Retrograde Inversion
Genres: Sci-Fi, Family
Summary: A hand of metal creates what it knows. None of the robots he builds can compare to his brother, because none of them have so much as a spark of humanity within them. / AU, Sedateshipping, Standshipping, sequel to Retrograde Motion
A/N: Written for the YGO Fanfiction Contest, Season 10, Round Five, with the pairing of Sedateshipping (Shizuka x Marik), although the story also contains Standshipping (Rishid x Jonouchi). This is steampunk/clockpunk AU and a sequel to Season 9's Retrograde Motion, and while this story presumes some foreknowledge of the original, here's a summary of the events to catch you up to date:
In a city full of industry and grime, Nassor Ishtar, father of Marik and Ishizu, pulled orphan children from the streets to experiment on them in a quest to create a 'more perfect' individual—part human and part robot—whose only success exists in Rishid, adopted sibling to the Ishtars. After learning that Nassor intends to attempt to duplicate Rishid's condition in Marik, Rishid destroys himself, including the chip that stores his memories, and has Ishizu send him to a junkyard far off in the country to keep him out of Nassor's hands. Later, siblings Katsuya and Shizuka Jonouchi, who make their living scrounging for machines and spare parts in the junkyard, find Rishid and fix him, and help him recover his lost memories.
Italicized scenes are flashbacks. I hope you enjoy!
Retrograde Inversion
"Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable."–The Wizard, from L. Frank Baum'sThe Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The Universal Exposition is so large that Marik hasn't even seen a third of all the exhibits yet. He's spent little time walking among the pavilions, preferring to stay behind the table tucked away in a dark, dank corridor off one of the side avenues. The entire complex is little more than a maze of interconnected buildings and passageways, surrounded by gray concrete on all sides, lit by artificial light even where there are windows built into the high, sloped ceilings for smog to cloud against the glass.
When he was shown his table two days earlier it was sloped, too, but a thin sliver of wood beneath one of the legs had evened it, and he winds a small clockwork mouse, watching it scurry across the table to smack its head against the column bordering his own tiny section of the exhibition. With far grander things to see—his father is debuting a new kind of generator, said to be powering the entire wing where it was located, and Marik has heard of an innovative, elongated airship that can lift hundreds of people at a time into the sky—he is not surprised that his small table is often passed by.
Additional robots race around his elbow, propped up on the particleboard. Each is no larger than his hand, the scale purposefully diminutive, and powered by the charge he'd given them that morning; a few like the mice are exceptions, and need to be wound by hand. He supposes the charge will last until the exhibition closes for the day.
His robots are done in a karakuri style, each given a single, specific purpose that defines their very being, painted and dressed in colorful styles to offset the harsh metal of their casings and inner workings. One, a robot that balances on a thin wheel, had broken earlier, and he had repaired it before an audience that consisted primarily of small children, clutching each others' hands and squealing when the mice darted too close. The wrenches and tools belted around his waist clink when he shifts his posture, his back already growing stiff from sitting still so long. A familiar pain in his left shoulder aches, and he rolls it back, listening to the joint pop and settle. Ishizu would have told him it was because he was so tense all of the time. Marik would have told her it was for a different reason entirely.
Another child is loitering against the wall, watching the line of tables. A few are getting steady business—a particularly loud man three tables to his right is displaying projectors—but Marik knows the child is not here as a customer or a spectator, but merely to take advantage of the opportunity to get off the streets, and steal a little food or money if they are lucky. When Marik looks at that child, he see his brother, and beckons him forward with a crooked finger.
"This robot," he says in a stage whisper, watching the way the boy's eyes widen, "this one here, it sings. Would you like to see it?" Re-setting the mechanisms in its back, he watches the gears move together, well-oiled and seamless, before the robot straightens and opens its painted mouth, pouring out a high, chiming melody, something clearly mechanical in origin but beautiful in the way that mechanical things are, combining so many different joints and tiny pieces of metal together to create something more useful than the sum of its parts.
The robot finishes its melody and bows at the waist, rising to settle itself back down, waiting for Marik to re-set it again—there are three different melodies, and they listen to the second, something old-fashioned and warbling—before he extends a hand.
"Take it. Go on," he says, and the boy snatches the robot off the table a second later, holding it close to his body with both hands. The edges of its dress are wrinkled, the fabric already smeared with a layer of dirt from the boy's hands, but Marik smiles at him and nods, turning his attention back to the table as the boy dashes away, his upturned eyes shining in a way that shows his gratitude far more than his mouth ever could. Four robots sit on the table now, one busy organizing a row of tools, the others chasing the mice in circles.
