Warnings for: Everything you'd expect from pulp sci-fi - fail science (I gave myself physics rage writing this), borderline racism (towards aliens) and scantily-clad / naked women.
Yugi's Dream: Lightning Mutou and the Lizard-Women of Io
The forcefield petulantly sizzled out under the sustained assault from Anzu's ray-gun. "Come on, Lightning! We've a planet to save!" She tossed her head back, the glow of the dim lighting on her hair making it appear in soft focus. Yugi blinked to try to dispel the effect.
Anzu leaned around the corner of the cell, one knee-high go-go boot pressed against the wall for leverage. The zipper on her silver mini-dress was pulled too low for modesty and Yugi tried not to stare. "Where am I?" he asked, puzzled. He looked around at unfamiliar bare walls, the cold, hard slab on which he was lying, the tracery of mellow orange lights where the force-field had been, and beyond that, a dull grey corridor, floor-lit. Something thrummed quietly in the background.
"They must have hit you harder than I thought." Anzu looked back at him, frustration evident in her tone. "You're on board the Dragon Lord's prison ship. I managed to stow away when they transported you here, and this is a prison break. Now please, Lightning, get a move on!"
Something clicked inside Yugi's mind. "Dragon Lord… Kaiba?" He sat up at last, rubbing his head to try to make the throbbing noise go away. It didn't work.
A small smile of relief showed briefly on Anzu's features before she returned to scanning the corridor, gun arm raised. "You remember, Lightning?"
"Lightning? Why do you keep calling me that, Anzu? My name's Yugi. I think you're confusing me with somebody else."
"No. See?" Anzu detached a palm-sized device from her utility belt. Her fingers skittered across its surface before she held it out to show Yugi. The display screen depicted a man, standing tall and confident, what appeared to be a large goldfish bowl nestled in the crook of his Bacofoil-clad arm.
There was no mistaking that tri-coloured hair. Yugi supposed the blonde streaks shooting out to the spiked tips could be compared to lightning. His shoulders drooped slightly. "I'm sorry, Anzu. That's the other me."
"Then it's you. Come on!" Anzu urged, tugging at Yugi's arm. Sirens blared into action as she spoke. "By all the sins of Titan… They've noticed. We're out of time." She dragged Yugi up and began running, the boy's short legs struggling to keep up.
"I told you, I'm not the one you want." He shouted after her, footsteps ringing on the metal floor.
"And I told you that you are. Please try to keep up!" She pivoted to aim the ray-gun at something behind them, the crackle of an energy bolt zapping past Yugi's ear. There was a hiss as the shot connected. Yugi glanced back as he ran to see something long and snake-like crumple to the ground. Whatever it was must have been seven feet tall.
That was all the encouragement Yugi needed to stay with the girl with the gun. That, and watching Anzu run in such a short skirt had its perks. "Where are we going?" he gasped. To be out of breath already was bad. It was all that time spent standing around watching the other Yugi duel, and skipping gym class to play board games with Ryou.
"To your ship, of course. I hope you remember how to fly it." Anzu stopped outside one of several identical featureless doors set into the seemingly endless corridor, pressing her ear to the door to listen.
"We'll find out." Yugi assured Anzu with a nervous smile.
"Stand back," she whispered, pushing him to the side of the door, before kicking it open with a wild yell. Five shots later and they were running again, heading for something that looked like a cross between a bottle rocket and a muscle car, all fins and brushed chrome and oversized light bulbs.
Anzu spun a wheel on the entrance hatch, tugging it open. Yugi noted the stylised lightning bolt emblazoned on the hatch. "After you," she insisted, and he scrambled inside, clambering over pipes and past panels of flashing lights to reach the cockpit. The leather seats there were surprisingly comfortable and he strapped himself into one as he heard Anzu shut the door with a clang and scamper up the fuselage to slide down into the seat next to him.
"Overriding the docking bay doors," she announced, flicking a few overhead switches. Anzu's half of the cockpit was ridiculously complex, with dials and gauges and toggles and levers. "Priming thrusters." Yugi's, on the other hand, resembled an arcade game cabinet – a joystick and a few chunky red buttons, one covered by a plastic panel that could be flipped up with a finger. "Main screen on." The black wall in front of them lit up with a neon wire-frame model, showing the doors of the bay slowly pulling apart, pinprick stars revealed between them and a green arrow curving up away from Yugi and toward the void. Anzu flashed a determined smile at Yugi. "All set. Take us out, Lightning!"
This, I can do, thought Yugi, and he pushed forward on the joystick, gunning the ship through the doors and into space.
The spaceship drifted, a curious wide-eyed face at one porthole. The vast expanse of nothingness made Yugi feel slightly nauseous, not helped by being overly warm from the silvery spacesuit Anzu had insisted he change into. She, however, remained unremittingly scantily-clad, not entirely a bad thing in Yugi's eyes.
