The Mob Song – Beauty and the Beast (Reprise)

-xxx-

Don't ever let anyone try to tell you that teleportation is painless. Moving through space obliterates every cell in the body to vapor, then reconstructs them completely from scratch. It takes the familiar, physical form and razes it, renders it amorphous—utterly unrecognizable. It is almost as painful as moving through time.

Yuugi had hated the flight to Egypt—the cramping feeling is his legs, the cabin pressure, the way the plane bobbed in the wind like a kite on a string—moving too fast and too far away from everything familiar.

But all that was nothing compared to feeling himself melt into pure entropy, until all that been Yuugi was erased and all that remained was one blazing, gold-plated intention: to re-materialize on the other side of the earth, hopefully with all his vital organs intact.

For a moment he was in a world beyond the reach of both darkness and light, where everything was roaring weightless noise and an unrelenting blast of color that would have burnt him down to the bone-if he had any body parts that were capable of burning.

Then, unsure if a moment had passed or an eternity, he found himself sealed up again inside his own body. He would have felt impeccably, almost intolerably, rigid and composed—if he hadn't been crying. (Teleportation is, among other things, incredibly emotionally draining. Especially when one takes a moment to reflect upon all that one has left behind.)

Yuugi sat on his knees, rubbing his eyes and arms and face because everything seemed to ache. He thought it strange that the roaring hadn't stopped. If anything, it seemed louder and more rhythmic. It rattled the walls and the floor and the ceiling of…wherever it was that Yuugi was now.

"Yuugi, is that you?"

Yuugi leapt at the sound of his grandfather's voice and raced towards it. "Grandpa!" Yuugi kneeled at his side, placing his hand on his slumped shoulder. "Are you alright? What happened?!"

"I'm fine, Yuugi. Now that you're here." He coughed, and leaned slightly closer, squinting in the semidarkness. "It is you, isn't it?" His voice suddenly felt hard and thin. It seemed to prod the air like an animal wary of stepping into a trap.

"Yes, of course! I…uh—" Yuugi stopped when Sugoroku wrapped a hand around each of his shoulders, then squeezed them tightly. He shook Yuugi gently, then clutched him in an embrace that Yuugi felt sure would at least crack a couple ribs. And Yuugi held him, too, feeling the rough fabric and thick seams of his overalls scratching against his cheek, his grandpa's rough beard pressed into his forehead, and the comforting heaviness of those arms that Yuugi had curled up in so many times like a nest. And he hugged him tighter. And when Sugoroku ruffled his hair and said that he had been both so afraid and so certain that he would never see Yuugi again, all Yuugi could was squeeze his eyes shut and nod.

"Oh, Yuugi…" Sugoroku patted his back and gently raised Yuugi's chin. "But how did you manage to escape from that monstrous place?"

"Well, I-I didn't really escape. The Pharaoh...he let me go."

"He what…?" Sugoroku pulled away and tilted his head to the side, scrutinizing Yuugi's face. "He let you go?"

Yuugi nodded. "Yeah…he—he told me that he didn't want to stop me from living my own life just for the sake of helping him….it's funny, I was so scared of him at first, but it turns out those stories you always told me aren't so far from the truth after all. He…changed a lot. It…" Yuugi paused and smiled, then laughed. "It's funny. I almost…well, he became so different—everyone was so kind to me in the end—and…"

Grandpa studied Yuugi's face as best he could in the dim light. Yuugi's eyes were still so wide and bright, his smile still soft and gentle. But there was something different about his face, and a new sturdiness in his back and in his shoulders. It reminded him of how it felt to strip the eons of dust and grime off the face of an ancient relief—something was irreversibly lost, but what that loss revealed was always bold and brilliant beyond all imagining. Somehow, in the darkness, believed that Sugoroku caught a glimpse of the most vivid and true vision of Yuugi that he had ever seen.

He chuckled. "Yes, of course he let you go!" His chuckle grew into a warm, bright laugh. "You did it, didn't you? You solved the puzzle of the Pharaoh's heart! I knew you could do it!"

Yuugi's eyes shifted down. He slumped. "No, I-I didn't solve it. Not all the way. We came really close, but the Pharaoh said we would never be able to complete the puzzle so long as I was his prisoner, so he sent me back to you…" Yuugi's voice trailed off as he looked around the room. "Where are we, anyway? What's going on?"

Sugoroku pressed his mouth into a thin line. "Oh Yuugi, you should not have come here. That so-called friend of yours, Kaiba Seto, is not what he pretends to be. He kidnapped me and forced me into a duel with him and some kind of monstrous hologram contraption…" He shuddered. "I don't think I have ever faced an opponent who was so cruel and relentless, or who knew so little about the true honor and heart of dueling. He knows nothing of mercy, or kindness. Everything that boy lays his hands on turns into some kind of twisted nightmare…" Grandpa's voice froze over, and his eyes loomed large and far away. "He's had me locked up in this cell for days—weeks even!—while he builds some kind of deadly maze that he plans to use to against you." He began to speak with a jagged, desperate tremor. "You shouldn't have come here, Yuugi. That boy is doing everything he possibly can to find and destroy you. You must leave, leave now before he finds you here!"

"Well…" Yuugi paused, biting his lip. "Maybe I should face him. I don't want him hurting any more people, trying to get to me, and—" Yuugi grimaced, reaching into his pocket. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner—Kaiba-kun doesn't like losing."

He fumbled in his pocket for the broken halves of the Blue Eyes White Dragon. "I'm sorry. I tried to protect it! Everything just happened so fast and I'm so, so sorry…"

Grandpa smiled and gingerly took the pieces from Yuugi's trembling fingers. "I know you did, Yuugi." He wrapped his arm around Yuugi's shoulders and squeezed them. "I love this card, but not for the reason that you might think. Now, I may never be able to play it again, but that's not important to me. What is important is all the happy memories it gave me, and all the happy memories it gave you. The friends we made together. What are attack points to memories like that? None of those things have changed in the slightest."

He tucked the broken card into his breast pocket. "I'm very glad to see you again. But—" He hesitated for a moment, staring intently at Yuugi's face. "What will become of the Pharaoh? And the others? Do you know?"

Yuugi shook his head and was about to reply when the door opened with a loud screech. The room immediately burned with a searing light that Yuugi feared might bake him from the inside out. He flung his arm over his eyes, struggling to suppress a groan.

"Yuugi!" Mokuba exclaimed, voice brimming with malicious glee. "So you finally decided to show up! What's wrong with you?! Open your eyes when I'm talking to you!"

"Yuugi has been in the darkness for quite some time," Sugoroku explained. "He needs some time to adjust."

Mokuba wrinkled his nose and rolled his eyes. "He's not going to get time for much of anything." He turned to go, then spoke over his shoulder, grinning. "Just wait till Nii-sama hears that you've arrived…"

-xxx-

Anzu grimaced and clapped her hands over her ears as she struggled through aisle after aisle of the bustling, boisterous teenagers who were jammed into nearly every inch of Kaiba Stadium, from the sticky black tile floor to the stadium lights. The building rattled with their pounding feet. Anzu's stomach shook.

She bit her lip and craned her neck, again, scanning for any trace of Yuugi. But every face and every voice in the arena seemed to run together. Frowning, she squeezed into one of the few remaining seats.

"Hey!" Someone tapped her on the shoulder with a loud laugh. "Anzu, what are you doing here?"

Anzu turned around to see Jounouchi and Honda sitting one aisle behind her, each bearing a jumbo size soda and popcorn. Honda quirked an eyebrow at her. "I would have thought that a place like this would be a bit too vulgar for your refined tastes."

Anzu frowned. "For your information, Kaiba-kun told me to come here! He said he had information about Yuugi—that I would find him here. I thought it was a weird suggestion, but," she shrugged. "Well, it's not like I had any other promising leads." She added pointedly.

Honda and Jounouchi exchanged a look.

Jounouchi pressed his back deeper into his chair. "I really hope he was yanking your chain, Anzu."

"What do you mean?"

"Well…" Honda reached into his pocket and unfolded a flyer that he handed to her. "Looks a little weird, doesn't it?"

The words KAIBA CORPORATION DEATH-T SPECTACULAR were emblazoned in large gold letters across the top, just above a picture of a Blue Eyes White Dragon with three heads, each with hard angry eyes and a mouth dripping with thick, white froth. A small figure was clenched between the dragon's claws, and its back was bent into a somewhat uncomfortable looking shape. At the bottom of the page was a line of text that read WITNESS THE TRIUMPH OF GAMING CHAMPION KAIBA SETO AS HE OBLITERATES UPSTART CHALLENGER IN A BATTLE TO THE DEATH!

Anzu shook her head. "No! You don't think…" Her eyes darted from Honda to Jounouchi and then back to the flyer. "Why would Kaiba do something like this to Yuugi?!"

Honda shrugged. His voice slipped under the quick and fiery shouts and laughter that surrounded them. It was low, steady, and serious. "I don't know…I mean, Kaiba's always been a little…you know, but…" He looked at Jounouchi again and held his gaze for a long moment. "If Yuugi's really the target of this thing, that's really something else."

Anzu turned the flyer over and over in her hands, as if she could decipher any more clues about Yuugi's whereabouts if she held it at just the right angle under the light. "Kaiba-kun offered to help me find him..." she murmured.

"Well, maybe we can just wait and see what happens?" Jounouchi offered with a shrug. "We're just sitting here getting worked up over something that we don't even know is going to happen! Could be that we're completely wrong! Maybe Yuugi is like, I don't know, a special guest or something."

Honda nodded and chewed his lip. "Yeah, maybe…"

"And what if he's not?" Anzu asked. Somehow the flyer had become crumbled into a small ball in her hands. And her knuckles were white, her fist shaking. "What if it's exactly as bad as it looks? What do we do then?"

None of them quite wanted to look at each other.

-xxx-

Yuugi leaned against the back wall of the elevator, careful to avoid looking directly at the lights. His eyes were still stinging. He could hear a restless clamor building up beyond the elevator door.

"So, uh, what exactly does Kaiba-kun have planned for me?"

Mokuba pursed his lips and twisted and untwisted his hands. "I'm not allowed to give specific details," he replied finally. "But trust me, it's to die for!"

Mokuba cackled and Yuugi replied with a small, uncertain smile.

"Well, great. I'm looking forward to it."

Mokuba turned on him, hands fisted and nostrils flaring. "Hey! You have to show my Nii-sama some proper respect! This is frightening!"

Yuugi laughed softly. "Alright—what was your name again, Mokuba?—I'm sorry, Mokuba-kun. I'm sure this will be a great challenge. I can tell that Kaiba-kun worked very hard on it."

Mokuba chewed on his tongue. "What's wrong with you?! Why are you not afraid…"

Yuugi laughed again. "Let's just say that it's a bit of a long story…"

"Hmph. Whatever. That stupid smile is going to fall right off your face the second you see what Nii-sama has instore for you!"

About this, Yuugi had to concede, Mokuba was completely correct. The moment the elevator jolted to a halt and the doors slid open, Yuugi's smile fell into a flabbergasted gape.
He had thought the glower of the overhead lights hard to withstand, but that had been nothing.

He stepped out of the elevator to find himself surrounded on all sides by wall of neon lights, explosive bursts of candy-colored music so artificially sweet that it made his teeth ache, and, pulsating through him so forcibly that he could feel his bones rattle, the voices of a thousand of Domino's best, brightest, and most impressionable minds, glaring down and screaming at him.

"W-what's going on?" Yuugi turned to Mokuba sharply. "A-Are they booing me?"

Mokuba grinned. "Well, they're certainly not cheering, are they? But don't worry—they will be soon enough—once Nii-sama starts creaming you!"

"B-but why? I—I don't even know most of these people!"

Mokuba rolled his eyes. "Because you're a loser," he drawled, as if this fact was so obvious that Yuugi stank with it. "Now get going! We don't have all day to sit around here watching you be a big baby!"

Yuugi gulped. "I'm not…but...what exactly do I have to do?"

"Make it out of here alive." Mokuba laughed again, and Yuugi felt the entire arena laughing along with him. "Ha—not so brave anymore, are you?" Mokuba asked, leering.

Yuugi gulped. "Kaiba-kun actually wants to kill me?"

"All I'm saying is that this isn't going to be all fun and games…" At this moment Yuugi noticed that Mokuba's smile looked much more easy and sincere than his big brother's. However, they were alike in their shared inability to convey even the faintest glimmer of happiness. Indeed, Mokuba's smile—Mokuba's eyes, Mokuba's laugh—all seemed to bubble up from a well of bubbling gasoline. The more he talked, the closer he seemed to be to exploding.

"All this because of a card game…"

"This is about much more than some dumb card game!" Mokuba cried, hands balled into fists and hair flaring out behind him. "My Nii-sama is the best at everything! He is the best duelist in the entire world and he has no time to suffer cheats and liars like you!"

"I—I didn't cheat! And I didn't lie, either!"

"You must have!" Mokuba was pacing now, but his eyes never left Yuugi's face. "Look at you. There's no way someone like you could have beaten Nii-sama. You must have cheated! It's the only logical explanation!"

"I didn't cheat!"

"You lie!" Mokuba yelled. He stretched out his arms, puffed out his chest, and turned out to the audience. "Yuugi is a liar, isn't he, Domino?!" The crowd cheered and clapped and stomped its feet. It made Yuugi jump. Standing under the spotlight, the faces in the audience were impossible to distinguish. It was like he was being shouted down by a single booming voice, a voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once. "And a cheater?!" Mokuba cried. The crowd cheered louder.

Someone in the faceless mob lobbed their bag of popcorn at Yuugi's head. Someone else tossed their half-finished soda. Yuugi flinched, flung his hands over his face, and tried to dodge the attacks, but his frantic movements only seemed to encourage them.

Yuugi stumbled around in a small circle and struggled to keep his legs steady and his eyes fully open. "I'm not! No—this—this is wrong!"

Mokuba grinned and leaned in closer. Though he was still several paces away, there was something in the quality of his voice that made Yuugi feel like Mokuba was whispering directly into his ear. "Alright, Yuugi—so maybe you're not a liar or a cheater, but we all know what you really are then—you're a sacred, pathetic little baby who's so afraid of facing my brother again that you ran away from home and made us literally hunt you down and drag you here." He flung his head back and laughed when Yuugi became trembling, quiet, and pale.

"I'm not afraid, Mokuba-kun." Yuugi said quietly. "And you did not drag me here."

"Alright," Mokuba turned and began to walk back towards the elevator, smirking over his shoulder. "Then prove it!"

-xxx-

Mana opened her eyes and screamed.

"Gah! What is this?! It's so bright here!" She shut her eyes again and flung her arm over her face. "Is this how people live now?! How can they think with all this light everywhere?!"

"I'm not sure." Isis staggered to her feet. Their journey had left them splayed on the rigidly manicured lawn stretched around the Kaiba Stadium. She squinted up at the high, gleaming walls. They seemed to glare down at her, and the building itself emitted a noxious energy that made her sweat and shiver at the same time. She swallowed. "Stand up, Mana. You can't help Yuugi with your eyes closed."

"I know—ah—" Mana peaked through a small gap between her fingers as she rose, knees still wobbling. "This is where Yuugi is, right? I did the spell right?!"

"That remains to be seen." Mahaad surveyed the lawn, the parking lot—both completely silent and devoid of Yuugi. "There doesn't seem to be anyone here at the moment."

"This also doesn't look like the place we saw in the vision." Seth said. "Perhaps—Pharaoh…?"

The Pharaoh had taken several steps forward and was glaring at the entrance to the stadium. "In there," he announced. "We will find Yuugi through that door."

Mana followed his gaze and frowned. "But how can you tell?"

The Pharaoh closed his eyes and bit his bottom lip. He felt a breeze on his skin, the sun bearing down on the back of his neck. "I…I sense him in there. It's strange, it's like—" Like playing senet-had that really happened the way that Mana had said? He felt the faintest flicker in the far reaches of his mind, like the first whispers of dawn in the night sky. But it was still too far away to touch. He shook his head, clenched his fists, and smiled at the sensation of the muscles in his body slowly, softly, twitching awake. "Yuugi...I won't leave you alone there. I promise."

The Pharaoh led the charge through the double doors, his cloak billowing out behind him, and nearly marched directly through the gate attendant.

"Hey, man" He squawked, throwing up his hands. "You got a ticket?"

The Pharaoh's gaze snapped up to the man's face. "A ticket?!"

"Yeah, a ticket. This isn't some kind of charity concert or something. Do you have one or not?"

The Pharaoh's eyes widened and his mouth fell open. "What?!"

The attendant rolled his eyes. "You have to pay to get in. You're familiar with that concept, right?"

The Pharaoh paused. "I'm afraid there aren't many concepts that I am familiar with at this point."

"What's going on? Why aren't we going inside?" Mana stumbled through the doorway, the others quickly behind her, and poked her head over the Pharaoh's shoulder.

"This man says we need a ticket in order to enter."

"Do any of you have one? Look," he added, glancing at their outfits. "If you're here for the cosplay convention, that's next weekend. Come back then."

Mana furrowed her brow. "Convention? No, we're here looking for Yuugi!"

"Then you need a ticket."

"How much do the tickets cost?" Isis asked. "We'll be happy to pay to enter the arena." Her hands flitted over her robes, groping for anything that might resemble currency.

"Though I can't imagine how…"

"Doesn't matter." He replied. "They're all sold out."

Mana pushed herself to the front of the group and leaned over the counter, fingers clawing at the countertop. "But you don't understand! We have to see Yuugi! We're here to rescue him!"

