Notes

Hi to everyone!^^

This is an incredibly old story i wrote in far 2010 and published in an italian Fanfiction site, and when I casually found it a couple of days ago I decided to translate it and publish it here on this site too.

Since it's already written I'll simply need to translate it, so if you consider that it's even quite short I think I'll be able to complete it by next month.

See you soon!^_^

Cj Spencer

1

Things was going really bad for Yugi

From the beginning of the duel he found himself in a continuous difficult position, and despite having been able to occasionally bring some good counterattacks, his opponent had always managed to preserve his advantage.

The opponent in question was none other than Seth, the Egyptian God of destruction.

All because of an idiot, two-bit thief that while robbing into the History Museum during exhibition dedicated to Egyptian mythology he had the bright idea to listen the little voice he had heard coming from inside a statue, asking to be freed in exchange for enormous wealth. That one obviously had believed, and broking the statue he had destroyed the prison where Horus had locked Seth the dawn of history after having been able to defeat him in battle.

Before long, the aura of evil Seth had expanded across Domino, trapping residents in a sort of crystallized time, only sparing Yugi and his friends, which at that time were out of town and that, and that after having known what had happened they had made return to face him.

Seth's plan was simple; flood the Earth and the Men's plan in general with his world's darkness thanks to a giant ball of dark energy appeared on the city skies and that, little by little, he was using the vital energy of the inhabitants to break the lock placed by the Gods to the door that separated the two worlds. If his plan had succeeded, he could have demanded for himself the whole dimension of the Men under the pretext that it had become part of its territory.

Atem, however, intervened in defense of his friends in the name of the Gods, which now he was serving as their herald, forcing Seth to compete in a duel with Yugi; if he won, no one would have been able to contest his claims of conquest, but if he lost the divine power that heaven had given Yugi would have allowed him to repel Seth into the same hell from which he had escaped long time ago.

He could no longer help him and assist him as in the past, however Atem had faith in Yugi's abilities, but he had not reckoned with the Seth's abilities as duelist and sorcerer.

Seth's powers were such great that he had managed to imprison in stone even the three Egyptian God Cards, thanks to a trap called Seal of the hell, just when it seemed that the course of the duel could change.

The situation was now of 2500 life points for the God, and only three hundred for Yugi. Yugi had neither monsters nor spells or traps, and its three deities were still petrified and out of the game cause to the Seal on the field. Moreover, the same card allowed Seth to petrify even any monster with more than two thousand attack or defense points his opponent had put into play; keep it in the field needed of two thousand life points per turn, but Seth was able avoid such expensive cost thanks to a monster in its graveyard, the Grim Hellish Servant, which was able to provide him two thousand life points at each end of opponent's turn while he was in the Graveyard, simply taking the first two cards of his deck and removing them from the game.

Finally, Seth had on play Ammit, a monster with 2700 attack points, that despite not being able to attack directly prevented Yugi from play any monster with 2000 or more attack or defense points, even forcing him to send to the graveyard as much cards of his deck as were his monsters removed from play, which were five, counting even the Dark Magician and the Dark Magician Girl, and so in a short time Yugi's deck had been decimated, leaving in only three cards.

"You're at the end, mortal." said Seth grinning in satisfaction "It seems that Horus and the others were wrong about you. Now, make your last move. And so my reign over this world will finally begin. "

Yugi's mates were at his side, as always.

That Jounouchi had acted before thinking as always, facing Seth for first but facing an almost instant defeat, and only thanks to Atem, which was with them as a spirit in flesh, Seth had not sent him to hell already; but the battle had left him terribly dazed, and he needed Hiroto to stand up you stand up.

"Yugi, send that bastard back to hell!" said Joey for all the forces he still had

"Come on, we know you can do it." said Tea

"Yugi, we all believe in you." said Atem "Win."

Theoretically, Yugi still had a card that could allow him to win, but it alone was useless. He needed two more cards, and he was not sure they were among the three ones left. He could only hope.

He closed the eyes, and then he drew.

"One last hope." He said looking at what he had drew " I play Pot of Greed. With this, I can draw two more cards! "

"Your last cards." Said Seth.

