Story Title: Chains of Crystal
Chapter Title: Clues
Romance: Fubuki x Otogi
Timeline: Effectively AU season 1 of GX.
"What are you talking about?" Otogi stared at Fubuki, not quite getting what he was aiming at. How could Darkness have not existed here? This was his world…
At least…
"Look, I'm not really sure how all of this works, but I figure if there was someone like Darkness around here, we'd know about him. But until you said something, I'd never heard of him, and neither has anyone else." Fubuki waved his hands a little as he tried to explain. "But I know you wouldn't lie about that. So, the only thing I can think of is that you're not where you were. Some other world or something like that." He shrugged some. "It's just a feeling I've got. I might be wrong."
Otogi opened his mouth, then closed it again. As strange as it seemed, the explanation made some kind of sense. "Oh." He finally said, dropping his gaze to stare at the pale sand beneath them both. He didn't quite know how to deal with this possibility.
"You know who we should ask about this?" Fubuki went on. Otogi shrugged a little. "Misawa. He's just about the brightest guy I know. If anyone can help you figure all of this out, I bet it's him."
Fubuki had mentioned him just a bit before. Otogi ran his fingers through the sand again, thinking. "All right," he decided. He was tired of not knowing, when one really got down to cases. He wanted to know where he was, when he was, and if anything he really wanted to get was possible.
A second later, Fubuki was on his feet and he reached out a hand to Otogi. When he pulled the djinn up, Otogi moved a little closer, more out of instinct, and he realized almost a moment too late that he was very close to Fubuki. Much closer than he'd thought. For a moment, the two of them stared into each other's eyes.
Magical. A thought of awe.
Wonderful. A thought of hope.
The kiss was light and breathy, the faintest dusting of lips across lips, but it held a promise of more when there was more time and more answers to many things.
Neither of them felt the need to say anything else as they headed away from the beach and towards the Ra Yellow dorms where Misawa lived. Otogi all but shimmered with a mixture of happiness and anticipation. Fubuki bounded along in his usual happy way, but perhaps a little more intensely happy.
"Misawa!" Fubuki knocked on the door. "We need to talk to you!"
The door opened, and the younger student stood there, one eyebrow raised a bit curiously. "You do?" Fubuki didn't come to Ra that often, at least not that anyone knew about, and when he did, he usually didn't bring along a guest.
"Yeah. And it's really important that we keep this a secret," Fubuki said, moving past Misawa and into his room. As soon as Otogi was in the room, the djinn closed the door very firmly and laid a hand on it, sending out a surge of magic so it would stay closed. People coming near it with intent to knock or bother Misawa would have a sudden urge to go somewhere else for a couple of hours.
Misawa himself turned to look at the two of them, his arms folded over his chest. "And this had better be very good," he said calmly. "I was in the middle of studying."
"Otogi's a djinn and we need to figure out if he's from this world or some other world somehow." Fubuki said cheerfully. Misawa frowned darkly.
"I don't like jokes like that, Fubuki."
Otogi shook his head a little. "He's not joking. I can prove it to you if you want." Seeing the disbelief still on Misawa's face, he performed one of his usual tricks. He took hold of both Misawa and Fubuki by the arms, not giving either of them a chance to protest, and a moment later they stood on the very top of the Ra dormitory building. "Is that going to convince you, or should I find someplace farther to take you? The moon could be very nice this time of year."
Misawa stared all around, then back at him, his eyes a little wild. He was a man of science, and he believed direct evidence more than anything. This was some very direct evidence. "Very well. Take us back to my room now." The unspoken 'please' was acknowledged, and they were back there in the blinking of an eye.
"So, are you going to help us?" Fubuki asked, having been no more bothered by the trip than he would have been if they'd walked down to the beach. Hanging out with Otogi tended to do that to a person if they did it long enough. Or maybe it was just Fubuki himself.
Misawa settled into his chair, his hands closing a little more firmly around his laptop than they might have without Otogi's little demonstration. "Precisely what were the circumstances of your arrival here, and why do you think this world might not be your own?" It was always best to start at the beginning, after all.
"I was sealed into the crystal that Fubuki has by a being known as Darkness. Fubuki hasn't ever heard of him, and we're going on the theory right now that I'm from a different world because of that. He was very famous where I'm from, to the point his reputation should have lasted no matter how long I was in the crystal, and I don't even know how long that was. Time perception in there is almost impossible." Otogi said.
Misawa frowned some, then shook his head. "I've never heard of Darkness either, not as a name or as a person." He turned to his laptop and began to type something. "I can run a search, but I can't promise anything at the moment. What else can you tell me? Where did you come from? What was the name of the place? What was the year?"
