Chapter 9: - Just Keeps Getting Worse
"Yugi? I saw him that way," the speaker pointed towards a water-slide dubbed the, 'Sea Serpent.' "He's with his bodyguards."
"Thank you," Serenity bowed to the tourist, carefully balancing the lunches she had collected from the cafe and darting off in the direction that had been indicated.
It had not been too hard to find out where Yugi had gone. The general public seemed to have better tabs on the Mutous than their own friends and family. If she was honest with herself, she was starting to get worried. As she had asked around, she had heard rumours of men in white masks and rides going very wrong. She was sure something was going down and frustrated that she had absolutely no idea where the one person she was supposed to be with had disappeared to.
As she scanned the crowds it was surprisingly hard to spot hide or hair of Yugi or the men who were obviously working for the woman who had kidnapped Kaiba Mokuba or Granger-san.
The queue for the Sea Serpent was huge. Obviously no one cared that some of the rides were breaking down left, right and centre. There was, however, no red, black and blonde head in the line. Not that Serenity expected there to be. There were excited whispers though, about the fact that there was a Mutou duelling in the underwater tunnel which could be seen from the impressively scaled slide.
Serenity frowned slightly as she changed direction, heading for the tunnel that passed under the artificial lake which surrounded the water park section of Kaibaland and led to the Meadowland Picnic area, only to pull up short when someone called her name.
"Wheeler-san!"
"Oh, good. Hi, Lotus. Hi, Akane," Serenity grinned as she spotted the two bodyguards. Her moment of pleasant surprise was replaced with confusion as she realised that a certain someone was not with them. "Where's Yugi?"
"He's not with you?" Akane hissed, exasperated.
"No," the healer-in-training shook her head in reply, "I did hear that there's a Mutou duelling near here. It might be him." Her tone was reassuring but her body language was twitchy with aggravation.
"That's what we're hoping, too," Lotus grumbled. "We lost him in the crowds when the Aqua broke down with people on it."
"The Aqua?" Serenity stared at the kitsune in horror. "Isn't that the rollercoaster that actually goes underwater?"
Akane nodded. "Luckily it stopped just before the plunge, but you can imagine the chaos."
Serenity let out a soft hiss. She could imagine it easily. "Was anyone hurt? Do they need a...?"
"Its fine, Wheeler-san," Akane interrupted with a shake of her head, "Kaiba Seto had the park doctors out here relatively sharpish and the ride was going again within minutes. No one was hurt. Someone's feet got very wet, but no one was hurt."
"That's a relief," Serenity's feelings on the matter were plain to see. She would have stopped to look after the injured. It was her normal day job, after all, however today she had an assigned patient and she had no idea where he was. A fact that was driving her a little crazy. She was not the only one going nuts. Lotus was pacing irritably and Akane's fur would have been up on end if she had been in her natural form.
"Come on, Wheeler-san," Lotus ushered Serenity towards the tunnel, "Kaiba Seto can worry about his amusement park falling apart without our help. We've got to try and find Yugi."
LINE_RECOGNITION_HAS_GONE_AGAIN
Atem was not amused as he stared down his opponent in the underwater passageway.
There were several tunnels that led into the Umiworld, where all of Kaiba's water-based rides were, but Atem had been avoiding them for the majority of the day. He could not swim and to be quite frank the idea of being underneath a lake made him considerably nervous.
Still, the moment he had realised that the bad guys were, once again, after the light half of his soul, he had dashed down the nearest open tunnel, aiming to get to the Umiworld section before something untoward could happen to his light.
Unfortunately, Menhit's masked mooks had other ideas.
Apparently if he wanted to get to the Umiworld he would have to duel against some of Menhit's Shabti. Why they were calling themselves shabti was beyond him. Maybe they wanted to serve her in the afterlife? He did not know but he was tempted to say, "Screw it," and just blast his way through, but the tunnel was far under the surface and he would never make it to the end in time if he caused part of it to collapse.
The first duellist he fought had not been much of the challenge. If anything, Atem would have beaten him much quicker if he had not been stalling the entire duel. It was a little irritating to find that for all their subtlety when it came to acting without warning them first, they were still playing it by the typical bad guy standards.
He had two problems with that. One was that they were stalling him while his hikari was in danger. The other was that he had basically predicted that they would pull something like this, though he had thought that it would involve causing the monorail over the lake ringing the Umiworld to stop, hence why he had taken the tunnel.
If he was honest, even with the blasted Duellists he had to fight to get through to the Umiworld, he would still much rather be in a nice, secure area like this, than trust his life to a cage that rode a thin wire over an extremely deep body of water.