Marik remembers the first robot he ever built, something crude and simple a few years earlier, a straightforward connection of circuits and gears that moved forward and backward on large, wobbly wheels. Rishid's room had been left empty, and it became his workroom, and the cables that had once powered his brother turned their consideration towards helping him build and power more and more complex machines, culminating in his veritable army of miniature cooking, writing, and singing dolls, their cheerful, unblinking eyes doing little to lift his spirits even as he compares each new creation to the brother who left him behind. None of them can compare, because none of them have so much as a spark of humanity within them.
The table to his left is packing up. He hasn't paid too much attention to what they were peddling, but the proprietor, an elderly man, has asked him for assistance with his boxes the two prior days. Marik stands without him having to ask again, sweeping the robots on his own table into a box he'd had stashed beneath it for the occasion. There is another robot, one of his newest, waiting behind his chair, and Marik stacks the box into its waiting arms. "Let me help you with that."
"Many thanks, my boy," the old man responds, and Marik stacks the remaining boxes, leaving the remaining one to heft over one shoulder, his left. It twinges in protest, but he ignores it, turning back to the man.
"Same place?"
"Yes." The old man leads, at a pace that is direct if unhurried, and the lifting robot follows; Marik had built it especially for the exhibition, knowing that he'd have better luck promoting it among the fellow vendors than he would among the visitors. A few had regularly approached him requesting help, and he all too readily complied, so long as it didn't take him past the main hangar, where Nassor and his team of engineers gave regular demonstrations of their newest model of electrical perfection.
An entire building had been designated for storage and cargo, and many, like this man, chose to store their product reserve here, instead of taking it back and forth with them each day. With almost three weeks remaining in the exhibition, it makes sense to Marik that some would take advantage of the opportunity. He frowns; he doesn't like the thought of his robots sealed in a box.
"See you tomorrow, Mr. Marik," the old man says as he departs, but Marik stops him with a light touch to one arm.
"Actually, I won't be here tomorrow. I'll see you two days from now."
The old man stares at Marik's fingers from where they poke out of the ragged edge of a tan jacket. "Your hands are mighty cold, my boy," is all that he says, but Marik knows what he means.
He bends his arm upwards, watching the gears in his elbow turn with the movement, smooth below a sanded, polished metal casing. He clicks the fingers of his left hand against one another in turn, the sound perfectly uniform, nothing like the music of the singing doll but every bit as mechanical.
"This hand could lift a truck," he says, more to himself than to the old man watching him with barely concealed pity. "This hand—"
"A hand of metal creates what it knows, I understand," the old man tells him, tugging on the brim of his hat before turning away. "See you in two days, Mr. Marik."
His shoulder continues to ache, but he picks up the box from his lifting robot and hefts it to replace the one he had set down. Inside, he can hear scrabbling from the robots—the mice scurrying until their gears wind down, the balancing robot struggling to keep the weight evenly distributed—and as his fingers leave a trail of grease across the cardboard, evidence of his time spent handling the machinery, he heads home, his goal one of the tallest towers in the city.
"What shall we do with you, Marik?" Nassor asks him one day after summoning him to his office, a plain, square room with an ornate desk and high-backed chair as its only furnishing. His father sits behind the desk, idly rifling through a stack of papers, computer readouts and records, upside-down to Marik's eyes. His eyes water trying to read them, but he stops as he realizes how intently Nassor is watching him.
"Do you know where your brother has gone?"
"No," he answers, making no attempt to hide his grief over that simple statement. "You forbade him from lying to me, remember—he told me nothing. Perhaps there was an accident—"
"An accident is exactly what I am trying to prevent." His father's tone is the clinical dryness of a doctor discussing someone else's problems, more focused on the condition than the patient. "You were to follow in his footsteps, you know—you would have been the perfect son."
He tries not to let that get to him, but it does, sinking its way beneath his skin to rest alongside his bones. He 'would have been,' implying that already he is not. "What do you suggest, Father?"
"We start again. It will take some time—years, perhaps, but once we obtain some new test subjects it should not be all that hard. What makes it more difficult is the evaluation phase—we monitored Rishid's health for almost five years before we even considered duplication. Everything had to be perfect, everything had to be assured."
Marik straightens, already seeing the gears in motion, wound by an invisible hand. Ishizu had been silent on the matter, but it is not difficult for Marik to put the pieces together—he is quite good at that. Rishid could not prevent the inevitable, only delay it, and Marik would not let others die for his Father's goals.
"May I?" he asks.
"Go ahead, son."
"I remember when you took my brother to the Universal Exposition," he says, "and everyone fawned over the mechanics and engineering of it. They called it a marvel." He knows it is best to flatter his Father before delivering his plan, and it seems to be working, by the way he nods and folds his arms over the stacks of papers.