The attendant raised his eyebrows and let out a low whistle. "Yeah, that's definitely not going to happen."

"Of course it's going to happen!" Mana cried. "That's why we're here!"

Seth ran a fingernail over the surface of his specter, digging into the gold until his fingertip turned white. "Do something to resolve this situation," he muttered to Mahaad. "Before I start to truly regret relinquishing my more special abilities."

Mahaad coughed. "Excuse me, are these the tickets that you're referring to?" He rubbed his fingers together, and everyone but Seth missed him mumbling a quick incantation. He held his hand up under the attendant's nose, brandishing five tickets.

The attendant narrowed his eyes. "I thought you guys said that you didn't have any tickets."

"And now we're saying that we do." Seth snatched the tickets out of Mahaad's hand and slammed them down the counter. "So it's no longer an issue, right?" His question ended on a sharpened point, as if to imply to the attendant that the wrong answer would result in an object of similar acumination finding its way into his chest cavity.

The attendant eyed him for a moment, and maybe it was Seth's bright teeth and long fingers and the way his voice felt heavy and dangerous, or the fact that he seemed like the type of guy who could kill a man with little more than a stern look and no more effort than a casual shrug, or maybe because he just wasn't paid enough to deal with this kind of thing, but the attendant shrugged, held up his hands, and sighed. "Go on in, then."

The Pharaoh nodded and marched inside.

They made it a few steps into the seating area before their ears began to ring. The Pharaoh's mouth fell open. Everything in this world moved and everything stank. The air was damp and sour and seemed to churn all around them as if they had all been thrown to sea. The light bobbed up and down unpredictably, skidding off the ceiling before crashing back down to the stands, where it ripped the shadow off people's faces and left them pale as bleached bone. And the faces—they had never seen so many. Packed in the stands they all seemed to look the same. They all wore the same expression—the face of someone who was about to sink their teeth into the neck of a writhing animal—and they were all looking down at the same thing.

The Pharaoh followed their line of sight down to the center of the stage and gasped.

"Yuugi!"

It was too far down to the stage for the Pharaoh to make out the details of his face, but he knew the slope of Yuugi's shoulders. He knew the way Yuugi stood. He knew the way Yuugi breathed. He had listened to it like music, when it had been just the two of them sitting together in the labyrinth. And he could hear that same rhythm now, reaching him through the blaring noise and shocking brightness with a slow, quiet warmth that he would have recognized even after another millennium alone and underground.
And now, Yuugi was standing there, all alone, so small in that wide open empty space.

"Yuugi…" the Pharaoh repeated. He glared out at the arena and his eyes, which had been softened by the sight of Yuugi, grew sharp. "What's going on here?" He whispered.

"Why…" There was a loud sound that seemed to come from all directions at once and the audience began to cheer. Yuugi flinched at the sound. The Pharaoh ground his teeth. "I cannot allow this to continue."

-xxx-

Yuugi jumped at the sound of a large crack. A beam of multi-colored light shot up near his feet and transformed into the semi-transparent form of Seto Kaiba, hovering about a foot off the ground. He seemed to shimmer under the spotlights that raced around the arena, and he looked even paler and more sleep-deprived than usual.

"Kaiba-kun!" Yuugi cried. He couldn't hear his own voice over the rancorous cheers engulfing him, but he could feel it burning in the back of his throat. "What's going on? Please stop this! We don't have to fight!"

"Hello, Yuugi!" Kaiba's voice had a strange, metallic sound, as if he were speaking from deep inside a computer. "And welcome to my game arena, Death-T! I'm glad to see that you finally came out of hiding to join me here!"

"You have to stop this, Kaiba-kun!" Yuugi cried. "Someone could get hurt."

Kaiba flashed him a lazy, patronizing smirk. "Yuugi, you are in no position to be making demands. And, in fact, getting hurt happens to be exactly what this arena was designed for. If you manage to defeat all five of the games I have designed then you can go free—but if I were in your position I wouldn't be overly optimistic."

Yuugi bowed his head slightly and bit his lip to keep it from trembling. "I will defeat your games, Kaiba-kun!...Or have you already forgotten how easily I beat you the first time?"
Yuugi couldn't tell if it was a technical malfunction, but the hologram seemed to freeze for a moment before replying. "You will find that these games are much harder than anything you have ever faced before! And the stakes much more deadly!"

Yuugi jumped as the stage where he was standing suddenly began to disassemble and the walls of the arena rose up even higher above him. Yuugi found himself standing on one thin pillar of solid ground, sinking down deeper into a large black abyss that had opened up in the center of the stage.

The crowd howled, stamped, and cheered. Kaiba smirked. Before the underground consumed him completely, Yuugi heard him make one final remark, his voice splitting with laughter. "Remember, Yuugi—the world of the dead doesn't relinquish its residents easily. Even those who manage to escape it has a way of hauling back again!"

The floor sealed shut above him, and for a moment Yuugi was alone in cold, dark silence.

Then he heard a pulse, like the jump-start of an electric heartbeat, and a screen above him lit up with the words STAGE 1 glowing in large, red letters. The screen flashed, and began to fill in with lines of bright red text which read:

IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS DISORDER AND CHAOS IN ALL THINGS. THE WORLD WAS LAWLESS AND LIFELESS. GOD ENDED CHAOS BY ASSIGNING EACH THING ITS PROPER PLACE. LIGHT ROSE TO THE TOP AND THE HEAVY ELEMENTS WERE PUT BELOW. FROM THIS ORDER LIFE WAS ABLE TO PROGRESS.

The words disappeared, then a spotlight fell into the center of the room, revealing a row of five scales. Yuugi squinted and slowly stepped close enough to see that the scales were balanced with different sets of stones-red, green, blue, black and white.

"I suppose Kaiba-kun wants me to know how much each of these stones weighs-I guess that's easy enough…" He took a step closer to the closest scale. It was taller than he was, and under the spotlight it gleamed golden and seemed to buzz. "Well," Yuugi said, reaching for one of the stones, "This should be less painful than the last time I used one of these things…" He chuckled, though the statement didn't feel particularly funny. The memory of his last encounter with a scale of this size, if anything, made him feel somewhat sick. He regretted laughing.

He also regretted assuming that this this second encounter would be painless. The instant his fingers brushed against the stone that he had been reaching for-a blue one-a bolt of pain shot through his chest. It sent him flying off his feet and skidding across the floor, until he collided with the back wall. Yuugi sat up slowly, hand covering his heart, just to make sure that it was still there. His head was aching and he was finding it hard to breathe; his whole body seemed to be buzzing, just like he had noticed the scales themselves doing earlier.

"So that's the catch, I guess," he muttered, staggering to his feet and rubbing his forehead. "They're all electrically charged...But how can I weigh the stones if I can't even touch them?"

Yuugi scanned the set of scales. He noticed that each setup was slightly different, and counted the stones of each side of each scale carefully.

Scale 1: 2 RED, 1 GREEN, 2 BLUE, 2 BLACK = 2 WHITE
Scale 2: 2 RED, 1 WHITE = 1 GREEN, 1 BLUE
Scale 3: 7 BLACK = 1 GREEN, 4 RED
Scale 4: 1 BLUE, 1 BLACK, 4 RED = 1 GREEN
Scale 5: 2 GREEN, 1 BLACK = 1 WHITE, 2 BLUE, 2 RED

Then Yuugi noticed something else-where the words on the screen had once been. It was now a ticking clock, counting down...4:45, 4:44, 4:43…

Yuugi gulped, then bit his lip. "I guess I better figure this out…"

-xxx-

"Yuugi! Ugh—what's that creep Kaiba done to him?!" Anzu's feet slammed the floor and she jumped up, yanking on Honda's arm, trying to pull him up from his seat. "Well, what are you waiting for?!"

Honda's face was set. "Calm down a second. What are we supposed to do—charge over to Kaiba and demand he just let Yuugi go? I highly doubt he'll do that now..."

"I know-but we have to do something! Oh—we can't just sit here and watch him go through this all on his own!"

"I'm not proposing that we do that. I just think we ought to develop a plan first."

"And so then what's your plan, huh, genius?"

"I'm still working it out!"

"Hmph." Anzu rolled her eyes. She gasped as several large screens descended from the ceiling, all showing Yuugi's large, pale face against a background of absolute black. He looked so small in that large dark room. "Oh, Yuugi…" Her eyes burned on the spot where Kaiba's hologram had vanished. She set her jaw and rolled up her sleeves. "If you guys don't come up with some way to get him out of there in thirty seconds…"

"Wait!" Jounouchi cried, startling them both, "I think I might have an idea!"

Honda grimaced and pressed his fingers to his temples. "Great. Do I even want to hear it?"

Jounouchi cast a quick glance around the stadium, then gestured for them to lean in. "You see that spot there?" He muttered, pointing to the elevator where Yuugi had first appeared. With the lights on the edge of the stage now dimmed, the elevator was mostly in shadow, and unguarded. "No one's paying attention to that thing, right? I say we sneak in, and it takes us right back to Yuugi!"

Honda pursed his lips and rubbed his chin. "Hm—well, assuming that no one sees us, and assuming that no one tries to stop us, and assuming that Yuugi got taken back down to the same place where the elevator came from…you might actually be on to something…"

Jounouchi inclined his head and grinned. "Why, thank you."

"Don't start congratulating yourself just yet." Anzu said. "There were a lot of ifs in that sentence."

"I know." Jounouchi shrugged and held out his hands. "But just look—it's not like we have a ton of options right now."

"And weren't you just about to storm the stage?" Honda added. "His plan is bound to work better than that."

Anzu cast another glance at Yuugi's face on the screen. He was sweating, holding his chest, struggling to get back on his feet. She sighed, the nodded. "Okay. Let's do it!"

Honda and Jounouchi stood up and they all began to clamber through the crowd, trying to remain inconspicuous. It wasn't hard to go unnoticed underneath the lights and the screaming and the music, all the eyes glued to Yuugi's face looming large on the screen. But they were so focused on making it to the elevator door that they didn't notice the commotion unfolding beneath them, where a strangely-dressed figure was standing at the center of the stage.

Anzu, Honda, and Jounouchi elbowed their way to the far end of the stadium and jumped down to the elevator. With the clamour in the audience and the security guards storming the stage, the three slipped through the elevator doors, and, holding their breath and not daring to make a sound, they began to slide underground.

-xxx-

"Pharaoh—Pharaoh wait for us!" Mana chased the Pharaoh down the stairs towards the stage, bumping into several people on her way down. Every shoulder she had to push past and each pair of people that she had to squeeze between made her stomach lurch. Their skin was so hot, and their bodies so incredibly heavy and firm. The Pharaoh passed directly through them. He didn't seem to notice them at all.

Mana glanced over her shoulder to see Isis, Mahaad, and Seth begin to stagger through the crowd after her. Mahaad and Seth didn't seem averse to using their shoulders and elbows to help muscle through the crowd, and a ripple of disturbance began to emanate out from them and undulate through the entire audience, as people began to turn, point, and stare.

The Pharaoh was oblivious. His eyes were set ahead, focused, and blazing. He was like a fire well-fed and roaring, ready to devour whatever it was set upon. Yet, when he reached the edge of the stage, he stopped.

Yuugi was still standing there, but he was no longer alone. He was talking to a transparent figure who seemed to float several inches off the ground, who seemed to tower over him, who brandished light and sound like a lightning storm around the entire arena.

"This is…some kind of spirit? He seems…" The Pharaoh shook his head. The figure had sharp, rigid shoulders. He looked down on Yuugi with a pitiless smile, as if relishing the fear that was playing across Yuugi's face. He shook his head. "This…this cannot continue." He took a step forward.

And then Yuugi was gone. A trap opened up in the floor and he was sinking down, vanishing underground—to another eternal death, another labyrinth of hopelessness. While that spirit looked on and laughed.

"Yuugi!" The Pharaoh leaped onto the stage, but it was too late. The floor had sealed under his feet and Yuugi was gone.

The Pharaoh spun around to where the spirit had been hovering, but he too had vanished. "Release him!" The Pharaoh roared. "Come out you coward and face me!" He glared around the stage, using as much of his magic as he could muster to make the spirit appear again. But the stage remained empty. The Pharaoh clenched his jaw and bit down hard on the tip of his tongue. "Ow…" he muttered, sucking at a strange tangy flavor in his mouth.

"Hey—you! Get off the stage!"

The Pharaoh looked up and around at the circle of figures moving in quick to surround him. They were wearing helmets and shields and several were pointing something small and metallic at the area around his chest.

"Where is Yuugi? What have you done with him?!" He shouted.

One of the figures spoke through a loudspeaker. "You have to the count of three to get off this stage and come with us or else—"

Or else what? The Pharaoh frowned. There was no way that these people could hurt him—they were so small and so mortal; he could wipe them all away in an instant. And yet…there was something about their stern, nearly blank expressions, their shields and their strange metal objects. The Pharaoh thought about that strange new flavor of his mouth. He wasn't sure what exactly that or else would do to him. And he had never been unsure about what anyone's empty and meaningless threats might do to him, but he had also never had this taste in his mouth, he had never left his prison underground in Egypt. Until just a few hours ago, he had never believed it possible. And now a whole new world of unpleasant possibilities seemed to open up under his feet, just like that hole that swallowed Yuugi. He had never had a heart, and now, though still feeble as it was, he wasn't sure what those guns might do to it.

He lowered his eyes to the ground and nodded. "I will go with you." The circle tightened around him, and they walked the Pharaoh off the stage and down a long, dark hall.

-xxx-

"Excuse me, Seto-sama, it appears—"

"What is it." Kaiba snapped. He didn't tear his eyes from his glowing wall of television monitors. Yuugi was scratching the back of his neck, mumbling to himself. Kaiba pressed his hands together and rested his chin on the sharp points of his fingers. He was silent and almost completely still, skin cool and damp and as electricity charged as those glass balls. Soon, Yuugi would be cowering at his feet, face crumpled and wet and bright burning red, blubbering out pathetic little apologies. And Kaiba would strike him down with one swift hand. He would obliterate the very memory of Yuugi Muto so completely that no one would even remember how to spell his name correctly. Kaiba sighed. And then he would stop hearing Yuugi's name in every footfall, would stop jumping at the sight his face in every passing stranger. Kaiba pressed his shoulders back into his chair, dug is elbows into the armrests, and grinned—an expression so severe that it nearly split his bottom lip. "I'm busy."

"My apologies, Seto-sama, but it appears that we've had a security breach in the basement."

Isono leaned forward and changed the channel on the nearest monitor, where they could see Anzu, Jounouchi, and Honda racing down a long, white-tile hallway, stopping to pound on every door.

"Yuugi—" Anzu's voice echoed down the hall. "Yuugi, are you down here?!"

"Yuu-giii! Hey, Yug' where are you?" Jounouchi was yelling until his throat went raw, but Kaiba heard it only as a faint, static-soft whisper.

"And whose fault is this?"

"I am very, very sorry, Seto-sama. Again. I don't know how something like this could have happened. I've already ordered guards who are pursuing them as we speak and they will be thrown out immediately and—"

"Wait." Kaiba held up his hand. He turned back to the screen and watched it for several moments in contemplative silence. "Let them find him." He grinned. "Let the presence of his little friends give Yuugi a false sense of security, let him still think he has a fighting chance. That will just make it all the more satisfying when I obliterate him."

Isono stared at him, open-mouthed and pale-faced, then scrambled to bow. "As you wish, Seto-sama."

Isono turned and fled the room. Kaiba turned back to his walls of monitors and leaned back in his chair. He looked from screen to screen—the exuberant audience, the frantic friends, and Yuugi—seemingly alone, seemingly bewildered—frowning as he counted something on his fingers. "It doesn't matter how many people you bring in to help you, Yuugi," he murmured. "At end end of it all, you're still going to die alone."

-xxx-

Anzu slammed her fist against one door, and another, and another. "Ugh! I can't—I can't…" She shoved her shoulder into the door, but it remained the same as ever: large, white, unyielding, and not Yuugi. "I can't believe I thought this might work! Coming down here with you—we don't even know where we're going or what we're doing…" She snarled and bunched up her shoulders and her hands until her entire body was a tightly coiled spring. And she began pounding on the door again. "Yuugi! Yuugi! Just—be here!"

"Hey—hey!" Jounouchi was at her side, trying to pull her away. "Stop that before you hurt yourself!"

"Oh—I'm fine! Ugh—" she flung Jounouchi's hands away. "Get off me! I can't believe I thought this would work! You and your brilliant ideas—what was I thinking?! Why didn't we just call the police?! How could I have let you lead me down here on this stupid goose chase—" She turned and scowled at him. "Do we even have any idea where we are? Or what we're going to do if we even find Yuugi?! Or what's going to happen to all of us if we don't?!"

"Hey—Anzu…hey…" Jounouchi had taken a step away but his hands were still up. "I know you're scared for Yuugi, okay? I am, too—I—and I know you don't really trust us." He shrugged. "I know that me and Honda haven't always been the nicest guys to be around. But you have to believe that I'm trying—I really want to get Yuugi out of here, just as badly as you do. And at the moment this is the only shot we've got."

Anzu shivered in the pale chilly silence. Somewhere nearby Yuugi's heart was pounding and Anzu could swear that she felt in the walls. "I just don't know what we're going to do."
Jounouchi took a small step closer. "We'll find Yuugi. Somehow. We're going to make this right, I promise." He reached for her arm again, softly and slowly; this time his fingers simply brushed the back of her hand. "We'll get him back."

