And here we go. Person in the rubble, reveal yourself!
Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh. I never would've thought of combining three colors in outrageously spiky hair.
"Did someone follow us to the temple?" Yugi asked from his spot in the middle of the back seat, glancing at his friends.
"Maybe," Tea replied, "but I don't get why. If they followed us why didn't they show themselves?"
"Because he's probably some sneaky bastard out to cause bad stuff!" Joey declared, thrusting his index finger into the air as if he had hit the nail on the head.
Tristan groaned. "Again? Can't we just get back to our lives? These bad guys are getting on my nerves."
"What makes you so sure it's a guy?" Mai asked, turning around to glare Joey and then Tristan who were sitting on either side of Yugi.
"Because every evil person we've met has been a guy. Duh," Joey replied as if it was obvious.
"Do you want it to be a girl?" Tristan asked.
"I wouldn't mind," Duke interjected.
"Of course you wouldn't. Actually, I don't, but that's just because she might actually get something accomplished. All the bad guys we've faced have been total idiots," Mai pointed out.
"Hey!"
Marik sounded offended from his spot next to Duke, and everyone sent him looks that said something along the lines of 'it-shouldn't-matter-that-your-evil-ways-were-crap-because-you're-supposed-to-be-a-good-guy'. Marik slid downwards in his seat with a pout.
"You guys are being mean! He or she is in the hospital. What if it was a regular person just studying the temple?" Yugi pointed out with a frown.
"All who think its a bad guy say 'I'," Joey announced.
Odion's face remained expressionless as he drove, Ishizu and Marik gave very soft and knowing smiles, Tea grimaced, and Yugi hit his forehead with the palm of his hand. Everyone else said 'I'.
When they reached the hospital and filed out of the car, the security guards escorted them inside and then lead them to the correct hospital room. The window embedded in the door was covered by thick white curtains, and the windows of the room that you could normally look through in the hallway were covered as well, making it impossible to see inside. Two guards went inside while the others stayed with the group. The talk in the car had died away now that they were in the hospital, leaving everyone on the edge of their metaphorical seats. Who was it?
Finally the guards returned, faces set to be emotionless. "He's stable now, but still in a coma state. The nurses say you can go in as long as you keep the talking to a minimum. After you've seen him, I need you to come back out and we'll question you on the identity of the person," one guard informed them.
The entire group nodded except for Joey, who leaned over to Mai and whispered, "I told you he was a guy." She promptly smacked him on the back of his head.
Then the guard who had talked open the door, gesturing for them to enter, and they all did so, practically at once. Ishizu and Marik smiled, but everyone else stiffened and gasped.
"Well," Duke began softly, but still audible to everyone, "it's not a bad guy."
No, on the contrary, if more people were aware of what the person lying beneath the the thick white sheets had done for the world, the gang was pretty sure they would have called him 'savior of the world', or in less poetic terms, 'the guy with the crazy hair who saved us all from crazy evil people'. Either way worked.
For a while no one said a word, and the guards had to lure them out of the room with a reminder that they still had some questions to ask.
"Do you know the man inside?" the guard who had been talking the most, likely the one in charge, asked as he took out a pen and a notepad.
For a split second no one was sure who should speak up, but Yugi figured it might as well be him. It couldn't be so hard to answer a couple questions. "Yes, sir."
"His name?"
Yugi figured there'd be no hard in using his actual Egyptian name. After all, it was right in the same ball park as Ishizu and Odion. "Atem." So far so good.
"How do you know him?"
Shoot. Yugi was never very good at twenty questions.
"He's Yugi's cousin. Yugi's father is the brother of Atem's mother," Ishizu answered smoothly and without missing a beat. Mai shot her a suspicious glance. Where everyone else was thrown off, Ishizu had come prepared.
"And you're Yugi?" the main guard inquired, turning to the shortest member of the group.
"Yugi Motou, sir," Yugi replied, nodding.
