HI LET'S ALL PRETEND LIKE THIS IS NOT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATE KAY? I mean hi! So I had some troubles. First I got back from Italy and did not have internet at my house, so there was no update that Friday. Then I moved into my apartment at my college area and so was pretty busy with the first week of class and whatnot and all the work I have, so I kind of missed Friday (hence this Saturday update but let's just kind of forget about that).

So this chapter does NOT have the Citronshipping I thought it was going to have! Well... you could kind of maybe argue that it does, but no, it really doesn't. I had an idea in mind, but then I wound up writing something else, because the idea didn't really fit with the lyric. So. You get this! I actually have a separate Citronshipping fic I wrote most of while in Italy, so once I get that finished it'll be uploaded as a oneshot at some point, but yeah. There's really no Citronshipping. I'm afraid I've lied to you all. Such a bad Devon! Now have this (late) chapter to make you all happy.

Disclaimer: I still don't own Yu-Gi-Oh. Or the song "Friday." My disclaimers are slowly becoming less amusing.


Chapter Twenty-Eight: Tomorrow Is Saturday

"I'm not scared of monsters," the boy said persistently and proudly. It was his third time arguing this fact.

"And I don't believe you," the voice said.

"Well I'm not," the boy said again. He wasn't. He'd never been afraid of monsters. Why would he be? He'd never met any. Until the voice had started speaking about them, the thought of beasts and monsters had never even crossed his mind. There were no monsters down here. There were snakes and scorpions and other bugs and nasties, but there weren't any monsters. He knew.

"How do you know?" the voice asked. The boy was startled for a moment and lost his fiery attitude. Had he said that aloud? How did the voice know?

"I know," the boy said, "because I haven't ever seen any. Maybe you have, but I haven't."

The voice laughed. It was strange, hearing it laugh like that. It sort of echoed all around his head, and made him think of the moths he sometimes liked to trap in jars. They just flew around and around in circles, bumping into invisible walls and trying to get out until they died. The voice was a lot like that, he thought.

"I don't think it's very funny," the boy said. He didn't like being laughed at.

"No, you wouldn't," the voice said. "You're not old enough yet. Come find me in a few years and then tell me if you still don't believe in monsters."

The boy did come again when he was older. He was not much older, but he thought he was old enough. He felt older, thought it had only been a year, and he thought that was what mattered. He wanted to prove to the voice that he was not afraid. He did not believe in monsters and he would not believe in monsters. They weren't real, after all.

The voice was hidden away in a dark room that felt colder and darker than the boy's room and nights when the moon had hidden its bright face. He did not like going in it. He was not allowed to go in it. It was a forbidden room, and to reach it he had to steal the key from his father.

His father kept the key under a picture of the boy's mother. It was the only thing like it in their home. Sometimes the boy liked to sneak into his father's room and just look at the picture of the beautiful woman he had killed. Sometimes he cried when he thought about her. Today he did not think about her. He did not want to cry. He thought that if he did, the voice would make fun of him. The voice was cold and powerful, if he remembered it correctly. A part of it reminded him of his father.

Inside the room were three items that sparkled at him merrily though the room was dark and cold. The boy had never seen anything like them before in his life. The first was a necklace. It looked the least menacing but he still kept his distance from it. The next was a long stick was a winged ball attached to the top of it. The boy did not like it. It seemed to call to him, and he shuddered and turned away. The last was a ring with a pyramid in the middle. This was the one he was looking for. This one felt alive, and menacing.

"How disappointing. I'd meant just a few more years than one. You're still a child. You'll hardly be able to hold a proper conversation."

"Who are you?" the boy asked.

"A spirit that lives inside the ring here. Nothing more, nothing less. I was once a thief and a stealer of souls, but now I'm just a parasite," the voice said.

"Are there other spirits?" the boy asked.

"Just me, I'm afraid," the voice said. It was dry and sarcastic and biting and not at all raspy and old like the boy thought a ghost's voice would sound. It had sounded that way when he'd been younger too, but he didn't remember it clearly. The voice now was closer and louder.

"What are they? The items? The long stick one feels strange. Not like the ring, but like it's calling me," the boy said. He didn't like it. He didn't want to go anywhere near it.

