Inner Apocalypse
Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! Or its characters! I only own my OC's, and the fanfic! I'm not getting any money out of this! Ok, back to the story… Just for entertainment purposes!
Rated T for violence at times… Just in case. Language at times.
And any questions about the story that won't make me spoil the story, ask me.
Note: I don't know what happened the first time I published, but this is the real chapter... Sorry of the confusion. -_-
Chapter 11- Hearts and Crutches
Narrator
"Alright, will Roxanna Hylkio, Joey Wheeler, and Yugi Moto please come to the dueling platform?" Croquet asked.
Yugi and Joey smiled sadly at each other, before turning to Roxanna's direction. It was time, for the three of them to face each other.
"Hey, good luck, Rox-?" The two of them gasped, as they saw her unconscious on the floor.
The gang gathered around her, unsure of what to do. Each of them had a worried look plastered to their face.
Yugi hesitantly reached out to check her pulse. He pulled his hand back as soon as he brushed his fingers against her skin.
Unlike the other time Roxanna had passed out, this time her skin was cold, ice cold, and growing even paler by the second. She was barely breathing, and the gang could only tell by the slight rise and fall of her stomach. The same thought passed through all of their minds. It really seemed like she was… Dying.
"I said, will Roxanna Hylkio, Joey Wheeler, and Yugi Moto please come to the arena?" Croquet repeated. "If you don't come soon, then all of you will be disqualified."
"Hey, Rox needs medical attention here! Forget about the tournament for just a second, ok?" Tristan growled.
Croquet finally caught sight of Roxanna's limp body, and his expression softened a bit. "Fine, I'll get the medical team. But the other two duelists still need to duel. And according to the rules, Roxanna Hylkio will be disqualified." Croquet muttered something into his earpiece.
"That's not fair, she's passed out, and you just disqualify her? What kind of stupid rule is that?" Tea looked furious.
"Rules are rules. If a duelist isn't in time for a duel, they're disqualified, no matter what the circumstance. Now Yugi Moto and Joey Wheeler, please proceed to the dueling platform, or the both of you will be disqualified as well." Croquet was starting to grow impatient and he tapped his foot on the floor.
Yugi and Joey looked worried, but ran down the steps and to the dueling arena. A faint glow came from Yugi's puzzle, and Yami appeared. The two duelists as well as best friends stood on opposite sides of the arena, looking at each other grimly. Neither of them wanted to fight one another, but they had to if they wanted to achieve what they worked so hard for this entire tournament. Yugi, to save his Grandpa's, Mokuba's, and Kaiba's soul. And Joey, to gain the prize money for his sister's eye operation. Both of them wanted, no needed to win this duel. But there could only be one victor. They both showed their qualification cards, and put their decks in place. The duel had begun, and they weren't going to go easy on one another. They were going to duel their best.
Two men came onto the balcony with a stretcher. They placed Roxanna on the stretcher, before taking her into the small infirmary deep within the castle. The gang watched with worried expressions as she was lead away. But there was nothing they could do for her now. All they could do was hope that she would be ok.
The monitors showed Roxanna's faint heart rate. Her heart was only beating enough to keep Roxanna alive, and barely. If this kept going on… Roxanna would be gone.
One of the doctors scratched his head as he looked at the clipboard, his eyebrows furrowed, as he sighed. "I've never seen anything like it in all of my years of work, and I've dealt with a lot of very weird cases. It looks like, all of a sudden, she's just going to… Die. For no apparent reason whatsoever. It's like her heart has just decided to fail on her. I'm afraid I have no way of helping her recover. Only a miracle could do that now."
"So you're saying that we can't do a thing? So you're just going to let her die?" Another doctor looked worried.
"I'm just saying that there's only so much we can do for her. Whether she lives or dies… It all depends on her now." The doctor sighed, and placed his clipboard down on his desk. He knew it was hopeless.
Roxanna
I blinked, and looked around. Everything around me was blank, just like the other time I found a piece of my personality again… But I didn't see any sort of faint glow. I scratched my head. What was I supposed to do?
"Hey! Anybody out there! Anyone that can help me? Anybody?" I shouted, but felt stupid. Last time, the only living thing other than me was that white dove.
"Well, if you count me as a person, then yeah!" A voice laughed, a familiar voice. A very cheerful, familiar voice.
"R, is that you?" I asked. That's weird, I've never met R like this before… It couldn't be her. But maybe… That dove again?
"Well… I'm not supposed to tell you who I am, yet. But I'll tell you this, my name definitely isn't R." The voice sounded amused. The voice was getting closer.