"Hey, guys! Quit yacking and listen! It sounds like we've got company…." Honda pointed down the hall, to where footsteps were falling fast and large dark shadows were creeping up the walls. "We've got to get out of here—and fast."

"And go where?" Jounouchi asked. "Every door we've tried has been completely locked."

"Then we've just got to keep running!"

"I'm afraid it's too late for that."

Mokuba was standing in the center of the hall, one hulking bodyguard at either side. "Did you really think that my Nii-sama wouldn't notice you three rats sneaking around down here?" He crossed his arms and grinned. He spoke like spinning spider webs, like he could wrap himself around everything and hold it suspended and writhing, waiting with infinite patience for the opportune moment to strike.

Anzu stepped forward. "Where is Yuugi?!"

"Oh—Yuugi—I can take you right to him." Mokuba waited and savored Anzu's silence and the bewildered darkness in her eyes. "Just come with me. Nii-sama has something really special planned for all four of you."

"Oh yeah? And what if I don't wanna come with you?" Jounouchi was already pushing up the sleeves of his jacket. "What if I don't want to deal with you or your stupid brother?"

Mokuba simply let his bodyguards take a step forward. "You are going to come with me. You either come willingly and I take you to Yuugi, or you come unwillingly and these guys here take you somewhere much worse."

-xxx-

The Pharaoh shuddered as the door slammed shut behind him. The metallic clang of the guard's footsteps retreated down the hall, and he was left alone.

The Pharaoh sighed and slumped against a wall, curling his knees up to his chest and leaning his chin on his fist. It still felt like his skin was letting off steam, like his heart was beating too fast. His palms were sweaty and he felt cool and clammy all over—almost dizzy, nearly nauseous. His chest felt tight and he reached for it, up past where his pendant was dangling and directly for his heart.

He leaned his head back on the wall and closed his eyes. "At least it's darker in here," he murmured. He hadn't noticed the headache pinching him between the brows until now, when, in the shadows, it was just beginning to subside. He bit his lip and sucked on it. It tasted hot and salty.

"But what good am I to Yuugi here? How could I have let something like this happen?!" He lifted his head slightly, then let it thud back against the wall. It made his headache worse. "I must get back to him…but how?"

There was something familiar about this chamber. It was a pocket of space that the universe had forgotten about—dark, silent, still, the walls and ceiling scarcely visible. After the light and noise and other brutal aboveground sensations the Pharaoh thought that this environment ought to soothe him, but the only thing he could feel was the distance between him and Yuugi. Yuugi was locked up in a puzzle that the Pharaoh didn't know how to solve, and the more he turned it over in his head the more his stomach seemed to swim inside him.

His eyes snapped open. This chamber was unlike his previous home in one key regard: the Pharaoh could tell that he was not alone. Somewhere in the room someone was shuffling, coughing, stirring up the air.

"Who's there!" He called out. "Show yourself!"

A small voice came from somewhere deeper in the room. "Is that…No…it can't be—my mind must be playing tricks on me…"

The Pharaoh sprung to his feet and held his body tense. "Who's there!" He furrowed his brow and a third eye began to glow on his forehead, casting a thin glow across the room. He saw one small figure leaning back in a far corner, a figure who looked strikingly familiar…

"It is you!" The man cried, excitedly struggling to stand. "I knew I could recognize that voice anywhere!"

The Pharaoh started. "You're…Yuugi's grandfather…" He shook his head and went to Sugoroku's side. "What are you doing down here? Is Yuugi nearby?"

Sugoroku sighed. "I'm afraid that I don't know exactly where Yuugi is…He appeared in here with me, then that rotten boy Mokuba led him away." He shuddered. "I told him to run, but he wouldn't budge." He laughed softly, despite himself. "Who knew Yuugi had it in him to be so stubborn? I'd never seen him so eager to go rushing off like that!" His coughed again, but smiled.

The Pharaoh nodded and his gaze fell to his hands, limp and loose and useless in his lap. "Yuugi is very brave. Far braver than me."

Sugoroku stared at him until the Pharaoh was forced to look up and meet his eyes.

"Yuugi told me that you've changed quite a bit as well."

The Pharaoh's eyes widened. "Yuugi talked to you about me?"

"He did."

"What did he say?"

"He told me that you let him go. Is that true?"

"Y-Yes. I let him go. I-" The Pharaoh turned away suddenly, struggling to keep his face composed. "I never should have left him! I should have been more responsible! I should have prevented this horror from happening! I—"

"Pharaoh, Pharaoh," Sugoroku interrupted. "You let him go."

"I did, but—"

"You let him go. Even though you hadn't regained your memories?"

"Well, yes, technically, but—"

"Why did you do that?"

"I—uh—Yuugi saw that you were in danger." One of the Pharaoh's hands floated up to trace the jagged, incomplete edges of his Pendant. "Because of the spell that was cast upon us—I will not be able to reassemble the Pendant until I can prove that I am capable of loving another and earning their love in return. When I first saw that Yuugi held the key to understanding how to reassemble my Pendant, I—I dared believe that he might be the one—but how could I ever regain my heart under those deplorable conditions? How could I have ever earned it then?! " The Pharaoh's eyes fell again. "I will never be able to repay all that Yuugi has given me. A second chance at this—something resembling a life. This feeling…" His fingers twisted the hem of his robe. "But perhaps I am not fit to bear the weight a fully human heart," His face contorted and his voice took on an icy rattle. "Perhaps, after all these years, I no longer have the strength to carry such a burden…"

Sugoroku's face hardened. "So that's why you came back, is it? You decided to brave the powerful magic that's kept you trapped underground for millennia so that you could find Yuugi and tell him that you've given up, then go back to sulking for another millennium more? Hmph!"

The Pharaoh's fingers stopped twitching and he looked up, eyes set and rimmed with black and red. "I came to help him save you and escape this danger!"

"So—where's my help then? Was getting captured by Kaiba's goons a part of your escape plan?"

"No! I—I saw him! And I ran for him—to try and save him! But a spirit transported him underground and I was suddenly surrounded. I—I was overcome with this strange feeling, and I could no longer think clearly…"

"Who surrounded you?"

"These men…They did not look familiar to me, and yet I felt that I could recognize something of their intent. I'd never felt that way before…"

"You were afraid."

"I had this strange feeling…" The Pharaoh bit his lip and shook his head, eyes scrunched tight. "As if I possessed something very valuable, and that they wanted to take it from me. And I felt that, if they succeeded, that I would—" he looked up at Sugoroku and gave a small, helpless shrug. "I don't know how to describe it." Yuugi had taught him many ways to name fear. There had been a fear that jumped and shimmered in the corner of his eyes when they first began to reassemble the Pendant (What if it doesn't work? What if I am unable to face my own memories?) There had been a cold, watery fear that slipped down this throat and pooled in his stomach when Yuugi had gone (What will become of him?) But this feeling was omnipresent. It stretched over him like the sky. He leaned over his knees and hugged his own shoulders. "I had this sense that I completely could disappear so suddenly, and I would have no say in it at all. I felt that I couldn't let that happen, but I didn't know what I could do. And then they took me here…Do you know what that feeling is?"

Sugoroku leaned back and tapped his chin. "It sounds to me like you were afraid that they were going to kill you."

The Pharaoh blinked. "Kill me? But that's impossible, I'm already quite dead."

Sugoroku chuckled. "Your head knows that, but what about the rest of you?"

"What do you mean?"

"How much of your memory has come back?"

The Pharaoh shrugged. "Not much. A few brief images of my life as Pharaoh. Most of what I've regained has been different types of feelings…and this awareness…"

"Awareness of yourself, and of everything that you don't want to leave behind."

The Pharaoh nodded.

"Life's a very precious thing. Once we get a taste of it it's hard for anything to wrench it from our hands. When we think our life's in danger it's only natural to want to hold onto it even tighter."

"But I must silence this feeling if I am going to save Yuugi."

Sugoroku shook his head. "It doesn't always work that way, Pharaoh. Sometimes we don't get a say in what feelings are strongest inside us at any particular time."

"Then what do I do? How—how does anyone live with this feeling?!"

Sugoroku laughed again. "Oh…you want my advice? I would say, when you get afraid of dying, you take a deep breath, and you think about everything that you want to stay alive for."

The Pharaoh's mouth twisted. "Does that really work?"

"That's how I got through the days trying to tackle your penalty games!"

"Oh!" The Pharaoh's eyes widened, and he briefly looked away. He faced Sugoroku again. "I am sorry for hurting you, and for keeping you as my prisoner."

Sugoroku nodded. "Thank you. And thank you for letting Yuugi go. Now, why don't you go back out there and bring him home?"

The Pharaoh smiled and nodded. "It would be my greatest honor."

They both jumped at a sudden burst of sparks at their side. Mana emerged from a cloud of shimmering, purple smoke, casting her staff in a wide circle around her. Her eyes immediately alighted upon the Pharaoh.

"There you are, Pharaoh! I've been running all over the place looking for you! We're all out of our minds worried! Why did you let those guys just take you away? Oh!" She spotted Sugoroku. "You found Yuugi's grandpa!"

Sugoroku chuckled then coughed again. "He did indeed." He smiled when Mana came close enough for him to make out her face. "And you must be one of the spirits from the Pharaoh's palace."

Mana nodded. "Yep! Only I'm not so much a spirit anymore—look!" She thrust out her arm. "Touch it!"

"Oh, yes, I can see that now." Sugoroku tapped her on the wrist, chuckling.

"And I can eat now! It's awesome!" She turned back to the Pharaoh. "We have to get going, Pharaoh." She stopped just shy of seizing his hand, and extended her staff for him to hold instead. "Take this. It'll take us back to the others." She frowned when the Pharaoh appeared to hesitate. "You are going to come back, aren't you?"

"Yes! Of course! I just—uh…" He coughed into his fist and turned aside sheepishly. "Um—excuse me…uh…Yuugi's grandfather, would you like to come with us?"

"Why, of course! I thought you'd never ask!" Sugoroku laughed and slapped his thighs. "If anything's going to stop me from seeing my grandson give that little punk exactly what's coming to him it's not going to be these old legs of mine!"

-xxx-

Yuugi tucked a strand of hair behind his ear and wiped his forehead.

"The red one's the lightest." He announced to the room. "Then black, blue, green and white." Yuugi surveyed the line of scales triumphantly. "I completed your puzzle, Kaiba-kun!" The clock immediately stopped, and the buzzing ceased. "Kaiba-kun? I finished it..." He frowned and tapped his foot on the ground. "I wish I knew what was happening…"

The room remained silent.

Then Yuugi felt a rumble under his feet. A quickening of the darkness, as if it were just waking up. The walls trembled. The entire room seemed about to expunge its bitter, bated breath.

The ceiling broke, and Yuugi was inundated by streams and streams of icy, endless water. He squeezed his eyes shut and kicked, flailed, struggled to reach the surface that was forever rising and evading him. Yuugi hadn't thought to hold his breath and now his lungs were burning. The water turned him around and around until the only directions he knew were water and more water. He tried to open his eyes but it didn't help. He stretched out his arms as far as they would reach, but there was nothing solid to grasp. There was no air to breathe. And he was sinking.

Until he wasn't. Something collided with his side, and then he was rising, propelled upward by something that he could feel but could not see. The force propelled him up to the surface of the water, then guided him, coughing and shivering, to solid ground.

"Yuugi, are you okay?" Yuugi felt a hand patting him on the back as he continued to cough.

Yuugi slowly turned his head. "…Jounouchi-kun, is that you?"

Jounouchi tilted his head, grinned, and shrugged. Then the grin vanished. "Yeah, it is." He squeezed some water out of his hair and racked his fingers through his bangs. "We were sitting out there and we had to come find you. We couldn't just do nothing watching Kaiba tearing into you like that."

"He wasn't tearing—" Yuugi started to protest, then paused. "We?"

"Yeah!" Jounouchi leaned forward to help Anzu pull herself out of the water, while Honda staggered out besides them.

"Yuugi!" Anzu was breathless and her chest heaving, but every inch of her, from her tightly curled toes to her shivering arms and flexed fingers, immediately strained towards him. She forgot her breathlessness. "Are you alright? We were watching on the screen outside! I can't believe that Kaiba is making you do this. I—I really thought that I could trust him." She frowned and her eyes gleamed with cold anger. "He said he would help me find you but I never imagined that his plan would be something horrible like this! Where have you been? I've been so worried…"

"…You were worried about me?"

"Of course! We all were!"

"…You all came to find me." He looked up at Jounouchi. "And you saved me."

Jounouchi gave him a small smile and squeezed Yuugi's shoulder. "Yeah, we did." He spoke quietly, softly, and the water around them seemed to still. "It took us a while, but with Anzu's help here Honda and I finally got our act together."

"Where you been, Yuugi?" Anzu asked.

"I—" Yuugi half-smiled, but his face fell quickly. "I'm not sure that I can explain it right now…"

"That's fine," Honda said. "Let's just try to focus on beating this thing and then we can catch up later."

Yuugi nodded. "Okay! Good idea."

"So…" Jounouchi furrowed his brow. "How are we going to beat this thing? This doesn't even seem like a game—it's just a huge pool of water…"

They peered through the large, darkened chamber. They were standing on the edge of a narrow shoreline, with a large blank wall behind them and nothing in front but swirling water.

"How did you solve the first puzzle?" Jounouchi asked.

"Oh!" Yuugi started, then looked down. "It reminded me of something I had to do before…"

"Well…" Honda sighed. "Is this ringing any bells?"

Yuugi frowned. "Not really…" He cast a quick glance up at them. "I'm sorry-"

"It's okay, Yuugi," Anzu cut him off. "We'll figure it out together." She tried to grin. "It will be fun!"

Jounouchi scoffed. "No it won't." He threw up his hands when he caught Anzu's glare. "I didn't say that I'm not going to do it! But, c'mon, we're freezing and wet, it's already not fun. But," he smiled at Yuugi. "That doesn't mean that I don't want to be here. You don't need to apologize."

They all flinched under a blast of blue-white light that lit up the opposite end of the chamber with a loud crack.

WHEN THE GODS OBSERVED THAT ORDER HAD BEEN CREATED, THEY CHARGED THE FIRST HUMANS IZANAGI AND IZANAMI WITH CREATING SUBSTANCE. IZANAGI AND IZANAMI MADE LAND FROM THE PRIMORDIAL WATERS

STAGE 2

"Huh…" Honda muttered. "What do you think that's supposed to mean?"

"Hey! Look!" Jounouchi pointed towards a pile of stones stacked further down the shoreline, just visible in the light shining down on them. He scrambled for them. They were silky smooth, shiny, and almost perfect disks. "I wonder…" He whispered, turning a stone over in his hand, then taking aim.

"Wait!" Honda yelled, striding up beside him. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Uh, I'm skipping the stones. What does it look like?"

Honda rolled his eyes. "You can't just start throwing things around for no reason!"

"These stones were made for skipping." Jounouchi titled his head to the side and looked at Yuugi and Anzu. "Yuugi," he said. "What do you want to do?"

Yuugi narrowed his eyes. He looked at Jounouchi's long, flexed arm, still curled up and ready to spring. Set against the blackness of the water and the walls, he looked like he was glowing. "Well, let's, uh, give it a try," he said at last. "It can't hurt to see what happens."

Jounouchi nodded, and sent the stone skipping across the water. It bounced four times, sending out a few silver ripples and a small plop each time it hit the water. The stone got smaller and smaller, the sound of it hitting the water became progressively faint, until they could no longer see or hear it at all. They stood together in silence for a moment, Jounouchi looking crestfallen. Then they heard a low, rich chiming sound, as if they were standing inside a bell that was beginning to ring. A bright blue ring started to glow off in the distance on the water, then the center of the ring filled and transformed it into a bright, glowing blue disk.

The blue light shimmered along the surface of the water like a network of veins. And in the light they could see that this ring was not alone. It was still faint in the distance, but they could see a trail of hollow rings leading from the their feet to the opposite end of the chamber. Anzu picked up a stone and dropped it into the center of the nearest one. There was a pause, a chime-hitting a slightly higher note this time-and the ring lit up crispy-apple green.

And the blue disc immediately disappeared.

"W-what happened?!" Jounouchi stammered. "That was mine!"

"I guess we can only use one at a time," Yuugi said.

"Well, I guess we know what we have to do now," Honda kneeled down and began stuffing his pockets with the stones. "That trail of rings must lead us to the exit."

Anzu and Jounouchi nodded and began gathering as many stones as they could carry. Anzu turned to Yuugi. "Yuugi? Are you ready?" She held out a fistful of stones. "Come on, take these."

"Oh-right! Uh…" Yuugi squeezed the stones between his fingers. They were so small, and so smooth.

Anzu was still watching him. "Are you alright?"

"It's nothing," Yuugi rubbed the back of his neck. "It's just that I just realized that this game does remind me of something, after all…" he added in a slightly softer voice. "I'm not sure if I should take any. I don't want to waste them…"

"What are you talking about?"

"Well-I never did get that good at basketball…"

Jounouchi and Honda heard this, and they stopped.

"Don't worry, Yuugi," Jounouchi smiled. "You've got your types of games, and I've got mine." He made tight fists around his handfuls of stones. "We got this."

-xxx-

"Nii-sama!" Mokuba barrelled towards the door, then hesitated on the threshold. His body was buzzing but he didn't make a sound.

Kaiba didn't turn around. Mokuba could only see the very top of his head silhouetted over his massive leather chair. "Well—don't just stand there."