"Calling you, eh? It's accepted you as its master. You should answer it," the voice said. The boy imagined it smiling. If it had a smile, it would be sharp and thin and red. The smile of a beast and a monster.

"I don't want to," the boy said.

"Don't be afraid of it. If it has called out to you, then it's your fate to accept it. You can't run away from your destiny," the voice said.

"I don't run away from anything!" the boy said. The voice chuckled at that. The sound was a bit better than the cold laughter, but not much.

"Of course not. You don't believe in monsters, correct?" the voice asked.

"No, I don't," the boy said. He did not like this room and he did not like the voice in his head and he did not like his father, but none of those things were monsters, and he was not afraid. "Monsters aren't real."

"Is that true? I'll cede that point to you; perhaps the ones you're thinking of aren't. But there are plenty of monsters in the world. I've seen them. I've been them. And you aren't so secluded from them as you'd like to think you are, trapped down here in your dark hole," the voice said. It sort of chuckled again. The boy still didn't like it. It made him feel cold.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"Oh you'll see in time," the voice said. "But perhaps you should spend your time now getting out of here. One of them is coming."

The boy did not know what exactly the voice was talking about, which would have irritated him at any other moment but for this one. Now he was seized with terror. Someone was coming, monster or not. And it could only be one person.

Later, the boy did not remember how he had gotten out of the room so fast. He did not remember grabbing the strange golden ring as he left, and he only somewhat remembered that cold voice telling him to put the ring back, that no one was coming, that he was an idiot. He did not care if it was true that no one was coming. Someone could come, and so he ran to his father's room and hid the key, then dashed to his own so fast it seemed like something truly was chasing him. He remembered shoving the ring down under his cot and then closing his eyes under his old blanket and ignoring the burn of them.

He did not touch the ring for some time. He wished that he had never grabbed it and brought it with him. Just its presence in his room made the entire area feel cold and dark like the first room it had been hidden in. The forbidden room. Even the safety of his blanket did nothing to dispel the evil he felt surrounding him now. He tried to ignore it, but the task was nearly impossible. He wanted it gone; yet he dared not go back to the forbidden room. He'd gotten lucky once. It would not happen again.

When he did unearth the ring from beneath his bed, it sparkled merrily in his hands, completely innocent at light and not at all threatening. There were a subtle undertone to it, something mysterious and dangerous, but the item itself did not hint at anything out of the ordinary. The boy didn't want to be touching it, or holding it. He wasn't afraid, but he didn't like it.

"Are you there?" he asked. He held the ring close to his chest, like the proximity of the item to his body would help him to hear the sarcastic biting tone that usually came from it.

"Hello?" the boy asked. There was no response. He frowned and wondered if the voice had lied to him. Perhaps it had really been residing in the rod this entire time. That item had also felt strange, abnormal.

The boy bent back towards the floor, ring clasped in his hand and lowering slowly to the ground where he would hide it once more. The voice chose then to speak out, and if frightened the boy so much he almost fell out of his bed.

"Don't you dare," the voice said.

"Don't I dare what?" the boy questioned. He was not trying to be sarcastic. He was just honestly perplexed. He did not know what he had done, and what he was now not supposed to do.

"Put me back there! I'm not some silly little trinket you can just toss around wherever! If you're going to put me anywhere, then put me back!"

"But there isn't any difference," the boy said. "It's cold and dark in both places. I don't get it."

"What your feeble mind is able to comprehend doesn't matter. Just put me back!" the voice said.

"No," the boy said. He was not used to saying this word. Not anymore. But he knew that he wouldn't be putting the ring back. He did not want to go in that room again. He wasn't afraid of it. But he did not want his father to know what he had done.

"It's nicer here. Don't you want someone to talk to? Aren't you lonely in that room? Don't you want to get out?" the boy asked. He thought that he would want to, if he were in the voice's position. His life now wasn't very fun, but being locked away in a golden ring could not have been either.

"I don't care about any of those things! I've been inside this ring for three millennia! I have grown past the human need for interaction! All I want it to be returned to my rightful place, so that I may one day find the person I am looking for!" the voice said. It was growing darker and angrier, and with it, so was the boy's room. It had gotten so cold that the boy was forced to dive under the cover of his cot. It did not help much, but it made him feel protected from the voice's wrath. He did not know if the voice could possibly hurt him.