"What I do not understand is why there must either be a complete human or a complete automaton—or in the case of my brother, a merge of one to the other." He swallows, and links his fingers together tightly behind his back. "Instead of working so diligently to replicate a past experiment, transforming me completely—which will take time, you said so yourself—why not work to transform a part of me? Let me give you my arm—my left arm—and you can make a machine out of it. In that way, we can move slowly, but see the results of our experiments applied directly to my body."
Nassor stands, and his expression is one of eagerness, as Marik knew it would be. It twists something deep in his stomach.
"What an idea…" He scrambles for the papers, reorganizing them and shifting others aside to fall to the floor, forgotten in an instant. "Yes, yes, we shall do that. I am glad you have no objections."
"None. May I be excused? My sister asked that I assist her with some correspondence." She has not, but Marik feels at the moment that he would like nothing better than to break down, to let her hold him and console him with words as empty as a discharged circuit.
"Go. I am so glad you are starting to take an interest in our family business, Marik. I will meet with my colleagues about your proposition in the morning."
Marik finds Ishizu, isolated in her room, the thick curtain covering the window to the floor blowing in soft waves. When Rishid was around, she had always kept them closed and covered; now, she has changed at least that much in some form of tribute. He always seemed to enjoy their views of the city, even if none of the rest ever did.
"What did he say?" She rises to her feet in an instant, coming to him and clasping her hands around his shaking shoulders. "You look a year older than you did at breakfast, brother."
"At least you still recognize me, for now." He cannot bring himself to say more, and she allows him to rest his forehead against her shoulder. He has to lean more now that he is taller than her, and mumbles against her sleeve. "Father wishes to make an experiment out of me."
"You cannot let—"
"I will make my own experiments," he says, thinking of a working but wobbly robot, his first creation, moving in two simple directions over creaking floors, and another machine, half-finished, waiting for him. "I do not mind, Ishizu, truly I don't. It is a small price to pay. And it will still be under my control; I will define its purpose. We have time."
Some part of her heart falls, and she clutches her brother tighter. "Not much. Not as much as we think. Not as much as we'd like."
When Marik sets the box down on the floor, tipping it to one side, the machines inside seem to sense it, and spill out onto the floor when he opens the flaps, guiding them towards the charging ports against one wall. Each has a particular port somewhere on its back that allows it to be connected, and he sets them up, watching them slip into a sort of stasis while they charge. It is the one thing he envies most about them—the ability to completely relax like that, to receive energy to replace what has depleted, to recover and become like new.
He studies his arm, turning it and listening to the components at work. A few screws could use tightening, and he sits down at his desk and pulls out a screwdriver. Stretching his left arm out, he angles a task lamp to see better and gets to work, idly tightening the screws over his fingers and by his elbow, finishing by polishing the surface until it gleams dully in the harsh, artificial light. He wonders what his Father will ask for next. His other arm? A leg? Perhaps his ears…
The door bursts open and he turns, more surprised at the noise than by his sister standing there, breathing heavily, clutching an envelope in one hand. The expression she wears is most shocking, and as she closes the door behind her and approaches him, the few robots scattered around the floor move out of her way, hiding alongside the baseboards.
"What is it?" His eyes follow the envelope as she holds it out to him; it has already been opened, and his fingers slide the paper free.
"I got a message," Ishizu tells him. "A message from Rishid."
Jonouchi tosses the wrench into the air and catches it. Wiping the sweat from his forehead with his other hand, he turns to look at Rishid and grins. "Perfect! See, told you it'd work!"
"…It broke down on the way there and I had to carry it until we could find the right parts to fix it. Which took three hours."
"But after that it worked!" Jonouchi looks jubilant, and unloads a basket from the back of the motorized bicycle. "Finding that swingarm pivot bolt was so lucky."
"How did it go?" Swinging into the work-room, Shizuka's smile widens as she looks at all the different parts they managed to recover.
"We got twice as many with the bike as before!" Jonouchi's childish glee matches her own, and they immediately bend over the baskets, reaching for the different pieces and turning them around in their hands, talking about what they would like to make with them. Rishid watches, standing almost uncomfortably far, until Jonouchi grabs him by one arm and pulls him in.
"You're a part of the family now, so start acting like it!" Jonouchi clubs him in the arm lightly with the wrench, and Shizuka laughs as Rishid's expression changes from muted unease to muted amusement.
"I suppose that's the wrench you used to work on that bicycle?" Shizuka asks. "And that, over there, is the brace and bit you used?"