The youngest looking guard, likely the newbie, stared at Yugi with shocked and suspicious eyes. The guy in the hospital bed was related to the guy with the tri-colored hair. He shuffled over to the door and opened it the width of a strand of hair to get a look inside, and the main guard rolled his eyes but patiently tapped his pen. The young guard's eyes widened as he pulled back and glanced at Yugi, realizing their hair was exactly alike.
With a sigh, the older guard continued. "How old is Atem?"
Another tough question. Jeez, Yugi was worse than he thought. But he was the supposed cousin, and it would look bad if Ishizu kept answering the questions when she wasn't related to the guy. "Uh... 22," he finally answered.
The guard narrowed his eyes and the group waited with baited breath. "Why did you hesitate?" the guard asked.
"His birthday wasn't too long ago. I almost forgot he wasn't 21 anymore," Yugi replied.
"When was his birthday?"
"July 19."
"That was a couple months ago," the guard shot back, causing Yugi to stiffen.
"Back where we come from, pal, we're not so good with birthdays," Joey interrupted rather rudely, leaping to his friend's defense. "After all, I think Mai's still 26 all the time! But you're actually what, now? 27?"
"I'm twenty-four you blockhead," Mai hissed, jamming her elbow in Joey's ribs.
The guard's eyes widened momentarily before he cleared his throat and went back to his questions, dropping the birthday issue entirely now that there was a young, age-sensitive female who was irritated in the area. "Right. What is Atem's full name?"
"Atem Mubarak," Ishizu replied without so much as faltering. Mai gave her another look, but no one else seemed to be catching on that Ishizu was oddly at ease with these questions.
"Does he have an occupation?"
"He works as a concept creator for Kaiba Corp back in Japan," Ishizu offered, and now everyone was giving her subtle looks of confusion. Kaiba would never go along with that if they investigated.
Sure enough, one of the guards had pulled out a laptop from a rather official looking black briefcase and was typing away. They all waited as the guard stopped and nodded. The main guard looked down. "He hasn't worked there very long. Only a couple months," the guard observed. "Has he made anything my kids would recognize?"
Yugi finally decided to say something. After all, this was looking a bit suspicious that Ishizu knew everything. "No sir. The projects can take a year at minimum most of the time."
The guard nodded.
"He just started anyway. He used to work for Industrial Illusions," Ishizu explained.
"But we... we all know what happened about that place," Marik added.
They all remembered Pegasus, and the guards nodded in sync.
Finally the main guard cleared his throat. "Why did you not mention him in your report?"
"We didn't know he was there," Yugi responded.
"Where did you think he was?"
"At Kaiba Corp working on his project."
"Any reason for why he's here instead?"
Since Ishizu was caught not answering questions for more than two seconds, Mai had been trying to communicate with her through eye-contact. She believed in the female power of telepathy since it had seemed to have occurred on more than one occasion, and when Ishizu looked at her she wasn't disappointed. And so, when the question was asked for the reason, Mai took the opportunity. She slowly maneuvered forward, leaning against the guard, who looked rather uncomfortable with the physical contact. He seemed ready to push her away in the most non-offensive way possible, but then she whispered, "Things have kind of been tense between him and a certain... lady friend of his. He's a little thick-headed, she's hurt, and you know, it's just a bunch of drama. I think he came back to set things straight. But you mind keeping it between you and me? Because personally I'm afraid she's going to have a breakdown and I don't know what protocol is for dealing with a crying girl..." With that Mai pulled back slightly, but not enough to completely remove her arm. When the guard realized he'd have to agree for her to go away, he eagerly nodded, and with a pleased smile she pulled back completely and returned to her place besides Joey. Joey and Tristan shot her disgusted looks as they imagined what she might have said, and while Duke was thinking along the same lines, his face read more 'impressive' than 'ew, gross'.
"Alright, well, since according to his files Atem's uncle is his closest living relative..." the guard started.
"Actually, my dad's away on business. Is there something me and my grandpa can do to help?"
