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"Yugi-Oh A Time to Every Purpose"
Act III: Atlantis
Chapter 37
"What's going on here?!" Vivian Wong cries out as she feels as if her very soul was being ripped out from within her well formed body just as the catacomb starts to quake and crumble.
Karen and Miho felt much the same as they silently witness the spectacle inside the inner sanctum. They could see even from where they were on the cave path the weird light show that encircled that cutie Yugi Moto his mousy brown girlfriend Tea Gardner standing in the middle of the chamber.
As strange wind currents and thunderbolts and vacuums of air out of nowhere whoosh by, Vivian feels something bizarre tingle inside of her being stir. She unconsciously takes a step backwards, her usual sense of balance caught off kilter by her irregularly pounding heart. But lucky enough for her, never off his game, Duke Devlin, luckily catches her fall to the rocky rubble at the base of the short stairwell she was stripping down.
"Glad I caught you!" Duke says rather flirtatiously as he pulls the leggy beauty close, full of bravado even if the normally overconfident young man was not quite sure what was going on himself. But wherever Yugi and Joey and the others went, the Duke was always ready to tag along, as he and Tristan, close at his heels, share a determined look as they rush with Vivian and Miho through the catacomb and into the chamber where it was all happening.
One by one, each person in the room begins to offer their sapped energies to keep focus on each point of light as it begins to surge through the time stream. Tea was half shellshocked to find that the Millennium Pendant was not the only thing glowing at her neck. It was also exuding from Tea's hands and feet and body and every other part of her being was exploding with light from every pore as the individual energies overwhelm her.
Feeling one with her pendant now, deep within her soul where the true power lay, Tea felt somehow this was so different from their round-trip to and from Egypt's past, some 3000 years before. But as all of those gathered offer their energies, Tea feels a surge within her bloodstream that now merged with the stream of time, and she knew she must push even further.
With one last look to Ishizu's endless dark eyes for direction, Tea reaches deep into herself, fighting off the fear that she would not only lose herself this time to the stream, but everyone else entrusting their souls to her care as well…
Her frightened blue eyes flash open to see Yugi's purple ones, and Tea pleads silently for his strength, which the King of Games freely gives.
But even Yugi's indomitable will could see that this massive undertaking required the energies of many souls to traverse 10,000 years, as he gratefully looks around at the determined to help faces of their friends who had become so dear over these years.
Joey, Tristan, Miho, Serenity, Duke, Vivian, Rebecca… Shadi, Ishizu, Odion, Marik, Kaiba, Pegasus…Bakura…
Yugi silent pledges to give his all for his love, for eternity, the woman to whom his soul would always belong beside…
When Tea closes her eyes, she feels not only Yugi's presence, as his hand squeezes hers tight, but a strange sense of another's presence suddenly enter her soul, as if beckoning to her.
It was as if that someone else she felt she had always known, but had kept inside the recesses of her heart was being revealed until the special moment of need. And through that other's soul, Tea has an overwhelming vision of Yugi – but not her Yugi.
The man her mind's eye was wearing shades of deep aqua's and turquoise, he smiling at her as he removes his aqua metal helmet to reveal a spiky shock of similarly styled aqua hair.
But as the scene becomes clearer, through another's cloudy dreams, Tea gasps at the man as he comes near to her, he having beautiful eyes just like her Yugi's. Deep, soulful, stunning – but there was only one of them.
The scar line straight down the right side of his face still looked fresh and raw from where his eye had been gouged out by what must've been a vicious claw.
The claw of a Great Leviathan.
"… Timaus…" Tea could feel someone else whisper the knight's hallowed name on her lips through her subconscious before she could even think to ask the question. She finds she was unable to stop her psychic body from reflexively racing to this knight's arms, Tea nearly fainting at the overwhelming thrill of his ardent kiss that made it feel she had been in his arms like this forever – and yet never…
And just as suddenly as this dream began, it ends when Timaus disappears. Tea feels his warmth, his aqua haze become enshrouded in darkness once again, slipping through the air as if her hands around his thinly armored body was grasping nothing but emptiness.
It was an emptiness that Theophilia – that other self through whom Tea had been glimpsing visions – obviously had felt keenly for ten long empty centuries alone without him. For her heroic Timaus' soul had been trapped within his crystallized Dragon for that long until recently in Yugi's fight with Dartz in the beginning of the 21st century had the three legendary dragons finally been awakened.
But after that, what? What became of Timaus, Hermos, and Criteus' souls? They returned to a peaceful existence within the Dominion of the Beasts, no longer trapped, right?
