Kaiba!
Seto sat bolt upright from his position at the computer where he had been managing various affairs of his company. Deep in his heart, he thought he had heard the Pharaoh calling to him. It had been as clear as if Atem had been standing right beside him. There was still no mistaking that voice. There was also no mistaking the urgency verging on desperation that the voice carried with it. Kaiba had never heard Atem sound that way before. His gut told him that the Pharaoh was in serious trouble. His head immediately dismissed the whole thing as a hallucination. Yugi and his friends were always blathering about the deep bonds they shared and how at times they thought they could sense the others' distress, but he had always dismissed it as nonsense. Besides, despite what Atem claimed, they were hardly friends. There was no way—
Kaiba!
The desperation was almost tangible now in its intensity. There was even an undertone of fear in the cry. Seto grabbed both sides of his head. He had a heart-wrenching feeling that if he didn't do something RIGHT NOW they would all lose Atem again. That thought decided him. With his head still shouting at him about hallucinations, Kaiba lurched from his desk and half-staggered out of his office. He almost crashed into Mokuba on his way out.
"Seto? Where are you going?" Mokuba noticed a rather wild look in his brother's eyes. "Um…Seto? What's wrong?" Seto glanced down.
"Atem needs help." Mokuba's mouth dropped open briefly. By the time he had closed it again, Seto was almost down the hall. Mokuba dashed after him. He wasn't being left behind again.
The sky above Yugi's house was overcast and stormy, but it didn't look like any storm Kaiba had ever seen before. The clouds were a strange purple-grey-green and swirled in a spiral directly over the house. Lightning flashed in them periodically. As soon as his limo pulled up, Yugi and Joey ran out to greet him. Yugi was the first to speak.
"Kaiba! What are you doing here?" Kaiba glanced up at the sky and back to Yugi.
"You don't sound very surprised. If you must know, I thought I felt the Pharaoh calling me." Yugi and Joey exchanged glances. "Where is he? What's going on?" Joey grimaced.
"When the Pharaoh told us his story, he left out a tiny little detail. His father was against the whole idea. COMPLETELY against it. And now—" Yugi broke in.
"He's trying to get him back." Now Kaiba grimaced.
"Based on his cry for help, it's working." Yugi and Joey nodded grimly. "But you didn't answer my question. Where is he now?" Yugi pointed behind him.
"In the house. Come on, I'll show you. Maybe you'll be able to come up with an idea." Kaiba followed Yugi into the house, Joey and Mokuba trailing behind them. The sight that greeted his eyes when he stepped into the living room stunned him into silence for a moment. In the middle of the room, a large portal swirled, its interior such an intense black that it looked as though a piece had been cut out of the scenery. It radiated energy and was fiercely absorbing the air around it, generating an almost hurricane force wind. Atem was on one knee in front of it, bracing himself against the pull of the portal, shielding his eyes with one arm, his teeth gritted in concentration, his hair tossing wildly around his face. Standing over him, much to Kaiba's surprise, were Yugi's Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl, their glowing staffs crossed in front of him, their stances and expressions pure determination and concentration and struggle. Yugi shouted over the tumult.
"This is all we can do. The Magicians are barely sufficient to counteract the pull of the portal and keep it from dragging him away completely, but we can't close the portal and we can't try and move him without risking losing him. The Magicians are just about exhausted, and we don't know what to do." Kaiba watched the scene with horrified fascination. This certainly explained the desperation of Atem's call! He glanced at the Magicians. They were trembling with fatigue already.
"How on Earth did you manage to summon them in the first place?" he asked incredulously. "Why aren't they holograms?" Yugi shrugged helplessly.
"I'm not really sure myself! Atem told us to as soon as the portal opened. Apparently the energy the portal generates is powerful enough to bridge the gap to the Monster's realm and enable them to take physical form. Right now, though, I don't really care! All that matters is that we have some measure to keep Atem from getting sucked away!" Kaiba had to grudgingly agree with him. A voice suddenly broke out of the portal, not loud and booming as Kaiba would have expected, but quiet and low and almost pleading.
"My son, why do you resist? Let the portal bring you home. You belong here."
"No, he doesn't!" Tèa shouted, and it was only then that Kaiba noticed her presence. Tristan, Marik and Ishizu were in the room, too. "He's made this place his home now!" The voice—presumably Atem's father—continued as if he hadn't heard her. Perhaps he hadn't.
"It's pointless. Your Monsters are all but drained, so your return here is inevitable. Give up." Atem clenched his eyes shut.
"No," he muttered through gritted teeth, "I can't. I've decided to live my life here. Why can't you accept this?" The voice became hard.
"Because you are my son, an Eygptian Pharaoh. Life there is not worthy of you."