The guard nodded. "Right. Now, working at Kaiba Corp he does have insurance, so we'll sort things out there. However, in the condition he's in the hospital would like to release him to a hospital closer to his home in two weeks or so so he can receive treatment from his own doctor. It's just less paperwork, and there are obvious medicinal differences in different countries, but we'll do what we can here. The doctors predict in two weeks time though he'll be good for air travel, at least until he can reach his own hospital to receive medication and a proper examination by his own doctor." Everyone nodded. Another two weeks in Egypt. This... would be interesting.
"But he's in a coma. They expect him to be thirty thousand feet in the air in two weeks?" Duke pointed out.
"Atem has broken several ribs, fractured a wrist, and broken..." The guard glanced down at his sheet. "His left arm and left leg. The doctor's say it's possible that he lost consciousness from too much pain, but they suspect the high level of dehydration and malnutrition almost definitely contributed," the guard explained.
"I'll bet," Joey whispered to Tristan, snickering at the thought of a mummy over three thousand years old coming back to life after having been dried out in a dessert for several hundreds of years. Dehydration made more than enough sense.
"Anyway, no real internal damage was caused according to the report. Two weeks should be fine. Now, we have to leave. However, seeing as you're his closest family, Yugi Mutou, we need you to stay in the country and escort him back home. We'll leave you here if you'd like to stay and wait and see if he'll wake up. We'll arrange for new tickets for flights two weeks from now if you will all leave then," the guard offered.
"Yes. We'll wait," Yugi agreed, and with that the guards left.
It seemed that the moment the guards left a huge weight was lifted from everyone's shoulders, allowing them to release breaths they hadn't realized they'd been holding and actually take in what was happening.
Atem was back. He was in a hospital bed fast asleep in a room a mere three feet from them.
Tea was fuming.
"Really? He gets crushed by a collapsing temple and is left there for days and all he gets is a couple broken limbs and a fractured wrist. I thought they built temples to be a bit more... deadly when they came tumbling down," Aknamkanon observed from his spot near the bucket, watching the image of the group speaking to the guards move on the surface of the water.
"They're not supposed to come tumbling down," his friend pointed out.
"Well, I thought my son would be a bit more disfigured."
"Well in his defense I'm not really sure I made the injuries accurate. I'm not used to disfiguring people."
"Not used to disfiguring people? You're Anubis!" Aknamkanon retorted.
"What are you implying?" Anubis asked, tapping the bucket to destroy the image in the water entirely.
"You're specialty lies with the departed."
"You at one point, and in some ways still do, hold the position of pharaoh, and never find me pointing out how your wife often dominates the relationship," Anubis pointed out.
"You wound me."
"You are growing increasingly immature. How often do you watch young people gather for events using my ability?" Anubis accused, setting the bucket on the floor.
"The young people these days call it 'hanging out'. It's quite fascinating."
"You used to be full of such mature wisdom," Anubis lamented with a sigh.
Aknamkanon smiled. "I have my moments of immaturity.," he replied, voice returning to it's calm and warm tone.
"Well, please attempt to have less of them. I find it disconcerting at your age."
The old pharaoh laughed at this. "My friend, we're immortal. At our lack of age we're allowed as many moments of immaturity as we desire."
Kudos to anyone who read Duke's line "Well, it's not a bad guy." and thought of the scene in El Dorado where Tulio and Miguel try to get the horse to give them a pry bar. "Well, it's not a pry bar." Yup. Just a little very subtle reference to make my day and anyone else's who happens to have a crazy mind like mine.
Please be noted I'm completely ignorant of how this would actually play out in Egypt and how guards and hospitals work there. Also, pardon moi, I'm not much for the medical field. I like art and mythology myself, just to explain the unrealistic injuries of Atem.
I feel like I'm torturing you guys. I swear Atem will do something next chapter. And as for his dad... I think it'd be amusing if Aknamkanon was attempting to be a 'hip dad' and looking into what all the young people are into. Just a personal opinion.
Ezzy