Jonouchi nods, and Shizuka's grin turns indulgent, her tone sing-song. "A sharp tool works better than dull one. You've got to keep your tools sharp, brother."
"…Are you mocking me?" He makes a grab for her, but she darts away with a basket of spare parts, laughing. He turns towards Rishid. "Was she mocking me?"
Rishid shrugs, but has to raise a hand to hide his smile. They're infectious, the two of them, and the more time he spends around him the more comfortable he gets, both in his own skin and with his new life. At first it made him that much more aware of how different they were and how out-of-place he felt, but Jonouchi and Shizuka were quick to help him forget. There is not much missing, but that thought alone is enough to sober him up and his grin fades away.
"Ishizu would have gotten my letter by now."
"Your sister, in the city?" Jonouchi's grave expression mirrors her own, and he cups a hand around his mouth to call out, "Hey Shizuka! Get back in here!"
"What is it?" She reappears in the doorway, and joins them quickly once Rishid repeats himself.
"I want to get him out of there. He is not safe there. Or happy."
"We'd need a plan." Jonouchi stretches out his arms, and Shizuka can almost see his thought processes, mapping out like a blueprint. "Got any ideas?"
"I'll go in, and—"
"Absolutely not," Jonouchi insists with finality. "I'll go—"
"Absolutely not," Rishid says. "It is my burden to bear—"
"It's not, and stop repeating me," he replies. "We grew up in that city, we know it well enough."
Shizuka speaks up. "Then I'll go, and—"
"Absolutely not." This time he is even more final, and sighs loudly as the three of them stare each other down in a stalemate. "We…draw straws? Flip a coin?"
"Katsuya, that's dumb," Shizuka offers, mimicking his posture as they lean over the motorbike. "The best plan is the most well-thought-out one. Consider every angle, leave nothing to chance. We can take the time to get it right, can't we? Since we'll likely only have one shot at it."
"We do not have the luxury of time." Rishid's voice is strained, but still strong enough that it draws the others' attention like a magnet. "The Universal Exposition is currently ongoing, and Nassor is certainly participating. It's a giant technological fair, and is only lasting for three weeks—this is the best time to spirit him away, when Nassor's notice is elsewhere. The train runs directly into the city, but even that will take time. There is no way for her to respond back to us, however—she cannot know where this place is, it could be too dangerous for ourselves."
"So, what do we need?" Jonouchi asks. "Let's break this down."
"You could certainly slip into the city easier than I could," he says. "Remaining unnoticed is key. It would require breaking into the clan's tower—or, if you could meet him elsewhere, breaking him out of the city itself. Nassor always keeps tabs on Marik, wherever he goes—even as a child, he used to find places to hide where no one else but I could find him. If he runs, finding him will be difficult for you."
"Katsuya, it took you three hours to find a swingarm pivot bolt in a pile of scrap. Last week, you set a screwdriver down somewhere and couldn't find it for days." Shizuka argues as delicately as she can, glancing between them to gauge their reactions.
"It was under my pillow! Safest place there is—"
"And we know it wouldn't be safe for Rishid to return. I'm as good a mechanic as you are, brother, I can get us out of there! Admittedly, I don't remember much of the city, but I'm sure that I could…I'm trying to say that I think I'm the one who should go. Let me do this."
"This discussion is closed." Jonouchi straightens, moving swiftly for the door, his hands balled into fists by his side. "We'll talk about this later. Tomorrow."
"Katsuya…" Shizuka reaches out a hand to him but does not follow, eventually dropping it back down to her side.
"I'll talk to him," Rishid offers.
Shizuka's returning smile is grateful. "Thank you."
It is the first time she has ever seen him pause before he speaks, his certainty washed away by indecision. "Everything you said was correct. I would trust you with this matter."
He leaves her before she can respond, but as she puts away the tools they'd left out and straightens the baskets, her mind is occupied with the thought of stealing passageway on one of the freight trains, and how best to disguise herself, and her absence.
A note suggesting she take the bicycle is resting outside her door when she makes to retire for the night. Shizuka smiles, and in pocketing it, her decision is sealed.
"You know the Universal Exposition is coming up. My staff and I have been preparing all year, deciding what we will showcase," Nassor tells him. "We have a special generator, something to produce more power than anything that's come before it. We liken it to the Sun."
"What does this have to do with me?" Marik knows that his Father would never call him without a reason—he calls him infrequently enough as it is, and the last time they were this close, Nassor was standing above the operation table he was strapped down to, adding a few modifications to his arm, bridging the casing all the way up and around his shoulder. It still hurt in places where the metal tended to cut into his skin. The rest of the time, it didn't hurt at all; there was very little feeling remaining, and none at all in the mechanical appendage itself, although he had perfect control of it.
