Chapter 11: Mission Implausible

The thing about a shoot-out is that bullets don't care what, or who, they hit. Contrary to what movies tell us, it's not the single bullet with your name on it that you have to worry about so much as all its buddies addressed "to whom it may concern."

That said, there's little more satisfying than having someone take a shot at you and miss. Seto reflected on this truth as he flattened himself on the sidewalk to avoid taking a bullet to the brain. Around him, the others were doing the same. The street filled with the sound of gunfire, sharp firecracker pops seeming to echo from all directions.

"What the hell?!" yelled Joey. "Who's shooting at us?"

"Why don't you go out there and ask them?" Tristan shoved at him. "And get your feet out of my face!"

"Get your face out of my feet!"

"We need to get to cover!" Yami's deep voice cut through the noise, shutting down the impending argument. "Now."

Easier said than done. The store fronts were useless, not even a recessed doorway or handy stairwell in sight. Directly in front of them, the street was clear, not even a bicycle parked at the curb. A short way down, a large concrete planter might offer some meager shelter for one person (two, if one of them was Yugi), but they would probably get shot trying to get to it.

Seto turned to growl at Yami, "How do you suggest we do that? Teleport?"

"Well, what do you suggest we do? Stay here and get shot, or go out there and get shot?" Yami snapped back.

"I vote option 'C'," Joey said. "Not get shot at all."

"Then you'd better come up with a helpful course of action!"

Tristan groaned. "We're relying on Joey to get us outta here? We're doomed."

"Crawl toward the bookstore!" Yugi ordered, already matching action to words and, sticking as close to the building as possible, belly-crawling toward a glass door with the words "The Gilded Page, Mr. Ian Woon, proprietor" painted on them in excessively curly calligraphy.

"Thank goodness one of us has some common sense," Tristan muttered, following Yugi's example and pulling himself along with his elbows. Behind him, Joey was complaining under his breath about road-rash.

Seto shoved at Kiaba to get him moving. "Hurry up and get going before someone gets in a lucky shot."

"Aw, you do care!" Kiaba beamed at him over his shoulder, then obligingly started crawling. "I knew you did."

"I do not! You're just blocking my way."

"Uh-huh." Kiaba shot him another grin. "Love you too, Yami K."

"What did you just call me." It wasn't even a question, more like a statement of utter resignation. No matter what the answer turned out to be, Seto knew he wasn't going to like it.

"Yami K," Kiaba repeated. "You know, so you don't get mixed up with Yugi's Yami."

"Or you could do what I tell you, and stop calling me 'yami' altogether, because I am not a yami!"

Kiaba pretended he hadn't heard that, and they continued the rest of the way to the store entrance in silence. (Well, except for the scrape of cloth and sneaker soles on concrete, the noise of the gun battle, and Yugi's hissed encouragements from the open door of the bookstore. So...not really silence. Never mind, then.)

"Get in here!" Yami commanded. He and Yugi each grabbed one of Kiaba's arms and half-dragged, half-helped him inside while Tristan and Joey did the same for Seto. Once in the door, they let it swing shut and scurried over to the store-front window and crouched down below the ledge.

Tristan stuck his head up briefly, peered out at the street, then ducked down again as something rat-tat-tatted against the glass.

"Is everyone alright?" Yugi asked. "Did anybody get hit on the way in?"

"I'm fine," Yami assured him. "You?"

"Yeah. Tristan? Joey? Are you guys okay?"

"We're good."

"Seto?" Yugi asked. "Kiaba?"

Seto glanced down at himself. He was dirty, scraped up, and sore, but otherwise unhurt. "I'm okay."

His duplicate didn't answer.

Yugi repeated, "Kiaba?"

Kiaba looked at them with wide blue eyes, then pushed his trench coat aside to reveal a dark spot on his side where red liquid was soaking through his shirt. A spot that was growing steadily larger.

"I think I've been shot," he said, right before his eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted dead away.

-o0o-

Meanwhile, in a much less exciting part of town...

A flash of light heralded the appearance of the two girls from the beach.

"Are you sure this is the right universe?" the first girl asked. She was a paean to the color black: jeans, sleeveless top, tall boots, and hipster shades. She wrinkled her pert nose as she surveyed the ordinary-looking city street. "It looks bor-ing! And I think your stupid portal thingy chipped my nails."

