Chapter 36: Silence
There was a storm gathering over Domino, and Seto Kaiba was at the heart of it. Each challenger ran beneath the crash of blue lightning. Each opponent trembled in his wake, whimpering as they stared into the face of Obelisk, the face of death itself. Seto tracked down the Ghouls that had invaded his city and cowed them one by one, waiting for the moment his god would clash with another.
And Mokuba was on the radio, cheering him on, proclaiming his skill to anyone within earshot.
Seto smirked.
Only two locator cards stood between him and the finals.
Only one opponent stood between him and another god card.
What had been a brilliant sky began to turn cloudy, as if the elements themselves feared the power that had been unleashed. The overcast city stretched before Seto. He could imagine his steps carrying him down full streets, could feel himself looming over the buildings as if he were Obelisk himself. When he clenched his fists, his bones sparked blue.
A Ghoul threw himself in Seto's path like a clueless man before a train. The caped man stood with his feet apart, his chest puffed out, just as all the others had. He spouted his empty threats while Seto watched the man's throat, watched it strain, watched the veins bulge.
The man intended to cheat. Seto saw it in his stance, saw the confidence born of arrangement rather than skill.
Seto didn't care.
The man had a weapon—a backup plan that glared obviously from the bulge in his shirt.
Seto didn't care.
The duel began.
And the duel ended.
And the Ghoul was unconscious in the street.
And Seto was claiming his fifth locator card.
And the storm was crashing on Battle City.
As the sun slanted in the afternoon sky, clouds began to filter out the blue. Joey's previous good humor muted with the light. After the Haga duel, he heard of an opponent who had won the national championship before Kaiba.
And Joey leapt forward to challenge.
The kid was arrogant. He was crass. He took one look at Joey and announced to the crowd that his final locator card was basically throwing itself at his feet.
The crowd laughed.
Joey bared his teeth in a grin.
For the first two rounds, the kid taunted, played to the crowd, reminded everyone of the opponents he'd already sent scampering in the tournament.
Normally, Joey would have blustered, but now he did something different: He listened. And he heard the echo of a bunch of street runners, tough guys Joey had faced during his gang days.
In the third round, Joey made a bad play. The kid predicted he'd wet his pants when he lost. Joey heard the echo of Hirutani, remembered being chased down on the street after he'd quit the gang, being dragged back to an empty warehouse to face his punishment.
The kid played a monster stronger than anything in Joey's deck. Joey's forehead beaded with sweat. His wall monsters disappeared one after another.
The kid laughed.
The crowd laughed.
Joey laughed.
They stopped.
Fire roared in the pit of his stomach, blazed in his eyes. He stood on the field the way he'd seen the pharaoh stand when he beat the Exodia Ghoul. He called on the courage he'd promised to develop. He clenched his fists and felt the remembered pain of split knuckles and bleeding skin. He clenched his jaw and tasted the remembered sweet burst of victory. As he drew a card, he counted silently to himself how many street fights he'd won over the years. As he played his hand, arranged his strategy, he recounted how many impossible odds he'd stared down in cold, abandoned alleys.
As his opponent's lifepoints scrolled to zero, he pictured how many times he'd stood hunched over the sink at home, washing blood from his face and hands, bandaging cuts, pouring alcohol over scrapes and hissing curses through his teeth.
After each of those fights, he'd stared into the mirror with bloodshot eyes, and he'd smiled.
The kid cursed and screamed, throwing a fit right in the middle of the street while people in the crowd shifted uncomfortably. Joey stood firm, and in the end, the kid threw down his locator card and rarest card.
And as Joey picked them up, he rubbed his knuckles and smiled.
Yori felt like her entire life had been one long battle. The opponents shuffled, but the field was always set, and she was always ready. Sometimes she would lie awake at night, staring out windows at city lights set against a black sky, and the city would change, and the window would change, but she never did. She was always running from a fight, running to a fight, trapped in a fight, scared of a fight, thrilling in a fight. And as she searched for invisible stars in a dark sky, as the glaringly bright lights fogged up the city and drowned nature, she couldn't help wondering if her life was filled with violence because she sought it out. Maybe she wished for it, called to it silently. Maybe she loved it.
Then day would break and the dark thoughts would retreat before the sun, and she felt crazy for ever thinking she loved violence.
As she threw herself back into Battle City, the cloud-filled sky above her began to darken.
She walked the streets with purpose, eyes narrowed, heart pumping. One duelist looked at her, prepped to challenge, then hesitated as Yori made eye contact. She didn't know what the girl saw in her face, but the challenge never came, and Yori passed silently by.
She was looking for a Ghoul.
She found one in the business strip. He laughed at her challenge, refused to play with anyone but the pharaoh—until she baited him with a single-copy card, purposely hinting at gods, purposely vague.
The match was set in the basement of a building. Yori heard the door lock behind them. The room was airtight, and she recognized a gas valve when she saw one. The Ghoul laughed, reveled in the mortal challenge he'd created. They were on a natural timer. One or both of them might pass out before the duel ended, and unconsciousness meant death. It was about survival. It was about endurance. Though it was decided over trading cards, no part of it was a game. Perhaps the Ghoul even had a lighter or match and was willing to kill them both if Yori won.