"Nii-sama!" Mokuba tried to charge forward, to walk with the same monumental footsteps that he had seen his brother take so many times before. Mokuba's walk was more of a hurried shuffle. "They're moving through the game very quickly, aren't they?"

Kaiba's eyes shifted over to screen eight, where Yuugi and his friends were squeezed together on a bright pink disc, looking on anxiously and preparing to jump as Jounouchi hurled another stone into the water.

He sniffed. "It's only a matter of time—" He said, leaning back in his chair. "Yuugi has benefited from outside assistance, yes, but all he's done is hasten his final defeat. I'll be the one to face him in the end, and he won't have anyone to fall back on then," he added with a small smirk.

"Yeah—about that!" Mokuba scowled up at his brother—hands digging into his hips, eyes and teeth and hair bright and flaring. The effect might have been intimating if Mokuba had been taller than Kaiba's elbow. "You remember the bet we made before Yuugi arrived! The bet on which stage Yuugi would lose Death-T!"

"I remember." Kaiba's face was still turned towards the screen. Mokuba glared at the reflection of Yuugi in his eyes.

"You bet that Yuugi would lose in stage five."

"And you bet that he will lose in stage four."

"Yes! My level! My game!" Mokuba thrust his face between Kaiba and the wall of monitors. "You think that I'm gonna lose to him! Well-I won't!"

Kaiba looked directly at Mokuba for the first time since his arrival, and it made him shiver. It was like looking directly through his skull. "Mokuba—" Kaiba practically spit out his name. "This is no time—"

"It is! You think that Yuugi will beat me!"

"Yes." Kaiba waited a beat, continuing to stare, unblinking, at his face. "Get out of the way." He made a move to brush Mokuba aside.

"Wait!" Mokuba cried. "Take it back!"

Kaiba stood up and raised a brow. "Why?" He stared at Mokuba, unblinking. It hadn't been a question-not really. Kaiba turned back to the screens, folded his arms across his chest, and chuckled. Kaiba had a certain way of laughing that sounded like a snarl, especially when he insisted on spitting out Mokuba's name as if it were vile to him. "Mokuba, you're not strong enough to beat him. You know that, and I know it, too." He snorted. "Protecting your feelings now isn't going to be enough to keep you from getting crushed by him in the end."

Mokuba scowled at where Yuugi appeared on the screen. He had fallen into the water and Honda and Anzu were hoisting back up by the armpits.

"You're wrong!" Mokuba muttered under his breath. Then he yelled it. "You're wrong! I am strong enough! I'll show you! Yuugi will not get past stage four! I won't let him! And then—and then you'll see that you were wrong to underestimate me!"

-xxx-

"Phew! Last one!" Jounouchi let out a big breath as he hopped off the final glowing disc and onto the opposite shore. "Come on, guys!"

The others scrambled after him. They were all breathless, soaking wet, cold, and sore all over.

"Well, that's done at least," Honda said. He turned in a half-circle. They were standing on another thin shore, surrounded by the same deep water, and facing another blank wall.
"But what happens now? It doesn't look like we're in any better of a situation than when we started."
"Just give it a moment," Yuugi said. "I think I can hear something…"

The surface of the water began to tremble. A low rumble shook the walls. Then the ground began to shake. It opened up beneath their feet like a gaping mouth. The mouth stretched open wider and wider as the earth crumbled down, down into the depths of the void. They struggled to keep their balance, to cling to little of it remained, but they all fell down and hit the ground hard, sealed between two black walls that felt as long and narrow as the confines of a tomb. The ceiling slammed shut above them, and they couldn't see a thing.

The air was thick around them, the ground soft and slightly warm, and when the message lit up directly above them-in cobalt blue-it was difficult to read through the fog and the dust.

IZANAGI AND IZANAMI'S REIGN WAS JOYOUS BUT BRIEF. WHEN DEATH STOLE IZANAMI, IZANAGI RESOLVED TO JOURNEY DOWN TO THE WORLD OF THE DEAD TO RETRIEVE HER. IZANAGI FOLLOWED THE TWISTED TRAILS TO THE UNDERWORLD AND FOUND IZANAMI IN THE DARKNESS. SHE SWORE THAT SHE COULD NOT RETURN WITH HIM, FOR SHE HAD ALREADY PARTAKEN IN THE FOOD OF THE UNDERWORLD. SHE BADE IZANAGI LEAVE AND CAST NO LIGHT UPON HER FACE. IZANAGI PROMISED TO DO AS SHE ASKED, BUT HIS LONGING TO SEE HER FACE COULD NOT BE OVERCOME. WHEN IZANAGI SHONE HIS TORCH UPON HER FACE, HE WAS SHOCKED TO SEE THAT IZANAMI'S FACE WAS NO LONGER THAT OF HIS BELOVED, BUT A GRUESOME AND DECAYING SKULL

Yuugi felt Jounouchi stiffen at his side.

"The world of the dead...does this mean that there's…ghosts and stuff…?"

Yuugi glanced up at him. Jounouchi's face looked stricken, his shoulders tense, his eyes wide and darting into every corner.

"Are you afraid of ghosts, Jounouchi-kun?"

"Hey—I didn't say that!" Jounouchi huffed, flexing his arms and chest. "I just don't like them, that's all!" He stamped his foot as if to awaken his unshakeable courage, but his bottom lip was just a little too tense.

Yuugi smiled. "I didn't think that you could ever be afraid of anything..."

Jounouchi shuffled his feet and stared at the floor. "I'm not scared! I'm just uncomfortable."

"Hey, what's this?" Honda had been pacing the small black box that confined them, and something had caught his eye: a shadowy shape that seemed to be moving beside him. He leaned closer and slowly waved his hands in front of his face. "I think…it's my reflection?" Honda reached into the wall and pulled out a hand-held mirror. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

Anzu came to his side. "They're all over—look!" She pointed around the room. And now that she had said it, they saw them everywhere. All along the walls there were small spots like windows, only they could not see out, but only their own shadowy faces peering back at them. Anzu reached for her own mirror, titling it at different angles and looking closely at the glass.

Yuugi studied his reflection. In the dim light it was all shades of gray, silver and a muted blue from the lights above them. Nearly shapeless, his features were all but indistinguishable- except for the small points of light in his eyes. He wondered, somewhat distantly, if this was how he had looked when he was underground. But perhaps the eyes of the spirits were capable of seeing more in the darkness. "I wonder what these are for…" he whispered.

His answer came in a beam of bright red laser light that shot over his left shoulder and hit the wall opposite. Yuugi followed the path of the light. He held his fingers up in the beam, slowly turned his hand, and clenched and unclenched his fingers, watching the light skid across his knuckles and light up the lines in his palm. He shook his head, then held his mirror up to the light instead. He turned his mirror to guide the light across the walls. It lit upon Anzu, Jounouchi, and Honda, each for a moment, and, dim as it still was, this was the clearest that Yuugi had been able to see them all since he last seen them standing in the schoolyard. He continued leading the light around the room, and Yuugi discovered that they were not trapped in a box after all. There was a small gap in one of the walls—just wide enough for a pair of shoulders.

Anzu stuck her head into the gap. "It looks like a passageway…but it's hard to tell, it's so dark…"

"Here, I'll help with that." Honda used his mirror to guide the light reflecting off Yuugi's mirror more directly down the passageway. Honda and Anzu could see the beam of red light streaming off into the distance. It didn't look like it ever stopped. Honda narrowed his eyes and took a few tentative steps down the pathway.

"W-wait!" Jounouchi interrupted. "You don't know what's down there!"

"It's a maze that will lead us to the underworld," Yuugi replied. "I think the clue made that clear enough."

"And—and we're just going to go in there?!"

Honda snickered and Anzu scowled, but Yuugi looked up and gave Jounouchi a reassuring smile. "Jounouchi-kun, it's okay to be afraid...But ghosts and spirits aren't so bad-once you get to know them."

Jounouchi didn't look convinced. "…Huh?"

"They're just like everyone else, really. No scarier than ordinary people." He paused. "But my concern is how we're going to make it all the way through the maze with only four mirrors and one lightsource. Kaiba-kun must have planned for that somehow. I think, until we find more mirrors or another light, someone will have to stay back here with this light to make sure that the path remains unbroken. If you want, Jounouchi-kun, you can stay here."

Jounouchi's eyes darted back and forth between Yuugi's face and the entry to the hall. "I'm not scared!" He stammered out at last. But the resolve in his voice sloughed off when he met Yuugi's level gaze. "I-It just seems lame staying back here all by myself."

"Fine. I'll stay!" Honda took Yuugi's mirror and place reflecting the laser, clapping him the shoulder. "Go, Yuugi, guys—" He shouted. "Get us out of here!"

-xxx-

Honda continued standing as still as he could until long after he could no longer hear Yuugi, Jounouchi, and Anzu's voices echoing down the hall. He squinted at the beam of red light that seemed to stretch on and on forever into this dark, narrow world of utter silence. He sighed and rubbed the space between his brows. His head was starting to hurt. His arm was also getting sore, but he didn't dare move it. There was no way to know if they had found another mirror or any other source of light, or if they were still even in the maze at all. Honda groaned. "Man, it feels like they've been down there for nearly three years…" he muttered darkly. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "No, that can't be right...how could it possibly take anyone that long to complete some dumb maze? Nothing takes that long…" He groaned again.

There was something about this place. Despite the stillness and the silence, he didn't feel completely alone. Perhaps it was the way that shadowy slivers of his own face gazed at him from along the walls, just barely visible and almost unrecognizable.

"Jounouchi! Yuugi! Can you guys hear me down there?" His voice echoed around the small room and down the hall. It was a cold, desperate sound that seemed to do nothing but emphasize the silence, and the insignificance of the dent he made in it. "Ugh…" he muttered. "There's got to be another way to do this."

He heard someone cough.

No. He couldn't have heard someone cough. There was no one there. Honda shook his head and took a deep breath. It was just his mind playing tricks on him. The silence was getting to him.

And yet-he could still hear his heart pounding in his ears. And encroaching footsteps.

Honda spun around. The line of light that connected him to Yuugi and the others was severed. "Who's there?!" He called out. "Kaiba! Mokuba! Is that you?!" His grip along the edge of the mirror tightened. He curled his arm up, as if to hold it like a knife. He glared, first over one shoulder and then the other. An icy feeling was creeping across his skin, almost as if he was melting. But this sensation of fright only made him all the more determined to keep his voice steady as he called out again, "Who's there! Show yourself-now!"
There was a pause. And then a soft, smooth voice. "Excuse me?" The shape of a woman seemed to materialize out of the shadow-Honda could just make out the sleek shape of her long, dark hair, the points of light shining in her eyes and in the jewelry around her neck, the folds of her long white dress, which seemed to glow. She took a small step forward. "I'm sorry if I frightened you," the woman said. "If I can, can I ask for your help?"

Honda's grip relaxed, and his heartbeat began to steady. "I-I guess, yeah?" He took a step closer to the woman, squinting, trying to make her out. "You don't work for Kaiba, do you?"

The woman shook her head. "I'm afraid I don't know who that is. We're trying to rescue Yuugi."

Honda bit his lip and pulled himself back. "Hm, ok. Then this has to be a trick. We're here to rescue Yuugi!"

"It's no trick." A much deeper voice suddenly resounded from across the room. "You know where he is-" Honda heard a heavy metallic sound, like a weapon being drawn. "Take us to him."

"Don't point that thing at him!" The woman spoke again, stepping up close and making a frantic motion with her arm, as if she was trying to push someone aside. She was close enough now that Honda could see her face. She didn't look like anyone Honda had ever met before, certainly not anyone they knew from school.

"Who are you?" He asked.

"We're friends of Yuugi's," The woman said. "My name is Isis. This is," she cast a quick look behind her. "Seth! Mahaad! Come here!" Two more figures stepped into the thin red razorlight. "We're friends of Yuugi's," she said again. She was looking directly into Honda's eyes; her eyes were so large and so open, and, Honda could see now, they were semi-transparent. Indeed, her entire figure seemed to be not entirely here. She was here, she looked real, but looking at her gave Honda a kind of double vision-he could see her and see through her at the same time.

"Who are you, really? Some kind of hologram?" He asked, then huffed and muttered, "Or I really must be going crazy…" He glanced from Isis to the two figures standing behind her. They had the same semi-transparent sheen, but they were larger, and looked ready to fight. Honda wondered, was it possible to fight-a ghost?

But then Isis reached out and just barely touched his hand. "Please," she said, "Do you know where Yuugi is?"

Honda chewed on the inside of his lip. He rocked his weight into the balls of his feet and then, slowly, into his heels. "Where do you know him from?"

Isis looked down for a moment, then looked back at him, confident and unblinking. "Didn't Yuugi go missing in your world? Did you ever wonder where he had gone to?"

"Look-I'm just trying to make sure that you guys aren't goons sent by Kaiba." Honda crossed his arms. "If you really are just trying to help, then we're good, but I don't know you-"

"You don't know where he is," Isis interrupted him. She spoke calmly, as if she was transcribing a message she saw written above his head. "He went down that hall," she added quietly. "But you've lost sight of him, as well as your other friends." She frowned, and shared a sad expression with the other two.

"What's down there?" One of the men, Mahaad, pointed down the hall.

"It's a maze," Honda said, now a little too confused to speak belligerently. "That's supposed to lead to the underworld, or something like that, apparently…" He shrugged and his voice trailed off. He looked behind him, down the darkened hall.

When he looked back, Isis was smiling. The others were smiling, too. One was cracking his knuckles.

"What is it?" Honda asked.

Isis slowly blinked and nodded. "We have a lot of experience navigating mazes."

-xxx-

"A little more to the left!" Yuugi called over his shoulder. He pursed his lips and continued adjusting the angle of his mirror. "Did you hear me?"

"Yeah!" Anzu's voice echoed back from somewhere deeper in the maze. "I've almost got it!"

A beam of golden light bounced off the center of Yuugi's mirror and illuminated the next turn in the passageway.

"Ok great! I got it!" Yuugi strained upward and, with the very tips of his fingers, managed to insert his mirror into a small, nearly invisible slot in the wall. Once he heard it click into place he nearly collapsed against the opposite wall, releasing a heavy sigh. After another moment he heard Anzu come up beside him.

"Ugh, another long, dark hall. Why am I not surprised?" She peered down the hallway, rubbing her arms. "There can't be much more to this, can there? It feels like we've been stuck in here for ages."

"I'm not sure." Yuugi stood up again and brushed off his hands. "It has been a long time."

They turned when they heard Jounouchi's footsteps, and he appeared shortly afterward, rubbing the back of his neck. "I don't know what happened to him. I went back as far as I could without getting lost, yelled my lungs out-I didn't hear anything…"

Yuugi and Anzu exchanged a look. And Yuugi looked more closely at Jounouchi-his face was slightly pained; his hands were shaking.

"Are you okay, Jounouchi-kun?" Yuugi asked.

Jounouchi smiled a little too quickly and flashed him a thumbs-up. "Yeah! It's fine! It's just…" He quickly jerked his head over his shoulder, then back to Yuugi, then to a spot a few inches in front of Yuugi's feet. "It's-it's no, it's nothing…just my mind playing tricks on me or something…"

Yuugi took a step closer. "What is it?"

Jounouchi swallowed and rubbed the tip of of his nose. "I just thought I saw something back there…" he said in a small voice. He cast a quick glance at Yuugi. "Just feeling edgy."
There was a crashing noise in the distance. Anzu shuddered, Jounouchi nearly jumped a foot.

"What was that?" Anzu murmured.

"Honda…?" Jounouchi said quietly. "It-it's just some stupid thing that Kaiba threw in to try and scare us!" He forced a laugh and shook his fist. "Well, it's not going to work-!" Jounouchi happened to look over his shoulder and catch Yuugi's glance, and his voice quickly fizzled out.

"Are you concerned for him, Jounouchi-kun?"

"I-I wouldn't say that! It's just, um-"

"I'm going to go investigate what's causing that sound."

"Yeah, right. We should do that." Jounouchi nodded.

None of them moved. And there was another loud crash, this time accompanied by a quick, faint flash of silver light.

"It sounds like it's getting closer," Anzu said.

"Hm-yeah, maybe-it might be a better idea to move away from the thing that's causing the creepy noises?" Jounouchi's eyes darted back and forth between their faces. "Right?"
"We have to continue that way to get to the other end of the maze," Yuugi said. "But," he added more quietly, "what if it's a trap? I don't know that much about the way that Kaiba-kun goes about designing mazes. And if this maze is supposed to lead us through the underworld, then-"

"Yuugi," Anzu took a small step closer. Her voice echoed with a kind of chill, like she was preparing to ask him something big. "What happened to you after your duel with Kaiba-kun? You just vanished and I had idea where to find you...Where did you go?"

Yuugi stopped thinking about the maze. He looked at each of them, these new friends who had followed him from the creation of the world down into the afterlife. He couldn't quite read the expressions in their faces. He didn't know all their expressions, either. They weren't close enough for that, he hadn't known them for that long. And, looking up at them, he could see some kind of fear in their faces, but he couldn't be sure if they were afraid for him-or of him. "Do you promise—" he began slowly. "If I tell you—you'll believe me? And you won't laugh or think I'm crazy?"

"Of course we won't. Yuugi…?" Anzu was trying to look reassuring-her lips were smiling but her eyes were very large. "…What's going on?"

