Disclaimer: I claim no ownership over the Yu-Gi-Oh! or Final Fantasy VII franchises. All copyrights belong to their respective copyright owners.
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Chapter Six- Valentine's Torn Apart- Vincent vs Mai
"Cousin?"
Mai looked away in embarassment at the loud unison chorus of all the familiar faces surrounding her. Joey, you loudmouth… she thought. Now the whole damn world has to hear about it.
A wry smirk twisted the corner of Vincent's mouth at Mai's expression. "Yes. I'm her cousin. What, did she never mention me?"
Joey shook his head. "Nuh-uh. Mai, seriously, why didn't ya mention ya had a cousin?"
Bakura grabbed Joey's shoulder fiercely, and gave him a warning look. "I wouldn't ask, if I were you. Something tells me those two don't exactly get along very well."
"Nah, what makes you say that, Bakura? The fact that they're having a glaring contest at the moment?" Tristan asked sarcastically.
Yugi gulped as he looked directly into Vincent's crimson eyes. Earlier, during the duel with Leon, he had seen warmth, kindness there. Now, there was a cold hard glint of pure malice for all to see. It wasn't too difficult now to imagine him, as Joey had been theorizing earlier, as a 'bad guy'...
"What the hell are you doing here, Vincent?" Mai asked, cutting straight to the chase.
"Did you miss the announcement?" Vincent retorted. "I'm a finalist here. Just like you. And I've got a few things to settle with you."
"And let me guess- you want me to duel you for it." Mai taunted. "Please. You might have won some low-key national tournament, but this is the big leagues, hon. You can't hack it here."
"Says the woman who placed fourth in Duelist Kingdom." Vincent shot back. "I'm challenging you to a duel. You have to accept, or else you lose your place in the finals. So, it's up to you. Either you accept my challenge, or walk away and lose your slot. Either way, I'm still going to win. It's just how much you want to make me work for it."
"So, you think you're a hotshot, huh?" Mai challenged, activating her duel disk. "All right, Vinny, I kicked your ass when we were kids, and I can kick it again now!"
"Let's duel!" both duelists shouted, commencing the next battle of the tournament.
"Ladies first." Mai called, gesturing towards Vincent.
"By all means, please." Vincent replied wryly, gesturing back towards Mai.
The blonde duelist gritted her teeth at the insult having backfired, but drew her hand nonetheless. "I was trying to give you an advantage. Last time I ever show you any consideration. "
She scanned over the cards in her hand. All right… Let's see what I have to work with right now… Her eyes zeroed in on the last two cards in her hand. These might be a nice way to start.
"First off, I'll summon my Harpie Lady in attack mode!" Mai called out, watching as her beloved winged creature took its place before her. (ATK 1300) "And then I'll lay this card face down for later. Your move, cuz."
The smirk parted into a twisted smile upon the raven-haired duelist's face. "You and your Harpies. So predictable. All right. I summon my Absorbing Kid from the Sky in attack mode!"
Mai laughed as an exceedingly chubby childlike angel appeared on Vincent's side of the field. (ATK 1300) "So that's your best defense? A fat kid?"
Vincent held up a warning finger. "Don't underestimate any of my monsters. The results will not be pleasant if you do. My Absorbing Kid may not have much in the way of offense, but he can take out your Harpie Lady without any trouble. That is, unless your trap card has anything that can stop him. Go! Destroy her Harpie Lady."
Mai's eyes narrowed as Harpie Lady shattered, followed by the Absorbing Kid. "Nice move, genius. You just wiped out your own monster."
"True. But, my Absorbing Kid has a special ability- when he destroys a monster in battle- whether he survives or not, my Life Points get increased by the level of that monster times 300. Which means, while I may have lost an attacker early on, it not only cost you an attacker, but gave me 1200 more Life Points." Vincent stated.
Vincent LP: 5200
"Now, I'll play two cards face down, and end my turn. Back to you, Mai." Vincent added, laying two more cards before him.
The busty duelist smirked confidently as she drew her next card. "Your face-down cards are worthless, Vincent. First off, I summon my Cyber Harpie Lady, in attack mode!"
