Eggy's Note: Heeeey. Look who's still around. The lateness of this is all me, guys, because, apparently, keeping five different fics updating at once is not a good idea and will lead to various states of overwhelmed on the author's part. Thank you for continuing to read! The first part of this was written by VB. Everything else is my fault.
Disclaimer: See previous.
Téa woke to the sounds of soft breathing and quiet shuffling around her.
She jerked up in surprise and opened her eyes, squinting against the gloom. From the corner, a bright-eyed child with short, mousy brown hair watched her excitedly.
As soon as he saw her looking, the boy smiled widely and waved from his spot on the bed her kidnappers had provided. "Hello, Mrs. Mouto," he said cheekily. "I hope you slept well."
Téa narrowed her eyes and kept her mouth shut.
The boy watched her for a few seconds before shrugging and getting to his feet. He couldn't have been taller than Yugi was when he had been in high school. "Glare at me all you'd like, Téa, I don't care. All I'm after is the title your husband holds."
"You're the crybaby at the last tournament who vowed you'd get revenge," Téa said, before her own hand clamped over her mouth. Best not to speak unless that bigger fool with the red hair came barging in and beat her up again.
It was a weak sort of defiance, but it felt good.
Better than screaming until her throat was raw, anyway.
The boy's smile just grew. "Yes. Mark Salinity at your service," the he said with a silly grin. He bowed mockingly.
"But you're just a child, aren't you?" Téa said without thinking.
"I am not a child!" Mark shouted, stamping his foot.
Téa raised an eyebrow. "Really."
"I'm twenty!"
"Well, you're acting like my seven year old. And who the hell kidnaps people anymore? Isn't the new thing to sue them?"
"Shut up!" Mark said. He crossed the room in long stride to shove her with both hands against the wall. "For your information, my brother told me it'd be much easier to kidnap you and blackmail Mouto into another duel. That way I can beat him properly, because he cheated in our last somehow. There was no way he could have won. No way at all."
Now, where had she heard that before? Wasn't Kaiba spinning the same weave about ten years ago?
When Téa didn't answer, Mark let out a groan of frustration and stormed out of the room.
Before Téa could think to question what he had even hoped to accomplish, Mark stormed back in with a tray of food. He slammed it down on the bed, then turned his back on her and added, "The sheets aren't bug ridden, you know. We just changed them." Then he slammed the door.
Téa sat on the floor for a minute, then pushed herself up, grabbed the tray of food, and contemplated throwing it at the door.
Then her hunger won over her pride, and she picked at her green beans in stony silence.
"Yugi. Yugi man, wake up."
Yugi stirred and opened his eyes to the harsh light coming from the open window. He yawned loudly and glanced around the smallish living room with a smile before yesterday caught up with him and hit him in the face with its terrifying reminders.
Téa. Gone. Held for ransom.
When did this become his life, anyway?
That's such a stupid question, the voice that sounded not-so-surprisingly like the Pharaoh pointed out. You should have figured out by now that this is your life, has always been your life, and will never stop being your life, so you might as well suck it up, get used to it, and actually do something useful today instead of freaking out.
Funny, he didn't quite remember the Pharaoh being so snarky.
Across the room, Atem sat up and rubbed at his eyes tiredly before spotting his father. "Hey, Dad. What now?"
Good question, Yug wanted to say. Extremely good question.
"Now, breakfast," he said instead, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. Food first, think later. "Joey, is everybody else up?"
"I think Ryou and Sarah are in the kitchen. They got here maybe twenty minutes ago. Duke's probably reapplying his eyeliner in the bathroom or something, Tristan and Serenity went to get stuff for food, Mai's in the shower, and I'm pretty sure Kaiba never went to sleep. Friggin' robot, staying up on my couch all night, wasting my air…."
"But Uncle Joey, if he's a robot, he wouldn't need any air, right?"
"Oh, aren't you the cheeky one? Yug, remind me to never have any brats of my own, yeah?"
"Tell you what, why don't you just borrow this one sometimes?" Yugi said absently, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt. God, he needed coffee. Why didn't mornings after traumatic experiences just automatically come with coffee?
"Daaad!"
"Sorry."
Tristan and Serenity came back from the store twenty minutes later, laden with milk and cereal boxes, shouldering their way through the crowded kitchen to dump their bags on the table.
"Breakfast of kings," Tristan said, tossing a box of Froot Loops at Yugi.
"Dad, Amane keeps following me!"
"Hon, stop following Atem."
"But Momma!"
"Listen to your mum, Amane," Ryou said, depositing a bowl in his daughter's hands. "Here, have sugar."
"Um, Ryou?"
"Yes, Sarah?"
"… Never mind. You can chase her around the house later."
"… Oops."
"Hey, look, cartoons!" Mokuba said, steering the kids out of the kitchen and into the living room with their bowls. "Go rot your brains out for a while."
"Thanks, Mokuba."
"Any time."
"So, plan of action?" Joey said around a mouthful of Captain Crunch.
"We have to visit the police station sometime today," Yugi said.
"And the KaibaCorp. building," Mokuba said, coming back into the room. "We've got better tech."