"I'll put you back! Just stop!" the boy said. He didn't think it would work. But curiously enough, it did. Whatever the voice had been doing, it stopped. The ring sparkled curiously up from the floor where he'd dropped it. The boy bent slowly to pick it up; almost afraid that something would happen when he touched it.

"Who are you looking for?" he asked. The ring did not feel any different in his hands now. He almost could not even sense the presence of the voice.

"A man who made me into this. Or a host that I can use," the voice answered finally. The boy crinkled his nose, because again, he didn't understand. He didn't like feeling so stupid! He knew that he was smart, but the voice was just being like this on purpose! It wasn't fair!

"Who put you in there?" the boy asked again.

"A Pharaoh from a long time ago," the voice said. The boy nodded. His anger was calmed somewhat. This he understood.

"I'm also down here because of a Pharaoh. I'm a Tomb Keeper. We've been down here for hundreds of years now! Sometimes I want to leave and see the outside, but my father says I can't. My sister says it's our job to wait down here for the Pharaoh to return," the boy said. The voice did that chuckling thing again. The boy thought that it was happy. The air down the hallway felt warmer than it had before.

"Then you'll be waiting for a very long time, won't you? You're waiting for the same man I am, and I haven't found him for as long as I've lived," the voice said.

"What are you going to do when you find him?" the boy asked. His hand was clutching tightly onto the ring now without his knowledge. The surface of it was growing hot under his hand. His eyes were wide in the darkness of the hall, but not because he couldn't see. He was excited. Excited in the same way he got whenever he thought about going outside and seeing the same place that had such wonderful things like photographs.

"I'm going to kill him," the voice said. This should have startled the boy, but it didn't. He'd never thought about death before. He knew that if he was not careful and one of the poisonous snakes down here bit him, he would die, but the thought was a sort of far away thing told to him by his brother and sister. Death seemed like a far away thing. Murder seemed even further. But now it was in his head, dancing around just like the voice, cruel and thin and cold and laughing.

"Can you do that?" the boy asked.

"I can," the voice said.

The boy dreamt about that now when he slept in his room. He would huddle under his covers and remember how sure the cold voice of the spirit had sounded. He'd never thought about hurting or killing anything before, except maybe the bugs that liked to get in his room, because he hated those. He thought that he should be scared that he was thinking about it now, but he wasn't.

The Pharaoh had hurt the spirit. The Pharaoh had hurt his family too, hadn't he? The boy wanted to go outside. He had longed to go outside since he'd first learned that there was something out there beyond their hole in the ground. He wanted to see the sky that he sometimes caught a glimpse of through the hole in the ceiling. He wanted to feel the wind on his cheek, and see all the animals and people that were out there. But he couldn't, because he had to wait for the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh had told him and his family to stay down here. The spirit said that they would be waiting for a long time, that the Pharaoh wasn't coming back.

Maybe the Pharaoh deserved to die then.

"What did he do to you?" the boy asked.

"Oh, you again. It's been a month or so, has it? I'm afraid I'm not so good with time anymore. It's all become meaningless," the voice said.

It had actually been about two months, the boy thought, but he wasn't going to tell that to the voice. He didn't want it to get mad, and he wasn't so good with time himself. There wasn't much of a point in paying attention to it when there wasn't anything to look forward to.

The boy had wanted to come sooner, but his father had only now left the tomb. Ever since his last conversation, the voice had been on the boy's mind almost constantly. There spirit inside the ring was old. He had to know tons of information! And more importantly than that, he knew about the Pharaoh.

"What meaningless thing was it you wanted to know now?" the voice asked.

"What did the Pharaoh do to you? How did he turn you into that?" the boy asked. The question had been on his mind the moment the voice had mentioned it. It felt like he needed to know why the voice hated the Pharaoh so much. Why it wanted to kill him.

The voice did not speak for a long time. The boy thought he might have said something wrong. He didn't think he had said something wrong, but he didn't know as much as the voice did, so maybe he had, but the room didn't seem to be getting colder like it had the last time he'd made the voice angry.