"I would show my two sons, then, if I could." The smile on his face suggests that he overestimates the cleverness of his joke, but as he leans over his desk, his fingers branching out over the burled wood grain, Marik is reminded of how much of himself this man would truly sacrifice without a thought.
"I would like you to participate. Let me show you off to the crowds—perhaps others would see the value of such mechanical enhancements? The billing almost writes itself! What to call you, perhaps—the mechanical man!"
"I decline." Marik takes a step backward, and this time instead of folding his arms behind him he clasps them together in front, almost taking a proud pleasure in flaunting his Father's creation, displayed so prominently in his own arm.
"My son. I'm afraid I don't—"
"I decline," Marik repeats. "I have no desire to participate in your show." He knows what Nassor would have him do—use his own clockwork precision to show medical or engineering applications, perhaps, or show off the strength of the metal in lifting heavy objects. Perhaps even installing military functions into the machinery, like knives or a gun?
"Do you think I do not know?" Nassor's voice is deadly cold, as cold as the winds that blow outside the tower, imperceptible in this windowless room. "You scheme, you plot, you seek a way to defy me? With your every breath you would defy me! A perfect son would be obedient, would follow the business of this family!"
"Father, I—"
"I have ears everywhere, staff whose job it is to watch you and ensure your location and safety at all times. It is their job that you never know they are there—I will not have my only son defy me! I know things, Marik! I know your robot is out there, that thing we adopted. I do not know how it escaped, its programming was assured, but it did and I will track it down. To disregard such a precious resource would be wasteful. And yet you wish to escape, don't you? It is your eventual goal, I see it in your eyes, but you should know that such an escape is impossible."
Nassor has hardly taken a breath during his speech, and Marik watches him now, sucking in lungfuls of air as he continues to roar.
His Father had boasted once that none of his experiments had been failures—he had always eventually found a way to make them succeed. For the first time, Marik considers himself a success, and knows that his plans—whatever plans he decides to implement—will not fail him.
"How is the fair going, brother?" Ishizu looks up from her desk, where she has been doing more of the paperwork required for their clan's business. Numbers and letters are her primary responsibility, and she attends to it dutifully.
"It's fun." Sitting down on a chair beside her, he props an arm up along its back. "I really like it—seeing all of the different components, watching the people working together. Everything runs so smoothly. Seeing something like that at work makes all of the times where something is not seem more obvious."
"You are talking about…?"
"Of course."
Ishizu notices her brother's shirt; for the first time she can remember, he is wearing one with shorter sleeves. "You should do nothing to raise suspicion, brother. Someone will approach us, soon. You will need to be ready."
"We will need to be ready," he insists. "You must come with me."
"And someone must stay behind to cover your escape," she says, as gently as she can manage. "You are in far more danger here than I. And once you are gone, there is little to keep me here."
"You would join us?"
"I would see the family business do something right for a change." The air flowing in from the open window had been stagnant, but now the curtain rustles again.
"Should I go back? Father doesn't know…I haven't been using the Ishtar name at my booth. I sold a few mice today. Fixed a couple toys for some kids." His expression turns wistful, and he sighs against one arm.
"I think the fair is the best place for someone to approach you. So go, but be cautious," Ishizu says. "If I were Rishid, I would take advantage of this opportunity."
"Did he leave a name? Of who would come?"
"He listed the name Katsuya as a possibility, but nothing definite. It's impossible to know for sure."
"It would be possible for a machine. I should build one to help. An escape-machine. Or a distraction-machine. Those would be quite helpful," Marik murmurs.
"Something so complex is impossible." At Marik's face, she hastens to add, "Not the physical building, but the understanding. In order to fulfill a task like that, the robot would first have to comprehend its own purpose. All that complex machinery, and that's something it could not do. It's not practical to build it in the first place. And why would you need a robot to do what you yourself are perfectly capable of?"
He premieres his tumbling robots to the effects of a few curious stares from people who walk right by his table without stopping. They're a duo, two that stack on top of one another, and the one on top flips itself forward to land upright on whatever surface they're stationed on. The mechanics of it all is quite delicate, and the robots themselves are weighted to be heavier on one side to make flipping easier. When standing together, they lean on one another to keep from falling over.
"Aw, they're so cute!"
The voice startles him, and he glances up to see a girl standing in front of the table, watching the mice run in circles. She picks up one, watching its twitching tail and all of the little gears connected to it. "It's beautiful craftsmanship. These are all very well done." Staring at the mouse in her hand, she suddenly sets it back down before taking a step back. "I'm sorry. I probably should have asked first."
