Chapter 21 - The Rescue Mission

Bakura couldn't contain his laughter, "How does it feel now that I have one of your most powerful monsters?" He held Obelisk the Tormentor in his hand, and he grinned at it maniacally. "Next turn I'll use it to destroy you!" he said, smirking at Yugi.

"Not if I can help it," Yugi said. "I activate card destruction!"

"What?!"

"Now we both must discard our hands and draw 5 new cards," Yugi said.

Bakura was not happy with this, "No matter, I can still crush you with it even if it's in my graveyard."

"We'll see," Yugi said, and the duel continued.

...

"Not my Swordsman!" Rose called out as her beast was destroyed. Marcus-the taller of the two men -let out a laugh, "Next time don't play such weak monsters."

"Neo isn't weak," Rose retorted.

"Well if that's all you've got then you may as well quit now," the other man-who Rose found out was named James-spat.

"No way!" Joey said, drawing from his deck. "We're gonna squash you like bugs on a windscreen!" Rose laughed to herself-Joey did always seem to have amusing analogies.

"Alright, I sacrifice my Iron Knight and my Panther Warrior in order to summon Red Eyes Black Dragon!" Joey said, as his monster appeared before them.

"Red Eyes Black Dragon?" Rose said, surprised. Of course! I forgot Joey had that monster.

"Oh, bollocks," James said.

"Attack!" Joey said, pointing at James' monster.

"You fool!" Marcus said to James as his monster was destroyed. "I thought you were a better duellist than this!"

"Well you could give me a hand, they're working together! Why aren't we?" they continued to argue, and Rose turned to Joey.

"Hey Joey," she said, "Do your opponents always argue in a double duel? Or is it just the ones I've been in?"

"I haven't been in many double duels," Joey said. "But yeah that seems like the case, it means we're winning!" he grinned.

"Alright, that's quite enough!" James said, "It's my move now." He drew his card, but upon looking at it, didn't look very happy. "Uh, I'll place this monster in defence mode and end my turn..." he placed his card face down and Marcus looked almost infuriated.

"Alright, now it's my turn!" Rose said, drawing her card. Her eyes widened, Meteor Dragon! "Ha! Rose said, "You're toast!"

"You can try out your new card," Yami said, his spirit standing beside her.

"That's exactly what I'm going to do," Rose replied with a grin.

"She's bluffing," Marcus said, glaring at her.

"Well check this out," Rose played her polymerisation card. "I fuse together Joey's Red Eyes Black Dragon with my Meteor Dragon!"

"You have that card, Rose?" Joey asked, surprised.

"You bet I do," Rose grinned, "now come forth, Meteor Black Dragon!" Marcus and James were frozen in their places as the huge beast loomed up in front of them. With a whopping 3500 attack points, they knew they were done for. "Now my dragon, destroy Marcus' monster!" James watched with wide eyes as Marcus' life points went down to zero.

"What?! I can't lose!" Marcus yelled, "James you better not screw this up for us!"

"Sorry to disappoint you," Joey said, "but seems you just lost it's back to my turn now, and I have a little number called Change of Heart, which means I can control Rose's monster for one whole turn, hello Meteor Black Dragon!" he grinned as the monster moved to stand in front of him.

"What?!" James said. "You can't do that!"

"I just did," Joey said, "and now it gets better, I activate the magic card Enemy Controller! This allows me to switch your monster into attack mode!"

"No! I'll lose the duel!" James said miserably.

"You got that right," Joey said, "Now Meteor Black Dragon, attack!" Their dragon destroyed James' monster, leaving him standing there speechless.

"Alright!" Rose jumped up and down as James' life points fell to zero, "Well done Joey!"

"I wouldn't have been able to do that if it weren't for you," Joey said, "Where did you get that card anyway?"

"I won it in my last duel," Rose said. "Now let's go inside and find Yugi!" Joey nodded and they pushed past the two men and into the warehouse. They stopped once they had entered, and stared in front of them.

"There's nothing in here but empty space!" Joey said. The large warehouse was almost empty.

"And abandoned machinery," Rose said, wandering around. Dust had gathered on the big piles of rust that sat on the outskirts of the space.

"Yugi! Where are ya pal?" Joey called out. There was no answer but the echo of his own voice.

"Look, ahead!" Yami said. That's when Rose noticed another door on the far side of the warehouse.

"Joey, this way!" She called back to him, running ahead.

"Wait up!" Joey said, "be careful! We don't know what's in this place!" Rose ran through the door and found herself standing at the bottom of the tall tower they saw from outside. There was a winding old wooden staircase leading to the loft at the top. The staircase sat against the outer wall, and Rose could look straight up the middle of it to the top. The tower was fairly wide too, so she assumed going up the stairs wouldn't make her very dizzy, but it would take longer to get to the top. It looked like the staircase had seen better days though.

"He's up there, I know it," Rose said, looking up the spiral of stairs.

"Indeed," Yami agreed, "Let's go."

Rose started making her way up the stairs and Joey followed, running to catch up with her. As Rose walked up the stairs she heard a creak. When she put her foot on the next step, to her surprise it snapped in half. She lost her balance and fell backwards, "Whoa!"

Joey grabbed her shoulders from behind to stop her from falling, "I got ya."

"Thanks," Rose said, regaining her balance, "I guess this stairway is older than I thought..."

...

"Slypher, attack!" Yugi said, as the dragon destroyed Obelisk, and the rest of Bakura's life points.

"No!" Bakura yelled with rage. The blow caused his duel disk to spark, and he pulled it off, throwing it aside. The duel disk his some sort of electricity box, however, sparking a flame.

"What have you done?" Yugi said, as the box caught fire.

Bakura freaked out and ran for the fire escape. As the flames spread rapidly, Yugi tried to run across the room to follow him, but after Bakura made it over one of the beams in the loft collapsed, blocking Yugi's path. The fire was spreading fast.

"Oh no," he said, stopping dead in his tracks. Yugi turned around and headed for the door as the smoke started to fill his lungs. I hope I can get out of here, he thought.