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Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh
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"Damn it," Yami snarled, "That bastard...DAMN IT!"
He kicked the Door as hard as he could. The action produced a loud 'bang' noise, but the Door still refused to budge.
'How?! How could this have happened?!'
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They'd been talking less than ten or fifteen minutes ago...now the Millennium Puzzle was in the hands of a thief and there was nothing, NOTHING he could do about it!
"This isn't helping
anything," he muttered, laying a hand flat against the surface of the
door and pressing the other to his forehead in a attempt to
concentrate, "I need...to calm down."
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Calmness eluded him. He growled, but resisted the urge to vent his frustration physically again. He could feel the strands of darkness coming from the thief...no ordinary thief this...and it seemed the longer he watched the more those threads of shadow magic tangled themselves around his Puzzle.
'Yugi's Puzzle,' he absentmindedly reminded himself, 'He solved the Puzzle, that makes him the owner...I'm just baggage.'Not long after, he felt a shift. Something outside the Puzzle had changed.
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"Hmm?"
The thief had let go? He could sense it - the thief had left the Puzzle somewhere. The threads of shadow were like loose ends of string coiling around, but at least they'd stopped moving. Now Yugi would be able to catch up...
'...I hope he gets here soon.'
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Leaning against the door now, arms folded, Yami waited. Even if Yugi got here soon, they'd have a hard time communicating until the Puzzle was back and safe around the boy's neck.
Minutes flowed
past outside the confines of the Puzzle. Now he was getting worried.
What if Yugi couldn't find them? The thief might have put the Puzzle
down because he knew no one was coming to take it back.
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'What if Yugi isn't coming?' a tiny part of his mind asked.
'Shut up. Of course he's coming.'
'For the Puzzle, sure. His grandfather gave him the Puzzle. But does he really want to get you back?'
'I thought I dealt with this already,' he sighed, hugging his arms tighter around himself.
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One bad duel and you start looking over your shoulder whenever you have to decide what hand to open a door with.
"He is coming," Yami told himself out loud.
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What was that faint sound? Coming through the Door, he thought...like a soft buzzing noise...Yugi's presence? It was! He whirled, put both hands flat against the Door.
No! The strands
and strings of darkness...they were wrapped around the Puzzle and
sealing him inside. Even speech would be hard to maintain now...
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Yugi's voice. Muffled through the Door. But understandable at least.
"Spirit!"
"Yugi!" Yami cried, reaching for the other.
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Yugi's voice was faint, too faint.
"Our bond is too weak now," he sent, "You'll have to do this by yourself, Yugi..."
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"...But I've never dueled without you," came the reply, "I don't think I can do this..."
"Yes you can, trust me! I have faith in you, Yugi..."
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Connection was getting weak. It hurt now, to keep it open. But Yugi had to know...
"Be careful...I sense a great evil -"
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It was gone.
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Their only line of communication, snapped in half. He growled in helpless fury - a slip of a split-second had cost him this last chance to speak.
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"YUGI!"
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The Door remained shut. The shadow energy, the evil he had been
trying to tell Yugi about, it covered most of the Puzzle and now
trapped him within his own Room.
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"Let me out," Yami yelled, pounding on the Door, "Damn you, you sonnavabitch, LET ME OUT!"
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Too much shadow energy...he felt dizzy...
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Leaning back against the Door, the Room spun around him with the excess magic...sinking to the floor, he sat with his legs held close and waited.
Once his head finally stopped swimming, he
concentrated his energy. He made a tiny slit in midair, a window to the
outside world, so he could at least watch the duel for possession of the Puzzle. And himself.
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Yugi was scared. The thief was winning. And probably cheating.
Not that there was anything either of them could do about that if it
was true.
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Strings of blackness...
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"A puppet?" he wondered.
A puppet that suddenly broke free of its strings. And when the puppet master regained what control they could, the puppet-thief ran towards the Puzzle.
Seized it, and held it up high with a yell of triumph.
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Yami had just enough time to brace himself before his consciousness fragmented.
...Sensation returned...
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...Strange...it felt just like...pain...
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'...Ugh...huh? What...hit me?'
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The last thing he remembered -
"The Puzzle," he gasped, even as he looked around to see that everything was restored.
"Someone put it back together...Yugi?"
Yami
could feel his counterpart's immediate presence, even though the other
still wasn't wearing the Puzzle, but there was some other sensation
coming from outside the Puzzle...
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...It felt like heat. Unbearable heat.
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A fire.
That was NOT a good sign.
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Neither was the fact that Yugi, possibly in the same instant of re-completing the Millennium Puzzle, was at most only half conscious.
Unable
to use their link, Yami tried manifesting himself outside the Puzzle in
hopes of...well, to be honest he had no idea what he hoped he could do,
but the very idea of just sitting there and waiting for a fiery end was
maddening!
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The fact that he didn't have enough energy to create an at all visible body only made things worse, and seeing the magnitude of the fire itself was the crowning glory of the day's total crappiness.
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If Yugi even noticed the spirit shaking his shoulder and screaming in his ear that he should just forget about the stupid Puzzle and save his own life, he made no sign of it.
Though it was far more likely that Yami's voice was just too weak to be heard.
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"YUGI!"
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What the hell -
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"Yug', what the hell do you think you're doing?!" came the unmistakable voice of Yugi's best friend.
Jounouchi
and Honda, having already rescued the raving Bandit Keith from an
untimely demise, leapt onto the holographic arena and attempted to pry
the Puzzle off the wall.
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When that failed, they attempted to pry Yugi's fingers off the
Puzzle. That also failed, even though Yami pitched in to the best of
his non-seen and non-felt ability.
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"I...won't leave...my puzzle..." Yugi wheezed as he held on with a grip-of-death, soon to be literal.
"Yugi, I respect your wishes and admire your devotion but you have to let go!" Yami yelled at him.
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'The Puzzle can survive a fire this big...I think...but there's no way he could!'
Yami
cast about for a solution. There were some short poles lying
nearby...even though Yami wasn't capable of physically lifting the
poles, after enough yelling in Jounouchi's ear the blond turned and
spotted the poles as well.
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There was an embarrassing minute at first, when the only thing
that Honda and Jounouchi could think of to do with the poles was to use
them to hit the nail holding the Puzzle to the wall, but after some
more yelling that Yami chose to believe influenced Jounouchi's thought
processes, they finally used the poles as a lever to pry the damn nail
out. Which had been Yami's plan from the instant he'd first spotted the
damn things.
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'Better late than never,' Yami sighed to himself as he retreated into the Puzzle.
Now that things were safe again, he could recover his energy properly. That was important because Yugi needed him.
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And hey, everyone needs to be needed.
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