She waved Exhibit A, a tiny flaw in her purple manicure, under the other girl's nose.

"God, Rio, do you have to be so petty?" The second girl, who was wearing so much glitter she sparkled more than a figment of Stephenie Meyer's imagination, frowned. "Anyway, the Millennium Compact is never wrong!"

Before Rio could formulate a scathing reply, they both heard the sound of distant gunfire. The Compact began to glow with an eldritch light.

"Betcha they're..." The second girl swung the Compact in an arc and then pointed in the direction it glowed the brightest. "That way! Or my name isn't Princessa Angelica Unicornia Glitteratti Hikari!"

"I thought your name was River Kawaii Malika Prosateuse Pegasus."

"I changed it."

"Why?"

"This one's cuter."

"It's stupid."

"You're stupid!"

"I have heels higher than your IQ."

"You're so mean!"

"Shut up. Do you wanna stand here and argue or go find our bishies?"

Princessa bounced happily. "Bishies!"

"Right. Let's get this show on the road."

-o0o-

Back at the Gilded Page bookstore...

Everyone was staring at the unconscious Kiaba. After a moment, Seto knelt down and, lifting Kiaba's head so it rested on his lap, pressed his fingers to Kiaba's neck to check his pulse.

"Well, he's alive." Seto wasn't sure if that was good news or bad news.

"Is that blood?" Joey gulped, pointing at the discolored spot on Kiaba's side and looking faintly green. "Tell me that's not blood."

Yugi squinted. "I don't think that's blood..."

"Let me see," Yami said, shoving the others out of the way. He poked delicately at the wound, carefully lifting the shirt out of the way. "Hmm."

The others bent close for a better look. "Was that a good 'hmm' or a bad 'hmm'?"

"He's fine," Yami reported, leaning back so that they could see. The bad-fic stand-in's side was unmarred except for a couple of shallow scratches.

"What's that on his shirt, then?" wondered Tristan.

Yugi held up a punctured Kool-Aid drink pouch, the source of the red liquid. "He had this in his coat pocket."

"Hey, is that fruit punch flavor?" Joey asked, then cringed at the sharp looks stabbing his way. "What? It's my favorite."

"Remind me to kill him when he wakes up," Seto growled in disgust, shoving himself to his feet and letting Kiaba's head bounce off the floor with a loud thud.

"Ouchies!" Kiaba, obviously awake, clutched at his head. "That hurt, Yami K!"

"Shut up."

"Lie still," Yami said, pressing Kiaba back down when he tried to sit up. "You're fine, but whoever's out there is still firing. We wouldn't want to get caught in the crossfire."

"'Kay." Kiaba fumbled a hand across his "wound." "What hit me?"

Yugi held out a handful of small, oblong, black-speckled objects. "Sunflower seeds, still in the hull."

"Oh, dear," a familiar voice said from further in the store. Rapid footsteps hurried toward them. A second later, Dupli-Yami paced into view. He frowned at the seeds in Yugi's hand. "What fool let my aibou get his hands on a semi-automatic sunflower?"

"Never mind how he got it," Yami snapped. "He's your responsibility. Now, get out there and deflower your aibou again!"

Everyone but Yugi, who'd heard it all before, gaped at the two Yamis. Joey yelped and clapped both hands over his ears, Seto tried to pretend he didn't know any of them, and Tristan groaned, "Dude! I can't un-hear that!"

Sighing, Yugi said, "He means take the flowers away from Emo."

Everyone relaxed (Seto still tried to pretend he wasn't with them, just in a more relaxed fashion). Shaking his head, Yugi got up and motioned for Kiaba to follow him as he headed toward the counter at the back of the store. "Come on. Let's see if we can find you a Band-aid."

"And by 'Band-aid' you mean a gallon of hydrogen peroxide and a set of stitches, right?"

"...Whatever."

Once they were out of the way, Yami turned back to his double. "Where have you been?"

"Trying to catch up with Aibou. He's wily when he wants to be," Dupli-Yami said with a fond shake of his head. "And I brought reinforcements." He gestured behind him, where a new person, unnoticed until now, stood. "Meet Ryouchan."

Ryouchan stepped out of the shadows. Outwardly, he was a near perfect copy of Ryou Bakura, though his white hair seemed a bit fluffier and his eyes somehow bigger and shinier. He was dressed in a pastel version of Ryou's favorite striped shirt and slacks combo, topped with a fuzzy white jacket with bunny ears on the hood. There was an honest-to-god halo hovering over his head.

