Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh. This was written before I'd seen more than a handful of episodes or read any fan sites, so my history doesn't follow cannon.
Summary: Some good deeds need to go unpunished and it's going to take the whole gang to see it done. AU for rewriting the ancient past.
The One That Remembers
Chapter One: It Starts with a Card
Yu-Gi-Oh Fanfiction
By Kat Mayes
"Hey, Yuugi!" Tea called out the same moment the chimes above the shop door sounded at her entry.
Yuugi Mouto automatically looked away from the customer next to him to smile at his childhood friend. Tea almost comically skidded to a stop when she realized that Yuugi was not alone. She blushed slightly in embarrassment and mouthed a silent apology before disappearing into another aisle. Yuugi returned his attention to his customer trying to answer the woman's questions without being distracted, but Yuugi couldn't help but notice that Tea was rather impatiently gazing over the rack at him. The dancer hopped from foot to foot and kept pulling at the strap of her purse while she waited. Yuugi tried unsuccessfully to stop his grin at her antics.
/Something certainly has Tea excited/ Yami commented and Yuugi mentally nodded in agreement. His customer asked another question and Yuugi found himself trying to not only get his attention, but Yami's on the task at hand. In recent months it had been becoming increasingly harder to separate his thoughts from those of the Spirit of the Millennium Puzzle. Where once Yuugi and Yami could focus their full attention on two completely different things at the same time, now Yuugi couldn't always tell if he or Yami was thinking a particular thought, and right now Yami found it far more entertaining to watch Tea fidget than to help their customer.
Maybe it should have worried Yuugi more than it did that the line between himself and Yami was starting to blur, but he couldn't seem to muster up concern. After all it wasn't all bad. Yuugi felt more confident, more in control, and older somehow. Besides, didn't friends sometimes become so close that they could finish each others sentences? And you couldn't get much closer than sharing the same body, Yuugi thought with a grin. Yuugi led his customer to the register and had to stop himself from laughing out right at Tea's seeming rapt interest in the display closest to the counter.
The evil little imp inside of Yuugi that had more to do with Joey's influence than his supposed dark side, Yami, decided to strike up another conversation with his customer as she placed her change into her handbag. Yuugi could hear Yami chuckle inside his head when Tea groaned in frustration and gave them a little glare over the woman's shoulder. Yuugi ended the conversation with a smile and a wave to the customer, before turning to his friend.
"Hey, Tea. What's new?"
Yuugi had known Tea almost all his life and there was no one he knew better than her. Everything in her body language said that she was pissed, but Yuugi just kept on smiling sweetly and let Tea's own excitement work against her.
/And they say I'm the manipulative one/ Yami told his host, in an almost scolding tone. Yuugi ignored him as he watched Tea's feigned anger melt away. The pretty brunette blew the bangs from in front of her eyes and playfully stuck her tongue out at them.
"Sometimes I swear you're trying to get me mad at you," Tea huffed. Yuugi plastered an innocent questioning look on his face that didn't fool Tea at all. She lightly rapped her knuckles on Yuugi's forehead and grinningly called him an idiot.
"Did you want to tell me something?" Yuugi reminded his friend, and jumped back in fright when Tea almost literally exploded with excitement.
"I just found the perfect gift for Joey!" she exclaimed as she dug furiously into her purse. Several odd looking compacts were unceremoniously tossed onto the counter as Tea reached farther and farther into the deceptively small hand bag.
/Does it have a bottom/ Yami wondered rhetorically as Tea's arm seemed to disappear entirely. Yuugi was asking himself the same thing when suddenly Tea gave a triumphant cry and held aloft what was obviously a Duel Card in a hard protective sleeve.
There was a brief moment of hurt anger at seeing the card. Apparently Tea had gone somewhere else to get the card, but almost as soon as the negative emotion surface it dissipated. Whatever the card was Yuugi knew that if his Grandfather's shop had have had it Tea would have bought it there, but knowing that only made Yuugi more curious as to what card she held.
Yuugi waited patiently for Tea to either turn the card around or give it to him to end the mystery. With a graceful flip of her hand, Tea revealed a Red Eyes Metal Dragon.
"Do I have luck or do I have luck?" she said with a wink even as Yuugi snatched the card from her unresisting hand.
"Wow," Yuugi said quietly, amazed at Tea's good fortune at finding such a rare card, and one that would blow Joey away to have in his deck.
Was it real? The immediate skepticism put Yuugi on edge. He knew that there were people out there that made and sold counterfeit cards.
"Where did you get it?" Yuugi asked with none of the enthusiasm that Tea obviously thought he should have over her find.
"I bought if from a girl. She was selling her cards to afford an apartment in the city," Tea frowned, Yuugi's concern sparking some of her own. "Why? Do you think I paid too much for it?"
Yuugi noted the price on the sticker in the corner and his eyes widened. "You paid that much for a card for Joey's birthday?"
