Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.

.

Warning: Spoilers for the entire series, especially episodes 218-219 (the Memory World / ancient Egypt arc).

.

.

Coming Clean, Chapter 10: Illumination

by Animom

.

A cold sweat swept over him; he felt weak and his gut twisted as his body finally forced him to accept what his brain had been rejecting ever since he tasted the salt of his sweat in the marketplace. His hypothesis about where he was was false. Against his will, counter to all reason, somehow he had gone back in time, to a past where science and technology meant nothing, and magic ruled all. To survive he would have to learn and obey whatever logic – however irrational it might be – governed this place.

Was that why the pharaoh had told him to leave? Because he thought that Kaiba couldn't function in a place like this? He folded his arms. Clearly, the pharaoh must think that the recent battles with Doma and the Leviathan had taught him nothing.

Below him, Zorukh sliced through Exodia. As the huge guardian turned to dust the old priest controlling him clutched his chest and collapsed. Kaiba could hear screams of dismay from the soldiers and priests gather by the city gate.

His grumbling was interrupted by a sudden change in the air, a thickening, gathering sensation that he had known well during the time that Obelisk was in his deck. Could it be? He saw a brilliant light radiate from the pharaoh, and three blinding sparks fly from somewhere near the palace and crash into the ground behind Zorukh.

It was! He ran toward them as they rose from the earth, taking in the true form of Obelisk, Osiris, and Ra, the beings that had inspired the God cards. Their power flickered over his skin, almost painful in its intensity, and he understood the meaning of worship. The Three attacked Zorukh, singly and then together, and Kaiba was in awe as the darkness was pushed back, destroyed in an enormous explosion. The clouds receded, the sun broke through, and he cheered along with the people.

And then he saw the pharaoh shake his head.

The ground rumbled as Zorukh's arm reached up from the crater, reaching for the sun, eclipsing it. The light began to fade. The Three attacked again, but now Zorukh slashed the winged ones from the sky, turning them to stone, and shook off Obelisk as if he was a leaf. Horrified, Kaiba remembered the vision he had been shown during his duel with Yugi atop the Duel Tower. At the time, he had thought that the massive stone forms that they had flown over were statues, but he realized now that he had been mistaken. What he had seen, under the sunless sky, were the gods' lifeless corpses. And that vision had continued with the high priest unleashing his White Dragon against the pharaoh.

He ran to the edge of the crater just in time to see the pharaoh fall. The few soldiers left fled towards the palace, leaving only the high priest and a girl by the pharaoh's side.

And then, as the girl hurried away with the pharaoh, the high priest stood tall and faced Zorukh. One lone human against an ultimate evil. The priest gave a war cry and ran at the demon, dodging fireballs.

Kaiba finally understood. From the first he had accepted the stone mural of the priest and the pharaoh, facing each other with their guardians under the three gods, as representing a rivalry between the two, as ancient justification for his competitive antagonism toward Yuugi. But it seemed that he had misunderstood, or had been misled. The pharaoh had called High Priest Seto "his trusted companion and friend," and Kaiba could now see why: the high priest who looked like him, who shared his name, was nothing like him, combining the pharaoh's nobility, Yugi's tender heart, Jounouchi's reckless courage, and Masaki's fierce loyalty.

The priest held the Millennium Rod aloft, calling forth a blue-white ball of light that unfolded into the White Dragon. As Zorukh was knocked back, losing an arm, the eclipse lessened.

Kaiba clenched his fists. "Strike again!" he urged the dragon, "While the demon is weakened! Defeat the darkness!"

Too late. Zorukh's vicious serpent-like phallus burst up from the ground, snapping the White Dragon's neck and turning it to stone. The priest staggered and collapsed. "The White Dragon's power is useless," Zorukh boasted, tossing the dragon aside.

"No," Kaiba said, "it was not." One dragon, alone, had had the same effect as the pharaoh's Three gods – and Kaiba had three dragons. If he could get to the pharaoh, certainly the two of them could defeat Zorukh, as they had worked together to defeat other enemies – the Five God dragon, the Masks of Light and Dark, Dartz. There would be a way that they would do it again.

Zorukh strode into the city's central avenue, stopping every few steps to blast the fleeing inhabitants with flame.

Kaiba scrambled up the wreckage of the wall enclosing the city, then used it to get on the rooftops. He had to get to the palace, and the pharaoh, ahead of Zorukh. Fortunately the narrow, crowded side streets made jumping from roof to roof easy.

He was several blocks ahead of Zorukh when he heard children in in the street calling for help. He ran to the edge of the roof and saw them – two boys, the same age as he and Mokuba had been when they arrived at the orphanage.

He jumped down between the boys and Zorukh. If he could buy them some time, perhaps they could duck into and alley. "Run – hurry!" he shouted to them, then turned to face the demon. The rational part of his mind knew that it was pointless, but he held out his arms anyhow, as if that could stop the inevitable.

