Chapter Two

Kaiba regained consciousness again, to find himself still facing a smirking Dark Magician. Somehow he knew this wasn't a VR representation of the Duel Monster, it was the very Duel Monster himself. "What the hell did you do to me?" He raised a hand to his forehead, rather, he started to, but stopped when he saw multicolored feathers, instead. He sprang into the air and squawked in the Magician's face. "Turn me back to normal, this instant!" He glared, then widened his eyes in shock. "Mokuba! The children!"

"Calm down, Seto," Dark Magician reached out and plucked the irate parrot from the air. "They, and you, are safe. We became aware of your Halloween event for these children, and wanted to help." Dark Magician rotated the parrot in his hands. All of the children, even Mokuba, were there. They appeared to be frozen, though. Kaiba diagnosed it as the effect from 'Swords of Revealing Light'.

"You don't know what you are doing," Kaiba implored urgently. He squirmed, until Dark Magician freed him. Thankfully, Kaiba had programmed the spy-parrot with flight, so he could maintain something of an eye-to-eye perspective with the tall Duel Monster. "These children can be harmed – not physically, even I know you'd never intentionally hurt children, but psychologically. They aren't... They have..."

Dark Magician gazed fondly down on the children arrayed before him. "We know all about these special children, Kaiba, more than you think. Whether he realizes it or not, Mokuba selected children who each used one of us, and their imaginations, to break the limitations their damaged bodies have forced on them. We dwellers of the Shadow Realm are aware of much more of what happens than just what we perceive when we are called into duels. Don't worry, Seto." Dark Magician's very serenity made Kaiba want to smack the calm expression off his face.

"Why drag me into it?" Kaiba asked. "If I can't stop you, and you didn't need my help that is."

"The children did need to be made receptive to our influence to be brought here. Your VR simulator did that. Bringing you along was – an unintended effect of your decision to watch Jeremy here more closely with your VR parrot."

"Can you return me to normal?" Kaiba asked plaintively. It was really making him uncomfortable to be such a weak creature in the face of the Dark Magician.

"Not unless you want Jeremy, the other children, and Mokuba for that matter, to know you were spying on them. How will Mokuba take it, if he feels you didn't trust him?"

"That's beneath you, Magician."

Dark Magician laughed. "I didn't create the situation, Seto, you did. All I'm doing is enjoying it." Abruptly he sobered. "But, if you endure this odd little trick – that you unintentionally played on yourself, I might add – and permit us to 'treat' these children – there might be a treat in it for you, too."

"You can't bribe me, Magician. These children are in my care, and I won't let anything happen to them." Kaiba regretted that he hadn't had the foresight to build an internal kill-switch for the whole thing, just as there was a master kill-switch on his console – an oversight he was going to take care of as soon as he got all of them out of this mess. There were safety protocols in place, of course, but he couldn't trigger any of the dynamic ones in his current state as a VR parrot. He hadn't intended to enter the simulation himself at all. He knew that a general emergency shut-down of the simulator would give all of them, himself and Mokuba along with the children, a massive headache, but that was preferable to permitting the Duel Monsters to inflict untold psychological damage on them.

"They are as safe in the Shadow Realm, in our care, as they are in your own, Seto. We won't let anything damaging happen to their minds, either. The effect of Swords of Revealing Light will end soon. I thought to give you the courtesy of letting you know what we are doing. It's up to you if you wish to spoil the treat we planned for these children."

Kaiba fumed. It didn't help that he was going to have to remain in the form of a ridiculous pirate parrot in the meantime, or else have Mokuba think he didn't trust him – when he did. "I'll only speak up if I see something happen that will harm one of the children. And it's on your head, Magician, if anything happens to any of them – especially my little brother!"

"Perish the thought!" Dark Magician said, while scooping the Kaiba parrot out of the air and placing him back on Jeremy's shoulder. With that, the Swords of Revealing Light expired.

"Ah, children!" Dark Magician called out. "As fun as trick-or-treating is, surely you didn't think that was all there was to Kaiba Corporation's Halloween Event, did you? Mr. Kaiba, in the process of selecting each of you, discovered who your favorite Duel Monsters are!" Kaiba watched as Mokuba started. This hadn't been part of the programmed event, at all. Dark Magician noticed, too. "Mokuba interviewed each of you, didn't he? Well, between that and the questionnaires, we know everything we need to know to make this the best Halloween treat, ever, for each of you!"

Dark Magician used the misdirection and distraction of his theatrical oration to focus the children's attention on himself permitting other Duel Monsters to come nearer to the children, completely unnoticed. Suddenly an assortment of noises, low growls, cleared throats, tentative greetings – all-in-all fifteen different utterances dramatically announced their presence. Except for two children, each one turned, squealed, whooped, yelled or otherwise made their delight known, and pounced, grabbed up, were grabbed by, or in some other way made contact with their chosen Duel Monster.

Jeremy stood stock still and stared up at the Dark Magician with huge, round, entranced eyes. Kaiba wanted to face-wing at that – as if the situation weren't already bad enough, Dark Magician had to be Jeremy's favorite Duel Monster, too! Mokuba's quiet approach to Dark Magician's side caught his attention instead.