"Too much?" Tea asked with a wince.
"Not if it's a genuine Metal Red Eyes, but Tea you don't have that kind of money to spend on a single present."
The anxiety in Tea's face melted away and she waved off Yuugi's concern. "After the time Joey's had over the last two years he deserves a treat, besides I only paid half. I'm going to work off the rest."
Yuugi didn't feel reassured, this story wasn't sounding very legitimate. "Where did you meet this girl?" Yuugi asked as he pulled the card closer to examine it.
"At the train station," Tea responded absently as she started returning items back to her purse.
"Hmm…" Yuugi hummed thoughtfully.
/I'm sure it is alright Yuugi/ Yami said, appearing for only Yuugi to see beside Tea, looking as though he was trying to peer into Tea's handbag.
Yuugi frowned at Yami's words. When had he, the 'Light Side' become the untrusting one? Yami turned to look at Yuugi and gave him a smirk.
/It is less that I trust this girl, than I trust Tea's judgment. /
Yuugi had to agree with Yami on that one. Tea always seemed to just know instinctually when someone was worthy of her trust.
"But still…"
"What was that Yuugi?" Tea asked, frowning at her purse when one of her compacts refused to be stuffed inside.
"Oh, I was just wondering…." Yuugi motioned that he wanted to remove the card from its cover.
Tea looked up and gave a shrug. "Sure, it's not like Joey's going to leave it in the case anyway."
Yuugi carefully worked the card from the sleeve noting that it took more effort than it should have. He examined the card and the very first thing he noticed was that it was unusually thick. He looked at the edge and immediately saw why. There were two cards instead of one. Gripping the cards firming, he 'popped' them apart with a soft crack. He turned the Metal Red Eyes over and was relieved to see that not only did it have the appropriate holographic logo it also had not been damaged by being stuck to the other card for an unknown amount of time.
Yuugi smiled, glad that his friend had indeed not wasted her hard earned money on a fake card. The smile instantly fled from his face when he looked at the other card. A feeling of unease so great it made his heart constrict painfully in his chest settled over him. Yami must have felt it too, because he instantly came to his side and demanded Yuugi tell him what was wrong. Before he could either answer or examine the card completely it, along with the Metal Red Eyes, was yanked from his hand.
"Joey!" Tea squeaked shrilly. "What a surprise! What are you doing here, today… now?" Tea babbled as she quickly tried to shove the cards into her purse.
Joey Wheeler gave the still stunned Yuugi a questioning 'has-she-gone-completely-mental' look, but Yuugi could only blink back, his hands and arms still extended as if he still held the cards. Suddenly Joey's face broke into a devilish grin and he fixed it on Tea who was still trying to get her purse to close all the way.
"I know what you guys are up to," Joey said knowingly. "And I bet it has something to do with a certain someone's birthday," he said with a raise of his eyebrow.
"Don't be ridiculous," Tea told him with an annoyed huff. Her over stuffed purse just simply refused to close. "You know perfectly well that Yuugi's birthday is months away."
"I'm not talkin' about him!" Joey yelled heatedly.
"Oh?" Tea's purse finally snapped shut with a click and she turned to her blustery blonde friend with a smug grin. "Then who are we talking about?"
Joey looked like he was going to bust a fuse when he noticed Tea clutching her purse protectively behind her back. "What's in the purse, Tea?" He asked through a wolfish grin full of teeth.
"Purse stuff."
"What kind of purse stuff?"
"Oh, you know, girly purse stuff. You wouldn't be interested."
"Oh, I wouldn't would I?"
"Not unless there's something you haven't been telling us Joey."
The two friends continued to banter on in the background, but Yuugi paid them little attention. His fingers almost seemed to burn where he had been touching that other card.
/Yuugi, tell me what is wrong/ Yami demanded again, but much calmer than he had before.
/That card…/ The brief glance Yuugi had had of it flashed through his mind and the teenager knew that Yami had seen it too. A woman knelling with her arms bound behind her back in gold chains and long flame colored hair covering her face from view. /That card, felt different. /
/How so/ Yami asked tightly, moving his spiritual form closer to Yuugi as the young man struggled to put into words what he had felt.
/It felt… alive. Like it had a heartbeat, a soul…/ Yuugi trail off, as that same overwhelming unease settled over him again. /It was in pain. /
Both Yuugi and Yami looked over to where Tea was holding her purse just out of Joey's grasping reach. Her left palm was pushing against the blonde's forehead as his arms pin wheeled wildly. The two of them were oblivious to the tension that Yuugi now keenly felt.
/Then perhaps it would be wise to ask Tea more about this girl she met./
Yuugi agreed, but they wouldn't do anything right now. There was no need to upset his friend until he knew more about what was going on. Yuugi's eyes narrowed dangerously, and he would have been shocked to see how much like his alter ego he looked in that moment. If someone was using his friends, once again, for their own gain he would make sure that they regretted it.
End chapter one