Yori should have run screaming from the building. She should have broken the door down through sheer will, clawed her way out if necessary.
She was sickened by the twisted mind that had created the challenge. Her stomach did tie itself in knots, and cold sweat dotted the back of her neck.
But she snapped her deck in place.
And she didn't understand why.
Except that she had come looking for a fight, and here it was. Except that she couldn't get the image out of her mind of Yami's red eyes and Pandora's red suit, and no matter how she turned her head, her ears rang with the high-pitched whirring of a saw.
And when she looked at this Ghoul, she saw that Ghoul.
And her throat burned.
And her heart burned.
And her eyes burned.
And the duel began.
Yami won his fifth locator card in a haze. Just an overzealous player who wanted to steal the title of King of Games. Not related to Marik. But any opponent would do, so he accepted the challenge, faced it, won. And as soon as the lifepoints and monsters faded, his mind filled with the same ghosts he'd tried to leave behind.
The woman cursed him for stealing her victory. Tears hovered in her eyes.
Yami wondered who she was off the dueling field. He wondered what she did in her day-to-day life, who she went home to at night. She certainly had more to her identity than just dueling.
Yuugi hadn't appeared at all. Hadn't said a word.
Down the street again. Barely seeing the people. Deaf to any attention they might have paid him.
One locator card remained between him and the finals. He would be there already if not for the battles he'd fought without gaining a locator card, thanks to Marik. But what would the finals even give him? All he had was Ishizu's word that he could discover his past through this tournament. If he didn't find it here, he might be searching forever.
If he did find it here, what would he find?
Who are you?
He saw a Ghoul standing at the end of the street.
And his mind burst through the haze.
He broke into a run. The Ghoul watched him for a moment, then turned and ran as well. He entered a building. Yami pursued. Just in time to see the Ghoul disappear into an elevator.
Top floor. It would have to be.
Yami waited, tracking the elevator lights with his eyes as he slowly ascended. Twentieth floor. Twenty-first. Twenty-second. Thirtieth. Thirty-first. His heart thudded in the cavity of his chest. Steady. Solid.
The Ghoul waited on the top floor, at the stairs that led to the roof. Yami followed once more. Silent. Certain.
The skyscraper had a glass roof and a hollow center. According to the Ghoul, as soon as the duel ended, Yami would fall to a glorious death amid shattered glass.
The dark sky above them murmured with thunder. The puzzle stirred with heat.
The Ghoul hadn't finished the last gory details of his plan before they were surrounded by a world of shadows.
A new opponent stood before Joey. She was an American tournament champion. She was tall, calm, collected, intimidating. She'd been winning tournaments since before Joey lost his first duel to Yuugi.
And when she spoke, Joey heard his mom. In the condescension, in the assumptions, in the predictions of how he would amount to nothing. She cut him down, tore him apart. He had 300 lifepoints left.
But he dug in his heels and held on. He gambled it all on a coin toss, on a smoke screen, on a last-ditch effort.
And when the smoke cleared and he stumbled off the battlefield, he had his fifth locator card.
Yori fought with quick attacks and short breaths. She could smell the sour gas, could feel panic closing on her mind.
But while the Ghoul taunted, while her mind told her to retreat, she kept seeing that horned mask and bowtie. The grin that stretched too wide. The hand wagging the remote that determined her future.
And she saw Yami's face. The way he blamed himself for a madness he'd never started, a madness he'd only continued to save her.
She tore through the Ghoul's defenses, slaughtered his monsters.
He countered, and she redirected the attack.
He laid a trap, and she shattered it.
He boosted his lifepoints.
She attacked him directly.
Her monster's jaws snapped closed on his body, and though his torso broke through the hologram, he screamed in real pain.
And Yori thought of Marik.
Shadow games were always determined by the challenger's method of attack, and a shadow duel was no different. The Ghoul had wanted Yami to fall to his death.
And in this duel, someone would.
They both stood on a fragile platform of shadows that cracked and splintered with each attack. As their lifepoints dropped, the edges of the platform fell in chunks to the darkness below. The first player to reach zero would be left with nothing to stand on.
The Ghoul screamed and blustered at the unfairness, at the unbelievability of it. He demanded a release to the normal world, just as they all did. Demanded a game on his own terms.
They never understood that the terms were theirs.
Yami sent his monster to attack, and the outer half of his opponent's platform dropped into the abyss.
Joey stared into the eyes of his opponent. The man crowed his premature victory, celebrating the attack that had brought Joey to his knees. Although the man's eyes were brown, like his own, Joey saw blue. Ice blue. Corporate blue. He saw another opponent standing over him, heard the cold insults.
Joey had been on his knees before, and it was the one defeat that still haunted him.
The gas encroached on her clean air. Yori struggled to keep her breathing measured, keep her heart from racing.
The Ghoul had no such restraint. He gasped in air. His chest heaved. His eyes spat fire, and his mouth spat the same.
