Quickly Yugi and Atemu ran upstairs, followed closely by Velma after Frank and Darien urged her to find out what was wrong with Seto instead of staying behind to help them. They'd be fine, Frank assured her, but Seto might not be. Velma grabbed her broom as she reached the second floor landing.

"Kaiba?" Yugi called frantically as he ran down a long corridor. There was no reply at first and the boy's imagination started to run wild, even making him begin to fear the worst until he finally heard an answering grunt to his cries. He tried to calculate where it was coming from and at last traced it to the library. When he went in, he could see nothing but silhouettes and shapes in the dimmed light. "Kaiba?" he called once more, advancing into the darkness and squinting as he tried to make out where the young businessman was.

An unintelligible mutter came from his left and he turned in that direction, only to find Seto sprawled on the floor and clutching his left arm in obvious discomfort. Blood was seeping between the boy's fingers and onto the floor and the window nearby was wide open, the curtains swirling about in the breeze. Yugi could easily figure out the basics of what must have happened.

"You're hurt!" he exclaimed in alarm, his violet eyes widening. "Where's the first aid kit?"

Seto grunted. "There's one down the hall in the bathroom," he replied, "but I can get it myself." Slowly he got to his feet, continuing to clutch at his wounded limb. "You know, I've lost track of all the times this arm has been injured," he remarked sarcastically, feeling more than a little annoyed-and confused.

What on earth had happened to all of his security? One of the ninjas had definitely still been in the house. He had remained there long enough to stab Seto when the boy had realized that someone had been in the library, then had fled out the window. Seto wondered if the ninja had just been lying in wait or if he had been looking for something. He was leaning toward the latter of the two explanations. But if that was true, what could the ninja have wanted?

Yugi watched with concern as Seto somehow shut the window with his left hand, wincing as he did so, and then walked into the bathroom to retrieve the first aid kit. "Are you sure you're okay, Kaiba?" the short boy demanded. "Maybe I should call a doctor." He tried not to get dizzy as he watched Seto unbutton his shirt and remove it, revealing the wound in its entirety. It didn't look too deep, Yugi hoped, but still-there was so much blood. . . .

Seto grunted, gingerly rubbing an antiseptic pad over it. "I'm fine, Yugi," he grumbled. "You don't need to call any doctor." He had been hurt far worse in the past. One small arm wound wasn't enough, he didn't think, to warrant calling in a doctor. Seto didn't like to bother with them if he didn't have to.

"Seto! SETO!"

Both boys whirled around as Mokuba came running over, with Atemu and Velma following the child closely. Mokuba's blue-gray eyes were no longer sleepy, but shined with alertness and fear. He hurried up to his brother, sizing up the approximate situation easily, and frowned as he determined that Seto had been keeping something from him.

"Seto, what happened?" he demanded, watching as Seto fumbled with attempting to wrap the bandage around the injured part of his arm. Finally Mokuba shook his head and climbed up onto the counter so he could reach over and do it for Seto. The older boy sighed, but allowed him to take care of it.

"Apparently security is lax tonight," Seto replied, his blue eyes narrowing.

Velma twisted the broom handle around in her hands. "Mr. Kaiba, Frank and Darien were both hurt!" she told him urgently after making certain that he really wasn't hurt seriously. Seto immediately looked at her for further explanations and the maid tried to tell him what the two guards had said, though she hesitated when she came to the part about someone Seto knew having committed suicide.

"I can't imagine who they meant," she said apologetically.

Mokuba turned to look at her with wide, confused eyes as he finished with the bandaging. "I can't either," he said, and gazed up at Seto.

Seto frowned deeply, finding that even he was confused. "I don't know of any acquaintance living in the city who might have killed himself," he mused. All I know is that something is very wrong. Gozaburo couldn't just materialize out of thin air after all this time unless something big is going on. Idly he wondered if it could have anything to do with either Del Vinci or with the electrical malfunction at KaibaCorp, but then he dismissed the idea. It was all absurd.


Ishizu smiled gently as she felt Marik slumping against her. The poor boy was so tired that he just couldn't stay awake any longer. Carefully his elder sister covered him with a nearby fleece throw, holding his teenage body close and listening to the sound of his quiet breathing. Marik snuggled closer to her, mumbling softly as he buried his face against the folds of her nightgown.