Maybe it their souls were no longer encased in crystal, but without their other half, their hearts were just as equally frozen in an unattainable love's icy grip.
Are your memories of him still so intense you could still feel the heat of his kiss like this here where you are, Theophilia? That is your name, isn't it? Confused, but trying to keep it all together, Tea glances around at the surrounding new interior of her awakening mind. It was showing an eerily dark realm on the horizon with only a few spots of light, tiny floating rocks of archipelago islands buoyant on the endless sea of black waters as Tea teeters upon one of the reefs jutting out over its crashing wave surface.
It's so dark and cold… Tea strains to see through the clouds of the dark realm, her time magic parting the waves to glimpse Atlantis as she reaches out towards the ancient city of Theophilia's birth. The bright young woman begins to grasp at what truly was at stake here at last. As, on the Atlantean horizon traversing over the dark seas with her radiance, seven other sparkles respond to that light's beckoning call, it appeared, over the ruins of the far-off city that rose into the dark sky.
The lights overpowered it with each luminescent glistening and rainbow colored sparkle of the stars themselves would envy. Those points of light set ablaze in a ring of fire between one another, as if trying to show Tea something important.
The bright lights one by one suddenly flicker off, leaving only Theophilia's golden aura for a few wavering seconds more, until it too fades into the encompassing darkness, leaving Tea all alone and shivering cold again.
That is, until suddenly a light illuminates right behind her, dazzling to behold.
"Tea, I'm here." The cold and the darkness evaporate into the arms of her Yugi's unconquerable warmth and light. Tea is grateful to feel her guy's strong muscles envelop her shaking, unsure psi-body with his own soulful presence wrapping around hers from behind as she glances around to see his pair of gorgeous violet eyes.
Tea is half ashamed and blushing to think that just a few minutes ago she was in another man's arms, and quite enjoying the affair. But no, that was a different her, Tea's own 'other me', who was being drowned in wild kisses by her own true love.
Timaus…
The warm sensation on her reddening cheeks is nothing compared to the intense heat of throbbing energies pulsating suddenly behind them both.
Tea briefly glimpses all of her friends, time traveling companions of all who were present in the underground Egyptian antechambers, even a few faces unfamiliar to her eyes – now standing on the craggy skerry she was upon floating amidst the sea of utmost darkness.
Over Yugi's sinewy shoulder, Tea's searching eyes connect with Ishizu's that were telling Tea that she knows what she must do from where the dark skinned woman was standing beside Shadi and his blank stare. Then there was Serenity's frail, still groggy smile, with Kaiba's protective eyes only upon her; Marik's guarded orbs survey of the scene with the fascinated redheaded archaeologist named Karen at his back; Vivian's rather angry glance flies to and fro until they finally landed back on Duke's saucy smirk; Rebecca's absolutely inquisitive peepers were complemented by Ryo's equally inquisitive, but more tentative look at their unidentified new surroundings; Miho's unmasked fear with her tight closed eyes as she was clinging to Tristan's bit brow neck where they stood in front of a dreamy, strangely quiet Maximillion Pegasus and stoic tower of strength Odion.
Finally Tea's gaze lands upon one last set of friends – but Mai Valentine's eyes were closed and unconscious with only a tiny piece of her soul left behind. But that tiny strand of hope was what kept Joey Wheeler going, as his troubled eyes down at Mai look pleadingly up to Tea with that silent plea for help.
Her eyes locked with Yugi's strong assuring gaze, both determined to answer Joey's unsaid entreaty.
Tea feels the souls of all those who accepted her prayerful invitation being answered within her. With her energies rising, Tea slowly becomes aware that the power to traverse time and space and swap souls wasn't of her Millennium Pendant, it was within her own soul that powered the golden item before.
Her mind opens to infinite possibilities with that fantasized revelation turning into reality.
Yugi could feel his love's eyes begging wordlessly for everyone gathered to give all their strength and hope and prayers so that they could safely reach their desired destination of Atlantis. Yugi's pure golden heart donates every personal bit of himself to strengthen his Tea, even as his time traveling psychic form quickly grows fainter by the moment, drained by the time vortex's pull. But he continues to doggedly give his all to Tea, trusting her implicitly to guide them all and seek a way to heal Mai. And maybe also find the rest of the pieces to this new enigmatic puzzle, just as she had always held the pieces to his enigmatic heart…
Yugi's own transparent eyes widen as Tea's closed ones accumulating energy suddenly snap open. A definite glow of aquamarine radiates from behind her pupils from deep within as she reaches to tap her ultimate powers, achieving true strength as her formerly blue eyes transform into a beautiful sea of cyan…
FLASH!
