Of Zombies and Card Games
Chapter 25
"Hope they'll be ok," Honda murmured after he and Mokuba had wandered the labyrinthine passageways for several minutes.
"They'll be fine," Mokuba assured the both of them, "Anzu's got a good head on her shoulders and if there is anyone that that Yami would be unlikely to hurt it would be Ryou."
"Yea…if," Honda mumbled nervously, turning a corner to find himself facing a two sets of staircases. "Well, shall we go up or down?"
"Nah," Mokuba drawled, "I think we should wander around these dark tunnels aimlessly awhile longer." Hiroto slapped the back of his head after that snaky comment, a bit chagrined that he actually had to reach up to do so. Though not quite as tall as his brother is – was – Mokuba had still sprung up rather close. He did console himself by attributing an inch or so of that height to hair. Swallowing his grin back down, Mokuba took the steps up three at a time, Honda in close pursuit. Light at the end of the tunnel had them quickening the pace, coming to a sudden halt when they found themselves at a cliffs edge. Not out of fear from the drop, but from the pure exhilaration at being outside in the open, for the first time in over a year.
"Oh thank God almighty we're free at last!" Mokuba exclaimed excitedly.
"I haven't been this excited since I found out I was graduating from high school," Hiroto shared, "I won't lie it was a pretty close call for a while." He laughed and his eyes glazed a bit as he reminisced.
"Yea, the shame you would have suffered if Jounouchi graduated without you," Mokuba smirked.
"So is there a Kaiba handbook out there that mandates you must constantly torment my buddy Jou?" Hiroto chided good naturedly.
"Hmm, perhaps," Mokuba pretended to consider it.
"Hey, at least he did, proving to the world that anyone can do it," Hiroto smiled, moving to the ledge to look for a way down.
"Anyone huh, and I'm the one standing here bashing him," Mokuba said with a wry grin, "suppose that makes me a failure at life then."
"Hmm," Hiroto hummed, "well that's different. None of your generation finished high school. Too many teachers running around eating flesh, not the most ideal learning environment."
Mokuba dissolved into a fit of childish giggles at that mental image. He could see it too, Oshiro-sama chewing on that stoner kid who never quite managed to finish the math assignments, and the parts he did complete were always done in crayon. It was probably sick having derived so much pleasure in putting down his calculus teacher, but she really had been such a witch.
"Look!" Hiroto exclaimed, gesturing downward, "if we can scale along this bit here, without falling to our deaths, we can climb down easily from there."
"Well then," Mokuba laughed leading the way, "here's to not surviving an apocalypse merely to plummet to our doom."
"Here here!" Hiroto cried, trailing closely, and carefully, behind.
AN: PhD getting worse again so updates will probably remain pretty infrequent over summer barring a brilliant stroke of inspiration regarding my thesis (so that I have time to force myself to do this) or a brilliant stroke of inspiration regarding this story, so that I just can't help but ignore my already suffering PhD work. Will try to update monthly (though chapters will probably continue to be super short), we'll see.
I do take comfort in knowing that I'm talking to myself because years later who is still following this story. :)