"Sir?" He stared up as he called Dark Magician's attention to himself. Dark Magician smiled and went down to one knee before the boy. Kaiba was just able to see both of them in profile from his vantage point on Jeremy's shoulder, and just able to make out their conversation. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, seemingly nervously on Jeremy's shoulder, so that the boy would hear his feathers rustling instead of the conversation between the Duel Monster and his little brother.

"Forgive us that we had to enhance this event, Mokuba." Mokuba's eyes widened at that. Dark Magician's gaze slid over to where Jeremy watched with delighted eyes. Kaiba caught Mokuba's swift nod of understanding and realized that his brother now knew what was going on – at least so far as to realize that they were in the presence of real Duel Monsters and not VR versions – and that the need to keep this information to himself was paramount. "Perhaps, your big brother permitting, we can discuss this later." Dark Magician reached out to arrange and smooth the lapels of Mokuba's Seto Kaiba costume to sit more properly – something Kaiba himself had itched to do since Mokuba appeared in the VR world. "For now, there's a certain Duel Monster waiting patiently for your attention."

"Uhm...?" Mokuba looked puzzled. "But I'm not one of the..." His gaze followed to where Dark Magician pointed. A Blue-Eyes White Dragon bugled softly at him. "Wow," he breathed. "WOW!" He gazed up at Dark Magician with great, shiny eyes, and threw an impulsive hug around the Duel Monster's shoulders before he gathered himself, nodded in what he probably thought to be a curt Seto-esque sort of way, and dashed off to meet the Blue-Eyes.

"Some children are special for entirely different reasons," Dark Magician noted quietly. Kaiba was shocked to realize fondness colored the Magician's tone. Dark Magician? Cared for his brother? Wonders would never cease!

"Now that that is taken care of, Jeremy, it's time for you and I to get acquainted," Dark Magician rose to his feet, took the few steps necessary to get to Jeremy's side, and went down on one knee again before this child.

Kaiba realized that his concerns the Duel Monsters would traumatize the children were completely unfounded. Each Duel Monster not only permitted each child to believe this was some highly elaborate virtual reality created by Kaiba Corporation's equipment, they fostered that understanding. Still, at least one of them managed to connect with the child who had chosen him in a way that profoundly affected that child. Kaiba was amazed that Dark Magician used Jeremy's fascination with him to teach the child the concept of the art of misdirection. Dark Magician was gentle, but direct, when he told Jeremy that it was entirely possible for him to be fitted with an artificial leg, learn to walk again, and yet make it so that it wasn't obvious to others that he had an artificial leg – something that Jeremy had resisted since losing his natural leg. He'd refused to even meet with the prosthodontist. This was the only interaction Kaiba was able to watch first hand, but it seemed as if the interactions of child and Duel Monster were, contrary to his fears, beneficial for the child.

The child he was most concerned with, his little brother, was having the time of his life riding on the back of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. Kaiba couldn't help but smile at the delight he could make out on Mokuba's face whenever he was close enough for Kaiba to see it.

"Oh, yes. A most excellent parrot, indeed!" Kaiba's attention was forcibly pulled back to Jeremy and Dark Magician as he was scooped up off of Jeremy's shoulder by the Duel Monster. "Parrots can be trained to be the perfect partners in magic tricks, you know." Dark Magician bent Kaiba's head down, and his hindquarters up, to more or less fold him into a small shape in his hand. Kaiba's bird instincts, which he immediately regretted programming with such exacting detail, kept him curled as the Magician wanted. While in this compact shape, he lost track of what Dark Magician did to whisk him about as the object in a dizzying array of sleight-of-hand disappearance and reappearance magic tricks. Jeremy was delighted. His clapping, oohing, and aahing gathered the children around Dark Magician once more. Kaiba became completely disoriented as Dark Magician used a series of very quick prestidigitations, complete with the usual magician patter, and he suspected the use of actual Dark Magic, to spirit Kaiba the parrot under his helmet. Kaiba managed to wriggle his way out through the Dark Magician's hair, and flop to the ground where he reeled about in wing-flailing, dizzy disorientation, much to the children's highly vocal delight.

"Now, children. It's time for you to say good-bye to your Duel Monster friends, and attend the Halloween party that's been prepared for you," Dark Magician announced. He knelt, scooped Kaiba up once more, absently petted his back while the last of the dizziness passed, and placed him back on Jeremy's shoulder.

"But, I don't want to go!" The princess wailed. Celtic Guardian, her favorite Duel Monster, immediately went to his knees and talked softly to her. Any other child who seemed displeased by the announcement was similarly comforted by his or her chosen Duel Monster.

"You know how to find us, whenever you need us," Dark Magician claimed. "Whenever you are lonely or bored, or whenever your therapies get a little too tough, all you have to do is remember us and this night, and know that we are remembering it, too. Your imaginations, each and every one, help to make us real." Dark Magician smiled. "Well, as real as a VR world can make us. Just remember that you are special, the very first of Kaiba Corporation's VR Explorers. Who knows what other worlds you can discover – and conquer!"

Kaiba felt the blackness reaching for him again, and realized that Dark Magician was doing whatever it was he did to send them back into the VR simulator, again.

– – – – –
Author's note –

Heh, heh, heh!

Next chapter teaser – Boo! Did I scare you?