"I—I was at home, right after Kaiba-kun left. My grandpa's friend came over and he said that grandpa had been in a terrible accident in Egypt and he couldn't find him anywhere. I went back with him, to look. And I—I fell in a tomb…and met these strange, magical people. They weren't people at first-they were terrifying and they tried to kill me! But they let Grandpa go and took me in his place. I thought I was going live down there forever, they told me that I would never be able to leave. But—but then things started to change. We became friends. And I—I had to leave them to come here. I left them all alone, with no way of ever getting out again or repairing the Pharaoh's heart..." Yuugi shook his head. "But Grandpa needed me! And they—they needed me, too..."

Yuugi looked away, running his fingers through his hair and listening hard to all the things that Jounouchi and Anzu weren't saying. A heavy silence hung around them for several moments as they exchanged glances—chewing their lips and shuffling their feet. There was another crashing sound somewhere in the maze.

Jounouchi coughed. "That's, uh-"

"No," Anzu held up her hand to silence him. "It's just like what your grandpa said, isn't it?" She whispered. "I had no idea what he was talking about…he said that you were trapped somewhere, with some kind of evil monster…"

"He wasn't an evil monster! He was-he was my friend, in the end. I was afraid of him at first, too. But-" He took a deep breath. "Things changed. He let me go." One of his hands trailed up the wall of the maze. "We spent a lot of time in a place just like this, in a way. It helped us." Yuugi slowly tilted his face to meet their eyes. "I know it sounds crazy." He finally felt a mirror hidden in the wall.

"Well…" Anzu smiled. It was a forced grin at first, with her lips pulled back a little too much to be natural. But then she laughed. Her shoulders shook, her face turned soft and round, and glowed. "What about this day has been normal, anyway? It's not like this was how I was expecting to spend my Saturday..."

Jounouchi rubbed the back of his head. "You can say that again."

Yuugi laughed, too. A small part of him expected one the walls of the maze to suddenly give way, just as they had in the Pharaoh's tomb whenever he had had this feeling-like his heart had just stuck a perfect landing. But he didn't hear any crashing walls this time, and in the silence where he had expected that sound to be he heard only a cold, stern voice in the back of his head; You left them behind.

Yuugi must have shuddered, or made a face, because Anzu suddenly stopped laughing and looked at him. "Yuugi, what's wrong?"

"It's-it's nothing, I just-" Yuugi shook his head. "We should focus on completing the maze and finding Honda-kun." Yuugi nodded to himself as he spoke. "He's the one that needs our help most right now."

Anzu nodded, but didn't stop looking at him. "Do you miss them? Those people you met-"

"We were friends," was all Yuugi managed to say, quite softly. He didn't quite like the way that those words sat on his lips. He wasn't sure why, but when he said, "We were friends," and the Pharaoh's face-smiling softly, shyly, and a little sad-flashed before his eyes, it felt like he was lying. It felt like he had taken something small and precious-a piece of candy, a new game he had really wanted to try-and hidden it away from himself, and now he had no idea where he had left it or why he had gone through all the trouble of making it so hard to find. And he would do anything-rip the carpets off the floors, yank out the ductwork and the electrical wiring-to check every hiding place, for even the slightest shot of getting back that precious, nameless thing that he had so carelessly misplaced.

The three of them continued walking on, slowly, in the semidarkness. They kept very quiet. Yuugi sighed and wondered about this feeling. He was supposed to know the names for all the things that people felt, but this bittersweet and impossible pain seemed beyond all reckoning. He reached into the wall and titled a mirror to catch and direct each beam of light that they passed by; he traced purple, green, red, and blue up and down the walls and around the corners. But in the end, he was as lost in his mind as he was in this maze, fumbling through twists and turns of unknowable shapes, with only the thinest of lights to guide him.

Yuugi could fell Jounouchi shiver when they brushed up against one another; sometimes he nearly jumped at the touch. And while Yuugi kept his eyes trained on the trails of light that they were following, Jounouchi was continually turning his head behind them and to the sides, making sounds as if he was about to speak and then quickly deciding against it. And then he stopped altogether, held out his arm to stop them, too.

"What are you doing, Jounouchi?" Anzu asked. Her voice had a strange quality when she spoke. But no, it wasn't her voice at all-it was that the air around them had changed. It had become colder, and incredibly still. Anzu's voice couldn't carry in that air, it just echoed around them and didn't go anywhere.

Jounouchi's eyes had gone wide, his face was frozen, his back was completely rigid. But his knees were trembling.

And then Yuugi felt it, too. It was a feeling like the dark hall was stretching out before him like an elastic band, trembling with tension, and preparing to spring back and whip him in the face. Yuugi heard a low, creaking sound. It was very shrill. He heard it like he felt it being drilled into the spaces between his teeth. His skin prickled at new sensations-an icy feeling dribbling down his spine. A lightness in his hands and feet, as if they were about to abscond without him. And then there were agonized, piercing voices, and a quick rustling movement, and then someone had him by the sleeve and was jerking him, unrelentingly, forward.

"Jounouchi!" Anzu shrieked. "Let me go!"

"In a minute!" Jounouchi was hauling Anzu by the hand and Yuugi by the wrist deeper into the maze, far further than they had explored, and now far too quickly for any of them to keep track of which turns they were making. Jounouchi's pace set Yuugi's teeth rattling, but Jounouchi refused to let go until he was too dizzy to run any further, and they all collapsed against the floor.

"Jounouchi!" Anzu cried, hauling herself off her hands and knees. "What was that for?!"

"You're welcome, you mean! Did you see that thing?!"

"No-I didn't get a chance to see anything because I was too busy trying to keep my arm in my socket!" Anzu grimaced. She was rubbing her wrist and slowly rotating her shoulder.

"Sorry," Jounouchi mumbled. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

"It's-fine." Anzu's hands moved up to her forehead, and with a small groan she dug the heels of her hands into her temples. "Where are we now? Ugh-we were being so careful to keep track of where we were going!"

"There was something there!" There was one thin beam of white light running down this stretch of the maze. It illuminated little more than Anzu's disgruntled silhouette and the very edges of Jounouchi's face. Yuugi could see that his eyes were wide, a few fine strands of hair were poking out around his face. And Jounouchi must have been shaking, because his hair was trembling.

"It felt it, too," Yuugi said. "I don't know what exactly what it was-but there was...something…"

"Ugh...I just want to get out of here!" Anzu groaned and leaned her forehead against the wall. She made a fist and gave the wall a half-hearted punch.

And then something punched her back, and much harder. Anzu screamed and cursed and Yuugi felt her hit the ground somewhere near his feet, but she was on her feet in an instant, rolling up her sleeves and scouring the darkness. Yuugi could hear her breathing hard, but, standing in front of him, she blocked out the light completely, and Yuugi was aware of little more than a sense of mass moving around him.

"Who's there!" Anzu called out. Then Yuugi felt her shudder, and heard her scream.

Yuugi stood up and tried to rush to her side, but he ran and he ran until his legs were spinning but he couldn't get any closer. He took a step forward and something pushed him back. He tried to push himself forward and that something pushed into him even harder. It was like being buffeted by hail, pummeled in his face and across his chest. He was being pressed into the floor, into the walls, and he felt certain that whoever it was that was doing the pushing wouldn't be satisfied until he had disintegrated into them completely. He was breathless, panting, damp all over and shaking in the knees, and he could tell from the grunts he was hearing down the hall that Jounouchi and Anzu were struggling as well.

"We have to get out of here!" Jounouchi screamed. "Come on!"

Yuugi felt an arm wrap around his waist and scoop him off the ground. Yuugi could feel the maze spinning around him as Jounouchi continued to twist and turn within it. He heard Jounouchi's feet slapping against the floor, and his breath, and the screams pursuing them.

And then they stopped. They were at a dead end. Yuugi could tell without being able to see it. Dead ends, fruitless endeavours, sudden and irreversible failures-all have a peculiar, unmistakable feeling to them, a feeling of emptiness and loss that looms larger than the thing itself. So when Jounouchi set Yuugi down and sighed, Yuugi did not need to see the tops of the walls of the maze to know that they were boxing him in. He could just tell-that this was it. They weren't going any further.

"We have to get out of here!" Anzu said. She immediately began groping the walls for another mirror-though there was no point. There wasn't any source of light in this part of the maze.

"I'm not going back there!" Jounouchi yelled and stamped his foot. His voice was a little shaky. "Not with those things there!"

"If we stay here they're just going to find us and we'll never be able to leave!"

Jounouchi paused. "Then we fight them here."

"Fight them?" Anzu snorted. "We can't even see them! And you're terrified!"

"I am not," Jounouchi muttered. "We just have to land a couple good punches-and-" He stared down at his fist as he rapidly bent and extended his arm.

The feeling was creeping up on them again. It started slowly, like cold water rushing between their ankles, but the current was quickly picking up. They each took a deep, sharp breath and then immediately fell silent. Jounouchi's arm froze mid-punch. They kept turning, twisting their faces in every direction, looking. And maybe there was nothing to see-it might be, they thought-that there was nothing there at all. Nothing but the need to keep looking, and the feeling-the conviction-that the moment they stopped looking and stopped anticipating it, the thing they were anticipating would choose that moment to strike. But they could not have articulated that. Because layered on top of all their other feelings, like an oily coat of hot wax, was the sound of squealing brakes-the sound of being paralyzed in an intersection, where cars, somehow, impossibly, were barreling down at them from all four directions at once, leaving them with absolutely nowhere to go. They were under siege.

Jounouchi plunged into it. He hurtled into the darkness with his arms curled up against his chest, ready to strike. Whether he managed to land any blows, Yuugi was not sure, because in an instant he was on his back with the wind knocked out of him. He stood up, and punched and kicked and shoved himself against those invisible things that were besieging them, and he staggered and fell again.

"Jounouchi! Jounouchi you have to stop!" Anzu cried. "You can't keep trying to fight them!"

"Yes I can!" Yuugi couldn't make Jounouchi out well in the darkness, but he could see him, standing at the center of the basketball court, rubbing the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, and urging him to fight.

"It's not working! Jounouchi-" Anzu sighed. "You're just going to get yourself hurt for no reason! Please, at least just-stop."

"And what do you want me to do, then?!" Jounouchi snapped back. "Just sit around and wait for them to hurt us more?!"

"We have to keep moving-"

"I'm not going to keep running away like some wimp-"

"-we get to the end of the maze-"

"At this rate we're never going to make it! Can't you see where we are! It's a dead end-there's nowhere else to go!" He stopped, if only for a moment, to turn back and face them. He was breathing very hard. "This-this is it, okay?! There's nothing else we can do."

"I don't know! I don't know, okay! I don't know what to do!" Anzu buried her face in her hands. "I don't know what to do," she repeated, softly. Her knees folded underneath her and she sank to the ground. "I hate this! I just want to get out of here…"

"I know," Jounouchi sighed. He had retreated from the frontlines, just as a temporary measure. "Ugh-" he rubbed the back of his head. "I don't know what to do, either. Yuugi," he tried to chuckle a little, "this is just another puzzle, right? There has to be a solution to it-somewhere."

Yuugi nodded. "I think so, but-" he shrugged. "I'm not sure what Kaiba-kun expects us to do."

"Maybe if we just wait for a little while," Anzu said. "And take some time to think about it." She tentatively held out her hand, as if she were trying to feel for rain. "So long as we stay still, they don't seem to want to hurt us. Maybe if we're quiet enough for a while they'll go away."

"Yeah…" Jounouchi didn't sound convinced, but he sat down just the same. "I guess we can give it a shot."

Yuugi was sitting down, too. And while he had started with his arms hugging his knees, with his back leaning against the wall, he somehow, without quite noticing how it happened, found himself lying flat on the ground. So did Anzu. And Jounouchi. They laid there, trying to breathe as quietly, as little, as possible. Trying to take up as little space as they could, to go completely unnoticed. They all stared at the ceiling, pretending that if they tried hard enough that they could melt into the cold, hard floor and evaporate the remnants of their bodies straight out into the darkness. And they waited, and waited, for the heavy, oppressive feeling that was hovering over them to dissipate.

And then someone began to cry. Yuugi wasn't sure which one of them it was. He heard someone say, "Why are they coming after us?" in a small, plaintive voice. There was no answer. After a time, someone said, "maybe we should try to stand," but that only made the person who was crying cry harder. Somewhere in the distance, there was a crashing sound.

When they had agreed to follow Anzu's plan they had thought that it would be easy to tell when whatever torment Kaiba had set upon them had passed. But the longer they laid still on the ground the harder it was to remember what it felt like to have peaceful air overhead. The senses had no way of knowing whether it was safe to stand, and the senses were so tied up in fear, in the memory of being hurt, that trying to untangle one thought from another was as confounding as trying to run through the darkened maze.

"I'm so sorry," Yuugi said. Though he didn't so much speak as let the words bubble out of him. "You guys never should have come to find me." He sniveled. "And Honda-kun."
"Yuugi, don't say that," Jounouchi said. He was silent for a long time, then said. "I did have to come find you."

"No you-"

"I did!" Jounouchi nearly yelled it. Then he let out a groan. "Ah-fuck this!" He yelled fully. "I don't care about Kaiba or whatever these things are that he's trying to scare us with!" Yuugi heard Jounouchi stagger up, leaning heavily against the wall, then heard and felt it and nearly tasted it when Jounouchi flung himself to land, kneeling over him.

"I did have to come find you because-because you never would have thought that what Kaiba or what anyone else did to you was okay if it wasn't for what me and Honda did first! I-Anzu was right, I never was your friend, not really. We should have been honest about what it was from the beginning, about how we were just pushing you down to make ourselves feel stronger…" He breathed heavily, as if saying this all out loud was causing him pain, and Yuugi wondered whether those invisible demons were still there, buffeting his back. "I'm really sorry, Yuugi," he said. "And I don't want to do that kind of thing anymore. And I want to make it up to you, if you'll let me."

"I-uh, okay," Yuugi smiled. "But-" he added suddenly. "But please don't get hurt, thinking that you have to protect me."

"Okay," Jounouchi sniffled, and smiled, and that was another of those things that Yuugi could feel without seeing, even though Jounouchi had never smiled at him that way before. He let out a big breath. "So, what do you think we should do?"

"I want to stand up." Yuugi bent his knees and propped himself up his elbows. "Can you help me?"

"Sure thing!" Jounouchi sounded eager to help him even though, Yuugi suspected, he didn't quite understand why he had made the request. But he still leaned down and took Yuugi's hand. Perhaps because it was dark and they couldn't see each other well, he kept squeezing it, like a small pulse, so that Yuugi would know that he was still there.

They stood up together. They were both a little stiff, preparing to cover their faces the moment they felt the blows begin. But none ever came. The hall was startlingly still.

"Hey, hey Anzu," Jounouchi prodded her in the side with his foot. "Get up! They're gone!"

"Are you sure?" She asked.

"Well, no-not really. They could come back any minute so we've got to get moving now!" He kneeled down and tried to feel her out of the darkness.

Then they were all standing together, side by side by side, at the dead end of a darkened hall.

"Which way do we go now?" Anzu asked. They both looked at Yuugi. But Yuugi didn't know.

At the end of the hall, a faint yellow-green light began to glow.

"What is that?" Anzu whispered. "It doesn't look like one of the lasers…"

"No, it does not." Yuugi felt Jounouchi tense at his side, and gulp. He squeezed his hand again. They all leaned into each other just a little bit more.

Yuugi reached into the wall behind them and took out another handheld mirror. It was the only one he could find. He held the mirror up to the height of his chest, and gently began to tilt it up and down. The point of light was getting bigger.

Yuugi took a small step closer, Anzu and Jounouchi lingered half a step behind. The hall seemed to narrow as they crept forward. Jounouchi flinched at the sound of a small, dusty cough. Yuugi whispered to him that it was all right, that it was okay to be afraid and nothing to be ashamed of. But that didn't stop his ears from pricking at the sound of rustling further down the hall. It sounded like someone was about to speak, but the silence continued.

Another light, slightly higher than the first, in a shimmering shade of pale golden violet-pink, lit up too. Yuugi stopped in his tracks, squinting, unable to shake the feeling that there was something about these two lights that was somewhat familiar. Now he could hear faint, rushed whispering, and something that sounded like a muffled cry.

"Yuugi…" Anzu's hand was about to reach out to stop him. There was a note of warning in her voice.

The light at the end of the hall heard his name, and cried it back to him. "Yuugi!"

Yuugi did not realize how far down the hall he had gone. He hadn't noticed his pace picking up as he walked towards those lights. And even as Jounouchi and Anzu stood back in quiet trepidation Yuugi continued to reach forward, unblinking, holding his mirror to capture every faint whisper of light it could get, so that he could cast it back and illuminate the figures standing before him.

In the thin beam of yellow-green light, Yuugi saw the outline of his grandpa's shoulders and hair. He didn't dare breathe as he made out the shape of Mana's staff, beaming down at him like starlight. They were all quite silent, completely still. Yuugi bit his lip, and, now failing to notice the small tremor in his fingers, Yuugi began to tilt the mirror in his hands, to see the face of the person standing between them.

And, reaching out from the dim, distant annals of the history of the world, Izanagi's thin, skeletal hand was reaching out and clutching his shoulder, begging him to stop this, to drop his mirror to the ground and turn around now and never come back to this place. But Yuugi didn't stop. He didn't stop because he knew something that Izanagi did not: that sometimes what felt like death was little more than a temporary ache, not a permanent disfigurement, no justification for eternal banishment. Yuugi didn't stop because he knew now that things like that were never so permanent, that there were no wounds that couldn't ever be healed. And he didn't stop because, put simply, he just really wanted to look. So he took a deep breath and brushed Izanagi's old and withered hand away, hardly noticing as it crumpled into dust down his back. He titled his mirror, and illuminated the Pharaoh's face.