However, that did not mean he wanted to have to deal with the Shabti, especially slow ones that did not seem to know a Spell Card from a Spellcaster. This one, the second of his opponents, was making sure to intently read the cards as if he had no clue as to what they were or how to use them. The worst part was probably that, as a stalling tactic, it was horrendously effective, but there remained one problem, at least for the opponent.
"You do realise that your Duel Disk will time out if you take more than five minutes to make your move, right?" Atem could not help but ask. A victory by time-out was still a victory, but Atem's pride would not allow him to see it that way. He wanted to defeat his opponents, not sit back and let them defeat themselves.
The man did not reply and Atem could not see what was going on behind the mask. The lack of a poker face added another layer to the Pharaoh's ire, because it rendered the other Duellist completely unreadable, if you could call just playing a card in face-down defence mode for several turns Duelling.
"How many more of you lot are there?" Atem grouched as the mysterious nuisance finally made his move, once again setting a card face-down in his back row, and another card in defence mode.
"Three," said the man quietly, his voice pretty much identical to that of the first Shabti Atem fought, "it's your move by the-"
He was cut off by the sounds of a fight erupting from further up the tunnel, and Atem chuckled.
"I think you'll find it's two," the King of Games smirked a bit evilly, "and it's about-"
"Yami!" the Pharaoh paused mid-sentence as the link to Yugi, which had been quiet to the point that Atem suspected his hikari was purposely blocking him, suddenly erupted with fear, panic and concern.
'Yugi? What's happened? Where are you?' demanded Atem.
"Never mind me," Yugi's urgency sent chills up Yami's spine. Yugi knew something Yami did not and it could not be good, if the panic in his tone was any indication. "Where are you?"
'The underwater tunnels,' Atem answered, but frowned when he sensed Yugi freeze up, 'why?'
"Yami..." Yugi trailed off, and the worry already coursing through the Pharaoh began to intensify, "promise me you won't kill Seto."
'What did he do?' Yami waited, but a verbal answer never came, but he did not need one, for suddenly he felt something slice across the link, throwing up a wall between Yugi and his link partners that could not block Atem's bond to the other half of his soul, but cut off any access to his hikari's magic and caused Harry to start cussing in spectacular fashion, reminding Atem of how different the links between them and Harry truly were. 'Yugi!'
Atem felt Yugi's mind waver for a moment and then rapidly fade out as his hikari lost consciousness. The Pharaoh's hands balled into fists as he realised that he recognised the weaving of the spell that was sealing Yugi's magic away and screwing with their mental bonds. There was no way he could forget it. He had been under it only once before, back during his days in Egypt when he was a foolish young prince. He and his sister had been reckless with their magic, which had surpassed that of their teachers, and his little sister died because of it. In order to prevent a repeat of the tragedy, his magic had been sealed until he could learn respect for that which he wielded.
That their enemy had gotten their hands on a spell that was designed in Egypt millennia ago to allow the magically handicapped amongst the guards to handle criminal spellcasters and rouge sorcerers was disconcerting, and spoke of something going on that was far more dangerous than Atem had suspected.
That was not the worst of it, though.
He had to get to Yugi. Quickly. There was no longer any way he could afford to dawdle. The spell was normally embedded in restraints that were placed on the sorcerer it was being used against. It fed off the captive's Ba and magic in order to power itself, draining only a little from their reserves, nothing that the victim could not recover on their own. Never enough to kill them, just enough to disorientate and sedate them.
But Yugi was sick, his reserves were not regenerating properly and not only that, there was more than one layer of the spell holding Yugi's powers beyond the hikari's reach. Each layer would drain just as much as the first.
Yugi would die by the end of the day if Atem did not find him and set him free.
Right there and then, Atem swore to himself that even if he had to tear this entire park apart, he would find Yugi before it was too late and Seto wasgoing to lend help, even if it had to be forced out of him.
First though, he had to get past the bloody shabti and out of this Ra-accursed tunnel.
"All right," Atem's tone was low, vicious and very, very dangerous, "my turn."
LINE_RECOGNITION_HAS_GONE_AGAIN
Hermione was pissed off.
She was not the damsel-in-distress type. She had not accepted death at the hands of Akhenaden and she was not going to be the reason that Yugi surrendered to the latest prat who wanted to steal his soul. It was bad enough that she was the reason Mokuba had surrendered to their adversaries. There were several damaged walls from where she had vented her anger on the scenery. Even without her focuses, she could still do a surprising amount of damage if she was pushed enough. Obviously, it was still possible to have bouts of accidental magic at fifteen.