Yugi is blinded by the flash of aqua light, as are they all, when in that millisecond of Tea's first awakening, they are all transported in their psionic forms through ancient time and space to travel past places and eras and bodies with like souls not their own yet again…
All with the fervent hope to accomplish the dream for all of them to live a peaceful, rewarding, heroic existence – starting now at the Alpha, the source and the commencement of where it all began…
… Atlantis…
Where it all began – and also where it all began to end…
As every one of these important souls are immersed in the aquamarine light and let it wash over them, their spirits cross the darkened seas following those points of light on the horizon.
Before the waters descended darkness on the city, before the end came to a time when there was only light…
Yugi feels Tea's body transmute into that light in his arms, even as he loses his own consciousness of everything but her aqua shine encompassing his soul.
But it was as if he had seen this all before, and felt it so exquisitely… once upon a time…
… Aqua streams of light rain down from the heavens…
It was within the ambient aqua haze that Yugi Moto groggily reawakens on this particularly sunny morning as beams of light stream through the ornate columns surrounding his bedchamber.
Well, disappointingly enough to a rather verile young man – in any time – it was not Tea's newly awakened magical body wrapped within his arms sleeping softly beside him (clothed or not, as Tea, his wife and Pharoahess in their era in ancient Egypt was first revealed to him, wow) – but rather his own version of an aqua haze.
Namely a thick shock of cyan bangs covering his eyes through the morning sunlight glistening through the open balcony view as Yugi awakens with the morning sun.
Eyes? Did I say eye-s?
"Why am I half blind!?" Yugi whispers in an eerie sense of shock to find not only Tea not beside him, but also something else that belonged to him was startlingly missing – also known as his right eye.
It didn't hurt, nor sting or ache as he would have imagined something like that would, but it was quite a frightening surprise to wake up with such a stark visual impairment as Yugi finds that he could only physically open the one eye. So that meant he can only see in two dimension, no matter how hard he tried to visualize better.
His fingers run trembling over the long scar running straight down his face, consolidating the fact that his right eye in this body was nonfunctional – and never would be again.
Timaus… I really have become Timaus… Yugi smiles proudly to his own little egotistical male pride welling up in becoming so closely affiliated with such a noble courageous hero from a far-off time. He brushes loosely the wild aqua strands of hair back from his eyes – ahem,.eye- singular, Yugi! – As he sits up in yet another ornate room and bed of a notable personage.
Only, my Queen is missing this time. Yugi both muses and worries for his missing chosen mate in life – all of my lives, it seems – as he rises with a sigh of disappointment of his Tea not in attendance here with him. Yugi leans against one of the tall stone pillars to gaze out upon the new scenery and new time – actually ancient old scenery in an ancient old time – with a curious awestruck eye at the vast awesomeness of the city of Atlantis beneath him.
Yugi mildly wonders where all of his other friends had landed in this foreign city as he soaks in the energizing sun for renewed strength to face this Atlantean day.
Miles away, in a secret underground lair…
Joey Wheeler was the kind of guy to have the kind of dreams about women that would've made a cat blush. Of course, Mai Valentine wasn't the sort of pussy who ever blushed, she and Joey making quite the pair.
Joey, in the half dreamy stupor he usually awakened in, wraps his arms familiarly around the lithe, voluptuous warm body in the cozy bed beside him. Just as he did in every dream of the sort with Mai Valentine, who never had a complaint in the morning.
But the body lying beside Joey was neither warm, nor lithe, nor squishily voluptuous. Quite the opposite, in fact. By the feel of it, Joey had been groping his hands and arms around to feel around a pretty cool to the touch and rock hard bumpy torso, with not an inch of squishy bust to offer. And their shared bed was neither nice, fluffy, nor cozy. More like damp and cold…
Besides, the sent of the unconscious body Joey was pulling into an intimate embrace was definitely not that of Mai's thick perfumed variety – nor was it that of a female at all.
"Wahh!" Joey was quite vocal about his disgusted shock of finding a man in his bed.
Of course, he just noticed that the dark rocky and dirty ground he was lying on was not a bed at all. In fact Joey was fully clothed and caped in full armor. Whoever's body he swapped with this time had obviously been standing when his soul was switched with this ancient one. Same goes for both he and his fellow caped and armored friend.
They had collapsed in a heap when that crazy soul swapping thing Tea does now happened minutes ago. So, after passing out with their heavy armor and massive helmets on, in such close proximity, they had probably bonked each other out cold.
They just ended up splat beside each other. So it was perfectly natural for Joey to grope whoever was there, because of course he expected it to be Mai. Who else? She's got the hots for me! At least that's what the all-American red-blooded male in New Yorker Joey Wheeler hoped.