Stunned into somewhat horrified silence, everyone goggled at him.

"My Fair Lady," Ryouchan sneered in the perkiest voice to ever attempt to curse (and fail). "You'd think you'd never seen a bad-fic stand-in before."

"Did we fall down a rabbit hole while I wasn't lookin'?" Joey finally managed, after a few seconds of opening and closing his mouth while trying to find words that weren't "wtf," to ask the room at large.

"Dunno, dude," Tristan, speaking for the group, said. "But if a caterpillar shows up and offers you a hookah, just say no."

-o0o-

Elsewhere, on the Pacific Princess cruise ship...

Shadi, dressed in a mint green shirt dotted with bright pink pyramids wearing sunglasses, coral colored Bermuda shorts, and black socks with sandals (look, he'd spent most of his life and all his afterlife in earth-tones; it was time to branch out), adjusted his Ray-bans and took a long pull on his Corona with lime.

He hadn't been on a vacation in... ever. Well, there'd been that pilgrimage to Abydos when he was thirteen, but that was with family and a religious obligation to boot, so it didn't count.

Still, that trip had not included a perky cruise director who made sure he always had a partner in the disco, a friendly bartender who made sure he never went thirsty, or - Shadi peeked over his sunglasses at the nearby pool - many lovely ladies in skimpy bikinis.

He leaned back in his deck chair with a happy sigh.

Time to just kick back and relax. It was doing him a world of good, and he was certain Yugi and his friends had everything well under control back in Domino City.

-o0o-

Back at The Gilded Page...

Things were most definitely not under control. Our intrepid heroes had been arguing over their next move for the past five minutes with no resolution in sight. At least the storm outside had blown over.

Tristan and Seto were trading insults over each other's strategic skills and/or the lack thereof, while Joey alternated between staring across the street at the sweet, sweet baked goods in the bakery window and grumbling at his fellow plotters, who mostly ignored him.

"All I'm sayin' is why can't I enjoy a cupcake while evil is being unleashed upon us?" Joey said, rubbing at his growling stomach. "Just one lousy cupcake. Is that too much to ask?"

"We need a plan!"

"And cupcakes," Joey said. The other two shouted over him.

"You're an ass! Stop being an ass, you ass!"

"Don't look at me in that tone of voice!"

"My kingdom for a trebuchet!" Joey yelled suddenly, temporarily giving up on the cupcakes, though... Trebuchet plus cupcakes? That sounded like a siege weapon made of pure awesome.

At any rate, he'd finally gotten Tristan's attention. "Dude, you don't have a kingdom."

"Then, quick, somebody get me a kingdom so I can trade it for a trebuchet," Joey said reasonably.

"How the hell do you, of all people, even know what a trebuchet is?" Seto demanded, feeling a fresh headache firing up behind his eyes.

"I read!" In the face of the frankly disbelieving stares focused on him, Joey wilted. "Okay, so I read comic books. Some of which have trebuchets, I'll bet, though I don't actually remember an example of one right now, but -" He held up an admonitory finger. "But, be that as it may, I do know what a trebuchet is. I saw 'em one time on TV."

"That, I'll believe," Tristan said, and then smacked him on the back of the head.

"Whatever, man. A trebuchet'd come in handy right about now."

"So would an air strike," Tristan pointed out dryly. "Unfortunately, we don't seem to have one at our disposal."

Joey turned to Seto. "Hey, rich boy. Make yourself useful and call in an air strike."

"I own a corporation, not an air force."

"Then what good are ya?"

"Oh, bite me, Wheeler."

"Not even if you were upholstered in jelly donuts."

Deciding, for the sake of his sanity, to ignore them for as long as possible, Yugi (who had returned from his errand of mercy), turned to Dupli-Yami and asked, "'Semi-automatic sunflower'? Really?"

"I did warn you about this," Dupli-Yami said. "Just be glad he hasn't got a saguaro." He shuddered. "All those needles..."

"This has not been a good day," Yami said. "In fact, this day has been the double-plus ungood day of all not good days."

"Since when have you read '1984'?" Tristan asked, abandoning his argument with Joey as a lost cause.

Yami shrugged. "Between duels, I like to read. It keeps me occupied, since Yugi won't let me use the computer."