"It is you!" Yuugi cried.

The Pharaoh gave him a small wave. "...Hi. Yuugi."

"But-why-how did you get here? I thought-"

"That the world of the dead does not readily relinquish its denizens?" The Pharaoh gave him a small smirk and raised his brows, and in Yuugi's mind their small, cramped, dark and dingy hallway could have been filled to the brim with dazzling light. "It appears that there is, after all, some flexibility in that rule."

The Pharaoh chuckled softly, and Yuugi laughed and laughed and couldn't stop laughing. He was nearly doubled over, hugging his sides, when both Mana and Jounouchi, looking concerned, stepped up to place a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"Uh-hi! I'm Mana!" She said. "Who are you?"

Jounouchi was too stupefied to respond. He wavered back and forth on his feet, casting a nervous glance. "Uh, Yuugi? What's going on here? Who are these people?"

"Well, this is Yuugi's grandpa, obviously," Anzu responded. She scrutinized the other two. Mana stared back at her, smiling, but unsure.

"We're Yuugi's friends," she said. "From Egypt."

"...Right. He did mention something like that...Yuugi?" Anzu's eyes snapped away from Mana and back down to Yuugi. "Yuugi?"

Yuugi had stopped laughing, but he wasn't listening. He and the Pharaoh were standing only a few inches apart. The light glowing at the center of the Pharaoh's forehead was just enough to light their faces in shades of green and gold. Yuugi was holding the large, golden pendant that hung around the Pharaoh's neck, slowly turning it over and over and upside down. The Pharaoh was holding out a few little gold pieces in one of his hands, saying that, yes, the puzzle was not quite completed yet, but now, perhaps, with the remaining few pieces, and the two of them together again-

There was another crash-this one louder and nearer than any one they had heard yet.

"What was that?" Anzu asked.

"I don't know," Mana frowned and shrugged. "We've been hearing it, too. We thought it might be you guys, but-"

There was another blast, the ground shook, and dust and chunks of plaster rained down upon them.

"Wha-" Jounouchi tried to sputter out, before he was interrupted by the billowing cloak and haughty smile of Seth sweeping through the massive hole that he had just blasted in the wall of the maze.

"You see?" He called back over his shoulder. "I told you that my way would be faster."

Isis and Mahaad poked their faces through the hole in the wall, shortly followed by-

"Honda!" Jounouchi exclaimed. "You idiot! Where have you been this whole time?! We've only been looking for you everywhere!"

"Ah, don't tell me you were worried about me," Honda smirked, slinging his arm over Jounouchi's shoulders. "I just decided to make my own way."

"More like you-"

Everyone winced and ducked for cover when a searing white light turned on overhead and pinned them in place, like the sun's concentrated beam through a magnifying glass, melting a little line of ants into the pavement. The black ceiling above them suddenly shifted with speckled light-rows upon rows of the silhouettes of faces stared down at them. They were all making some kind of noise, whether it was derisive or congratulatory none of them could tell-there was simply too much of it, coming too fast, to make out any one word or phrase in particular.

There was one voice they all heard very clearly.

"Well, well, well," Mokuba drawled. He appeared in view a moment later, coming from around a corner, hands on his hips and head tilted slightly to one side. "Look who finally made it to the end of the maze...I think I might just have the perfect prize for you right here…" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a block of cheese, which he hurled at Yuugi's feet. He laughed-it sounded more like a bark. "Go on, eat it! That's the best prize you'll get tonight-a little rat like you!"

Yuugi swallowed, but his gaze, trained on Mokuba's face as he sauntered towards them, didn't waver.

"Mokuba-kun," he nodded.

"Yuugi," Mokuba stopped walking. "So I see you've made it quite far through our obstacle course, farther than I would have expected. But your good luck and your free rides end here!" He stomped his foot and pointed to the ground to emphasize his point. He leered at them. "Because you haven't really done any of this on your own, have you? You've been counting on your little chums to bail you out every step of the way! You've been a cheater, just like always! But here-now, facing me, I'm not going to let you get away with it!"

Mokuba clapped, and the ground between the two of them began to rise. Beneath the ground was a semi-translucent cell, containing a table, two chairs, and a game board. The arena lights refracted off its interior walls, crisscrossing the interior of the entire structure with prismatic light. Mokuba climbed a small flight of stairs that led up the entrance of the cell. The door to the chamber slid open.

Mokuba took one step into the cell and then called out to Yuugi."Well, what are you waiting for?" He was trying to make his voice, soft, smooth, and tantalizingly melodious. It came out in more of a harsh, nasal whine. "Come on, Yuugi," Mokuba called, beckoning him inside. "Come duel me!"

"Yuugi!" The Pharaoh reacted before Yuugi did. He turned to him, eyes wide. "Yuugi, you don't have to listen to him! You know you don't have to go in there!"

Yuugi looked into his face. He had never seen it under such light before. He hadn't noticed the vibrancy of the Pharaoh's eyes, the way they shone. Though, perhaps, Yuugi thought, maybe they hadn't always looked that way. Maybe they were only shining now.

"You're crying," Yuugi said.

"I-yes-" The Pharaoh turned away, just for a moment, and wiped his eyes quickly on the back of his hand. "I'm frightened for you. You shouldn't be in this situation! That boy has no idea what he's talking about!"

"It's okay," Yuugi smiled. "It'll all be okay, you'll see. We're just going to play a game at that table, it's no big deal. I play games all the time!" He added a small laugh at the end, slightly forced. "I'm just going to talk to him. This whole thing will be over before you know it."

"Uh, Yuugi-" Anzu, Jounouchi, and Honda all seemed to want to speak at once. But over the roaring of the crowd and the ringing in his ears, Yuugi didn't hear them as he turned and stepped into the box. The three of them exchanged worried looks-they were thinking of the flier they had seen earlier, now sitting crumpled up and soggy in Jounouchi's back pocket. The Pharaoh was staring straight ahead, hands balled into fists. He was thinking of the guns that had been pointed to his chest. (Un)fortunalely for Yuugi, he hadn't seen any of these things, so he entered the new dueling chamber, sat down opposite Mokuba, and smiled.

-xxx-

These are the rules of Capsule Monsters Chess: Each player randomly selects five monsters, each of which comes with an assigned rank of one to five, with five being for the strongest monsters. Each player is allowed to situate their pieces on the board as they see fit, taking care to place each piece in a location whose unique geographic properties best complements the monster's own strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities. Players take turns moving their pieces around the board, according to the permitted movement range that each monster type is assigned. When the enemy monsters meet, they engage in combat, and the owner of the damaged monster takes damage in the form of an electric shock to the chest, the intensity of which is applied in direct proportion to the damage that the monster itself receives. The upper reaches of the electric shock range may be lethal-they are heavily implied to be lethal. To accompany the electric shock, the damaged player, via a pair of technologically advanced electrodes applied to the forehead, sees a visualization of their worst fears, anxieties, and memories projected before them, on a screen that hangs behind the opposing player's head. These are not the standard rules of Capsule Monsters Chess.

Yuugi, upon hearing them, was rightly horrified.

He gaped at the intricate circuity embedded in the walls and at the white, poofy vest, electrodes, and jar of pale greenish-blue gel that Mokuba passed to him from across the table and instructed him to put on. He twisted his mouth up into a large, smug scowl as he watched Yuugi hesitate.

"Don't tell me that you're scared."

Yuugi's brow furrowed as he squinted at the vest.

"Just put it on already!"

"...Are you sure that this is all necessary, Mokuba-kun?"

Mokuba rolled his eyes. "You have to put the vest on in order to receive the electric shocks."

"Don't you think it would be more fun to play without getting hurt?"

"Quit stalling!" Mokuba slammed his palm straight into the table. "This is the only way to play! I do it all the time-it's nothing!" He was seething so hard that Yuugi would not have been surprised to see steam billowing out of his nostrils. "You're-you're so pathetic!"

"Do you really?" Yuugi laid the vest down on the table and leveled his gaze at Mokuba. "I'm not going to wear it. And you shouldn't, either."

"Put it on! Or I'll force it on you!"

Yuugi closed his eyes, shook his head, and stood up. "Then I'm going to go." He made for the door.

But Mokuba beat him to it. He thrust himself between Yuugi and the exit, arms and legs and even toes and fingers flung as far as he could possibly reach. His eyes were wide, and he cast a glance into the upper corner of the cell, breathing very fast.

"Don't you dare!" He hissed. He licked his lips, then said louder, "I knew it! It's so like you to turn tail and run." He cast a sidelong glance out of the cell, to where Yuugi's friends were standing, then turned back to Yuugi's face. "That's just it, isn't it? You made it through the other levels of Death-T because you were relying on all your little friends to bail you out. But that won't work here. Now you have to face me all by yourself, and I'll expose to the whole world what a fraud you really are!" He cackled.

"Maybe I've just realized that I don't need to prove myself by getting hurt."

Mokuba laughed again, lower, and somewhat softer this time. There was a strange light in his eyes. "No, Yuugi, that's not what it is," he began softly. "You're so eager to keep your so-called friends by your side because you're afraid that they'll be gone by the time you get out. And you're right. Now that you've helped them get out the maze there's no reason for them to stick around." His voice became louder, and faster, almost frantic. "There's no reason for anyone to like you at all! You know it, I know it, and they'll all know soon enough! And then you'll go back to doing the only thing you're good at-being alone, and pulling whatever pathetic stunt you can just to get someone to pay you even the slightest bit of attention!" Mokuba broke down into gleeful laughter. Because he had done it. It had been quick, all but invisible to the untrained eye, but it had happened. Yuugi hadn't meant to, hadn't wanted to, but, as Mokuba had uttered those final words, he had flinched. As if bracing for a blow. Or a basketball lobbed straight to the face.

"That's not true," Yuugi said. But the small waver in his voice betrayed him, as did the pink flush spreading across his cheeks.

"That's not true," Mokuba mimicked in a mock-serious tone. "Ha! Prove it, then!" He squeezed his hands together and waited. He knew he had him now. He peeked again at the far corner of the cell, and this time he didn't take his eyes away quite quick enough.

Yuugi turned and squinted into the corner. "What are you looking at, Mokuba-kun?"

"It's nothing!" He said just a little too late. Yuugi had already seen it. Peering down at them from the upper corner of the cell was the steely blue gaze of the lens of a security camera.

"Kaiba-kun is watching us through that camera, isn't he, Mokuba-kun?" Yuugi asked slowly. He tilted his head from side, and noticed as the camera swiveled, ever so slightly, to track his movements. He turned back to Mokuba, who was now looking much less confident than he had a moment before. "I understand what's going on, now." He nodded. "I'll play the game your way, Mokuba-kun."

Yuugi thought he heard the crowd let out a cheer as the two of them sat down, hooked themselves up to the electric wiring, and began setting up the game board. But it was hard to tell-all the sounds of the outside world were muted through the thick walls of the dueling chamber. People's faces, too, were blurred. For all intents and purposes it was just the two of them there in the entire world, staring each other down, with the giant screen of memories that were playing over their shoulders.

Yuugi took a large hit early on. The game had been stacked against him he was sure-Mokuba had just so happened to draw five of the highest level monsters in the game; all of Yuugi's creatures were quite measley in comparison.

Mokuba had grinned as his Armorzaurus burnt Yuugi's first monster to a crisp. Yuugi shuddered watching it crumple into a pile of ash on the gameboard, which Mokuba then promptly blew into his face.

Yuugi was still rubbing and blinking the ash out of his eyes when the lights in the duel chamber dimmed, and the screen opposite him began to glow. At the exact same moment that Honda and Jounouchi's smug, smarmy faces resolved themselves before him, Yuugi felt a burning, pins and needles pain prick him right in the center of the chest, between his eyes, and down the length of his spinal cord. He grabbed his chest, suddenly struggling to breathe. And as he heard the echoes of their mocking laughter play out on the loudspeaker, Yuugi could have sworn that this Kaibacorp Exclusive Electrical Shock Therapy Vest © was truly more advanced than any technology he had ever known-because he felt it all, as a wave. The skinned knees from being tripped on the basketball court, the black eyes and bloody noses that had all, of course, been an "accident." He could even taste the blood in his mouth.

He knew he couldn't have looked good, cowered over like that, every muscle rigid and face contorted in pain. Mokuba seemed to enjoy it. He enjoyed it even more when the destruction of Yuugi's next monster sent him back to a night that he had arrived in the Pharaoh's tomb, and he was breathless, kneeling at his grandpa's side, and shivering and sweating in fear at the figures towering over him.

He must have bit his lip, cried out, or cowered into himself with a painful sigh, because Mokuba's onslaught suddenly ceased.

"Ugh, just look at yourself," he scoffed, wrinkling his nose. "I thought that this was actually gonna be hard."

"It's-not over yet," Yuugi managed to say.

Mokuba shrugged. "Psh, as if! This was over before it even started!" He scowled. "You're not even competent enough to cheat." He sounded, if anything, slightly disappointed.
"I never cheated, Mokuba-kun."

Mokuba rolled his eyes. "Don't get started on that again."

Yuugi had had a moment to recover his breath, and was now sitting a little straighter and speaking with a bit more control and clarity. He levelled his eyes on Mokuba. "I never cheated in my game against your brother, Mokuba-kun. It was Kaiba-kun who cheated-he stole my Grandpa's Blue Eyes card and when he couldn't win with that he tore it in half."

"No he didn't!"

"You weren't there," Yuugi said slowly. "So how could you possibly know?"

"Because I know that you're a liar!" Mokuba shouted. "And I know my Nii-sama and I know that he's not!"

Yuugi paused for a long moment, "Where is Kaiba-kun, Mokuba?"

Kaiba was sitting, glued to his chair in front of the bank of television monitors. He had one camera set to capture every tremor that passed over Yuugi's face, and several monitoring the activities of the battle box from the outside. The box itself was also set up to feed sound directly into the earpiece that he had clipped to his right ear, and was beginning to toy with just now. He adjusted a few controls on the panel in front of him and set one of the cameras to pan over Mokuba's pale little face. Mokuba's face was not always that pale, and his voice usually did not sound so sharp and desperate as he spat out, "That's none of your business!"

"He does want to face me, doesn't he?" Yuugi spoke very slowly, tilting his head just a little in the direction of the camera. "Isn't that why I'm here?"

"It's none of your business what he does or doesn't want!" Mokuba was getting louder and angrier by the moment. "And it doesn't even matter because I'm going to defeat you! Myself! Right now!"

Mokuba had his hand poised over the gameboard and was about to call out his next move, when Yuugi spoke again.

"Did your brother put you up to this, Mokuba-kun?...Knowing that you would lose?"

Mokuba's face went white. "I would do anything for my Nii-sama," he hissed like a kettle about to boil. "But I will defeat you."

"That's sweet of you," Yuugi said with a shrug. "Do you think he feels the same way?"

"W-what does that even mean?!"

"I mean," Yuugi said, leaning back slightly in his chair and folding his arms. "Do you think that Kaiba-kun feels the same way about you? Do you think that he would do anything to protect you?"

Mokuba's hand, too, had turned white around the monster figure he was holding. But he hadn't yet announced his move. "Of course," he said finally. "Nii-sama has done more for me than a fool like you could possibly imagine."

"Including hooking you up to device like this?" Yuugi pointed to his chest. "Or has that been rigged in your favor, too?"

"Shut up!" Mokuba shouted. All the color that had drained from his body came back in flash-he was now burning red and hot all over. His arms were shaking, and in the end he seemed to lose his ability to speak-each word he wanted to hurl in Yuugi's face was choked out by his own labored breathing.

"Mokuba-kun-take the vest off, please. We can still play, if you want. But I want you to know that it doesn't have to be like this."

"Yes-yes it does," was all that Mokuba could manage to say.

"But why? What does wearing that vest prove except your willingness to hurt yourself...or to let your brother hurt you?"

This brought Mokuba's voice back. "My brother has and never will hurt me at all!" His hands flailed about the table, looking for something-anything-that he could hurl directly at Yuugi's face. Finding nothing except his game pieces, he spat at him. "I know what you're trying to do, Yuugi!" He screamed. "You're just trying to get out of the pain of losing! It doesn't matter if the vest is real because I'm never going to be the one who needs it!"

"Alright," Yuugi said softly. "Then make your next move."

In his rage, Mokuba sent his Armorzaurus barreling straight into Yuugi's Mogrin, forgetting, just at that pivotal moment, the monster's ability to burrow underground. His eyes glazed over as he realized what he had done, as Armorzaurus continued on, crashing into Mokuba's own Megatron and destroying them both.

Mokuba's vest, as it turned out, was as real as Yuugi's. The electrodes on his forehead were real as well, as were the tremors that wracked his body, and the fear that shone in his large, dark eyes as the chamber dimmed.

Yuugi wasn't sure what he was seeing. The memory was quite dark, and felt far away, as if it was being observed in quick peaks from around the corner. But the voices of the speakers came in very clear. There was one, loud, harsh voice that made Yuugi feel cold, and sick, and incredibly small, as if he were back in the center of the stadium, wallowing all alone under the floodlights.

"Do you think I took you in for this?!" The voice asked. There was a long pause. "Well?"

"No, sir," said someone else, just loud enough to be audible.