"There are actually seven of the golden items you see here. The Ring, the Rod, The Necklace, the Puzzle, the Eye, the Key, and the Scales. They are imbued with powerful magic, and anyone who collects all seven of them will be granted unlimited power. To create such powerful artifacts, the lives of one hundred innocent souls were destroyed, and made into these items," the voice said finally. The boy's eyes widened.

"Were you one of them? Did the Pharaoh kill you? Is that what happened and why I can hear you?" he asked.

"No," the voice said. "I was a thief who tried to collect all seven items to destroy the Pharaoh, but I failed. I was sealed inside this ring as punishment, as was the soul of the Pharaoh."

"But…" the boy said. He didn't understand again. He didn't think the voice was telling him everything. Not all of it made sense. Why was the Pharaoh sealed within the items? And how could the voice kill him if it was true that he was?

"The reason why doesn't matter," the voice said. The boy blinked and paid attention. "What matters is that I will kill him. Even if it takes another millennia or two."

"I want to kill him to! It's his fault that I'm down here!" the boy said. The voice laughed and the boy frowned. It wasn't funny! He did want to kill the Pharaoh!

"You're still far too young. Go run away and leave it to the grown ups," the voice said. The boy bunched his fists and tried to glare. He was being made fun of. He hated it! His sister and brother always did it too! They didn't like to tell him things because they said he was too young, but he wasn't! He'd thought that the voice had at least seen that!

"I hate you!" the boy said. He screamed it and hoped that it hurt the voice. Then he ran from the room. He still heard the voice's chilly laughter in his head when he was gone, flying around and bumping off the sides of his skull.

The boy did not return to the forbidden room for a while. It wasn't that he didn't want to, because he did. But he wanted to find out some way to show the voice that it was wrong. He wanted to show that he was old enough to help, and that he could do whatever he wanted! In the end, the only way he thought that he could do this was to go back and prove the voice wrong.

"Is the Pharaoh one of the monsters you talked about?" the boy asked. He was rather happy about this question. He thought that if he could show the spirit in the ring that he understood what it had talked about before, he could make it stop looking down on him.

"You could say that…" the voice said. "He is certainly a monster to some, though not quite the kind I had in mind."

"But he's still a monster," the boy said. He wanted to make sure of this fact. He wanted to show that he was right and knew what he was talking about. "He's a monster and he needs to be stopped. That's why you're going to kill him. Because he's the bad guy and you're the good guy."

The voice laughed again, harsh and loud, but it wasn't a cold laugh. It was a warm laugh, and the boy thought that the whole room responded to it by growing warmer itself. It was an amused laugh, definitely because he had said something silly, but the boy did not mind this time. He thought it was okay if he made the voice laugh.

"How old are you?" the voice asked curiously.

"Nine," the boy said. "Almost ten."

"I remember when I was that age," the voice said. "I was like you for a time being. I thought people were only good or bad. I thought I was too old to believe in monsters. But then I found out that life wasn't quite how I'd thought it was."

"What happened?" the boy asked. He was mesmerized.

"The Pharaoh killed my family. One hundred innocent souls," the voice said. It did not sound sad. It did not sound like anything. But the boy understood. He knew what the voice had meant about monsters. The Pharaoh was a monster. He had hurt the voice and he had hurt the boy's family. The Pharaoh was a monster and he needed to be killed.

"He needs to be stopped," the boy said. The voice said nothing, but it didn't need to. The boy could almost see it nodding. In his head, it took the form of a powerful male with skin as tan as his own, and short hair the color of the moon on the outside world. A scar ran down his eye and somehow it meant everything the voice had said about evil and good and monsters.

"He needs to be killed," the boy said, and again the voice nodded in his mind.

"We'll kill the Pharaoh." Another nod. And then—

"Blasphemy."

The room went cold almost immediately. It alerted the boy to the presence of another before anything else did. He heard the voice that had sounded last, but he was so caught up with the voice that he heard in his head that he did not recognize it as his father's until he turned around and saw the man.

He did not try to say a word. He was young, but he was smart and he knew his father well to know that any words he could utter would only make things worse. He'd been caught. His father had found him in the room he was forbidden to enter, hands touching the cool gold of the ring as he talked to the spirit within it. That voice was curiously quiet now, and the boy wondered if it was because his father would be able to hear it if it were to talk.

