Chapter 35: Stumble

Yami wished he could stay at Yori's side forever. Let the world pass him by, let it go with all its battles, all its darkness, all its cruelties. Let him wrap his fingers in hers and close his eyes and see a blackness that wasn't cursed.

But the world was still around him, the air thick and stagnant and mocking just as much as the shadows.

So he turned his back on her and left.

She's human. She's alive. She's radiant.

He turned his face to the sun, but he still felt cold.

What are you?

He reached a hand out as he walked, scraped the pads of his fingers against the coarse brick siding of the theater. He could feel just like anyone. He was as real as anyone. As real as—

A king.

But he wasn't a king. If he'd ever been one at all. There was nothing behind him but shadows and nothing brighter ahead.

What are you?

The puzzle thudded against his chest with every step, heavy on its chain and heavier in his mind. His prison. His home.

No, he wasn't real.

He didn't know what he was.

His knees wavered, throat tightened. As he lowered his arm, a stripe of reflected sunlight crossed his gaze, thrown by the beveled edge of his Duel Disk.

And maybe that was all he had.

He was a duelist.

He cleared his cards from the previous duel, shuffled and reset his deck. The movement was familiar. Comforting. In a duel, there was no room for any thoughts outside the match itself. He needed a duel more than he needed water and air. He scanned the streets ahead of him for any sign of duelists, any sign of Ghouls.

"Show yourself, Marik!" he shouted suddenly, an explosion of sound and feeling.

A mother pulled her child closer, eyeing him as they passed on the sidewalk. But the streets remained empty of duelists. He would have to root out his next opponent from the weeds.

So be it.

And he tried to ignore the ache in the back of his mind, the silence that had fallen between him and Yuugi the minute he'd loosed the shadows on Pandora. It was too much to handle, just like the questions about himself were too much to handle.

All that mattered was one thing: He was a duelist.

And a duelist needed an opponent.

Marik felt it when Pandora lost. Though the consistent mind-link he shared with his Ghouls was limited at best, it was enough for him to feel a shiver of pain and hear the faint echo of screams as the shadows ripped Pandora's mind to pieces. It left behind tremors in Marik's fingers. With a snarl, he grabbed the glass he'd been drinking from not minutes before and threw it with his full weight against the wall. Glass and ice cubes scattered. The dark orange liquid streaked the white paint.

Odion chose that moment to enter, and the Millennium Rod turned on him before Marik could think twice. Odion dropped to his knees with a grunt, head bowed beneath the power of Marik's mind as he lashed out.

Marik's eyes widened. He lowered the rod, although he couldn't quite release it.

"You should have announced yourself," he spat, as if it were Odion's fault in any way.

"Yes, Master Marik," Odion said, as if Marik's response had been reasonable.

"Shut up." Marik screwed his eyes closed, pressing his fists to his forehead, willing the raging of his mind to calm. Physical, mental, spiritual—he no longer bothered to track the source of the pain the rod left behind when he overused it. It was simply a part of life.

Without a word, Odion moved about the cabin, wiping the wall clean, sweeping the remnants of glass into the trash. Marik watched him through slitted eyes as the pain ebbed into a dull ache. It always seemed to calm faster when Odion was around, not that Marik ever told him.

There was a lot Marik never told his brother.

After cleaning everything, Odion refilled a glass with ice and juice, setting it on the table beside Marik.

Only then did he speak.

"What's happened?"

His deep voice was a familiar rumble that pacified Marik even further. He finally released the rod, sliding it through his belt. When he responded, his own voice was level.

"The bracelet user's learned a few new tricks," he said. "The spirit of the Millennium Ring is more than a fairy tale, and both are on the pharaoh's side."

He lifted the new glass carefully, agitated the ice, and took a drink that he felt the cold of all the way down.

After a drawn-out silence that meant Odion was pondering, he said, "Perhaps you need to increase your own forces."

Marik clinked a fingernail against the glass. Set it down once more.

"You're right," he said. "It's time to stop drawing the game out."

It was time to claim the final god card.

Of course, he'd hoped Odion would claim it in Battle City using Osiris, but when he'd lashed out at his brother's entrance, he'd seen clearly in the older man's mind how he'd won all his locator cards and returned promptly to Marik's side—all without an appearance by Seto Kaiba. Odion was too efficient; Marik could hardly punish him for that.

Marik flexed his hands, clenched his fists until the knuckles whitened like the bones were peeking through. When he'd sent Ghouls out to collect Yuugi's friends, they'd returned with 50/50 results, and the ones arranging duels were faring even worse. Odion had already served well.

"I suppose it's my turn again." Marik smirked.

After outlining his plan, Marik exited the ship, Odion in tow.

