Chapter Ten:
Chapter Ten: Sunrise
O O O O O
Yugi yawned, fixing his chain as he walked into the living room holding a phone in his hand. From the other end of the line, he could hear Joey's voice answering.
"You mean that some thugs broke into Tea's house with pictures of those two girls trying to find them?" Joey said incredulously.
"Yes. And we don't exactly know what we should be doing about this all. I've discussed it with Yami, but he doesn't really know what we could do until we knew for sure whether or not people are still tracking down Sarah and Mary. Most importantly, we don't know how they know about them and why they want them. I mean, it obviously has something to do with the two appearing out of thin air, but we just don't know where to go after that."
"Hm…." Joey said seriously, and Yugi tried not to laugh. He could imagine Joey stroking his chin with a deep, pondering look on his face, which of course would look completely ridiculous on him. Yugi cleared his thoughts and tried to pay attention to Joey.
"Well, you don't get girls zapping out of a duel disk everyday, I guess, so it's not that hard to find out. Somebody could have been watching you and Moneybags duel and saw the whole thing." Joey continued. "Maybe they have some sort of special powers or something that caused them to come here and those thugs want to know how they did it? Or maybe they're working for somebody that knows what it's all about? If you could find some way to put them out in public without putting them in danger, maybe, I dunno, you could lure the thugs and find out more."
Time and time again, Yugi was always surprised at how insightful Joey could be when he wanted to. He then thought about Joey dressed in a loincloth sitting on a mountain and tried not to giggle again. "That's actually a really good idea, Joey. Thanks for the idea," Yugi said. "Anyways, are you going to call Tristan and meet us up here soon?"
"Yeah. I'll be there in about…oh, twenty minutes."
"You sure you don't mean two hours, like last week?"
"Oh, shaddup. I'll be there on time, Yugi, you can count on me."
Joey hung up, and Yugi stood there in his living room staring thoughtfully out of the window for some time before clicking END on the phone. He could feel Yami's spirit appearing nearby him, and he turned around to look at his other self's translucent body.
"What are you thinking about, Yugi?" asked Yami. Yugi sighed.
"Oh. Lots of things, I suppose. How are we going to find out who the stalkers are, what's going to happen to Mary and Sarah if neither of us can protect them, whether or not they are even being honest about where they're from and what they know. It's all confusing."
"You don't have to let it be." Yami rested his ghostly hand on Yugi's solid, corporeal shoulder. "We must trust these two girls in order to understand them and do our best to protect them, and even if things do not go our way, if we can work together then we can overcome all of our obstacles. You know that, after being through so much."
"Hah. Yeah. Duelist Kingdom, Battle City, the Virtual World, Marik, and being connected with you, Pharaoh. But I've just never been through something like this. No matter how confusing and extraordinary things have gotten for you and I, everything was…real. I mean, it existed in our world and only ours. When I think about it being possible that there is another universe parallel to ours that our own world is dictated by, it honestly changes things. And then I get to thinking about all of the other worlds that could be out there and I get a huge headache. Oh. Well." Yugi sighed deeply, but recovered quickly. "We're starting to form a decent plan now, so I guess things are looking up."
"Never assume the best of things, Yugi. Always expect the worst. Always." was the Pharaoh's grim reply.
O O O O O
The sunrises here were beautiful, she had to admit.
Sarah was sitting by herself on a stoop, trash bag in hand. There were a lot of buildings around the Kame Game shop but if she looked to the east towards the beach not too far away, turned her head, and squinted her eyes a little it was possible to see a bit of the sunrise reflected off of a building's tinted windows. She was supposed to be taking out the trash. She had asked Yugi if there was anything that she could do, and despite Yugi's repeated refusals of letting her do anything around the house she saw a full trashcan in the kitchen and had taken the bag out. It didn't seem fair for her and Mary to be freeloading off of these people, no matter whether they were real or not.
Suppose that they were real. What would that make the other "real" world, or rather, the world that Sarah and Mary existed in? It had only been yesterday that they had disappeared in a flash of static and electrical energy, but even so as the minutes ticked by their world felt more and more blurry, kind of like a long, beautiful dream that begins to lose its vivid colors as soon as morning comes but in the corner of the mind that dream still exists, no matter how faded and grey. Sarah ran her fingers through her hair and suddenly pulled her hand away from her face. The skin seemed shinier, and the outlines sharper.
Holy shit. How long had that been like that? Did it happen gradually or was she like this the moment that she and Mary had come to this place, which apparently was called Domino City, according to her sister?
Sighing, Sarah rubbed her eyes and tried to remember the last thing her father had said before he had sped out of the driveway to work. Probably something related to picking up Mary's cards out of the yard.
So she and her sister could quite possibly be stuck for all eternity in an alien universe, and all she had to remember her father was him talking about her stinking sister's cards. Wonderful.
But thing could be worse. They could always be worse. Sarah stood up, stretching herself leisurely before starting the walk towards the trash bin.
She should probably learn how to play those stupid card games and get a deck or something like her sister. They seemed to be very popular here, and from what she could see they were a pretty big thing. Kind of like football. Or soccer. Or some other sport. It would be useful, anyways.
The last thing Sarah remembered before being knocked unconscious was a whizzing sound flying right by her head as she was throwing the trash away.
O O O O O
Explosions are so much louder in real life than on any action movie. This was what Yugi thought a split second before he felt the Puzzle take over and Yami's presence replacing his own.
Yami saw that the windows facing the front lawn had shattered, and that half of the lawn itself was on fire. Tea was screaming. Mary was crying. Yami didn't know where Sarah was, but he knew that Yugi's grandfather had gone to the store and he was probably safe so that was one good thing. He ran outside and saw Sarah in a crumpled heap on the cracked windshield of a nearby car, her clothes smoking. Not so far away, perhaps on other streets, Yami heard the distant booms of other explosions and screams.
"Yugi."
Yami turned his head and saw a person standing in the middle of the road, amidst the chaos of people running and screaming and shrieking for mercy from God or whomever. For a brief second he had thought that it was only a little black-haired girl wearing expensive clothes, but in one blink he realized that he was wrong and it was an adult, a sinister woman wearing a trench coat and a cloth tied around the bottom half of her face, who had a blackened, half-melted duel disk in one hand and a deck of cards in the other. She eyed Yami lazily with yellow-gold eyes.
"We duel," she said.
O O O O O
"Joey!" Tristan yelled to his comrade as they helped people escape from a store that had caught fire. His eyes burned from the smoke. "We have to find out—"
"—if Yugi's okay!" finished Joey. He did a quick body count and figured everybody had gotten out well enough. "Let's go, NOW!"
He was already halfway up the street. Tristan could barely keep up with him.
"What's happening?" Tristan said, still trying to run.
"I dunno, but I think I have a good idea where we can find out!"
O O O O O
ISF: Duhn duhn DUUUUUHN. The drama! You peeps should review to show support for the story and figure out how it ends! Sarah…she can't be dead yet…or can she?
!!FIN!!