"It's quite alright." He reaches for a singing doll, intending on showing her that one next, but she seems more enamored of the lifting robot, stationed behind his chair.
"Oh wow! What I wouldn't give to see how this works…"
He replaces the doll without re-setting it, stacking the tumbling robots instead. The girl takes the opportunity to lean closer, her long hair just brushing the edge of the table.
"You fit the description I was given well enough—are you Marik Ishtar?"
He stiffens, glancing up sharply. Behind him, steam blows from a vent high up on the wall, the gentle whoosh sound as loud as a rocket in the otherwise sudden, piercing stillness. He finally finds his voice. "Who are you to ask?"
"Thank you for confirming it." The tumbling robots clatter to the table, their somersault perfectly executed. "Aw, they really are adorable! Like robot siblings."
He doesn't think his back can get any straighter, but the posture is starting to hurt. The girl blended in well enough, but when she opened her mouth she didn't sound a thing like anyone from the city—it wasn't that she was observant, it was that she voiced those observations instead of keeping them to herself, and made striking connections through them.
"Tell me your name, now." The lifting robot is heavy; he can always have it pin her if he needs to escape. Perhaps she is someone working for his Father, hoping he will lead her to whoever was sent to rescue him?
"It's Shizuka!" She beams at him, her attention drawn back to the table as one of the mice scurries across the back of her hand. He takes that moment to run, darting around the table and running down the corridor, away from the main throng of people.
"Hey! Wait!" As she stumbles after him, he glances back. Her reflexes are sharper than he gave her credit for, but he knows the building network well. Better than her, at any rate.
Dodging around a young couple, he kicks at a series of stacked crates, glancing back again to see her jump over them, the obstruction barely more than an inconvenience. She reaches for something at her belt, and he worries that it might be a weapon.
At an intersection he pauses, noticing how empty the place has become. He had hoped to put enough distance between them, with surprise on his side, to allow him to slip unnoticed around the crowds instead of moving through them. Instead, any noise or conflict now would draw too much attention.
He turns right, knowing that the building's maintenance tunnels run alongside these hallways. He kicks at a grate set in the side of the wall, busting out the screws, loose in their sockets and covered with rust. He slips inside the narrow opening, sliding around a mess of water pipes and bundles of wires, the steam rising from vents making it that much harder to see and navigate. Pausing, he listens, and hearing nothing, decides that the girl did not follow him inside. Now all he needs is to find an access corridor, and he can escape.
Sliding underneath a pipe, he rolls onto a grate-covered floor, thankful that these joists seem to be much more secure. Standing, he brushes dirt off his jacket, turning to move forward and freezing again when he sees the same girl—Shizuka—walking towards him, her stance defensive.
She takes one step towards him before doubling up in a coughing fit, bringing her arms to her face to mask the sound. Through it, she glances around wildly, probably anticipating his escape, but he stands there, watching her, waiting for the coughing to subside.
"I was right," he says, after. "You're not from around here, are you? My bet's on the country, somewhere with clean air."
"That's right." She smiles weakly. "And from your reaction, what exactly are you expecting? I'm not a mercenary, I'm a mechanic. And if you are Marik, I'd like to tell you that I'm here on behalf of your brother, Rishid."
"You can't be too prepared." Sliding backwards, he puts more distance between them. "My brother wrote that someone named Katsuya would come."
"That's my brother!" From the way she says it he knows that at least must be true.
"Can you prove any of this?"
"Um." She reaches into a pocket and removes a note, holding it out to him. "I have a note with his handwriting on it? All it says is feel free to take the bicycle, although that won't mean anything to you unless it's some kind of code phrase I don't know about."
"It's not." He leans forward, enough to verify the handwriting. Rishid favored printing, the lines and letters so level and uniform that it appeared to be typed, but he had a heavy hand and the ink would always blot. "I suppose for the time being I've got to trust you, Shizuka. How are we getting out of here?"
"Not sure. I came by train," she says.
"My father will have people watching it. And we can hardly walk out of here." He pauses. "We're not…taking a bicycle, are we?"
A clanging sound draws their attention towards the far wall, where the corridor curves sharply around a large boiler and a series of air vents. The angle makes it impossible to see, but already Shizuka inches away from the sound, moving lightly across the grates. "Let's move, just in case," she whispers.
"What is…?" For the first time, he notices something she has clutched under one arm. It's one of his robots, one of the singing dolls.
"I grabbed it when we were running. There's a few mice in my pocket, too. I wasn't sure if you would have wanted to leave them behind, just in case we couldn't go back."
"We certainly can't, now," he says. "But this is perfect. Let me have it. Go on ahead—this corridor should continue straight, although several smaller passageways branch off from it. Keep going, and wait for me at the far wall, by the grate. Try to loosen the screws, if you can. You can keep a lookout for people on the other side."