They were supposed to be coming up with a plan to free the people of Io, who had been enslaved when their Queen teamed up with the evil Dragon Lord Kaiba. Yugi had kept telling Anzu that he wasn't some great space adventurer, that he was at best a card game hero, and at worst simply a kid trying to make up his last year at high school, but she just claimed he was delusional from the Dragon Lord's mind-control device. After all, he knew how to fly the ship, didn't he?
"I don't suppose we could just find Kaiba and ask him to stop," Yugi volunteered pathetically.
"You tried that last week. He laughed in your face and had you imprisoned, remember?" Anzu kept monitoring the viewscreen, the star field hanging as motionless as the spacecraft.
"No, I don't, actually." Yugi sighed.
"Did the Dragon Lord torture you?" Anzu's tone was soft, concerned. "Maybe you're repressing the bad memories."
"No, I don't think so. At least, I don't have any bruises." Yugi had examined himself pretty closely when changing to make sure he was who he thought he was.
"The Dragon Lord wouldn't use something that left marks." Anzu's voice lowered further, and Yugi had to strain to hear her. He left the porthole to join her in the cockpit, slumping down into the seat.
"I'm okay, really." Yugi tried his best reassuring smile. "I'm a little confused, but I'm sure one of us will wake up soon and we'll have a laugh about this whole deal." Anzu just looked bewildered, so he returned to the subject. "Could I challenge Kai- the Dragon Lord to a duel?" He hoped that meant "card game" in this universe, too, not that he seemed to have a deck box anywhere on his person.
Anzu's response wasn't encouraging. "That wouldn't be wise. His flagship is supported by a fleet of fighters, each heavily armed, and once aboard we'd have to face the Ionian elite guard. On the prison ship, they were just grunts. We haven't the resources to take on the Dragon Lord's bodyguards."
"On the prison ship… you mean those snake-people? They were Ionians? That's who we're fighting to save?"
"Yes." Anzu's forehead crinkled, her words catching in her throat. "I didn't want to hurt so many of them, but I had to get you out of there. You're their only hope."
I am? Yugi didn't speak the thought aloud, feeling incredulity wouldn't help Anzu right now. Instead he placed his hand on hers, comfortingly, as she had done for him many times before. It seemed to work, the threat of tears receding from her blue eyes – if it had ever really been there – as she curled her fingers around his.
"How about this queen, then?" Yugi ventured, still thinking about the task. Anzu snapped her fingers away, sending them dancing across the device that must have been a miniature tablet computer. Yugi leaned across to look.
"It's a possibility." Anzu scanned the diagrams intently. "She remains on Io, and the palace seems less fortified than the flagship. If we could get to her, we'd have a bargaining position, at least."
"It's a start?" Yugi silently thanked Ryou for all those roleplaying sessions. He might actually be able to muddle through.
"Plotting the coordinates now, Lightning." Anzu's face lit up, both from her smile and the green arrow that appeared on the viewscreen.
"Hold tight." Yugi's eyes narrowed in fierce concentration as he threw the joystick forward, watching the stars become streaks, a vibration beneath his feet the only other indication of the ship's sudden acceleration.
The moon hung bloated and yellow in the viewscreen, its pockmarked surface unchallenging as Anzu scanned the defences. At long last she looked up. "They're not firing on us. Either they haven't noticed we're here, or we're expected."
"I guess we need to land then." We'll soon find out, thought Yugi grimly.
Anzu nodded, punching up a trajectory. "Take the descent at this angle. It's a thin atmosphere, but it could still hurt the ship."
"There's an atmosphere? That's peculiar for a moon…" Yugi thought of a more important question as he guided the ship towards the surface. "Is it breathable?"
"I wouldn't recommend it." Anzu gave a mischievous smile. "It's mostly sulphur dioxide. It'll smell like Jounouchi's bar after curry night."
Yugi chuckled, fighting to keep the ship steady as the buffeting began. "How do the Ionians stand it?"
"Just used to it, I guess." Anzu calmly dealt with Yugi's questions, taking his supposed amnesia in her stride. "They've modified parts of their cities to suit us, though. When we first made contact they were really keen to get along with us, but the Dragon Lord took advantage of that kindness and, well, here we are." She shrugged in the chair.
The ship took an unusually large knock, a klaxon suddenly blaring from somewhere behind Yugi's right ear, causing him to jump away and catch his head a knock on the console. He rubbed the sore spot, looking anxiously over at Anzu, who was frantically pushing buttons. "We've got company!" she yelled over the clamour. "Switching to camera!"
The view on screen shimmered, the pixellated graphics being replaced by a view from a camera situated, Yugi figured out, on one of the tail fins of the rocket. Two monstrous horned feet gripped the rocket, silvery-blue wingtips slowly beating in and out of the yellow-cast frame. "Well, we know they've spotted us, then." Yugi shouted, frowning in thought. "Shut down the thrusters, Anzu."