A creature which looked almost identical to the first, save for the cybernetic armor encasing it, appeared before Mai. (ATK 1800)
"Next, I activate Harpie's Feather Duster, which destroys all your face-down cards!" Mai declared, activating her favorite magic card, and relishing Vincent's expression as his cards shattered. "And now, I'll activate a little something known as Elegant Egotist. This magic card lets me summon Harpie Lady Sisters to my side of the field from my hand of deck. Can you say hello to some serious girl power?"
A trio of Harpies that moved as a single unit appeared next to Cyber Harpie, and each looked very similar to the other. (ATK 1950)
"I now have more than enough power in my monsters' claws to scratch out half your Life Points, Vincent! You should've just surrendered from the start if you were gonna put up this pathetic of a fight." Mai taunted, looking over at Vincent's defenseless side of the field.
"How dare you… I'll never surrender!" Vincent shouted from the other side of the field, rather disproportionately loud for the public area, causing an awkward silence to ensue for a few seconds.
"So you'd rather die hard, huh? That'd be a first. Go, my Harpies! Claw out most of his Life Points!" Mai commanded, sending her Harpies for an all-out assault.
Vincent held up an arm to shield himself from the four harpies' claws, causing them to hit his duel disk directly.
Vincent LP: 2450
"That's all I can do for now. Make your next move, hotshot." Mai finished, pointing towards Vincent.
"Fine." Vincent stated, drawing his next card. "I summon my Witch of the Black forest in defense mode."
Mai rolled her eyes. "You're gonna have to duel better than that if you want to win. Face it, Vincent, you don't have what it takes to be in this tournament."
"Just like I didn't have what it took to be considered a part of the family?" Vincent replied, his voice taking on a deeply cynical tone. "Just like I didn't have what it took to control myself?"
Mai gritted her teeth. "Somehow, I just knew you were going to bring that up."
"Mai, what's going on?" Joey asked. "What's he talking about?"
Vincent looked over towards his cousin's little fanclub, and sharply stated, "She knows exactly what I mean. See, I doubt Mai ever told you this, but the reason why she's hesitant to talk about me is because of something that happened back when we were teenagers. I was denied my rightful fortune, even my place in the family because little miss bleach blonde over there got me institutionalized!"
Joey, Yugi, Bakura, Tristan, and Serenity gasped in unison.
"No way…" Yugi muttered.
"Mai… Mai wouldn't do dat!" Joey insisted. "Not unless she had a damn good reason to!"
"And I did!" Mai added, looking more at Vincent than at Joey. "You attacked me!"
"That wasn't ME!" Vincent insisted, looking desperately back at Mai.
"Oh, here we go again with the whole 'it wasn't me' spiel. Please, Vincent, no one believed it the first time, and no one's buying it now. It's all in your head." Mai retorted, cutting him off.
"It's not in my HEAD!" Vincent shouted back, leaving all viewers in a stunned silence. "You know what you saw that day. I know what I felt that day. And we both know that it wasn't me that attacked you. But you lied about it anyway."
"Mai, seriously, what is he talkin' about?" Joey asked. "He attacked you? When? Why? What does he mean when he says it wasn't him?"
Mai opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off with a fearsome glare from Vincent. "You want to know the truth? I can give you the story…"
.-.-.-.
As children, Mai and I were really close friends. We were the only relatives the other could stand, given the rest were generally very smug and up themselves about family business, and neither of us really had the patience for that sort of thing. As close as we were, though, our parents were always travelling. My father, Grimoire, was a scientist, and that meant we had to move wherever his next experiment took him. And Mai's parents were elite socialites, usually too busy with parties to bother with her. It was only sporadically that we got to see one another after the age of nine or ten. And then, one year, when I was fourteen, and off visiting at her house for the day, there was an- I suppose the best word for it would be an incident.
I hadn't been feeling well at all for the past several weeks. My parents attributed it to typical hormonal, puberty-related issues, but I could tell that this wasn't just some growth spurt. Something felt seriously wrong. And I could hear this voice- this demonic, monstrous voice- whispering at the back of my mind… I had been ignoring it for several weeks, but that day was worse than any other, and Mai said something that would be merely frustrating at any other time, and- it- I- snapped. This thing, this presence trapped inside me rushed to the forefront, and I could feel my body changing to a form more comfortable for 'it'. I don't even remember what happened next- only that when I came to, Mai was bleeding from shallow claw wounds in her arms.