What he thought were weapons at her belt turn out to be a screwdriver and a wrench, and she pulls one free and grasps the handle tightly. "They can double as weapons if we're being pursued."
"I've got an escape idea in mind. Let me take care of that. Ready?"
She nods, and the two part ways.
Marik knows already that his pursuer—for there is certainly one, doing their best to weave around the tangle of pipes and vents—will fall for the distraction. Placing it near a vent is sure to allow the sound to travel and filter in odd ways, and when seconds after walking away he begins to hear the steady warble of the mechanical doll, it is almost enough to make him turn back and investigate, so compelling is the sound.
His footsteps are light as he travels over the grates, finding Shizuka again without much difficulty. She fiddles with the screwdriver in her hands, her forehead furrowed in thought.
"If there really is someone following you, is it possible there is some kind of tracker on your person? Something that would allow them to find you?"
The thought had not occurred to him. "If there is, it will be in my left arm. Behind the elbow or at the back of my shoulder."
From her confused look, he clarifies in the quickest way he knows how, by pulling up the edge of his sleeve so she can see the metal casing that has become his arm. Her jaw drops, and she almost instinctively reaches forward to brush her fingertips lightly over the surface, studying it and pressing it in places, testing the joints. He wishes that he could feel it.
"Why?" she asks, still lazily tracing the seams with her fingers.
"It's a long story. My father—"
She cuts him off. "Oh, no. I meant, why the elbow or the shoulder?"
He stares at her then, his own mouth slack-jawed. He could not tell if how he acquired such a thing was really that unimportant to her, or if she was just that preoccupied with the mechanical side of it. Either way, she did not look at his arm the way that anyone else ever had. Even Ishizu, who first polished it for him when he refused to look at it, was hesitant in her approach. This Shizuka had no fear, either of his own reactions or of the prospect of a mechanical prosthetic.
He realizes she is still waiting for him to answer her question. "The back of the elbow is very difficult to see and to reach, so it would be easy to hide something there. Likewise with the back of the shoulder, although I recently went through some modifications there, and it would have been easy to add in some kind of tracer in the process."
"Ah, I see. Do you mind if I look?" She bends his arm even as she asks, pulling his sleeve higher and rolling it out of the way. Her screwdriver loosens a few screws—the same ones he had tightened earlier, he remembers—and she pops a section loose, studying it.
"I don't think it's here, if there is one. I'll work fast, don't worry. And because you're wondering why this seems so natural, I helped restore your brother. He was in much worse shape when we found him than you are in now, I can tell you that." The panel restored, she turns him to yank down the back of his shirt collar, testing the pieces that allide with his skin.
"What sort of condition was he in?" He grunts as Shizuka works, the familiar ache returning full-force. "My sister never told me what happened, only that he left to save me."
"Let him tell you himself, then." She yanks something loose, and he hisses in pain as she hands him a chip, a few wires sticking out of it. "It was fused to the casing here. Sorry about that, by the way, there really wasn't a very graceful way to get rid of it."
"No, it's fine." He considers crumpling it up in his hand, brushing metallic fingers across the corners. "I'm glad it's out."
"And now you're fixed up again. How are we getting out of here again, exactly?"
"A second decoy, first. Hand me one of those mice." He takes the chip and stuffs it inside, forcing it into the head, where there aren't any gears. He winds it up as Shizuka removes the grate, and the two slip outside, easily joining the crowds, who give them only a few curious glances. Bending down once, he releases the mouse, watching it zig-zag away in the opposite direction.
"They'll be watching all regular modes of transportation," he whispers, linking his arm through hers, both to hide it and to keep them from getting separated. "So, we simply have to take something irregular."
They make their way together with the crush of the crowd, all gathering for one of the exhibition's main events. Shizuka glimpses the sign before it disappears behind a group of businessmen, but she can't help but admire Marik's way of thinking.
Zoom through the sky in a Zeppelin!
"What are we going to do once we're inside?" she asks.
"I've never built a flying robot," he says. "I have no idea how to fly the thing. Lucky for us, the pilot can do that. We just have to convince them to take us on a detour."
They join the line for the zeppelin, which they can see through the windows as it rises and descends in turn, allowing a few dozen people each time to board. As the line moves, they study the procedures—there is an engineer at the front explaining to groups how the airship works, and one pilot and an attendant in the main cabin, and at least two people helping keep the line organized.
Soon, they reach the front of the line, and board with a few others. Marik keeps himself towards the front of the group, staying as close to the doors as possible, even after the airship starts to ascend.