At that point, it really was just a matter of fate. Yugi took the last two cards he had left, and had to call for all of his bravery to be able to look them.

The victory had begun. Once again, fate hadn't betrayed him.

"Now I active Instant Trap! Thanks to it, I can play a trap card directly from my hand paying half of my life points! And I play Return from the Different Dimension! Now I can call back all the monsters that you have petrified."

The five statues over the field began to crack, while flashes of light came from their insidest; at the end, with an angry snap, the monsters broke free, returning to Yugi's side.

"And since this is a special call, Seal of the Hell doesn't work."

"This means nothing." Said a not scared Set "Do you remember? Ammit prevents any monster with more than two thousand attack points to attack. Then, your pathetic gods are useless. "

"I will not need to attack to beat you." Yugi replied with the same tone

"What!?".

It was the moment of his ace in the hole.

"Now, the active card magic Returning Hope!"

"No!" growled Seth understanding what was about to happen

"With Returning Hope, I simply need to sacrifice half of my life points! But in return, I can inflict five hundred life points of damage for each monster on my side!

The duel is over! "

"No! It is not possible!".

The five monsters launched a combined attack, which bypassing Ammit directly hit Seth tremendously , eliminating its remaining life points.

"It cannot be! How can I be defeated like this by... a mortal! "

"Way to go, Yugi!" Said Honda, "You're the best."

"Bravo, Yugi." Atem whispered.

With Seth's defeat, the evil energy that was enveloping Domino quickly began to fade, and even the dark sphere over the boys' head, which was the portal, began to pulsate like a heart, a sign that it was about to implode.

As for the God, soon after his defeat a black mud puddle and appeared under his feet, and demonic hands emerged from it, grabbing him and dragging him down.

«Come back to burn in Hell!" shouted Atem

"No! I refuse! I refuse to fade like this! " The god ranted while disappearing.

Then, his eyes burned in anger, turning in bloody red.

"If I have to make this journey, at least I will not do it alone!" He exclaimed, and freed one arm he raised his hand towards the ball, which suddenly started to tremble and boil even more than before, surrounding itself with a menacing dark halo.

"What's going on !?" exclaimed Jounouchi "Atem, you said that beat him was enough to stop all this, or not?".

Atem, unfortunately, feared to know what Seth was going to do.

"Seth, you damned fool!"

"Safe journey, mortals!" The God laughed out loudly as he was dragged back to hell forever.

The ball, however, remained, and instead of disappearing it became more and more threatening, as a nucleus ready to explode; the whole city trembled, benches, machines and other things unfixed began to levitate, as attracted by a sinister gravity force.

"Yugi!" Atem shouted "Go away!"

"Atem, what's happening?" Yugi said, trying to remain standing.

Anzu tried to bring a still limping Joey out of the square, but the ground was shaking so much that she could barely stand.

The sphere continued to throb and twitch, while its surface was covered in cracks.

Suddenly, for a moment, everything seemed to quiet down, like an absolute and unreal calm, and soon after a terrifying, outstanding explosion struck the square; the buildings trembled, the windows exploded, trees and bushes found themselves uprooted and stripped.

"My friends!" Atemu shouted with terror in his eyes.

Yugi, Anzu, Jounouchi and Honda saw a light, a blinding light produced by the sphere that overwhelmed them, completely wrapping them. Then, they saw nothing more, hearing just the voice of Atem desperately calling them.

When Yugi regained consciousness, the first thing he did after having tried to chase away the numbness across all his body was to look around, and what he saw surprised him.

They were no longer in Domino's main square.

That rather seemed some sort of ancient temple, with so high vault that was impossible to see the roof, covered in such deep darkness that the torches all around were not able not reach it, and supported by two lines of huge columns so impressive to make the ones of Greek and Roman temples seem like simple toothpicks.

The architecture was very similar to an Egyptian temple, and the hieroglyphs on the walls seemed to confirm this hypothesis.

But as he had done, Yugi thought, to find himself in Egypt, if that was really the place where he was at now? And above all, what had happened?

Yugi looked around, seeing his fainted friends not far from him.

"Anzu, Jounouchi, Hond." He said, "Wake up."

After a while, they also opened their eyes, and they were also numb and staggered just like him.