"Are you sure, Lightning?" Her finger poised over the cut-off switch.
"Certain." Yugi managed a nervous smile. "If they were trying to kill us, they've had the opportunity. Given that we're still here, I'd rather not appear hostile, or shake the ship apart trying to break free."
Anzu nodded, flipping the switch. "Engines full stop." With that, the ship stopped shaking and the alarm stopped, leaving only the ringing in Yugi's ears. "What now, Lightning?"
"Now, we wait, I suppose." Yugi hoped that playing by ear wasn't an idiot's tactic. There was a feeling like butterflies in his stomach as the ship lost altitude, and an increasing pressure in his ears that replaced the tinnitus with pain. He gritted his teeth, pinching his nose and blowing hard to alleviate the discomfort.
Anzu's giggle sounded like it was coming from far away. "One day you'll get used to it, I promise." She didn't seem in any distress.
On the viewscreen it was hard to see much beyond the huge feet and the bulbous form of the spacecraft, but when the nose dipped occasionally the dusty yellow surface of the moon came into view, punctuated here and there by patches of white or mountains that seemed all the bigger for how far away they were. The sky was clear, and the dim light and sallow hue gave a sense of dusk to the place. The limb of Jupiter was just visible on the horizon.
Eventually a more regular patch of rock came into view, indicating something made rather than formed, great spires of twisted volcanic rock arcing up toward the silver craft. "They're taking us straight to the palace," Anzu confirmed, pulling up a schematic of the interior for Yugi to study.
"Well, that's what we wanted I guess," Yugi smiled weakly, trying to plan his opening lines in his head.
"Don't worry, Lightning." Anzu clasped his hand briefly and Yugi's smile became a blush, enjoying the familiarity.
There was a gentle bump as the craft landed, Anzu springing to her feet to wait by the exit hatch, hand on raygun holster and looking to Yugi for direction. "You're not wearing a spacesuit?" he asked, eying his own helmet apprehensively.
"They're taking us inside the palace," Anzu explained as the ship shuddered forward on some kind of conveyor. "It'll be safe in there."
"Safe. I like that word," Yugi joined Anzu at the hatch, silently praying she was right. He'd always relied on her cheerful support, and that now meant trusting her with his life.
The hatch hissed open as the pressure equalised, revealing a troupe of green-skinned creatures, each muscle and sinew clearly visible as their armour was clearly more for ornamental than protective purposes, being scanty and adorned with curlicues of gold. Judging from the build of the creatures, and the length and point of each one's sword, it would not be wise to get into a fight with one, regardless of the state of their armour. One moved forward, removing his shimmering helmet to address Yugi. "Our Queen requests your presence." Yugi nodded, grateful he could understand the alien. Anzu moved to exit the rocket, but found crossed swords in her way. "Alone," the guard emphasised, flicking his reptilian-slitted eyes in her direction. Anzu reluctantly stepped back, eyes hard-set, ready to act if the word was given. It was not. Yugi brushed past her, whispering a reassurance on the way. She nodded, satisfied but still on guard.
It was a long walk through the palace, surrounded on all sides by the Queen's guard. Yugi kept track of each monumental door and cavernous hallway, mentally plotting them on Anzu's plan of the palace. Soon he calculated they must be approaching the centre. He was asked to wait while the sentries flanking the massive entrance to the Queen's chambers pushed the doors open.
The chamber was dark and it took Yugi's eyes some time to adjust before he realised he was looking into a cave, steps leading down. A prod from behind sent him stumbling forward, heading towards the faint blue phosphorescence in the distance.
Yugi felt the Queen's words in his mind before he saw her. /You may call me Keroessa, daughter of Io./ Years of living with the Pharoah's spirit had inured him to such telepathic contact. /Yugi Mutou,/ he sent back.
There was a pause. /Then, you are not the one I am looking for?/
/Lightning?/ Yugi sighed as he plodded downwards. /Everyone else seems to think I am. I guess, I don't know, maybe I am./
The Queen's chuckle made itself felt. /You seem unsure of yourself, little one. But I think you have strengths you have yet to fully acknowledge./
The shape in front of Yugi became closer as he approached it, a pale, glowing form, maybe six times his height. A woman, naked from the waist up, implausibly long white hair spilling over her shoulders, arms crossed covering her chest. Her skin was pale, almost translucent. Cables wrapped her from pointed toes to hips, snaking up to the ceiling from which she was suspended. Her eyes were closed. /I require your assistance, Yugi Lightning Mutou./
"That's my line." Yugi tried talking out loud now he was in the Queen's vicinity, but his words came out small and hoarse in the vast cavern.