"Then why-" there was a harsh sound, somewhere between a rustle and a thump. "Do you insist on doing this?! Well, Seto, is it defiance or just plain stupidity?" There was another pause, during which Yuugi couldn't make out what the other person was saying. There was another loud sound, like a bang, and then the older, crueler voice was laughing softly. "Don't forget where you come from, Seto. And you always remember-as long as I'm alive I can send you right back there."

The memory flickered out-it seemed that Mokuba, crouched behind the door, had heard his father's footsteps approaching and scampered away. There was only one final shot, from a glance he took over his shoulder, of a small figure seated at an enormous desk, staring down at his balled hands.

The house lights came on, and Yuugi turned to see Mokuba glaring at him, just daring him to open his mouth.

"You see," he said coldly. "My Nii-sama has done more to protect me than you could possibly imagine."

Yuugi nodded. "I know that you and Kaiba-kun have probably been through hard times together, but that doesn't change the fact that what he's doing now is wrong."
"No! You don't understand anything, Yuugi! Nii-sama is helping me! He is making me stronger!"

"Mokuba-kun…" Yuugi said. "Your brother should know that...you don't make someone stronger by putting them through pain. Someone who cares about you shouldn't want to see you suffer like that."

"And what would you know about it!" Mokuba snapped back. "Those people you brought here with you, they weren't always that nice, were they?" Yuugi didn't respond. Outside the battle box, where Yuugi couldn't see them, the faces of several of his friends fell to the floor. Mokuba leaned back in his chair, almost gloating. "Yeah, I didn't think so. So how about you stop trying to tell me what to do?"

"All I'm trying to do, Mokuba-kun," Yuugi said softly, with a kind of deliberate steadiness. "Is tell you what I wish someone had told me."

"Well I'm not you," Mokuba huffed. "So cut it out."

Neither Yuugi nor Mokuba, nor any of the observers watching from the sidelines, noticed right away when someone else joined the circle that had formed around the perimeter of the box. He had stood quite a bit off from the rest, semi-concealed behind one of the dueling cube's complex sets of internal wiring. But when he finally stepped out into the light, a loud gasp echoed across the stadium. He began to ascend the stairs to the dueling cell, brushing Mana-who had been studying the door in an effort to determine which spells might magic it open-to the side. Mana squaked and reeled and made a move to whack this intruder in the shin with her staff, and was in the process of turning to Mahaad and the Pharaoh to enlist their support, when she turned just enough to let the Pharaoh catch his first glimpse of his face.

It was the boy from before. He was a boy, after all. His flesh was solid, though with his pale white suit and sallow expression no one could have been blamed for continuing to mistake him for a ghost. He cast a quick, derisive glance over the lot of them, then reached up his hand to tap on the door.

"You! Stop!" The Pharaoh called out.

Kaiba flicked his head in his direction and scowled. He knocked on the door, almost defiantly. Then Mana moved again, blocking his view, and the boy had vanished into the box.
"Excuse me, uh-" The Pharaoh hesitated when he realized that he didn't know Anzu's name. "Who is that boy?"

"That's Kaiba, our classmate. He's the one who created all this, and I'm pretty sure he's one of the main reasons Yuugi left school in the first place." She scowled. "He's always given me the creeps, but this-" she turned and gestured towards the stands that towered all around them, the lights, the noise, and the white, gleaming battle box. "I didn't think he'd ever be capable of doing something like this."

"Do you think that he intends to kill Yuugi?"

"I-" Anzu shook her head. "I know for sure that he doesn't intend anything good."

"What do you think we should do?" When Anzu didn't reply immediately, he continued. "I could kill him, if it came to that. Or I could torture him until he had no strength remaining to even wish for death. But-" He looked into the cell, to where Yuugi, Kaiba, and Mokuba were speaking. "I came to this world because I had a vision that Yuugi was in grave danger, and I was certain that he needed saving. But now I think I want to wait, and see what Yuugi decides to do.…

-xxx-

Kaiba strode over to the table and scowled down at them. "Mokuba," he hissed. "Get up."

"But-Nii-sama!" Mokuba looked quickly between Kaiba, Yuugi, and the gameboard, then Kaiba again. "I'm about to win!"

"No, you're not." Kaiba was standing very straight and speaking in a clipped, businesslike manner. He hadn't spared a glance for Yuugi at all. His sudden presence in the small dueling chamber made it feel like the temperature had dropped several degrees. And Mokuba felt it, too. He gulped. Kaiba gestured towards the gameboard. "Take a look at the gameboard, and you tell me how you plan to defeat Yuugi"

They all looked down together. In his haste to demolish Yuugi's monsters, Mokuba had failed to prevent Yuugi's Beeton from crawling towards the evolution spot, where it would multiply in power from a level two monster to a level five. And with a freshly superpowered Beeton, and with Yuugi's Squid Ninja in a prime position to initiate a suicide attack that would take out one of Mokuba's own monsters-

Mokuba's voice wavered. "Nii-sama…"

"Get up," Kaiba said again. "And go."

"But Nii-sama I-"

"And I don't want to hear it." Kaiba leaned over the table and pressed the button to open the chamber door. "Moto Yuugi is no longer your concern."

"Kaiba-kun, why-" Yuugi fell silent as Mokuba stripped off his vest and began to file towards the door, eyes downcast. He stopped at the doorway and stared as Kaiba sat down in his place, buckled the vest on and, closing his eyes, carefully began to apply the electrode gel to the edges of his face.

Kaiba caught him staring. "What are you looking at? I told you to leave."

Mokuba didn't say anything. It looked like he wanted to, it looked like there were very many things that he wanted to say, but it would take years for him to find those words, let alone understand why, at this moment, he had felt so compelled to say anything at all. But these realizations were still several years distant and, in their absence, he simply continued to stare.

"Mokuba," Kaiba said. "Now."

He didn't even look at him. That was the last thing Mokuba thought as he looked again at his brother's back, before the door slammed shut in his face.

"Why are you doing this, Kaiba-kun?" Yuugi asked.

"Stop trying to brainwash my brother, Yuugi." Kaiba smirked at Yuugi's incredulous face.

"I wasn't-I don't want you wearing that thing, Kaiba-kun."

"Hphm. I'm not afraid of a little electric shock. I do this all the time."

"But why?...Can't you tell that you're going to lose?" Yuugi said the final sentence in a somewhat quieter, plaintive voice-as if he were begging Kaiba to keep this embarrassing secret between just the two of them.

Kaiba gave him a thoughtful look, head tilted slightly to the side, and slowly crossed his arms over his chest. "Mokuba did tell you what penalty the loser pays for losing the game, didn't he?" Yuugi made a move to speak, but Kaiba continued before he had the chance. "The illusion of death!" He shouted, rolled his head back, laughed. "It's a joke, Yuugi! Nothing but a stupid child's trick!" He eyes suddenly snapped back to Yuugi, glowing with such piercing intensity that Yuugi recalled the lasers in the maze. "The pain one experiences as a penalty for losing this game is absolutely nothing to me."

"...But, I thought that you wanted to beat me?"

"Yuugi…" Kaiba drew his name out very slowly, as if he were preparing to teach a very simple lesson to a very decidedly stupid child. "There are more important kinds of winning than beating someone at a stupid game like CapMon. Think about it: the games we play are just flimsy metaphors for the lives we lead. Losing a game is-unfortunate-but it's nothing compared to the real losses we incur, the ones that touch us to our very core!"

"What are you talking about, Kaiba-kun?"

"Life! Yuugi!" Kaiba pounded one of his fists on the table. "In life, you lose by showing fear! By having fear! Fear of death!" He took a deep breath. "When you ran away from me you showed more fear in a moment than I have in a lifetime, and you irrevocably lost the one thing that really matters. Now, I'm going to show you what real winning looks like."

Yuugi stared at him silently.

"Well, what are you waiting for!" Kaiba yelled. "Attack me!"

"I don't want to hurt you-"

"Pathetic." Kaiba reached across the board, grabbed Yuugi's Beeton, and dragged it towards the evolution spot. Kaiba cackled as the soft green skin of the Beeton peeled off, revealing the hard, gleaming red shell of Hyper Beeton. Hyper Beeton had large teeth, a great spiked horn, and Kaiba's same malicious expression. "Well, what will you do now, Yuugi? You have no choice but to continue to fight me!" He picked up one of Mokuba's-now his-remaining monsters and moved it a square on the board, almost directly into the path of Yuugi's Squid Ninja. "Make your next move."

Yuugi stared at him, and at their little animal figurines that were scattered across the gameboard. And even though he hadn't sustained a hit he thought again of the time that Honda and Jounouchi had corned him on the basketball court, bounced the ball up and down a few times-slowly, deliberately-in his face, and urged him on to come play with them. They had all known exactly how these games were going to play out, but they all had these smiles plastered on their faces, pretending that they didn't know exactly it what it was that they were doing, to themselves and to each other, over and over again. And Yuugi decided to do what he wished he had had the courage to do then. He stripped off his vest, stood up, and walked towards the door.

"No, I don't think that's true. You know, Kaiba-kun, we could have been friends. Don't you know that? We still can be, if you want to try. Maybe you'll say that I'm naïve but," he laughed softly. "I know sometimes it's hard to think of yourself as someone's friend, when you think you're all alone in the world. But we can't navigate life entirely on our own-I don't think there are any people who actually want to—even you, Kaiba-kun. I know that you're probably afraid, and lonely, but I'm not afraid of you. But there's more to it than that—I'm not afraid of whatever it is you're afraid of. And I'll fight it with you, if you want me to. But we can't do that sitting in this room."

"You want to leave-fine!" Kaiba snapped. He jammed his finger into the button and the door shot open. "I don't need you, Yuugi!"

Yuugi looked back and forth between Kaiba and the open door. Kaiba was staring intently at the game board. His eyes were bulging and sweat was beading on his forehead. It was almost as if Yuugi had never said anything. It was almost he had never been there at all. Kaiba's lips were moving without making any sound, and it looked, Yuugi thought, as if he were sealed up in his own battle box, one that none of the rest of them could see. Yuugi gave him one last, long look. He sighed, then turned towards the door.

Then several things began to happen at once.

First, the door to the battle box, which was, unbeknownst to Yuugi, also wired to an automatic timer, slammed shut in his face with enough force to send him flying off his feet and sliding into the far wall of the chamber. Seeing this, The Pharaoh, Mana, Anzu and Jounouchi sprang for the door. Seth had his own ideas about how to break open the box, but Mahaad took him by the wrist and steered his arm away from the those gleaming, impenetrable walls-couldn't he see that a blast that strong would surely do more harm that good? He was more liable to set the entire box ablaze then get Yuugi out alive. The people in the crowd, for their part, had lost the plot quite some time ago. With the unexpected arrival of the funny-dressed Egyptians and the intervention of a few ragamuffin looking high schoolers, this whole program to see Yuugi pinned between the teeth of a Blue Eyes White Dragon had completely fallen to pieces. Yuugi attempting to end the CapMon duel completely had been the final straw and now they were all thoroughly confused, whispering amongst themselves, unable to decide who they were supposed to cheer for or who on the stage they were even supposed to be looking at. Slightly outside of the action, in the shadow of the dueling box, Isis, Honda, and Sugoroku turned to Mokuba-surely he had a way of getting the door open. But Mokuba was the only one who had been watching what was happening to Kaiba, and Mokuba was screaming.

When Honda and Isis turned to see what he was looking at, they understood why.

When Yuugi's head had hit the back wall of the dueling chamber his vision had momentarily gone dark and he hadn't seen it-hadn't been able to stop it.

Kaiba picked up Yuugi's Squid Ninja and moved it another space on the board, triggering its suicide attack. There was an explosion. For a moment the entire interior of the battle box was flush with light, and a roar so absolute that it would have been indistinguishable from silence-if it weren't for the way that it made them feel. If it weren't for the way that it made their ears ache, and their bodies feel as if they were about to be swallowed whole. The box quickly filled with white smoke and a foul, burning odor. Yuugi could see nothing but the gray, fuzzy outline of Kaiba's head and shoulders as the smoke swirled around him, and then the flames.

There must have been a mistake, some kind of miscalculation. Even the most powerful of the electric shocks was not meant to be this strong. It was because Kaiba had destroyed two opposing monsters at once-Yuugi's squid, and the monster that it's explosion had destroyed. The system was set to strike them both, and heavily. But Yuugi's vest was off, all his electronics unplugged, and the force of the two electric shocks were sent straight into Kaiba's heart.

He was convulsing at the table, totally unaware of the fire that was consuming the table and crawling up the wires that connected to his face and chest. His mouth was hanging open like a large dark hole, as if someone had simply erased him from the inside out. Yuugi got just close enough to see his eyes rolling and the veins in his neck and his forehead bulge as if they were about to explode. He was screaming. The entire room-the wires, the table, the visions that were beginning to play out on the walls around them-were all screaming. A circuit burst and sent sparks scattering across the floor.

Then the room shuttered and went dark.

On the outside, Mana, Anzu, and Jounouchi were pounding, prying at the door.

"Why is it not working!" Mana cried. She picked up her staff again and nearly flung it at the door. She had tried everything: screwing her eyes shut, holding them wide open, grasping the staff so tightly that she thought it might crumble between her fingers, thinking, feeling, breathing her desperation to reach Yuugi so hard that she felt she might sprout an extra limb. But none of it worked. Where the top of the staff had once lit up and set off sparks, it now sat, quiet and useless, staring back at her like a vacant eye. "I don't understand! I must have used this thing to open a million doors! Why is it not working now?!"

She flung her staff away, and all three of them paused. They watched as the lights within the cell suddenly died, and all they had been able to see of Yuugi disappeared into shadow.

Mana pounded on the door. "Yuugi!...What are we go to do?" The air shifted, and Mana felt someone breathing deeply beside her. "...Pharaoh?"

The Pharaoh was staring into the cell. Looking at him gave Mana a strange sensation. It was as if, up until this moment, she had only ever seen his face obscured by a thick fog. And now, suddenly, he was exposed, clear, brilliant, and blazing. He even seemed to be emitting heat.

"I'm going to go in there."

"...But won't you get hurt?" Mana wasn't sure why she had asked that. She had suddenly become so full of questions, but the smoke in the cell was rising. It had set off an alarm on the top of the cell, which was now blaring out and flashing red light in a frenzied circle all around them. And her staff was gone and without it Mana was sure that she had never felt so small. She wanted to cry, or cry out, and she wasn't even sure why she was so afraid for him, now-of all times to be afraid. But every time the red light flashed across his face Mana could swear that something about him had changed, was changing, and as he swept past her and Mana watched his back disappear into the wall, she felt quite certain that he would never be able to pass through it again.

-xxx-

"Yuugi! Yuugi!" The Pharaoh had just barely entered the cell when he began to feel his knees buckle beneath him, his eyes burn, and his lungs fill with smoke. He stumbled on, groping through the smoke and darkness. The alarm had activated some kind of sprinkler system, which was now sending water raining down upon on them but was doing little to subdue the fire.

"Yuugi!" The Pharaoh was losing his breath, sinking into the floor. He covered his mouth with his cape and coughed, and saw a small figure lying crumbled on the floor. The Pharaoh could no longer call his name, but he rushed towards him.

Yuugi was barely conscious. He blinked up slowly at the Pharaoh and smiled. He mumbled something that the Pharaoh couldn't quite hear and tried to reach up to him, to touch his face.

The Pharaoh shook his head. "Don't worry about that right now. I'm going to figure out a way to get you out of here."

That boy has used a button on the table to open the door from the inside. The Pharaoh stood, and stumbled, and yelled out into the smoke, "Open the door!" The only response was the continued blare of the alarm, and another circuit bursting in the far corner of the cell, sending off a string of sparks that sailed down to the floor like a fleet of falling stars.

"I'll be back, Yuugi. I'll get you out." The Pharaoh didn't dare look at his face again, knowing that if he did it would be far too easy to never leave him. He stood, and stumbled, and staggered into the center of the cell. Everything was a dark and smoky blur as he half-collapsed into the table and began pounding his fist against every button he could find. His hands hurt. His head hurt and he could barely see as he pressed every button on the table and wished that Yuugi was still strong enough to tell him which one it had been that Kaiba had used to open the door, because Yuugi would surely remember-he had always been so good at remembering small details like that-and even if he didn't remember he would just take a minute to develop some clever and efficient strategy for figuring out which button to press and he would get the door open and get them out and save them all. His head hurt and he couldn't quite breathe right anymore and it was so painful to not be able to breathe it felt like he was being stabbed and like his heart might stop but he heard the door click open and felt a rush of cool air on his cheek and, if there was any strength and any magic left in him at all, he spent it all in that one moment where he grabbed Yuugi by the collar and flung him out the door.

-xxx-

Slowly, the smoke began to lift, and the fire dwindled away. The Pharaoh was left standing in what felt like an abyss of darkness, with only a few stray sparks with which to see. He still felt dizzy, and nauseous, and weak. It took him a moment to realize that the alarm was no longer going off-it was silent all around him. But he still heard ringing in his ears.

He took a small step forward, and paused, turning around. The walls of this place were moving, or moving around him. There were patterns on the walls-swirls and fractal images and endless sheets of small cells, like pores, or eyes bearing down upon him. He couldn't see these patterns so much as feel them inside him, like something acidic and poisonous.

The Pharaoh rubbed his forehead. It felt horrible, like someone had tried to split it with an axe. Touching it, he realized, made it worse. He pulled his hands away and turned back into the center of the room, where Kaiba was sitting in his chair.