"Khemet was what the people there called it," Otogi told him. "Some people called it 'Egypt'. That's not really where I'm from, but the djinn don't have a name for where we live that is really pronounceable in most human languages. But it's where I was living when I was captured by Darkness, and that was in Pharaoh Atemu's seventh year of being Pharaoh."
Both of them turned to look at him with the most incredulous expressions he'd ever seen on any human face before. "Pharaoh Atemu?" Misawa managed to get hold of his voice first. "You knew him?"
"Of course. He and Yuugi were two of my best friends, once we got some misunderstandings cleared up." Otogi shrugged, not sure why this was surprising them so much.
"Yuugi…you mean Mutou Yuugi?" Fubuki still didn't appear to be able to say anything at the moment, so it was Misawa who had asked that.
"Well, it was pronounced differently, but that was the name of their family. It wasn't used that often," Otogi said. Their surprise still confused him some. "What's so strange about that?"
Misawa stared at him a little more, then turned to his laptop and started to type again in a fresh window. What he pulled up a few moments later set both Otogi and Fubuki staring at the screen before them in shock.
Because it was Otogi himself on the screen, dressed in some kind of blue outfit that he couldn't remember ever having worn before. "Who the hell is that?" he asked, pointing one slightly accusing finger at it. "And why do they have my face?"
"That is Otogi Ryuuji. The creator of a game called Dungeon Dice Monsters. He's been friends with Mutou Yuugi since they were in high school together." Misawa told him. "And according to this, he was at a gaming convention in America just a few days ago."
Two words broke forth simultaneously from Otogi and Fubuki. "Say what?"
"This is just a theory still, because I don't have enough evidence to back it up," Misawa said, looking from the image on the screen to the two before him. "But I believe there is at least a chance you are correct. You are not in the same universe that you came from originally. For one thing, in this world, Pharaoh Atemu has been dead for nearly three thousand years. But Mutou Yuugi is a famous figure of the modern gaming world, and there is another Otogi Ryuuji, one very different from you. His birth records and school history are available, and he would be approximately twenty-six years old right now, give or take a few months."
Otogi frowned; he knew he was much older than that, though in effect he was still a teenager, by djinn terms. Another him…he wasn't sure how he liked that idea. A him that was human as well. Very strange.
"So how did I wind up here?" he wondered, more to himself than anything else. But Misawa took up the question anyway.
"That I don't know, as of yet. There's too much information that we don't have at the moment. But it is at least theoretically possible that your friends in your world are still there."
Still alive. I could go back there. I could go back home. To a world where he understood everything, and where he could very well be being missed. As much as he liked this place, it was still different, and it was…it had…
It had Fubuki. It had the new friends he was making and the game he was learning, that he already loved so much.
And he knew he didn't know how to get back there, because he had no idea of how he'd gotten here in the first place. He had never heard of a djinn who could cross worlds. Granted, he'd spent a lot of time away from his family, but he thought maybe that was something that would have been brought up somewhere along the line.
"Thank you," was all he could bring himself to say at the moment. He didn't think he needed to tell Misawa to keep this to himself. The quiet intelligence in the teenager's eyes told him that the other already had that much common sense.
"If you need more help, let me know," Misawa said as Otogi and Fubuki both turned towards the door. "I'll keep on researching and see if I can find anything that might be able to help you."
Otogi nodded a little, but said nothing else until he and Fubuki were already out of the Ra building. "You were right," he said quietly. "Darkness doesn't exist here. He's probably still back in that world…in my world, causing trouble for my friends."
"If your Pharaoh Atemu is anything like the one I've studied about in history, then I don't think you're going to have much to worry about," Fubuki told him firmly. "He saved the world more than once."
"Yeah, that's Atemu for you." Otogi couldn't help but smile at the memory. "He and Yuugi were…are…some of the best friends I've ever had. They were about the only ones who knew what I really am. I always thought Bakura and Ryou knew as well, but they never really said. Ryou was studying to be a wizard, so he could've picked it up."
He kept on talking about his friends, his mind ranging all over the years they'd spent together as he did. Fubuki listened, occasionally asking questions that showed he really was paying attention and not just being polite. Otogi answered to the best of his ability, growing more and more relaxed with each word that he spoke.
Then they were at their room again, and he found that he'd run out of things to say for the moment. Fubuki closed the door behind them, and they stood there, looking at one another just a little awkwardly.
The first kiss had been more or less spontaneous, a result of the moment. This one wasn't planned that much more, but it was deeper and fuller all the same. Otogi was very far from the place he had always considered his home, but now that he was in Fubuki's arms, he didn't think he ever wanted to leave.