/Then you must speak first, of course. As my guest./ He almost thought he imagined the quirk at the corner of Keroessa's lips.
"It's about the Dragon Lord. Your people are suffering because of him. Do you think you could perhaps, um, call off the alliance?" Yugi braced himself for an attack that didn't come.
Sadness filled Yugi's thoughts. /I loved him, once. I was willing to do anything for him. To sacrifice my people, to chain myself up here to power his empire, to strike at anything that threatened him./
"But he changed?"
/Yes. When you emerged, he became focused on destroying you. He used my people to attack the innocent. He forgot to visit me, seeing only my usefulness to his aims./
"Why? I'm just…" Just what? A kid, a king, a freelance adventurer? "Just me."
/There was a rebellion on Europa. You fought on the side of the rebels, the Dragon Lord supported the government. Freedom was an admirable aim, but for the Europans, it was too much too soon. Because you won, the Europans are starving, fighting each other for food. Had the government retained control, the Dragon Lord could have influenced it, caused change from within. But you refused to see the good in him, and trust him, and he now cannot see the good within himself./
"I didn't know." Yugi looked down, contemplating the floor, trying to comprehend the enormity of what he had supposedly done.
The cables shifted, tightening, the glowing figure shrinking and inclining her head down towards him. Her eyes opened, slowly, as if she was remembering how to do so. They were a striking blue against her pale skin. She reached out a hand to brush his face. /It is not your place to feel shame. You are not responsible for the actions of your other self./
"So what do you need from me?"
/Your ship. Take me to the Dragon Lord. He will let your ship pass when he senses me. I will do what I can to save him from his own mind, and perhaps we will then both achieve our aims./
"Don't you have a ship of your own?"
/It will not fly. My fleet is grounded, until such time as the Dragon Lord deems it appropriate./ As Keroessa's feet touched the floor, the cables retracted and Yugi averted his gaze.
"Then let's go." Yugi listened for the Queen's footsteps padding up behind him on the basalt steps. Reaching the top, he pulled an embroidered cape off a surprised-looking sentry, wrapping it around Keroessa's shoulders. Outside of the cavern, her skin merely shimmered with a silvery cast. Otherwise, she seemed perfectly human.
The Queen must have ordered her guards to stand down, as Yugi walked through the palace unchallenged. Back at the ship, Anzu gave him a hard look as she spotted the company he was keeping. "I told you to stop collecting naked alien women, Lightning," she whispered as he passed.
"It just seems to happen," Yugi rubbed the back of his head apologetically.
"What's the plan, anyway?" Anzu secured the hatch once the full complement were aboard.
"This is Keroessa – the Queen," Yugi explained. "We're taking her to the Dragon Lord in the hope she can talk him out of things."
"You think she'll have better luck than you?" Anzu's expression was unconvinced.
"She thinks it's worth a try."
"Then to the flagship it is." Anzu took her usual seat, plotting the coordinates while Yugi attempted, and failed, to find a comfortable and secure place for the Queen to sit amid the tubing of the rocket's midsection. "She'll have to sit on your knee," Anzu called back.
"Oh. Sorry," Yugi apologised to the Queen as he took his seat. She followed. /There are worse things than to be held in a man's arms,/ Keroessa projected with a smile.
Anzu must have heard it too, as she looked up, fuming. "We're ready to go, Lightning, if you would care to separate business and pleasure?"
As Keroessa had indicated, it had been a simple matter to approach the Dragon Lord's fleet. They were escorted in to the flagship by a dozen fighters, just in case Lightning got any heroic ideas, and Keroessa was now ensconced in the Dragon Lord's quarters while Yugi and Anzu waited outside, kicking their heels on the high-backed chairs.
"I can't get over his hair," Yugi chuckled. "It was always shaggy, but I never thought I'd see it grow to waist length."
"You're one to talk about silly hair," Anzu pointed out.
"Don't you like it? I think it makes me look distinguished. Like Grandpa."
Anzu stifled a snort. "That old pervert, distinguished?"
"Please don't talk about him like that. And I've seen pictures. Back in his youth, he could pull off a tuxedo with style."
"Now that I have to see," Anzu smiled, and Yugi wondered what Sugoroku was up to in this universe. He still hoped this was a dream, but he'd like to see Grandpa before he woke up. "But at least I know where you get your womanising tendencies."
"I am not a womaniser!" Yugi stuck his tongue out, offended. "Some women just seem to like me, that's all."
"Yeah, and if they're naked and silver, that's just a bonus."
"There's only one girl for me." Yugi's cheeks flushed again as he admitted the truth.
Anzu didn't turn from him, instead letting her face soften and her hand rest gently on Yugi's. Yugi tried to make sense of the gesture. "But I thought you were interested in the other me. Lightning."
"It's you, Yugi." Anzu tried the name experimentally. "It was always you."