Zorukh saw him, stopped. A low rumble – was it laughing? – and then a fireblast.

He began to run, shouting at the terrified boys to hurry. The fire streamed over his head, licked down the street, and surrounded the two boys. As the fire swallowed them he noticed how much the younger brother looked like Mokuba.

He whirled to face Zorukh, the pharaoh forgotten. "I will never forgive you!' He clenched his fists in rage. If only he could call his Blue Eyes!

There was a sudden weight on his wrist. His duel disk? Was this … a rule of this magical world? If he pictured something clearly, if he wanted it completely, it would materialize into reality? "Blue Eyes!" He visualized pulling the card, and there it was in his hand.

"Kaiba Seto," Zorukh said. "Don't you know who I am? Do you think your puny human powers any match for me, the incarnation of infinite darkness?"

"I don't care what you are, you bastard!" he snarled. "Even though this is not my world, I won't tolerate anyone who kills children! And neither does the Blue Eyes!" He put his hand on his deck. "Come to me from the future, my Ultimate Dragon!" As he drew the cards, he saw two faint lights fly to his hand, and heard an echo of the high priest's voice: Kisara, lend me your power! As the Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon came to life above him, inhaled and gathered power for attack, he shouted, "Take this, you stupid demon! Choke on the light of my triumph!"

The blue-white stream knocked Zorukh back, almost out the city. Stunned for a moment, it stood, red eyes glowing with hate. "I'll show you the consequences of resisting me! Disappear along with your Ultimate Dragon! Zorukh Inferno!"

Kaiba braced himself. "Fight back, Blue Eyes!" He kept his rage fueled with the vision of Amelda's brother, one of many victims of Gozaburo's amoral greed, and of the two boys that Zorukh had incinerated.

The concussion wave pounded him as the energies collided. Around them, buildings disintegrated (he heard no screaming, so it seemed they were fighting where the townspeople had already evacuated).

You don't belong here! The pharaoh doesn't want you here, either!

Kaiba smiled despite the increasing ache in his muscles and bones. He must be winning, if Zorukh was resorting to whispered insults.

"You are all alone, human, and tiring," Zorukh taunted. "It won't be long now!" He sent out a second attack that pushed Kaiba back and began to shatter the ground.

"No!" Every breath Kaiba took burned with ash, and his skin was painfully taut from the flame. He would not win here, he now knew, but he hoped that keeping Zorukh's attention was allowing more townspeople to escape.

And then he heard the pharaoh. "Kaiba! Do now as we have done before!"

"Yugi!" He turned, saw the pharaoh streaming toward him in a halo of power. He felt a surge of energy at the sight, and threw all his determination and all his fighting spirit upwards, into his most cherished partners. He could hear Kisara, telling him to trust his heart; the high priest, urging him to abandon hatred; and the pharaoh – who had fused with the Master of Dragon Knight just as he himself had fused with the Blue Eyes – commending him for once again realizing the power of cooperation and friendship. The four of them sent the force of their souls towards Zorukh, and their triumphant solidarity filled Kaiba with pride.

A huge explosion ripped him from the others, and then he was alone, in an agonizing, deafening, absolute blackness.

.

The voices were faint. The first one made him angry.

"Darkness always wins over light – that is the truth of this world."

"No! Even if I fall, someone will inherit the light of my soul. The light won't disappear until you're defeated!"

"Humans project the darkness within them onto others. That is what gives me power."

No!

"Partner!"

"You've come to reveal the pharaoh's true name? I won't let you."

True name. Magic. Rules of magical worlds – true names bestow power. Damn it, why couldn't he see? Why couldn't he move?

Zorukh mocking. "You can't tell the pharaoh his true name, because you can't read the hieroglyphs!"

"It's true – we remember them but we don't know how to communicate them to you!"

Yugi yelling, "Jounouchi!"

If their life points drop, they'll die.

Yugi screaming.

Zorukh laughing. "A pity, Pharaoh, but at least you'll perish all together."

Yugi. "I won't give up! I'll find a way to tell my other self his true name!"

A new voice, female, saying, "I found the way! Use your mind to carve the hieroglyphs on the cartouche!"

And then, louder now, as the blackness around him brightened, he heard Zorukh say, "Disappear, pharaoh! With your comrades and your friends of your memory!"

He opened his eyes, lifted his head. In front of him, Yugi, Jounouchi and the others were gathered around the pharaoh, their faces intent with concentration, the pharaoh saying that it was almost done, while beyond them Zorukh was gathering an inferno.

No! He had to stop Zorukh! They had to finish!

He found himself suddenly standing between the group and Zorukh just as the fireball began to move. "Wheel of Defense!" he rasped out.