She could not do anything to help Mokuba right now. She was not strong enough to fight the spirit possessing the boy and without her deck and wand she could not defend herself properly from his attacks. She needed backup if she wanted to free the younger Kaiba brother. She could, however, get herself out of here and warn the others, except to do that she needed to find her way out of this bloody maze and that was not going to be easy. Menhit's ancient friend had possessed one of the few people who did not need backup to reprogram everything in the park, which meant he had control over how the labyrinth around her shifted and changed. She could have been walking around in circles for the last few hours and never known it.
She let out a frustrated snarl as she turned a corner and discovered the pen she had lost when she had been dumped in the labyrinth lying on the floor. Well, now she had confirmation. The exit had vanished so going back to find her deck and her wand was not an option. She was left wondering if they were doing this purely to aggravate her further.
The more logical part of her mind, the part not overexposed to Joey, reminded her that if she did not know where the hell she was, then neither would her friends, so even if she wanted to wait to be rescued, it would be a long time coming.
Stalking around the maze was not going to help. She was not going to go anywhere if they did not want her to, and quite obviously they did not want her to. She had to find another solution. There was no way that Seto and Mokuba would not have built back doors into the place to allow not only easy access for their employees, but to let them help people who had been lost for hours more easily.
The question was where they were and how she could get into them. The logical suggestion was that the access to the staff walkways would be tunnels under the maze. Going underground an, 'underground,' maze sounded less than fun but if she was going to get the hell out of here, she would more than happily escape that way.
She carefully checked every inch of the floor, looking for the concealed exits that she just knew had to be there. The Kaiba brothers would not have made it easy. After all, this was a game and using the staff exits was cheating, something that the Clan as a whole disapproved of. Hermione herself had been informed of the cardinal rule of, 'don't cheat,' a long time ago, but this was not a Shadow Game and it was not cheating to use the available shortcuts if the game itself was broken.
"Ah-ha!" Hermione crowed as she found the floor tile she was looking for. The seam was just a little larger around the edges and it was a slightly different colour, not that it was easy to see in the dim light provided by the labyrinth's lighting system. Fake flames looked very pretty, but they were not very bright, something that only added to the place's creepy tone.
Next trick, wedging the exit open far enough she could slip inside before the bad guys realised what she was up to and stopped her.
LINE_RECOGNITION_HAS_GONE_AGAIN
Something was bothering Ryou and he had a horrible feeling that he knew what it was.
When the others had gone to Kaiba's tournament, he had opted to stay behind. There were many reasons for that. Between his lack of interest in the game of Duel Monsters and the fact he and his recently deceased other self had been practically identical, along with the fact he did not entirely trust himself meant that it was safer for him to stay here.
He was busy, anyway. The televised duels would not start until tomorrow morning, so other than those sad few who were following every duel as it happened on the Kaiba Corp website, the shop was beginning to get back some of its regulars. In fact the mini-tournament that the store had been supposed to be running had actually attracted quite a crowd - there were not as many people as in previous summers, and some of them had only come to see if Yugi or any of his friends were at the shop, but there had been more customers. Stocking the new boosters definitely helped. No matter how frightened they were, people always wanted the newest stuff. It was almost a rule of human nature.
He recognised the feeling that was bothering him. It was his gut instinct telling him to get the hell out. One valuable lesson the Thief King had taught him over the years was to listen to it. The hikaris tended towards precognition, so if something told Ryou to run, generally it was correct. It did not help that Golden, a fully qualified Seer, had vanished from the shop sometime this morning and had yet to return.
For once he was not going to heed it, though. He had hidden himself away when Bakura had been at his worst, just hoping to mitigate the damage and stayed away from the danger when he could have helped his friends at Hogwarts, but he did not want to just abandon them now. That did not mean he could not clear the shop of anyone that could not defend themselves.
He did not even know what the problem was, because both thankfully and problematically, his was more a skill for sensing incoming danger, rather than Yugi's nightmare-visions. It meant he never had a full idea of what was to come except for a vague sensation of, 'trouble,' and the bigger that trouble was, the bigger the urge was to run like mad.
Every fibre and nerve-ending in him was screaming to get the hell out. Now.
Leaving Yugi's mother in charge of the counter, he shot out to the back room where Solomon was making a judgement call on a move that one of the semi-finalists had made. Gesturing for the elderly gamer to come to one side, he was grateful when Solomon obliged him rather than call him over towards the table.