Ishizu leaned back against the couch, pondering again over her strange vision. None of it made any sense to her, only that it sounded as though they were in for a lot more trouble in the remaining days before Christmas. "So very odd," she whispered almost indiscernibly. The image of the young man laying dead in the snow still haunted her. He had looked only three or four years older than Marik-perhaps Ishizu's age. That was too young to die. And what circumstances would have led to him shooting himself?

Or was that even what had happened? Now that Ishizu thought about it, it had looked as though the body had been brutalized. Horror filled her eyes and heart as it occurred to her that maybe someone had purposely tortured the man and then tried to make it look like he had killed himself.

"Who are you?" she pondered quietly. "What role do you have to play in our lives?"

"What role does who have?"

Ishizu looked up at Rishid's calm voice. The man smiled gently as he looked at his two younger siblings on the couch-Marik curled up asleep and wrapped in the throw while Ishizu held him tenderly. Quietly Rishid walked around and sat on Ishizu's other side, not wanting to wake Marik up when he so badly needed to sleep. And Ishizu told him about her vision while he listened grimly.

"I am not certain what to make of it," the Egyptian woman finished with a sigh. Marik stirred, but only to burrow deeper into the warmness of the fleece.

"Neither am I," Rishid said, shaking his head. "It sounds ominous."

"I wish I could decipher the meaning of the motorcycles and of that young man in the snow." Ishizu frowned, glancing out the glass patio doors idly and seeing the wide expanse of their backyard stretching before her.

"Most likely we will find out soon," Rishid assured her, just as the electricity flickered. Naturally his first assumption was that this was a result of the storm, but he was quite mistaken. Runihura the Destroyer was at work again.


Téa and Bakura were still trudging through the snow, trying to figure out where Oreo could have possibly gone, when the roar of a motorbike made them both look up. The snow coating the roads spurted up on either side as the driver expertly maneuvered through the powder and came to a stop right in front of the two teens. To their shock, Oreo was perched quite contentedly on his lap.

"Oreo!" Bakura cried in disbelief, running forward. Téa followed after him in confusion.

But she was even more confused when the biker removed his helmet and blinked up at them both. "Is she your cat?" he asked, watching as Bakura lifted Oreo up. The cat purred, putting her paws on the boy's shoulder.

"Oh yes!" Bakura exclaimed with a smile, profusely thanking him for finding her. "I just don't know what could have possessed her to run off like that."

The young man laughed softly. "That's a cat for you," he said.

Téa just stopped and stared. "You're Valon!" she burst out in astonishment. She remembered Valon from their experience with the Doom organization. He had been the one with a crush on Mai Valentine, resulting in several clashes with Joey. After Yugi had defeated Dartz, they had lost track of what had happened to Valon and the other two bikers who were his friends-or at least, his associates.

Valon looked at her, startled to be recognized, and then seemed to remember her as well. "And you're Téa, one of Yugi's chums, isn't it?"

Téa nodded, still baffled as to how all of this could have come about. "What are you doing back in Domino?" she asked. Bakura looked at her in confusion, seeing that she knew this person and wondering how she did. Oreo couldn't seem to care less how Valon was known. She just continued to purr, hopping inside Bakura's shirt for warmth and then peeking out through the space between the buttons.

Valon leaned on his motorcycle's handlebars. "I've been living here for a while now," he replied, "with the other two. We've been keepin' kind of a low profile." Oh, not that any of them had anything to fear from the law or anything like that. They had all been living on the up-and-up ever since they had met up again after Doom was disbanded. But none of them had felt especially close to Yugi and the others and hadn't really seen any reason to let them know that they were back in town.

Now Valon straightened up again, preparing to drive off. "I'd like to stay and chat," he said hurriedly, though the truth of that was debatable, "but I have to be going. I got word that Raphael found Alister laying in an alley, practically having kicked the bucket." Without bothering to explain anything further, he put his helmet on again and sped off, snow swirling around him.

Téa stared after him, even more confused than ever. She didn't bother to call for him to wait, as she knew it wouldn't do any good.

"Who is he, Téa?" Bakura spoke up then, drawing her out of her reverie. He walked over to her, holding Oreo again and stroking the cat's silky fur. Since he had not been them during their misadventures with Doom, he had no idea who any of the former members of that organization were. But Valon had seemed nice enough, though a bit rushed.

Téa sighed. "It's a long story," she replied.