His motorcycle was waiting on the dock, right where he'd left it. He traced a hand along the edge of it, lifted the helmet from the seat. The engine roared to life with calming familiarity. He straightened the bike, knocked his heel into the kickstand, and revved the engine just to feel the energy pulse.

Beyond the docks where he currently stood, all of Domino waited. Some people thought they knew the battles they were in for.

They were wrong.

"Be safe, Master Marik," Odion said.

But Marik hadn't come for safety; he'd come for war.

"Have the Ghouls prepare the dueling site for me here on the dock," he said.

Then he loosed the engine, and the bike roared forward, carrying Marik into the thick of the hunt.

After Yami left, Yori moved on autopilot. She picked up the remote first, pressing buttons until she found the one that finally silenced the horrifying wail of the saw. If she could have broken the blade, she would have, but she settled for crushing the remote beneath her heel. Then she reclaimed her switchblade and fixed her deck.

Only then did she check on Pandora, who was still breathing and twitching but showed no signs of recovery. Frankly, Yori didn't care if he ever recovered. Maybe she should have felt bad about that, but she didn't.

Yuugi would have. It was that thought alone that compelled her to reach for her cell phone and dial for an ambulance. They told her to stay on the line, but she pretended bad reception and hung up. They had the address already.

She crouched by Pandora.

"That 'little boy' you kept mocking?" she said. "If you make it through, you have him to thank."

His eyes never moved to her; they were fixed on something she couldn't see. She caught his arm as it spasmed, reaching beneath his Duel Disk to unlatch it.

"You weren't making good use of this anyway, honey." She smiled sweetly.

She slid the device off his arm, and he resumed twitching as if nothing had happened. After setting it aside, she fished his wallet from his pocket. He had more of an offering for her than the Biscuit Ghoul.

"And let's be real," she muttered, "you owe me a lot more."

She tucked the stack of twenties in her pocket before returning Pandora's wallet. Then she scooped up his Duel Disk, moved to the edge of the stage, and hurled it as far into the audience seats as she could. It rebounded off a chair in the center of the auditorium and crashed to the floor, out of sight.

A faint smile crossed her face as she remembered Mokuba talking about a Duel Disk designed for throwing. Dueling had never been much of a whimsical thing for Yori. Even if she enjoyed it, at the core, it was about survival. Music was that way, too. Maybe one day things would be different.

But not in Battle City.

She remembered standing on another stage looking at another empty auditorium as Jiro put in time-and-a-half preparing for the band's shot at fame.

She remembered waiting for another ambulance at another abandoned building on the day she first met Yami.

So much had changed for her in Domino; so much had improved. But the fight for survival was always the same. And it was always on her heels.

Her leg tensed, and ridiculous as it was, she had to look down to be sure it hadn't been severed after all—that she hadn't deliriously imagined her escape. She sat at the edge of the stage and pulled her legs close, tucking them against her body and rubbing her calves until she was convinced she was fine. She was fine. She was fine.

And she never fully turned her back on Pandora.

When the paramedics finally arrived, they stared at the dueling ring like it was something out of a freak show, and rightly so. Yori told them Pandora was a magician practicing an escape act.

"I told him not to," she said, wiping at a few tears that weren't entirely faked. Her shaking hands weren't faked at all. "But I guess he never listens to his assistants."

"I think I saw this guy's show once," one of the two medics said, eyes wide.

They loaded the failed magician onto a stretcher, carefully strapping him down. When they asked for more details, Yori said he'd suddenly collapsed into seizures in the middle of the act; no, he'd never done that before; no, she didn't have any contact information for his family.

"I don't really know anything about him but his stage name," she said. "He only hired me for the act today."

The second medic eyed her Duel Disk with obvious distaste. "You're part of the tournament?"

"He just pulled me right off the street and said he had something better for me than dueling. I thought it was interesting at first, but then it all went so wrong."

They asked her to give contact information, and she gave her usual fake info with ease. When they asked her to come to the hospital, she declined.

"I think I'd just like to forget this ever happened," she said. "I'm sorry."

"Of course." The first medic smiled gently. "A word of advice: Next time a stranger pulls you off the street and says you can be part of something big, you turn around and walk the other way."

She nodded.

They loaded Pandora into the waiting ambulance, and it pulled away from the building, lights blazing. Yori haunted the doorway for a moment, looking out at the Domino streets. A duel was starting down near the corner, but Yami wasn't part of it. He was nowhere to be seen.

For just a moment, Yori imagined tossing her Duel Disk like she'd done to Pandora's. She imagined walking to the station and buying a ticket out of town. Maybe even a ticket out of Japan. Maybe she could climb on a boat and sail until the horizon curved and the stars sank down into the ocean and everything turned blue.

She checked her deck, checked her Duel Disk. Then she took a deep breath and re-entered Battle City.