"Damn it." Joey said rubbing his head, "I feel like a drunken hit by a truck."

"Where the hell are we?" Honda asked

"I have no idea." Yugi said "It seems like a temple."

Something that at first no one noted was that the Yugi and Joey's duel disks had been replaced by the ancient Egyptians diadhank; Tea and Tristan also had one.

"And where are these come from?" Jounochi asked noting his tool.

"I do not know." Yugi said looking at his one.

Last point, was that none of them had any sort of wound; just before the light overwhelmed them, all of them had been injured in some way because of debris. Now, however, all those signs were gone.

"This thing becomes increasingly strange." Honda said

"Meanwhile." Anzu said, "Let's try to find out where we are."

In that moment, a light appeared from nothing in front of them, turning into Pharaoh Atem. He had a strange expression, very different from the usual one; he seemed worried, not to say sad.

"Atem!" Yugi said, "Fortunately you're here."

"Thankfully, all of you have reached this place safe and sound here." he said, almost trying to avoid their eyes "I was afraid I would not be able to pick you all before you went too far."

"What are you talking about?" Jounouchi asked "Can you simply tell us where we are?"

"And above all," said Honda, "How do we get back?".

Hearing that question, Atem lowered his eyes again, appearing to be even more dejected and disheartened than before.

"You cannot go back."

All of them remained stunned.

"What do you mean !?" Yugi asked, 'Why can't we go back? "

"This is a bit... special place. From here you will never go back. You can only go forward."

A terrible doubt began to creep into Yugi's mind, and even Anzu began to have a very bad feeling. There was a time where none of them would have never believed the hypothesis that at the moment they had neither the courage to face, but after all things they had seen in those years their point of view was definitely changed.

"Sorry, but I'm still not able to understand you." Jounouchi said, since he and Honda were still unable to see the meaning of Atem's words.

Even Yugi and Anzu however didn't want to believe it initially, trying to think that it was a too far-fetched hypothesis to be true.

At that point, Atem had no choice, and moving a hand he made appear some sort of portal on front of the four boys, almost a television screen, in which they saw something very familiar.

"That's Domino!" Yugi said finding a bit of hope.

The city was intact, and finally free from Seth's influence; the sphere also was gone, and people were moving againg, oblivious to what had happened.

"So we did it. Seth has been defeated. "

"Way to go!" Said Jounouchi "That sadistic madman has been thrown back to the place he deserves to be. True, Atem? ".

Instead, the Pharaoh closed his eyes, and how his hand moved again the images changed, showing other, less enjoyable and very disturbing images.

It looked like a church, or some kind of temple's entrance, with a small crowd massed all around; in that crowd, Yugi recognized his grandfather, Jounuchi his sister, Hond and Anzu their parents, all in tears and destroyed by an apparently incurable pain.

Then the picture changed again, showing a small temple with four votive pictures draped in mourning.

And seeing those photos, the four boys turned pale, remaining breathless when they recognized in those black and white images their own faces.

"That's ..." said a shocked Anzu "That's ... us."

"No ..." said Yugi "It cannot be ..."

"This ... this is a joke." Jounuchi said, "A very bad joke."

None of them was able to look away from those images, while Atem wasn't able to watch anything but the soil, feeling too much shame of himself to look into his friends' eyes.

"The dark energy that Seth has released with that explosion," he said clenching his fists, "would had been too much for anyone. I tried to create a barrier, but despite having been able to protect the rest of the city, the central point, which was the square, had been filled with so much energy that even I found myself unable to contain it."

Anzu almost fainted, and fell to her knees crying and sobbing, but even if he tried to comfort her Honda didn't feel much better than her.

"No ..." she said in tears, "I can't believe it..."

Now that thought had become certainty, but Yugi and the others still couldn't believe it. They needed to hear it from their friend's voice.

"Atem ..." Yugi said with trembling voice.

Also Atem was crying, but he still found the strength to look at his friends' eyes.

"I'm sorry, my friends. I'm sorry".

Then, he tried to be the most firm as possible, because only in the most strong seriousness and composure one was able to find the strength for say such a thing.

"Yugi. Anzu. Jounouchi. Honda.

You ... you're dead."