All of a sudden, a small blur of black went past me, inches away from my face. I blinked, and felt something light land on my shoulder. I glanced at my shoulder, and saw a tiny black dove. It looked exactly like the other white one, except this one had feathers darker than the night sky. The feathers seemed to give off a warm, happy glow. In fact, the bird seemed to be radiating with happiness and care.
"So, I'm assuming you're the same exact dove I saw before when I retrieved the first piece of my personality, right?" I reached to pet the small bird's head, and the dove just stayed perched on my shoulder.
The bird chirped happily, but then flew onto the top of my head. "Hmm, how do I explain this…? Well, yes… And no. Depends on how you look at things. I am also a piece of memory from the previous owner of this gem. But I have some later memories than the other 'dove', as you called her. But we are the same person's memory, just different pieces."
That's when it hit me. The other dove talked about being a bit of someone's memory, and so did this one. What if the memory belonged to R? So what if I gathered all the pieces of the gem? Would that bring back R's memory? Or at least a part of it? Or maybe-
The bird started pecking lightly at my head, and I stopped thinking to look irritably at the dove. "Come on, I'm supposed to show you what you've been searching for, Roxanna. Isn't that why you're here?" The dove started flying ahead of me.
I decided to follow the little dove. After all, there was nothing else I could do. "Hey, how come you get to know my name, and I'm not allowed to know your's? That's not fair at all."
"Because, I made an oath a while ago, that unless a specific person found me, I would never speak my name. You aren't that specific person, so I can't tell you, duh. Anyway, life's never fair, so don't' complain to me." The dove continued flying ahead.
"Who's that specific person? Wait, let me guess, you're not supposed to tell me that either." I was starting to think this dove wasn't allowed to tell me a thing that I really wanted to know.
"Yep! You're starting to catch on! Oh, we're here~!" The bird twittered, flying in circles around the glowing red heart.
I was about to reach out and grab the heart, when the bird flew and landed on my hand, stopping me from grasping it.
"You're not supposed to get your personality, unless you pass the test." The bird's eyes gleamed with excitement and nervousness.
"I didn't have to do a test when I got my first one, why do I have one now? I hate tests!" I groaned.
"I guess it's because, it's harder as you obtain the pieces later on, I don't really know. Stop asking me questions! Ok, here's the test. All you have to do, is write down your earliest memory. And well… The rest will explain itself." The bird flapped its wings, and a pen and paper magically appeared on the floor.
My eyes narrowed. Everything seemed too simple, there must have been a trick behind it all. But I did it anyway. I started out describing the day my real family died, and it wasn't before long that the page was filled front and back. Then the words started floating off of the paper, into the air. Each word stayed in the air for a few seconds, before disappearing. The dove stared intently at each word, as if trying to see something important. When the last word floated into the air and disappeared, the bird landed on my shoulder.
"Ah… That's really confusing, no wonder… Hmm… I wonder how she'll take it…" The bird muttered and looked really worried. As if the words floating into the air showed her a really bad vision.
"How I'll take what?" I asked.
"Eh, forget about it… I'm going to warn you, that day is very important. Don't you forget about it, ever. And something important will happen soon… Try to accept it, ok?" The dove looked at me with sympathy.
"What'll happen? Oh, you're not supposed to tell me, right?" I pleaded, but already knew the answer.
"Sorry, I wish I could tell you, but I'm not supposed to interfere with the flow of events. Rules specifically given from Ra himself. Now go, claim the next piece of your personality." The dove flew off of my shoulder, and disappeared from sight.
"Figures, she doesn't give me almost any clue of what's gonna happen and then leaves me all alone." I reached out for the heart. The second my hand touched it, I was blinded by a bright red glow.
"Ow… My head's killing me…" I muttered, and sat up. Somehow, I was lying down in a bed… No, in an infirmary! What was I doing in an infirmary? I looked around at the monitor next to me, showing a normal heart rate. "What the heck…?"
"It's a miracle! She's alive, and in perfect heath! It's unbelievable... And we didn't do a thing!" A doctor next to me exclaimed. As if I was going to die before.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm alive, and all that, so hurrah! I am so happy." My voice was dripping with sarcasm. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find my friends." I jumped down from the bed, and landed on my feet. But my legs started to wobble after a few seconds and they felt weak. Then I collapsed onto the floor, feeling like I had run three marathons in a day, which is to say… My legs couldn't support me.
"Hmm, seems that you haven't fully recovered yet… You'll need to use these to stand up, and move around." Another doctor handed something to me. I gulped when I looked at it. Just when I thought my luck was bad enough! Were they trying to make me kill someone here?