"Bakura-san?" Solomon asked, concerned when he saw the look on Ryou's face.
"This is going to sound strange, but we need to get everyone out of the shop," said Ryou steadily, all the time wondering how precisely to explain himself to the elderly gamer.
Solomon considered him carefully for a moment. "Can it wait forty five minutes?"
"I don't know," Ryou admitted. It was probable that he was being ridiculous, jumping at shadows because he was trying to adjust to whatever it was his darker self had done to him just before he had left for Japan that meant he was not, shockingly, going crazy. He did not recognise how he felt, but that gaping hole Yugi described when Yami had been petrified did not seem to be there, in spite of his alter ego's departure.
"After this round," Solomon promised, frowning slightly. "I know the likely finalists, they won't object to coming back tomorrow if I give them an extra booster pack each."
"You believe me?" Ryou was a little surprised, his own mother had not believed him when he told her and Amane not to go that day and, and yet Solomon was willing to believe him even without a proper explanation.
"Later on, I'll explain a few things. Right now I need you to start closing up the shop, while I finish here," Solomon informed him. "Tell the customers we have a problem with the till and that it can't be fixed until tomorrow morning. We weren't opening till midday anyway."
"Yes, Mutou-Sensei," Ryou nodded, relieved that someone was listening to him, and headed out to begin shooing away customers.
LINE_RECOGNITION_HAS_GONE_AGAIN
His mind hazy, his body refusing his orders and his powers far beyond his grip, Yugi had no choice but to allow his captors to carry him deep into the labyrinth, not that he would have struggled even if he had been able to. He had surrendered to the shabti that had approached him. There was no other choice.
Well, there was, but Yugi could never have taken it. His options had been to hand himself over willingly, or run, forever knowing that his unwillingness to sacrifice himself had caused the deaths of Hermione, Serenity and Yami.
Now at least he knew that Hermione would be unharmed, Serenity would be left with Akane and Lotus and the flood gates on the tunnels would not be opened, so Yami and everyone else down there with him would not drown.
He knew his friends would come for him. One thing he could always depend on was that his friends would never abandon him when he was in trouble, but he could feel his life draining away. The pins and needles that had started with his wrists, ankles and neck, where the shackles and collar bit into his skin, was spreading throughout his body rapidly. His dulled senses could still feel the magic pulsing, eating away at his energy, each pulse spreading the prickling further.
They would come, but Yugi did not know if they would come in time. He could not. If they did not, he could at least die knowing he had saved them.
His faceless captors, whose arms did not feel like flesh and bone, but closer to stone, carried him through a door and literally dropped him at the feet of their leader. Yugi let out a pained cry as his body hit the floor hard. His head struck the faux stone surface as it did so, worsening his already nauseating feeling of inertia.
"Hey, Boh?" Yugi sent out, or at least tried, unable to hear anyone he was linked to. He could still pick up Yami's distinct aura of darkness supporting him, he was unsure whether anyone could hear him in return. "Tell Serenity I feel dizzy..."
"I know you're not asleep, Yugi," the leader spoke, causing confusion to course through Yugi as he opened his eyes slowly, "look at me."
"Mo...Mokuba?" Yugi practically squeaked as he beheld the face of the one stood before him.
"Yes," the younger boy allowed, "and no."
Yugi's senses were screaming something, but he was too far gone to understand what they were telling him. "Wha...?"
"I knew that playing on your weaknesses would bring you straight to me," the younger Kaiba continued, something strange in his voice as he spoke, "and now I have you, one soul of pure light, signed, sealed and delivered."
Suddenly, it made more sense that their spells were killing his body. That was never what they wanted. They wanted his soul. "Why?" Yugi asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
"You'll see soon enough, Yugi," Mokuba turned his attention away from his hostage and back towards the screens behind him, causing the sickening heir to realise he had been brought to some kind of, 'control centre.' Possibly even a backup. "For now you'll be pleased to hear your Priestess, Hermione, has slipped out of my clutches and your girlfriend, Serenity, has been taken somewhere safe where I can't get her."
Yugi was too exhausted to protest that Serenity was not his girlfriend in any way, shape or form, but he was relieved to hear the news, regardless.
"However, something will have to be done about your brother..."
Yugi froze. "But-" he managed.
"I know I promised, through my shabti, that I'd leave him alone if you handed yourself over. But you didn't really expect me to let your brother - whom I know will want to destroy me, live - did you?"
Yugi had. No matter how often he dealt with bad guys, he still could not shift his faith that they would stick to their oaths. It had been the one thing that had kept him going during their early battles was that the magic would force them to keep their promises. He had not forgotten that not everyone had that pressure, but did not want to believe there were people who would break their word on such important matters.