.-.-.-.
Bakura felt an eerily familiar chill run down his spine at Vincent's story. Hearing voices and blanks in memory? That sounds more like possession by a spirit… It could be the ravings of a madman, but he seems far too close to reality to be that insane.
"Vincent, all this 'demonic presence' talk is nothing but Grade A bullshit." Mai retorted. "You just can't accept the fact that you did this to me, and you want attention for your issues, so you're trying to mess with my head by bringing up this monster business."
"You know what you saw!" Vincent yelled, pointing an accusatory finger towards Mai. "Don't try to deny it! You know what really happened!"
"Yeah, I know what really happened!" the blonde duelist shot back. "You went crazy! And quite frankly, I don't see why they released you when you're still dealing with these kinds of violent delusions!"
"They're not delusions!" he cut her off. "You lied to them, saying only what would make you look good and sane. You and your parents talked with my father, and agreed to settle the matter out of court- so long as my father got some psychiactric assistance for me."
Mai's lips hardened into a single line. "I was trying to save you from juvie."
Vincent scoffed. "Right. You were trying to 'save me' from juvenile detention. The most I'd have been kept there for was several months, maybe a year if I wasn't well-behaved, but you- you just had to go for the maximum sentence, didn't you? You know a little fun fact about psychiactric hospitals? They don't have dates to release you by. You're released from their care once they've deemed you well enough to function in society, and not a second before."
Mai sighed. "Let me guess- now you're gonna go off spinning some overly dramatic yarn about how the place they kept you was worse than Bedlam on acid, and how much they tortured you, right?"
"Oh no." Vincent contradicted. "No, the place where I had been committed was completely up to code and standards, but that didn't mean it was a pleasant place to be…"
.-.-.-.
After one interview with one psychiatrist about the incident that occurred, I was swiftly slapped with the 'schizophrenic' and 'dissociative identity' labels before being shipped off to the local psych ward. Now, the place was, as I said, up to code, and hardly a Bedlam, but to be treated as if you're a precocious three year old any time you try to tell those in charge the truth about what happened is extremely maddening. They were also very, very careful about monitoring the behavior of all the patients, especially those in the adolescent male ward. Any signs of aggression were met with sedatives and spending time in the 'quiet room', where you were instructed to stay on your little blow-up mattress and not to move until your 'sentence' had passed. Now, here's something that's really fun: Imagine you have a very active, very brilliant mind- and you've had so many antipsychotic drugs shoved down your throat that it dulls and slows your mental processes to barely above comatose. That's how I spent most of my time my first year locked up.
Now, after the first year, I learned what I needed to say to make myself appear well, but because there were still frequent 'relapses' where my mind had gone blank, I was there for four more years until it was deemed I was making sufficient progress. And it was another two before I was finally released from their care. Let me just reiterate that: I spent seven years of my life locked up in a psychiactric hospital. And while they made sure all the patients kept up with proper schoolwork when they were in fit state of mind to do so, that didn't make it any easier to find work- or higher education. After all, what college wants a student who's just gotten out of the loony bin?
I finally got a job working for a company for a few years, but circumstances unforeseen forced my employment there to an end. I needed to get away from the stigma, to get away from this reputation of madness that had followed me since my youth, and the only way I could manage that was to get out of the country. I cleaned out my savings account, and uprooted my life, travelling to France, where I've been living for the past several years.
.-.-.-.
"So you ran away from your problems- as usual- instead of manning up and facing them." Mai sneered. "Typical. And now you've spent how long obsessing over revenge aganst me? Ten, fifteen odd years? Freud would have a field day with you."
Vincent narrowed his eyes. "Yes, well Freud had a very one-track mind. And as beautiful as you look, ma cousine, I think I'll pass. Two reasons: one, you're my cousin. My blood cousin. That's just disgusting. And two: even putting aside that issue, you're not my type, regardless."
"Oh really?" Mai asked, raising an eyebrow. "And what, mon cousin, would be your type? Les hommes? Wouldn't surprise me, given where you've been slinking off to the past few years!"
"Eh… what da heck's goin' on?" Joey asked, looking around for someone in the group to answer him. "What're dey talkin' about now?"