"Yes, it is! I have friends who care for me, and that's of far greater worth to me than being Pharaoh. Than being lonely for all eternity in the afterlife." The voice didn't reply to that, but the swirl of the portal intensified. Atem too fell silent, forced to concentrate all his energy simply into not moving. Kaiba clenched his fists. It was clear that this couldn't go on indefinitely. Kaiba fixed his gaze on Atem and wondered briefly how it would feel to lose him again. This time, Atem wasn't leaving them willingly, dignified—this time he was being dragged back against his will, clinging to the present and to life with all his might. Atem's words to him flashed through his mind. How they could be friends and not enemies, allies instead of bitter rivals. He thought of how often they had helped each other. He would not lose the only person to understand him, the one that had freed him from his darker side. The one who had stuck by him, even after he had destroyed Yugi's grandfather's card. Upon his return, Atem had called him—wanted his presence. And when he was distressed, Atem had cried out for Kaiba. Kaiba narrowed his eyes. He had lost Atem once. He would not do so again.
The Magicians last shred of strength failed them. They sagged to their knees, the staffs clattering uselessly to the floor. Atem managed to resist for a heartbeat, then felt the drag of the portal lifting him bodily from the floor. He turned briefly to try to catch a glimpse of his friends for the last time, and in doing so saw Kaiba launch himself towards him. Before anyone else had fully grasped what had happened, Kaiba had reacted. He latched onto the back of Atem's coat and used his superior weight and momentum to swivel them both around, throwing himself between Atem and the portal. They slammed into the swirling energy, and a cry of raw pain ripped from Kaiba's throat. Ishizu stepped forward.
"The portal is designed especially for Atem. Kaiba, who has never been in the afterlife, can't go through!" Kaiba was sandwiched between the portal and the Pharaoh, thereby effectively preventing the maelstrom from sucking Atem in, though not without a cost. Seto felt like he had leaned up against a wall of molten lava. The portal burned fiercely against his back, and it felt like he was being prodded by thousands of razor sharp needles. He screamed again involuntarily. He had never felt such pain before. He dug his fingers into Atem's coat and clung on fiercely, anything to direct his attention away from the horrific pain behind him. The room's occupants were frozen in horror, unsure of what to do. Atem looked over his shoulder in wonder at Kaiba, deeply touched by the grimace of intense pain he saw on the latter's face.
"Kaiba, you can't keep this up! It's too much for you!" Kaiba opened one eye fractionally and hissed through clenched teeth,
"No."
"Kaiba, you have to let me go. You have to get away." The grip on his coat tightened again.
"No." Kaiba's voice was thick with suppressed pain. Atem tried struggling weakly in an attempt to loosen Kaiba's death grip.
"Seto, I won't let you suffer like this for me. You have to—"
"No! Now shut up, or else I'll break your neck with my own hands." Atem stopped struggling as Seto bit back another cry. It felt like his back was being dissolved in acid. "Even if it kills me, I won't let you go, you idiot. You…you still owe me a duel." Kaiba's voice weakened and petered off, seriously distressing Atem.
"Father! Father, you have to close the portal now!"
"Not until you're home."
"Father, you're going to kill Kaiba!" A pause.
"If I must. Isn't that your greatest rival?" Atem glared at the portal. Kaiba felt himself starting to drift out of consciousness. He felt like he was outside observer looking back at himself. Exactly. He was Atem's biggest rival. His enemy, in other wors. Why was he suffering like this for someone who was constantly defeating him? Someone who reveled in his defeats and losses? He felt his grip loosen slightly, but couldn't tell if he was intentionally loosening it or if he was merely getting weaker.
"Yes, he is my greatest rival." Atem's voice had dropped and he spoke with dead calm. Kaiba's fading consciousness, feeling as though it were floating somewhere above him, seemed to laugh at him. I told you so, it spat at him. Absurd. How could you have been such an idiot? "But…" His internal laughter fell silent again in order to better hear Atem. "But he's also my greatest friend. If he dies because of you, I swear to you that I will never return to you in the afterlife, even if I have to throw my heart to the Devourer myself." Kaiba's fading mind seemed to recall a fearsome beast of Egyptian mythology, part hippo, part lion, part crocodile that devoured the hearts of the wicked, thereby erasing their existence.
"You would never do that!" the voice cried, but Kaiba could hear an undertone of doubt.
"You think? I would never forgive you for his death. Why do you think I came back in the first place? Kaiba never recognized me as a friend. That thought never ceased to torment me. Without him, without his friendship, I could never be content. Besides—" His vehement, dead-serious tone suddenly turned wry. "Beside, I really do owe him a duel." Kaiba was too far-gone to say anything, but he did manage to fractionally tighten his grip to let Atem know that he had, indeed, heard. Oh yes, he had heard. And a chain around his heart had loosened. In your face, consciousness. His heart had been right. A smile ghosted across his face in the instant before he ultimately let go of awareness and blissfully escaped the pain.