm's reach, but the angel-person's intact wing extended and drew it closer, feather tips lightly scratching the floor.
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Yami felt his confusion compounding as he read the words.
They said 'You're in my room. I'm the person that found you. Who are you?'
Letting his eyes linger over the words as if he was still reading, Yami pondered the situation he had inexplicably entered. Sensing the unusually intense stare of the human boy on him, Yami decided to humor the boy and reached for the paper. Briefly examining the pencil, Yami wrote his reply underneath the boy's question, before pushing the things back over.
'I don't give out my name to people I don't know that I can trust. Why couldn't you just ask normally?'
Yami could have sworn that an almost bitter look had entered the other's eyes as the boy wrote another message and shoved the paper over.
'I do. My name is Yuugi.'
Underneath it was a shorter scribble that read, 'Figure the rest out yourself.'
While Yami tried to make some sort of sense out of this, a human voice called up from below.
"Yuugi, I'm back!"
'Yuugi' eagerly turned and went down the stairs. Now that he was alone, Yami tried to get up, only to annoyingly discover that he still couldn't. The Ban-Ile had to settle for pulling his deadweight over to get a look down the stairwell.
What Yami saw occur down there baffled him at first. There with Yuugi. He was standing before a little old human man.
"So, how was business while I was out?"
A brief hesitation, and then the younger human made another series of those odd hand motions.
"Not much, eh?"
The old human chuckled a bit.
"Guess my grandson's getting bored with minding the store while your Grampa's away!"
Yuugi laughed a bit too, though it was either utterly silent or too quiet for Yami to hear, then made a few more of the hand motions.
"I see," said the old man after looking at them.
Yami blinked as the obvious hit him. The Ban-Ile dragged himself back to the padded mat he'd woken up on and pondered over his circumstances as the one-sided-sounded conversation continued through various subjects. Eventually, that conversation ended and Yuugi came back up the stairs. Yami wasted no time in confirming his discovery.
"You can't speak at all, can you?" Yami inquired.
Yuugi paused mid-step, then nodded. The human boy wouldn't turn to meet his gaze, instead going to rummage in a dresser for something. Yami sighed, scribbled another note on the paper, tore that section off, wadded it up, and threw it in the general direction of Yuugi's head.
That task completed, Yami tried to find a position that didn't set off more pain in his aching and abused frame. Exhaustion from the prolonged chase finally catching up to him, the Ban-Ile's slid shut.
Yuugi blinked as a wadded piece of paper hit him in the head. Picking it up, Yuugi unfolded it out of curiosity. His eyes went wide as he read the single line that had been written there.
Turning to look at the angel-person, Yuugi was surprised to see that the guy was curled up, clearly going for some obviously much-needed rest. Something like a smile crossed his features as Yuugi looked at that line again. It was only four words long.
'My name is Yami.'
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