The table had melted into a puddle at his feet. His formerly pristine white suit was now pock-marked with burn marks and sprinkled with ash. He was quiet, and mostly still, but the Pharaoh could tell that neither the quiet nor the stillness were the manifestation of any inner peace. His head was leaned back far, eyes glazed, mouth ajar, and, when the Pharaoh looked closer, he could see that he was trembling. When he walked closer, he could hear him making a faint, dry, gagging sound.

"You ought to get out of this place." The Pharaoh said.

Kaiba's eyes followed him as the Pharaoh casually perused the chamber.

"And take that thing off, before it kills you," The Pharaoh added over his shoulder, almost as an afterthought.

Kaiba laughed. The sound was almost indistinguishable from the gagging sound he had been making earlier, the main difference was that it sounded more malicious.
"I'm not going anywhere," he sputtered out. "Leave."

The Pharaoh turned on him sharply. "So that was your plan all along, was it? Kidnap Yuugi and his grandfather and nearly take their lives-as a little prelude to you taking your own?" He scowled. "How disgusting." His eyes narrowed. "You really want to die that badly, huh?"

Kaiba laughed again. "It doesn't matter what I want-I'm as good as dead already." He had tried to raise his head a bit as he had been speaking, but it fell back on his shoulders now, and his eyes wandered towards the ceiling. "Can't you see that for yourself? My own thoughts, and memories-in this room-all around me. Seeing this every time you close your eyes is just the same as being dead."

Now it was the Pharaoh's turn to laugh. It started as a low chuckle, something that he must have thought would sound worldly, sophisticated, and mature. But he couldn't keep that up. He bent over, shoulders shaking, hugging his stomach with laughter, and the fact that laughing only made his lungs and his head hurt more made him laugh harder still.
"Yes, yes-of course-" He smiled, catching Kaiba's irate expression. Kaiba was clearly not one to be laughed at. "What did you call this thing again, the punishment dealt to the loser of the ultimate game-the Illusion of Death!" He laughed again. "Kaiba-kun-your name was-take it from someone who's been there-this isn't nothing."

Kaiba looked like he wanted to snarl, but the Pharaoh held up a hand to appease him.

"No, let me explain. This place does remind me of somewhere I used to know well. I spent a quite a bit of time there-enough time for you to live and die at least a hundred times over…" The Pharaoh turned away from him slightly, falling into a melancholic reverie. "Yes, I remember the feeling-how you feel that you could sink into the very center of the earth, as if, maybe that the center of the earth was calling out to you all the time, and its invitation to come lie down in the dirt sounds like the simplest and easiest and most pleasant sound you've ever heard. Does this sound familiar? And I remember-I think the saddest thing at all-was that I had forgotten that there were words for being sad, for feeling alone-I couldn't conceive of ever feeling any other way because I thought that this was simply-" he held at his hands, then let them fall limply to his sides. "All that there ever was. Or could be.

"The point is," he turned back to Kaiba again. "I know what it is you're going through, but if you think that being dead is as easy as being sad you'll be in for a very rude awakening. But the good news is that there's hope for you yet-" he squinted at Kaiba. "I'd say you're a good...seventy-five percent alive, still, at least. You have a lot to work with, here. But-" his eyes darted from Kaiba's face to the wires that were still criss-crossed across his chest, affixed to the edges of his face. "The circuitry in this box is still sending electrical impulses into your body, and all the smoke that's filling up this chamber is also circulating through your bloodstream, and so I think there's a good chance you'll be completely dead in just under a minute or two if you don't take that stupid thing off and come with me." He smiled, and held out his hand. "Oh, and another thing," was the last thing Kaiba heard before he slipped out of consciousness. "That story of yours is all wrong. You don't get trapped in the world of the dead if you eat the food-we can let you do takeout."

-xxx-

Kaiba's memories of his escape from the battle box were scattered-blurry-and when he looked back on the experience later, even much later, he was at a complete loss to describe how any of it had come to pass. The cameras were useless, as were the eyewitness reports. The cell had been too full of smoke for any one of them to distinguish anything.

So why did he remember looking that man in the eye? How had he been able to speak so clearly, and for so long? He was loathe to admit it, but after years of battling back half suppressed, nightmarish memories, it was nice, for a change, to puzzle over something completely different:

How it felt when he had taken that man's hand-how it had felt so soft and so smooth, and warm. Had he carried him in his arms out of the dueling chamber? And set him down gently on the ground? Kaiba couldn't recall, he could only remember feeling very light, blinking up at his face and watching as his mouth moved-though he couldn't quite make out most of what he was saying. It was too bright to hear him properly.

What Kaiba did remember distinctly was lying on the ground, squinting up into the spotlights, and into his face. He was backlit and his features should have been completely obscured, Kaiba knew, but he had been able to see his face so clearly. He had seen every flicker of sensation that passed over it, like the sun traveling over the landscape to illuminate each single blade of grass, when Kaiba had choked out, "Who are you?" and he had looked very far away and wistful for a moment, then had smiled, nodded, and said, "My name is Atem." Then he had frowned slightly and added, "Kaiba, do you have any food around here? I think I'm quite hungry."

-xxx-

Burger world was much larger than he had imagined. In truth, whenever Atem had tried to picture the place he had never been able to see much in his mind's eye beyond Yuugi-Yuugi, perched on top of a bar stool and sipping cherry cola, Yuugi munching on a forkful of spaghetti while gazing out the window at a booth, laughing with his grandfather, completing the mazes and riddles that they printed on the backside of the children's menu. Yuugi had described it all in vivid detail, and he had drunk up every word. It had never crossed his mind that he might ever see the place in person.

But now here he was. He was here now. With Yuugi. Yuugi, who was just sitting right there next to him, neck craned over the menu. Yuugi sitting close enough that the points of their elbows and the backs of their arms and their shoulders brushed, even though Yuugi had a solid extra foot of booth space that he could have all to himself if he wanted to. If he wanted to.

He was suffering from smoke inhalation-that's what the medical team had told him when he emerged from the dueling chamber. They had hooked him up to oxygen and draped a heavy blanket over his shoulders-to calm him. And they had gaped, quite stupefied, when they took his pulse and his blood pressure and nodded, yes he did have those things, but they were quite dangerously low and he really ought to go to the hospital right away and-

They had been quite surprised at the way that Atem seemed thrilled to have a pulse at all, and the casual way in which he had waved off their concerns, insisting that this was no serious issue, that it happened all the time and would surely all sort itself out.

He had been far more concerned for Yuugi. Yuugi had inhaled a great deal of smoke, and was still unconscious and hooked up to an oxygen mask when Atem had emerged from the chamber. Atem had watched the rise and fall of his chest, had, gently, when he was sure that no one was looking, brushed a few stray hairs out of Yuugi's face. Yuugi's eyelids had fluttered when he touched him. Even now, sitting side-by-side at a booth in Burger World, the effect didn't seem to have fully worn off-his face flushed every time their arms touched.

Atem had watched as they wheeled Kaiba away on a stretcher. He was heavily unconscious but still, by Atem's estimation, a good seventy five percent alive, perhaps now a little closer to seventy. Mokuba had gone rushing after the stretcher, giving the lot of them one long, tear-stained look before he disappeared down the hall.

And Yuugi had slowly blinked awake, and smiled at him, and taken his hand. Atem could still feel their fingers intertwined, locking together perfectly, like pieces of the puzzle.
Yuugi coughed. "So, um-what did you want to try next-onion rings, maybe?"

Upon arriving at Burger World, Yuugi's first order of business had been to get him to try at least one of everything. With a 2-foot tall, eight-page menu, this would be no small feat. But Yuugi had kept the orders coming-hamburgers, homemade potato chips, chicken strips-no salad ("We can skip that one for now," Yuugi muttered, making sure that Sugoroku couldn't hear. "Trust me, you're not missing much.")-and a banana split. Atem's favorite thus far had been the rootbeer float, which he reached for now to take another sip, while his other hand absentmindedly wandered across the surface of the pendant. He rotated it slowly, watching the light dance across. He wasn't sure how he felt, now that it was completed. Yuugi had done such a good job teaching him how to catalog his feelings, package them up in tidy, understandable little boxes. But there was something about seeing all the pieces brought together that defied easy compartmentalization. For the first time in a long time, he simply felt whole.

"That sounds nice," Atem agreed.

"But are you sure?" Yuugi picked up the menu and propped it in front of his face. "You really have to look at everything, before you decide."

"I trust your judgement, Yuugi,"

"But you have to look carefully…"

Atem smirked. Now he could see what Yuugi had done. With the menu up in front of their faces, the two of them were cloistered off from the rest of the diner, from the ruckus and the wandering eyes.

"So...Atem, huh? That's a nice name," Yuugi said shyly.

"Thank you. It feels good to know it now, after all these years. Thank you for helping me find it, Yuugi."

"Oh! That, that-it was nothing, really."

"It means the world to me." Atem paused, biting his lip, unsure if he should continue on, but- "Yuugi, do you want me here?"

"Wha-"

"I would understand it if you didn't, after everything I did to you and your grandfather. And, if that's how you feel, I-I won't try to change your mind." When he saw Yuugi's confused look, how he was struggling to speak, he added. "I saw those things that appeared in your mind when you were shocked during that game. Those memories of our meeting still bring you pain, don't they?"

"I-uh…" Yuugi's face fell.

Atem looked away, suddenly unable to handle looking at Yuugi anymore. He studied the menu very intently, carefully reading all the ingredients that went into a breakfast quesadilla.

"I'm glad I got to see you again," Yuugi said softly, at last. "I was upset then, and afraid of you. And even now, knowing what I know, I can't go back in time and tell myself that it's all going to be okay. And...I think maybe I'm still a little afraid, actually, in a way, but for different-well, because, I like you a lot and uh-you're going to back, aren't you?"
Atem frowned. "What are you talking about?"

Yuugi gestured to the pendant on the table. "I mean, now that you've finished solving that thing, you're all going to go back into the afterlife, just like the story always said."
"And why would we do that?"

"Because that's how you'll find peace. A, y'know, release from the millennia of suffering…" His voice trailed off a little. "That's what Grandpa always said, anyway," he added somewhat defensively.

"Ah. I see." Atem nodded. "Yuugi, do you know what happened when you were trapped inside that cell? Mana kept trying to get to you-she tried every spell she knows for opening doors plus some, I think, that she just made up on the spot. None of it did any good. It was as if her magic had just suddenly-stopped. And Mana is one of the most powerful sorcerers who's ever lived-she's had thousands of years to hone her skills. So what do you think accounts for that?"

"I, uh-I don't know…"

"I have an idea." He cleared his throat. "I think that there's a choice we have to make. All our powers derived from these objects, which themselves were the products of violence and war-the ultimate agents of death, and pain, and suffering. And we've obviously been quite attached to them for quite some time. But I think that Mana's powers stopped working because she found something in this world that she valued more than power and more than magic, something that no dead half-spirit could ever understand. And in that moment, her powers disappeared. Perhaps you're right, perhaps the afterlife is the best place for us after all, but, Yuugi, look-" Atem picked up the menu and sat it down flat on the table. "Look at them."

The early evening light was soaking through the windows, painting them all in warm, heavy shades of rose and amber. Across the room, in the open space next to the jukebox, Anzu was teaching Mana how to do a pirouette en dehors. They were making slow progress-Mana kept taking breaks to giggle and to ask for extra change so that she could request a new song. Isis was watching them, smiling softly, mercifully oblivious to the fact that Jounouchi and Honda were hanging off every upturned corner of her lips and every point of light that glistened in her eyes. She broke out into applause when Mana finally got it right and smiled, sheepishly, when Anzu scurried over to her side, took her by both hands, and insisted that she try as well. Seth and Mahaad were sitting at the bar counter with their backs to the rest of the room. From where Yuugi and Atem were seated they couldn't quite see their faces, but could hear Mahaad sigh and exclaim for what was nearing the dozenth time, "All I'm saying is that I think I could do it better!" as he dropped another half-eaten cheeseburger onto his plate with obvious distaste. "This one is too dry! And the flavor profile is all wrong-it shouldn't be nearly this astringent..." And again, for nearly the dozenth time, Seth reach up and patted him on the shoulder.

"I suppose I should still ask them what they'd like to do," Atem said. "I won't hold the destinies of these people in my hands alone, and it is always possible that I could be mistaken, but-I think they all look quite at peace already, wouldn't you say? And in my case, at least…" Atem leaned back in his seat and picked up the rootbeer float again. He tried to take a sip, only to find that the glass was now nearly empty, and all he got was some residue of melted ice cream and a large, frothy slurping sound from the the bottom of his straw. "I don't have to ask." He poked the pendant, right at the center piece, the one that looked like an eye. "There's no magic in this object anymore, I can feel it. I could feel it the moment I put the final piece in place. It wouldn't have the power to take me into the afterlife, even if I asked it to. Which I won't, because I don't want to." He put the glass back down on the table. "What I'm trying to say is that I like you a lot, too."

Atem had been telling the truth when he had said that he hadn't felt any magic in the pendant when he had put it back together. The whole thing had been a little anticlimactic, really. He has taken the final small handful of pieces out of the folds in his robes as he had waited for Yuugi to be released by the medical staff, and he had somehow, nervously fiddled the pieces into place. It had almost been an accident. In the hubbub surrounding him, he had barely even noticed it. He had wondered, holding the completed puzzle in his hands, why it had always felt so hard-why he had always been so afraid to try.

And the change had been subtle. He felt something like a gust of wind blow across his face, something like an opening door in the back of his mind. It had been a comforting feeling-nice. Calming.

But that feeling had been nothing, had absolutely paled in comparison, to the feeling that took off and soared inside him when Yuugi titled his face towards him and whispered, "Atem, put the menu back up." Atem sputtered, completely unsure of what to say or do, when Yuugi leaned into his ear, "I really want to kiss you and I'm pretty sure my grandpa's watching, so-"

He didn't need to be asked twice. Yuugi lunged forward and wrapped his arms around Atem's shoulders. Atem ran his fingers through Yuugi's hair, caressed his checks and the back of his neck. They closed their eyes, and Yuugi kissed him, and they were both certain, in that moment, that they were like the spirits of the duel monsters that they had set free out into the Egyptian night.

-END-

Some secrets I wanted to share with you:

When I first conceived of the idea for this story and wrote and published the first couple chapters, I hadn't put a lot of thought into it. I was enthusiastic about the premise and had a couple ideas for scenes that I thought could be fun, but that was about it. One thing I had planned on, though, was our ancient Egyptian characters actually dying at the end. I was thinking that the story would be about them learning to make peace with their past transgressions before they went peaceably floating off into the afterlife. And really the only thing that steered me away from this course was the few reviews on the first few chapters from people telling me quite explicitly that they didn't want that to happen. And that gave me pause and inspired me to reconsider and eventually come to the conclusion that, yes, wouldn't writing a story about a group of people struggling to come to terms with the myriad emotions and struggles and small glories of being alive be much more interesting that a story about those people neatly preparing themselves to die? In retrospect, I'm kind of embarrassed that I didn't see that sooner, because, yes it's better

Somewhat related, one of the few ideas for a scene that I did have when I first started writing this story, and which was, in fact, one of the things that made me want to write it in the first place-ended up never happening. I had this vision for the equivalent of the 'be our guest' scene: Mana has just barely managed to convince the others that they ought to be nice to be Yuugi and be good hosts, and the others begrudgingly agree-then take it all too far. They try to be the best hosts, and best hosts Yuugi's ever seen. The problem is that they have been isolated from living humans for so long that they have absolutely no frame of reference for what makes a good host. They decide to do the only thing they do know how to do, which is be terrifying. They're running around, throwing magic and spells every which way. At some point Seth has got the millennium rod twirling like one of those rods they use in baton throwing routines and he's sending off sparks in all directions and a few hit Yuugi and his hair catches on fire and Mana, seeing this, magics up a huge bucket of freezing water that she dumps over his head. So now Yuugi's soaking and freezing cold and, yet somehow still on fire, and he's just trying to smile and clap along and make like he's having the time of his life because he can tell that they're trying and if this is their idea of a fun time then he really doesn't want to risk hurting their feelings and finding out what a less fun time would be like, all the while trying to hide the fact that he's completely terrified. The whole thing is pure chaos. And I really wanted to write it! But when it came time to write that scene I ended up getting caught up in the descriptions of the food and the tone of the scene shifted and I couldn't figure out how to shift it back, so...maybe someday if I'm feeling quite ambitious I'll go back and give it another shot

I have no idea how the magic in this world works. Actually, I do. All the rules regarding who can use magic at what times, what the magic is capable of doing, and how it influences their ability to interact with other spirits/people/objects, is completely dictated by whatever worked best for the plot at that particular moment. hopefully the fact that there a few continuity errors never bothered anyone too much

There's probably a couple in-universe explanations you could come up with for why Seto takes over for Mokuba in their game, but the doylian explanation is that I had had it with writing descriptions of characters playing games. Kind of similar with the creatures that they encounter in the maze. I was tired to trying to describe things. 'Oh look-Yuugi, Anzu, and Jou have run into some terrifying creatures that have no physical appearance. How very convenient-for me' hehe

I go so hard for headdresshipping. They have to fall in looooveee

I think that is all! As a final note, the first puzzle that Yuugi solves involving the weighted stones on the scales can be solved by setting up a system of equations. I kind of glossed over it because who wants to read a description of a character doing a linear algebra problem. But if my math is correct you should be able to solve it.

Thank you again to everyone who has read and commented! I have been so humbled by everyone's kind words throughout this process, and it was made writing and sharing the story so much more dear to me 3