His father grabbed his arm and wrenched him away from the stone table that held the items. It hurt, but the boy did not cry out. He expected his father to lead him out of the room and punish him, and he was terrified but he was ready for it. His father did not do that. The boy did not utter a word until the man grabbed the golden ring and held it in his own large hands.

"Let it go!" the boy said. His own words surprised him. He was not expecting to say them. But he was still feeling the frigid chill of the room, and he knew it was coming from the ring and he knew it was not because the voice was angry but because it didn't want to be held in the boy's father's hand any more than the boy wanted it to.

"You have disobeyed me. I told you not to go in here," the boy's father said.

"I don't care! Let it go! It doesn't belong with you!" the boy said. His father chuckled in a low way that was almost like the voice's chuckle, but too different. It was scary, much scarier. He didn't like it and it made him want to run away. But he couldn't run, not without the ring!

"My poor, stupid little son. Do you really think you can tell me what to do?" the boy's father asked.

"Let it go!" the boy said again. His father's face hardened in a way that made the boy shiver and the room grow colder.

"I'll let it go all right. I'll send it away to a place where it will never be able to poison your mind again with such traitorous words," the boy's father said.

His stride was long and powerful and the boy found that he could not keep up. The boy tried running, but the halls were not lit and he could not help but to stumble and fall in his hurry. He could not hear the voice in his mind but he imagined that he could see it again. It was not afraid like he was, but it was trying to get away and it could not. The boy reached his hand out to help and wasn't able to.

He did not remember being bitten, but he knew that he felt pain suddenly, and that his body was starting to not work and that he could not keep moving. His father was in front of him, laughing that terrible laugh that was like the voice's but was not, and then the golden glint of the ring was gone. The boy's vision was fading and he could not remember what his father had done with it. One moment it had been there and the next it had not.

"No! Give it back! Give it back!" the boy said. The voice from the ring had understood. The voice had known things. The voice had spoken of wondrous things that made the boy's mind race and his heart tell him to go out and do something. He did not want it gone. He could not have it gone.

His father was laughing and he sounded awful and strange and inhuman. His father was close to him and his deep eyes were constricted and tiny and full of something the boy didn't like to see. His father was picking him up because the boy could not walk anymore himself. His father's skin felt scaly and rough and all wrong. His father was all wrong. His father's laugh was hoarse and gravelly and his father's tongue was forked like a monster's.

The boy did not know what had happened to the ring. He went looking for it when he'd recovered from the snake's poison, but he was unable to ever find it. The found the key to the forbidden room and went into it to see if it had perhaps been returned to its rightful place, but it had not. The voice and the ring were gone.

A month later, when he turned ten, the boy was given another reason to hate the Pharaoh. His father had laughed and grinned the entire length of the time the knife had slid into the boy's skin and he had screamed. The Pharaoh and his father were monsters. The Pharaoh and his father needed to be killed. Monsters needed to be killed. The world should not have such monsters in it. Monsters who would kill innocent people and harm an innocent child. The boy thought that maybe it was his destiny. And he wasn't supposed to run away from his destiny.

When he dropped the golden rod, it landed in a puddle of wet blood. The boy did not pay it any mind. His sister and brother were unconscious and his father certainly wasn't going anywhere. The rod would be there when he returned for it. He was its master, after all.

The boy headed to the door he had seen his father leave from. The door that lead to the outside world. He swung it open and closed his eyes as the bright light blinded him. Slowly, he opened his eyes and took in the endless stretch of sand and blue sky around him. The wind blew by him and shifted the parts of his hair that were not wet down by liquid. The giggle started quietly. It spread through the boy like the warmth of a fire in a cold room, and then the boy was laughing in a way that reminded him of something, of someone. He looked to the sky and grinned in the same manner of a person he had envisioned in his head. Tomorrow was another day, and he was going to accept his destiny.


I honestly thought I had something to say down here. I suppose I do not! Actually, it was a bit hard writing Marik's father as I've talked about him a bit but never written him as a character before, so that was something new. Yeah that's it. I have nothing else to day. Okay! So I will hopefully get chapter twenty-nine up next Friday, and then we'll only have one more chapter left! So excited! So until then, remember to review! Thanks!