Yech! I was hugging some guy! Eech! Wondered where Mai got those tight muscles from overnight…
"…hmm?... What…? WHEELER?! GET YOUR FILTHY MITTS OFF ME, YOU PERVERTED JERK!"
Oh nice. Not just some guy. Him. This is going to be fun.
"Chill yer cucumbers, Kaiba! Sheesh! I just woke up and thought you were Mai, dats all! Ya don't gotta go and scream my ear off!" Joey quickly extricates his arms from grasping around Seto Kaiba's viciously angry, muscular chest.
Joey scrambles to stand in the pitch darkness, rubbing his painful ears.
"DO I LOOK IN ANY WAY LIKE YOUR STUPID GIRLFRIEND?!" Roars Kaiba, his perfectly sculpted body untouchable by all, save her… And he would especially not be hugged by her jack-blank of a dumb brother.
"Hey! Mai is NOT stupid! You take that back, Rich Boy! She saved Serenity back there and now she needs our help, you got dat, Loser? We got to find both my sister and hopefully Mai too in this freaky time zone." Joey quickly recovers from the red cheeked embarrassment (or was it merely the reflection of the fiery red hair upon his own soulful transfer recipient of Hermos' helmet and armor?) of waking up with Kaiba in his arms.
Joey angrily states their new mission to find both sister and girlfriend, even if Seto Kaiba seemed to be his only partner currently available in this mess so far.
Why can't I ever end up in a dark cave, in the middle of nowhere, displaced in time facing danger with a pal like Yugi –er, Timaus- more than this blue haired son of a jerk, critical Criteus a.k.a. Seto Kaiba?!
"… Blue hair? Hehehe, Hee hee hee! You sure look funny with that color, Moneybags!" Joey uses humor to diffuse every situation, and he found nothing more funny than seeing Seto Kaiba with deep blue hair sticking up in every which way after the taller man pulls off his similarly Navy blue shaded helmet.
"Shut up, Wheeler! You're no one to talk with your blinking red hairdo! You look like some kind of fruity freak! At least blue is a cool, adult color." Kaiba retaliates and scoops up Criteus' helmet to put it back on over his blue head smugly.
"Hmph! You got something against redheaded Wheelers?! Because if you do, I couldn't be a happier guy to hear it! Serenity's had nothing but trouble since she met you!" Joey shakes his gloved fists in the air, rubbing his head after crashing into a low hanging stalactite as the tall men, mid-argument, begin to stride across the cave walkway at their full very tall heights. Kaiba/ Criteus' helmet was nearly touching the cave's stalactite dripping ceiling.
"Hmph." Kaiba grunts as well, with no other response to defensively offer. He turns his back on Joey's anger, epithets notwithstanding, as he puts aside his own at the mention of Serenity's calming name.
After all, the severe businessman Seto Kaiba had gotten involved in all this madness for her. And for her he would continue to put up with this stupid farce, even if it meant teaming up with the man he despised most of the world. Explicitly one Joey Wheeler.
"Here. Let's keep that redhead protected." There was a double entendre meaning to his words as Kaiba kicks Hermos' fiery red helmet over to Joey until it rolls to stop at the other man's feet.
Joy looks at the knight's helmet and picks it up, dusting it off with a serious glint coming to his eye before he plunks it onto his aching head.
"Yeah. And Mai's golden one, too." Joey nods in agreement with Kaiba for once who nods back in commiseration. He then follows the tall booted, dark blue caped and wide shouldered armored man deeper into the cave, both of them sensing – as had the original Criteus and Hermos before them – something that had brought them into this deep dank cave as well, that it led to both their missing, endangered loves, Serenity and Mai.
Or whoever the Hell they're bodies are called in this Atlantis era of time.
Though neither of them had any reason why, both for the type of man who would follow their gut instincts more than question it in whichever direction it pointed them to find their greatest treasures.
Mai needs me…
Serenity needs me…
… I'll save you, I swear it.
Though neither heard the other's inner thoughts, both stubborn young men were more alike than they would either admit or care to know. Both Joey and Kaiba would stomp fearlessly through the darkness of any time, any place, to walk into any danger, even side-by-side, to save the women they loved…
Who in turn, would give anything to save them…
Thanks for entering into Act 3: Atlantis with us, YugiOh friends!
This Summer I intend to get as many chapters typed up of my beloved Yugi time travel tale!
I hope you have as much fun as I did writing it as you read along on this magical card role-playing ride!
I'd love to hear your reviews!
God bless!
HarukaKou