"Where'd Moneybags go, anyway?" Joey asked. "Did he get tired of gracing us lowlifes with his presence?"
"He had to work today," Mokuba said. "He's got a lot to do."
"Yeah, I'll bet," Joey snorted. "He probably has to go polish his dragon plane, right?"
"Play nice," Mai said, whacking him upside the head with a dish towel.
"Maybe we should form some sort of search party," Sarah said, folding her hands around a mug of tea. "That's what people normally do when someone goes missing, right?"
"I don't think it's that simple," Duke said, entering the room. "Hey, Froot Loops!"
Yugi handed him the box. "Duke's right. I mean, I think it's a good idea, but I feel like whoever did this is probably not your average criminal."
"How do you figure?"
"He didn't leave evidence, for one thing," Mokuba said. "Seto already had our people search the place."
"Before or after the police?"
"Before." He met their stunned expressions with a shrug. "We've got connections. Anyway, there's nothing. And it was a breaking and entering job, too, which wouldn't have been easy. I mean, it's not exactly a piece of cake to grab someone out of a house without alerting the neighbors or some kind of security system." He rolled his eyes. "I should know."
"Okay, so it's a classy criminal," Joey said. "Not exactly all that helpful. We still don't know where Téa is or why they took her."
No one had anything to say to that.
Finally, Tristan said, matter-of-factly, "I think Duke did it."
Duke choked on his cereal. "What?"
"He's probably got her tied up in his basement or something."
"Really funny, Taylor."
"Well, it can't hurt to check, right?"
"Not helping, Tristan," Mai said.
"Look, me'n Yug can talk to the cops," Joey said. "Mokuba and his people can run the underground work—see if they can find anyone who fits some kind of card game-related MO, if this guy really is after Yugi's title. The rest of you can split up. Some can stick around here, the rest of you go look for Téa."
"Do you really think that they're just going to have her locked up around the corner somewhere?"
"I don't know, then talk to neighbors! Put up posters! Just do something."
"I'll stay," Sarah said. "I don't know anything about this place, so I'm not going to be much help in a search."
"Why don't Mai and Duke come with me to dig around, and Sarah, Ryou and Serenity stay here?" Tristan said.
"Keeping me out of the action?" Serenity said. "No way."
Tristan shrugged. "'S worth a shot. Besides, we're just looking. It's not exactly action."
"Awesome," Joey said before Serenity could protest. He grabbed his jacket off the back of a chair. "Come on, Yugi. We're gonna go talk to some feds."
"Have fun," Tristan said. "Make sure they don't arrest you."
"For what?"
"I don't know, stupidity? Can they do that yet?"
Joey said something that made Atem call out a reprimand from the living room, then dragged Yugi out the door.
Duke leaned back in his chair. "Well, at least we have a game plan now. Seriously, though… all of this over a card game? Man, and you guys wonder why I never got into all that Duel Monsters stuff."
"Says the guy who's got Téa tied up in his basement."
"Listen to you," Mai grumbled. "Wherever the hell Téa went, couldn't she have taken me with her? Dishes in go in the machine, boys. I don't do hand washing."
"I've gotta run," Mokuba said, abandoning his cereal. "I have to start searching for psychopathic duelists."
"Aren't you all crazy anyway?" Serenity asked.
Mokuba grinned. "Just a few of us. See you later."
"See, why couldn't his brother have turned out that charming?"
"Is that disloyalty I hear, Miss Wheeler?"
"All I hear is the sound of your insecurity."
"That was cold, babe."
Serenity dropped a kiss on Tristan's head. "I try. You guys going to get going?"
"Yeah, sooner the better, I guess," Tristan said, stretching. "Have fun babysitting."
"Oo, touché."
Tristan gave her a thumbs-up. "Wish me luck."
"Hey," Serenity said, catching him by the wrists as he stood up. She smoothed his shirt down with the palm of her hand, looking somewhere towards the vicinity of his shoulder, avoiding his eyes. "Be safe, okay?"
"Don't worry about me. I'm just off to play the hero, like I do best."
"Oh, come on. You were always the sidekick."
"But the sidekick always gets all the cool lines, anyway."
Serenity stood up on her tip-toes to kiss him softly. "I always liked the sidekicks best myself."
Duke coughed. "Not that this isn't great, but, uh, can we get going?"
Serenity blushed, letting go of Tristan's t-shirt. "Sorry."
"I don't know about you kids," Mai said, "but I'm ready. Let's ride?"
"You and Duke take the car," Tristan said. "I've got my bike parked in the garage."
"Or, I can take the bike and you can ride with Devlin."
"I take offence to that."
"Oh, can it, Duke."
Forgotten at the table, Sarah turned bemusedly to her husband. "You know these people how?"
Ryou pretended that he wasn't trying to hide behind his tea, but Sarah caught the small smile he was giving to his bickering friends.
"I figured that if I couldn't beat them—and no one could ever beat them—then I might as well join them." He sighed. "I might not have been my smartest move."
"We're still here, Ryou!"
"Oh, sorry. I hadn't noticed."