The wheel blocked the attack. Zorukh snarled, sending a second blast that consumed the wheel and knocked him back and to the ground.

"That's it!" he heard the pharaoh say.

Wearily, he started to push himself to his feet when a hand appeared in his field of vision. He looked up: one of the cheerleaders – Honda – had his hand out. He was about to say, I don't need your help, I can stand up on my own but instead he took the hand, let it pull him to his feet, and nodded once in thanks. It felt strange.

"The seal of the name of the pharaoh is now broken! My name is – Atem!" The pharaoh, who moments before had seemed half-dead, was now revitalized, glowing with power, a light that made Zorukh stagger back. "Zorukh! Thanks to the gathering of all my friends, the gods will now come back to life." Lights shot out of Yugi's deck and flew to the stone statues of Obelisk, Osiris, and Ra, blazing resurrections.

Zorukh looked back at the Three, scoffing. "That is of no use! They are not powerful enough to compete against me!"

"And now," the pharaoh said calmly, "using the power of my True Name, I'll fuse the three gods!"

Kaiba was astonished. Fuse the gods?

From the desert behind Zorukh came a radiance, a pure Light that was more than light. Looking at it inexplicably evoked the sense of protectiveness that he had towards Mokuba, but somehow as the Light expanded it turned this emotion back on him, wrapping him in a warmth that kept folding into him, filling him with joy and strength and pride, washing away despair and fear and shame.

He looked up as an angelic being materialized behind Zorukh. "The creator of light, Horakhti!" the pharaoh said.

Kaiba realized suddenly that he was defined, not by what had happened to him, not even by the fact that he had survived it, but by every choice he made since then. He would continue to be a prisoner of past events – the loss of his parents, Gozaburo's abuse, Pegasus' betrayal – as long as he continued to leave a piece of himself buried with each of those events: but if he could find the courage to carry his memories into the light he could re-assemble himself, could walk with his whole being into the future where he and Mokuba would build their dreams.

"Disappear, darkness!"

I miss the brother that smiles. . .

And perhaps …

I don't care if I lose! I'm having fun!

Don't you have fun, Kaiba?

perhaps …

"Number 24, Fu, the 'Turning Point' …
the first shafts of sun
coming down from the clouds
after a frightening storm.
. . .the time of darkness is past …
The light that has been banished returns …
The old is discarded
and the new is introduced …

your peers and friends
will come to join and support you.

.

He would not be building them alone.

Zorukh was gone, and Horakhti was saying, "That is the only power that can defeat the darkness. When the strength of all is gathered, the impossible becomes possible."

The pharaoh was thanking the cheerleaders for finding his name, saying that was what enabled him to defeat Zorukh. "Aw, you don't need to be so formal!" Jounouchi was saying. "Nothing has changed! We are all still friends," Yugi added.

Kaiba took a deep breath, then walked toward their circle.

.

The path was steeper in places than he remembered, and narrower. Bramble vines and thorny branches grabbed at him, but he pulled the machete from his belt and cleared the way.

The waterfall at the top of the path wasn't the musical, magical rivulet of clear water it had been last time, but a churning, muddy torrent that galloped over the cliff edge far above him and slammed into the rocks next to the mouth of the cave, making the stone he knelt on as treacherous as a sheet of muddy brown glass.

"Initiate kenjutsu program," he said. When he saw the Immoveable Wisdom King in the cave entrance, he bowed low. "Fudou Myouou!" he called out, "I am ready!"

.

~ Epilogue to follow ~

.

.

.

Yes, after 8 years, the final chapter. Eight years after I started, at least two [now three] major course corrections of the plot later, my portrait of Kaiba is done. ~ Along the way, he's acquired quite a bit of invented backstory, pulled in more than a few esoteric topics, and mined some very dubious subtext.

I sometimes make the decision to put easter eggs in my stories. Usually I do this with minor details like place or street names, or less often with OCs. ~ In chapter 10 I gave Kaiba himself an easter egg that's meaningful primarily to me: when he shouts encouragement to Priest Seto's White Dragon, he's echoing an exhortation delivered in World of Warcraft by the blue dragon Kalec to players during the Sunwell raid against the demon lord Kil'jaeden: "Strike now, heroes! While he is weakened! Vanquish the Deceiver!" (Now that I think of it, that moment comes after the dragon's beloved, a girl named Anveena who is the personification of the magic of the Sunwell, sacrifices herself in a shower of holy light.) During my several years away from fandom I played a lot of WoW, and even though I've put WoW aside, Bluerose's video of SK Gaming's world-first Kil'jaeden defeat always brings me to tears. (Kinda like most of episodes 218 and 219 :p)

Note that the epilogue is entirely optional, and was mostly written for those who wanted a little more closure to the Jounouchi issue.

(05) 3 Mar 2011 ~ Horakhti tweak, AN