Bakura's forehead made close acquaintance with his palm. "They've gone from discussing Vincent's years in the asylum to talking about his sexuality…"
Joey raised an eyebrow. "Oooookaaaayyyy… Random topic, much?"
"This is what happens when you bring a family issue into public light." Bakura sighed. "All sorts of skeletons- existent or not- get dragged out of the closet."
Vincent's face, all the while, was contorting with varying degrees of shock and anger. "That's- you- I- how dare you! I'll have you know, I had a girlfriend."
"Oh really? And what ever happened to her?" the blonde duelist challenged.
Vinent looked like he'd rather be having a root canal than saying the next words pulled out of his mouth. "She left me. And died shortly afterwards in a lab-related accident."
Mai's expression softened somewhat. She hadn't expected that answer at all. "Vincent… I'm sorry. I had no idea… Look, I was only teasing you earlier, like when we were kids, remember? I wasn't trying to insult you- or anything- I just…"
"It's a bit late to apologize for it now that you've already said it." Vincent cut her off. "At any rate, we need to get back to this duel, so I can seal my place in the finals. I place one card face down, and end my turn. Your move."
Mai drew her next card, and smirked. "Looks like this duel's over before it could even begin. Been nice seeing you again, cuz, but I've got finals to win. I summon my Harpie Lady #2, in attack mode!"
An orange haired Harpie identical to one of the Harpie Sisters appeared on Mai's side of the field. (ATK 1300)
"Now, Harpie Lady #2, attack his Witch of the Black Forest!" Mai shouted.
"Reveal trap! Mirror Force! This card reflects your attack right back at you, destroying all your monsters, and taking the sum of their attack points from your Life Points!" Vincent declared, raising the face down card for all to see.
"I know how the card works." Mai retorted. "Not that it matters. My Trap Jammer cancels it out, as long as I discard one card from my hand!"
The Witch of the Black Forest shattered as Harpie Lady #2's claws raked through her, leaving Vincent completely defenseless.
"Remember, when my witch is destroyed, I can add one monster with a defense of 1500 or less from my deck to my hand." Vincent reminded, picking one monster out of his deck before shuffling it again.
"Yeah, yeah." Mai stated, rolling her eyes. "Not like it's gonna do you that much good. My Harpies have more than enough attack points to finish you off! Now, my Harpie Lady Sisters, attack his Life Points directly!"
Vincent groaned in pain as the three sisters clawed him across the chest.
Vincent LP: 500
"Now, my Cyber Harpie, finish this duel off! Attack him with your metal claws!" Mai commanded, sending her final monster to do battle with him.
Cyber Harpie's claws aimed for Vincent, but where met by a phantom Kuriboh, which shattered upon the impact.
"What?" Mai asked, completely bewildered. "That should've finished you off!"
Vincent smirked. "Did you think Yugi Muto was the only duelist to make use of Kuriboh? Please, Mai. By discarding mon petit ami effrayant, I can nullify one of your attacks."
Mai grumbled. "All right, fine. Make your move."
Vincent sighed as he overlooked his hand. "There doesn't appear to be all that much I can do. I'll place one monster face-down in defense position, and end my turn. It's your move again, ma cousine."
Mai raised an eyebrow. He's hardly even putting up a fight. What the hell is he thinking? If he's so pissed off about what happened years ago, you'd think he'd be fighting a little harder than this! Well… no matter. A smirk twisted the corners of her mouth upwards as she glimpsed her next drawn card. This way, I can send cousin Vinny packing with a bang.
"All right, Vincent, you wanna just lay down and take it like the rest of your countrymen, then I'm gonna send you off in the grandest way imaginable!" the busty duelist shouted from across the field. "I activate my Harpie Lady Phoenix Formation! This magic card lets me destroy a number of monsters equivalent to the number of Harpies of my side of the field, and deduct your monster's attack points. In case you can't figure it out, that means you lose! Now, my Harpies, finish him off and secure my place in the finals!"
The Harpies on the field arranged in formation, and were surrounded by a bird of blue fire, which rushed towards Vincent's face-down monster, preparing to send him packing back towards the country from whence he came…
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TO BE CONTINUED…
Next time, join as as Vincent pulls a massive comeback and is poised for victory- but- what's this? Could Kaiba have discovered something about Rufus ShinRa that the latter doesn't want publicized? Find out next time!