"Excuse me," Marik asks, raising his mechanical arm to get the attendant's attention. From behind a roped-off partition, he can see the pilot, too, staring back at the strange prosthetic. It has an uncanny ability to silence conversations, if nothing else.
"Can you tell me if the gas inside these balloons is hydrogen or helium?" he asks.
"It's hydrogen."
"Very good." Grasping one of the larger, loose screws in elbow with his other hand, he wrenches it free, before scraping it down the length of his arm. A few sparks fly from the contact, and Marik cheerfully continues, "I understand how easily this gas can catch flame—wouldn't want that to happen, would we? We'd like to make a request for an extended cruise, if you wouldn't mind. If that wasn't enough to scare you, this arm of mine also contains a rocket and a pair of pistols."
"W-Where to?" Sweeping back the curtain, the attendant glances towards the pilot, whose hands have frozen over the controls. The rest of the occupants share similar expressions, and Marik scatters more sparks for effect.
"Marik! Stop terrorizing the passengers!" Shizuka resists the urge to hit him with her wrench, but keeps a firm grip on the handle anyway in case he does it again. From his expression, she knows he was lying about the rockets—at least, she really hopes so. "Really, there's a train station about twenty miles from here, that will be sufficient—"
"How about we take this all the way?" Marik grins, staring out one of the large, plate-glass windows as the zeppelin moves higher in the sky. "We can arrive in style?"
"Absolutely. Not." Not that she wouldn't have liked to, but she had agreed with Jonouchi and Rishid to arrive as inconspicuously as possible. "Train station, wagon, or walking, those are your choices."
Marik pauses, drumming his flesh-and-bone fingers along the top of his mechanical arm. "So is the bicycle not an option again?"
Nassor storms into her room, leaving a spray of fallen papers in his wake as he slams the door closed.
"You helped him escape," he accuses, and while she doesn't bother to deny it she says nothing, preferring to let him run out of steam before she speaks. "My son is gone. Gone! Where is he?"
Ishizu calmly watches his tirade, watches him storm across the room to her desk, grabbing at each carefully stacked bundles of folders, sending envelopes and letters crashing to the floor. Beside him, the curtain rustles against the floor.
"Will I find proof of your treachery in these?" he shouts.
Like she would leave Rishid's letters out in the open. Like she would have done anything other than commit them to memory and burn them.
"No. You will only find the paperwork for our family business," she responds.
"My son will be brought back—and he will pay! I will see him made to follow orders—"
She contemplates the lack of windows in his office, the lack of any heavy furniture save the immovable desk, the lack of any implements like desk-clocks or paperweights. Nothing usable as a weapon, save paper. He thinks himself so safe.
She takes a step closer, watches him turn, watches him lift an arm to lean it against the window. She watches him stagger forward, falling through the empty space, tugging on the curtain to keep his balance. It doesn't hold, ripping away in his hands as he tips forward, disappearing completely, screaming. There is very little pity to be felt.
After successfully terrorizing the other airship passengers, Shizuka confiscates the screws in Marik's elbow, leaving his arm dangling loosely by his side. She promises to give it back once he's earned it. She'll even fix it herself.
"If the balloon had been helium?" she asks, jokingly.
"I would have told them it was combustible, too."
"If the balloon had burned up?"
"Wouldn't have. The sparks were nowhere near the engines or the fin." His answer is so calm, so definitive, that it has Shizuka laughing for a full minute as they walk together down the narrow dirt road that their home is built on, connecting the train station to the junkyard, to the homes littering the surrounding countryside, and even the city itself, should they travel it long enough.
Jonouchi and Rishid are waiting for them; Shizuka knows he will be angry at her later, but the expression he wears is anything but. She glances towards Marik, seeing the happiness there, reflected back in Rishid, wearing a smile like they had never seen on his face before.
Shizuka grasps one of Marik's hands in hers and pulls him along, racing forwards. She doesn't stop to think which one she is grabbing, flesh or mechanical, whole or broken. Marik doesn't stop to think about whether he can feel it or not; it's inconsequential at the moment.
Besides, she has promised to help fix him.
End.
Notes:
1) Retrograde Inversion is a musical term meaning "backwards and upside down" (Wikipedia). I like that it complements the first story's title, and essentially is the reverse of the original, bringing the characters together where the first story split them apart.
2) As there is no documented name for Marik and Ishizu's father, I have given him the name Nassor, which means 'victor' in Egyptian.
3) The Universal Exposition is based on a 'World's Fair' type design. Karakuri dolls are real things, automata that have specific purposes typically geared towards entertainment (serving tea, etc).
4) Thank you for reading! I would appreciate and value your reviews.
~Jess