"No, he's getting too close to defeating my last shabti," Mokuba sounded almost cheerful as Yugi struggled against both his bonds and the spells keeping him subdued, eyes locked on the screen Mokuba to which Mokuba gestured. It displayed Atem in the midst of his match. "So..."
His hands hesitated over the keyboard for a moment as he fought an internal battle, giving Yugi time to shift his way partially through the haze. A moment later, they were flying across the keyboard.
Yugi watched in horror as the flood gates burst wide open and water issued out in what looked momentarily like a single thick, malevolent mass. He got a quick glimpse of Atem's astonished reaction before the camera switched perspective, looking away from the Pharaoh in favour of the churning water carrying on down the tunnel. At the same instant, Atem's darkness vanished, as if someone had suddenly switched a light on and chased it from the room, leaving Yugi reeling.
Yami was gone.
Yami was...
Yugi had never felt rage like he did at that exact moment, but it cut through the fog in his brain and allowed him to push past the barriers restricting his magic. Sinking almost every last drop of his power into this one strike, Yugi strained against the suppressing spells, wanting nothing more than to stop the one who was in control of Mokuba, because it could not possibly be his friend who had just murdered Yami in cold blood.
The arcane bonds had never been meant to hold back the wrath of the living Horus himself. They folded pathetically under his assault and the Shadows climbed the walls, striking at everyone who was not Yugi or Mokuba. The new Pharaoh of the Shadows called forth a Shadow Game, both to punish the one who had killed his predecessor, and to save his friend from possession.
The shabti all across the park, which were in fact nothing more than clay statues brought to life with magic, shattered the moment the shadows and the light - working and swirling together in one burst of magic that everyone who was even remotely sensitive across the world could feel - overwhelmed the spells binding them to their creator.
In the wake of the abrupt mystical eruption, the ceiling was vaporised, and Menhit made the wise decision to flee, valuing her current life more than some, 'promise,' of immortality. The one controlling Mokuba stood his ground against the surge of uncontrolled energy which was steadily closing in on the Pharaoh and his target.
Anhur, who had just arrived, was not blessed with Menhit's foresight, nor had he been around long enough to know what was even occuring. The huge man strode across the room and went to kick the already straining King, only to be blasted away, smashing his back hard into the control console. The console started smoking, but no one was paying attention to it, too concerned about the new, untamed magic bent on destroying them all.
As quickly as it had come, the magic fled, along with the rage fuelling it as Yugi collapsed. Exhausted as he was from fighting his shackles and his previous issues, he was simply unable to maintain control over that much raw, cosmic fury.
Mokuba, stunned almost into goggle-eyed silence, stared down at the unconscious Pharaoh with awe and more than a small twinge of fear. "He wasn't supposed to be able to do that..."
LINE_RECOGNITION_HAS_GONE_AGAIN
"The hell was that?" Ron demanded as the feeling of impending disaster washed over him to replace the shock that racked his body seconds before.
"I... don't know..." Ginny admitted.
"I do," Ombre said, hovering in the open doorway, "and you lot should be more careful."
"Ombre?" Ron yelped, dragging her into the room and shutting the door behind her.
"What do you mean you know what that was?" Ginny demanded, shoving Ron's remaining clothes into his open school trunk.
"Of course I know what that was," The false Princess snorted, "and you would too if you thought about it. There's only one being of light and shadows in this world who's that powerful."
"There's no way!" Ron protested. "That couldn't have been Yugi!"
"Believe me or not, it doesn't matter. Not if you're not ready to move," Ombre shrugged. "Other people are going to assume the same as me and go after our Clan. They will need your help."
"Come with us," Ginny offered, "we..." She trailed off as Ombre started chuckling bitterly.
"Me? I don't think so," said Ombre. "The last thing they need there is me. I have no control, I proved that before I left."
"Without Clan at hand and support from all," Ginny quoted at her, "into darkness this world will fall. You have to come."
"I..."
'The Kame Game Shop's under attack!' Ginny's Steel Scorpion burst into the room, interrupting Ombre with its announcement. 'Death Eaters! At the Pharaoh's ho-!'
A Cheshire Cat appeared out of thin air and sat on Ron's head. He tried to swat it off unsuccessfully.
"The Lady Whyte requests your presence," The cat said and floated away lazily, unaware that it had interrupted an important discussion. Ron's hands continued to swipe at it, and went straight through the tricky, immaterial feline. "It's started."