"You expect me to use these?" My eyes widened, as I held up a pair of crutches.
"Yeah, do you have a problem with that?" The doctor asked, looking curious.
Yeah, I do, as a matter of fact. I have a bit of a bad history with crutches… It was a while back in the orphanage, when I broke a leg because I fell out of a tree on accident. The nurse at the orphanage made me use crutches to help me walk around. I was perfectly fine with that, but later on at night, something really unexpected happened… I was sound asleep, and I didn't know what had happened. But later on, people told me I was running around trying to attack people by swinging one of my crutches like a baseball bat. I only stopped when I woke up, and even then, I was in mid swing, about to hit another kid. And by then, I had scared the crap out of everyone at the orphanage. From then on, the orphanage made sure to keep the crutches far out of my grasp or any other kids' for that matter. And then the next time I needed crutches again, the same exact thing happened. The orphanage just decided to ban the use of crutches all together. Heh, I'm such a wacky sleep walker… Wonder what would happen if I was holding a knife when I fell asleep… Or a sword… Or a-
"Is there a problem with that?" The doctor repeated, snapping me back to reality.
"No sir, not a problem at all." I stood up, with the help of the crutches. "Thanks a lot." Then I limped out of the room, and tried to find my way to the balcony where everyone else hopefully was. "And hopefully, I won't fall asleep today and start trying to kill people again. Aw, where's Lucifer when you need him! I'd love to have an excuse to start whacking him in the head. "
They were there, apparently watching Yami dueling Joey on the dueling arena. I leaned on one crutch, and waved with the other one, so I wouldn't fall. "Hey, guys!"
They all turned around, and looked really relieved.
"Oh, Roxy, you're alright! Thank goodness!" Bakura smiled. Why is everybody looking at me like I was going to die before? What happened to make me be in the infirmary?
"What happened to me anyway? It's all kinda fuzzy… The last thing I remember… Uh… Was my duel…" I stuttered.
"Well uh… How do I explain this? You uh… Passed out before you could duel, so you got disqualified out of the tournament." Tristan said nervously. I must have looked really disappointed, because Tristan immediately looked guilty for telling me. "Sorry about that."
"Oh. I would have loved to duel Pegasus myself, but it looks like Yugi or Joey will have to beat him for me." I shrugged, and looked at the duel that was going on.
The duel was really intense, both of them trying their best… But in the end, Yami revived Joey's Black Skull Dragon, and used it to destroy Joey's Thousand Dragon, and Joey's life points dropped to zero. The winner was… Yami.
The two walked up to the balcony to greet the rest of us. And the first thing Joey did was pull me into a tight hug. My crutches fell onto the floor, and my feet dangled in the air.
"Rox! We all thought you were going to be gone for good, you little grey head!" Joey laughed.
"Can't… Breathe… Suffocating… Let… Go!" I gasped.
"Oh, eh, heh, sorry!" Joey scratched his head, and I stood on the floor for five seconds, before my knees buckled, and I fell onto the ground.
"Ugh, I still need my crutches…" I stood up, this time using my crutches.
"It's great to see you better, Roxy. We all got worried after you fainted." Yugi smiled.
"Yeah… Go kick Pegasus' butt for me, ok?" I smirked.
"I will. Don't you worry about that!" Yugi laughed.
"That reminds me, Yug, here. You won, so you deserve the prize money." Joey was going to give Yugi the card that would let Yugi claim the prize money.
But Yugi shook his head. "Joey, I didn't come here to get rich, I'm going to save Grandpa's, Mokuba's, and Kaiba's souls. So keep the money and use it for your sister's eye operation."
"Yug… I don't know what to say… Thanks!" Joey grinned, and stuffed the card into his pocket. "You're the best. I had almost lost all hope to save my sister, and here you are proving me wrong."
"Aw, it's so touching! Ok, Yugi, we'll all be cheering you on! Now go beat the crap out of Pegasus for all of us and- AH!" I pumped my fist into the air. But I forgot I needed my crutches, and fell onto the floor. "Ouch… I think I need to remember not to do that next time, until I don't need crutches anymore."
The rest of the gang laughed, and for a moment all the pressure had just disappeared.
Then I remembered. I took out both pieces of the gem, and tried to attach them next to each other. They fit right in place, and when I went to see if I needed to glue them… No need to. They were stuck together, as if they were never broken apart before. Just one more piece to go, and maybe I can help R regain her lost memory back. And at least gain my personality back.
Author's Notes:
Yay, I'm done another chapter! I'm so proud xD Anyway, thanks to all the reviewers, readers, and ect… Hope you liked it! ^^ Sorry I took a while to update.