"I'd like to keep avoiding the apocalypse for a little while longer, if you don't mind," Yugi said, getting that pinched look he always got when contemplating the equation of "internet plus ancient pharaoh equals chaos and destruction." They'd learned the hard way that Yami tended not to suffer trolls gladly. Who knew the "smite key" was a real thing? (Not to mention the fact that Yugi was pretty sure his laptop was still smoking.)

"Fair enough. But why Orson Wells?" asked Joey.

Tristan face-palmed. "It's George Orwell, moron."

"I got your 'Orwell' right here." Joey flipped him the bird. "Also, why are we standing around discussing ancient literature when we should be figurin' a way outta this mess?"

"Ancient-?"

"Dude, if it was written before I was born, it's ancient. Shut up and tell me what we're gonna do now."

"You make my brain hurt."

"We have to get to Yu- er, Emo-Yugi," Dupli-Yami said. "I don't think he's firing at us. So, whoever he's after must be on this side of the street. Maybe we can find them and stop them from shooting at him."

"How? By letting them shoot at us?" This seemed like a good idea to exactly no one other than Dupli-Yami, so Yami continued, "Emo's floral ammunition may not be fatal, but the same cannot be said of whoever is shooting back, as they appear to be using more conventional bullets."

As if to prove his point, a burst of gunfire shattered the window of the bakery, spraying glass and bits of frosting and cake into the air.

"Well, that's the waste of perfectly good pastry," Joey mourned.

Tristan smacked him on the back of the head. "Could you not think with your stomach for, like, five seconds while we figure out how not to die in here?"

"Dude. If I gotta go, I'd rather go with sweet thoughts of tasty dessert foods instead of bitchin' about the fact that I'm about to kick the bucket."

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

"At home. I grabbed my common sense by mistake."

"I didn't think you had one of those."

"Guys!" Yugi glared at them. (He'd come a long way since the beginning of this debacle; he was fast approaching Seto-esque levels of angry expressions.) "Can we focus? We have to work as a team to figure this out."

"Right." Joey nodded. "Teamwork is essential."

"Indeed. It gives the enemy someone else to shoot at," a new voice interjected into the conversation. Everyone turned to look at...

"Bakura!"

Yami Bakura frowned at the group. "I'd say I'm sorry I'm late, but I don't actually want to be here, so I'm not. Sorry, that is. Well, sorry I'm here, perhaps..." He trailed off as he noticed his lighter half's ultra-fluffy duplicate. Slowly, Bakura reached out and poked Ryouchan's halo. "What. The actual. Fuck."

Ryouchan folded his arms and scowled at him. "Shove it up your Cabaret."

"...It's like being menaced by a dust bunny," Bakura said in a tone of awed horror. He hadn't been this traumatized since... well, since he'd first encountered Dupli-Yami and Emo-Yugi.

Mentally grabbing Ryou and shoving him back in control of the body, Bakura made a hasty retreat to his soul room. You deal with it, he told Ryou. I'm taking a mental health day. Decade. One of those. Now, where'd I put the booze...?

Still muttering to himself, mostly about being "too sober for this shit," Bakura slammed the mental door behind himself, and Ryou was left blinking at the others in confusion.

"Hi, Ryou," Yugi greeted him. "Meet your bad-fic double. He's even weirder than Emo. I'm sorry."

"Ooh-kay?"

Yugi patted him on the arm. "It's exactly as bad as it looks, but try not to think about it. At least until no one's shooting things at us."

"And then?"

"Then we'll eat ourselves into a junk food coma and pretend none of this ever happened."

Wearing an expression somewhere between "I'm reluctantly concerned" and "I'm pissed off that I'm reluctantly concerned," Seto interrupted, "Where the hell is Kiaba? Isn't he supposed to take the bullet on these things?"

Everyone else looked around the store. There was no sign of Kiaba, until Ryouchan pointed to the window, where Kiaba, out on the street and heading right into the heart of the battle, was clearly visible.

"What does that idiot think he's doing?!" yelped Seto.

"Jesus Christ Superstar," Ryouchan growled, sounding remarkably like the grumpiest bunny in the universe. "What's it look like? He's 'taking the bullet on this thing.' Or he will, if he doesn't duck in time."

Ryou buried his face in his hands and, in a plaintive voice, begged, "If this is my brain on drugs, could someone please hit me with a frying pan?"