It was then they heard the horrible sounds of a car crash coming from the next block over. As they ran to see what had happened, they were stunned to find that all of the lights at the intersection were out. Two cars had smashed into each other right in the middle of the street, the drivers most likely not having seen each other due to the heavy snowstorm and also due to the lights having gone out.

"Wait a minute!" Bakura cried in shock, recognizing the car that was a light turquoise shade. "That's Duke's car!"


Yami Bakura, dozing in the window seat back at Bakura's house, in Bakura's room, awoke in the middle of the night to find his stab wound paining him. Muttering curses to himself, the thief sat up and looked around the darkened room, which was lighted only from outside.

"Bakura?" he growled, looking over at the bed and only cursing more when he saw the covers rumpled and pulled back to reveal no young boy sleeping soundly against the soft pillow and mattress. Perhaps he would have only thought Bakura had gotten up for a drink of water, if it hadn't been that this was the third time he had roused up tonight and found the boy missing. An hour had passed during those three times. Bakura was obviously not in the house and Yami Bakura was obviously in no condition to go searching. It was a frustrating dilemma.

He could hear Mr. Ryou wandering around downstairs, humming some foolish love song to himself. If the man happened to come up and find that his son wasn't in bed, that would only put Yami Bakura in a worse mood for certain, since Mr. Ryou would be likely to blame Yami Bakura for his son's disappearance. The tomb robber didn't like Mr. Ryou much at all, especially not since Frances had entered the picture and turned all of their lives upsidedown.

So Yami Bakura did the only thing he felt he could do under the circumstances-he bunched up some of the covers and then threw the comforter quilt over them all, to make it look like Bakura was sleeping there. Then he stumbled back to the window seat and laid down, deciding that if the boy wasn't back the next time he awoke, he would have to brave the "evil" snow and go searching. He didn't much like that prospect either.


He still felt the pain. It had dulled, but it was still there. It was irritating him. He wished it would just stop so he could rest in peace. Then maybe he wouldn't keep having these nightmares. It was bad enough to have experienced everything once without having it be repeated once, twice, even three times or more. He was tired of seeing Del Vinci's cruel grin, tired of feeling the prick of the weapons boring into his slender body, tired of not being able to wake up from this state of confusion and misery. He knew he had to.

This time there seemed to be almost an urgency about it, however-as if, if he didn't manage to bring himself to consciousness, he would still die. He concentrated, trying to single out any one thing that he could focus on-a sound, a voice, a feeling-anything. When he wasn't enduring another too-real memory of what Del Vinci had done, his spirit was suspended in some area of swirling darkness from which he couldn't seem to escape. But in that dimension, he was able to hear things that were occurring in the real world.

For instance, he could hear a strange, incessant beeping. He frowned, wondering if he could concentrate on that long enough to pull himself out of his current state. Anytime he began concentrating on any certain thing, Del Vinci would interrupt and bother him with another replay of the torment. But this time he was determined not to let it happen. He closed his eyes, focusing on the sound until it was the only thing he was hearing. It seemed to be slowing somehow and growing less frequent. But that only made him more stubborn about concentrating on it.

The moment it stopped completely was the same moment his eyes snapped open. He looked around as his vision started to focus, baffled, and then spotted a familiar blonde man staring down at him in astonishment. It took a moment to register, but then he recognized the man as being Raphael, his friend.

"Alister," he muttered, shaking his head in disbelief, "you're alive. . . ."

Alister blinked at him, still trying to determine what had happened exactly. "It looks that way, doesn't it," he replied, his voice coming out extremely raspy. Frowning, he decided not to attempt talking again for a while. Now that he had managed to return to the conscious world, questions started filling his mind. How had Raphael found him? How was he even alive at all, when Del Vinci's men had been supposed to have killed him?

Raphael looked almost spooked, and for Raphael, that was very unusual. He straightened up, though he was still looking down and studying the other young man. "Your heart stopped," he said finally after a long moment of silence. "That was when you opened your eyes-when your heart stopped."

Alister just stared at him, not comprehending at first. Then he realized he once again heard the steady beeping sound. It was the heart monitor. Feeling slightly spooked himself, he at last made another attempt to speak.

"Oh. . . ."

Raphael sighed and then sat down next to the bed, relief showing in his eyes. "Never mind," he said then. I'm just grateful you're back. He thought of how he had found Alister only a few hours before-though it seemed an eternity. He had thought that the red-haired young man was dead then. Alister had surprised him then and now had surprised him again. It looked as though he still had a lot of life left in him.