He had 200 lifepoints left, but he'd managed to pull a stunt that gave him a 3000-point defense monster. And all he had to do was make the duel last. All it took for Yori to lose was to run out of time.
And the clock had been ticking for far too long.
She took another shallow breath.
The Ghoul was frozen on his turn, hand clutching between his four cards, apparently unable to find hope in any of them. His eyes darted wildly, bloodshot and panicked. He whimpered. Sweat rolled down his face.
With 100 lifepoints remaining, he stood on an island barely large enough for his feet. Meanwhile, Yami hadn't lost a single point. His win was secure. They both knew it. It was why the Ghoul was panicking.
The hollow darkness waited below, and the shadows around Yami purred, egged him on toward victory.
Minutes ticked by, and the Ghoul wasted out his turn in indecision until the play automatically passed to Yami.
Yami drew a card.
He ordered Valkyrion to attack.
Joey held his ground, but barely. He stalled for time. And as the man across from him increased his attacks, something about him changed. He stepped to the side, and it could have been a drunken stagger. He shouted an insult, and it could have been a demand for Joey to get a beer, to go out for groceries, to clean up a mess that wasn't his.
As Joey stared forward, mouth parted slightly, tongue dry, he stared into the face of his father.
An attack rushed forward, shattered against Joey's defenses, and it could have been a bottle.
But his defenses held.
Joey Wheeler could withstand.
He drew a card.
Joey Wheeler could withstand.
He played a monster.
Joey Wheeler could withstand.
But withstanding wasn't enough. He needed more. He wanted more. He wanted courage, wanted purpose, wanted heart. He wanted not to withstand, but to stand—as his own man, separate from the heartless predictions of both parents, separate from the wounded bully he'd been on the streets, separate and strong against the onslaught of a mocking world.
He wanted to stand like his best friend did.
So Joey Wheeler stood.
As Yami's monster charged forward across the gaping space, the Ghoul's face drained of color. He seemed ready to collapse and fall without any force needed. The shadows cackled in anticipated triumph.
That was when Yami noticed.
That was when he realized.
The shadows were void of whispers for punishment. They were eager for blood, eager for a loss, but the crowding weight on his mind was absent; there was no warning of cheating, no call for justice and blood.
They always cheated.
He'd never faced an opponent in the shadows who didn't break the rules. Even Pegasus had used his Millennium Eye for an unfair advantage. The only reason he'd escaped full punishment was his own command of the shadows.
And suddenly, the duel looked different to his eyes.
Instead of standing on the remnants of shadows about to shatter, he saw his opponent standing on the edge of a castle tower.
Instead of a Ghoul, he saw Kaiba.
"If you win, I'll jump." Kaiba's eyes haunted him, ghostly blue. "You know what I would do in your shoes, so kill me, Yuugi! Kill me if you can!"
It had been an impossible situation. Both of them had to win to enter Pegasus's castle. Both of them had to enter the castle to save someone dear—Kaiba's brother, Yuugi's grandpa.
But it wasn't just for the sake of Yuugi's grandpa that Yami had ordered his attack; it had been because he was a duelist and nothing else. Victory was his only goal. If he lost, the line of duels would come to an end, and he would be trapped in the darkness again with no truth to cling to.
If he won, he had an identity.
If he lost, he had nothing.
Valkyrion raised his sword, wings spread like an avenging angel. The Ghoul flinched away. In just a moment, Yami would win the duel, secure his place in the finals, and move forward.
But he wasn't just a duelist.
He was human.
In the duel against Kaiba, it had been Yuugi's voice that stopped the attack.
This time, it was Yami's.
Yori coughed, breathed through her shirt. The air tasted heavy. Her mind felt thick. Black tendrils swam in her vision.
Her opponent had lost all his bravado. Everything he tried was a desperate attempt to hang on, but that tenacity would cost them both their lives.
This time, when she looked at the Ghoul, she didn't see Pandora. She saw herself. That bull-headed tenacity was hers as she went charging into battle after battle for no reason except that there was nothing in life she understood more than conflict. When she'd broken her arm in a street fight once, she hadn't even waited for it to heal before using it to punch someone again. The pain was nothing more than she deserved. If her arm would have never healed correctly, she would have deserved it even more.
And here she was again. If she'd have lost her leg for real, no doubt she would have told the paramedics to stitch it up real fast and give her crutches so she could get right back in the tournament. If she were to die young, it wouldn't be the fault of her enemies or an Egyptian god, not really. It would be no one's fault but her own. The violence was in her blood.
But so what?
Rather than worrying that fighting was all she was good at and that some part of her loved it, she should have spent her time worrying about what she was fighting for.
She'd entered the ring with Pandora because she saw Yuugi and Ryou in trouble. She didn't regret that. If she'd lost a leg, lost her life, even, she still wouldn't have regretted it. The same was true when she'd disobeyed her gang leader to go after the man who'd paralyzed her friend.
But this fight? If it took her life or the Ghoul's, it would be pointless. Stupid. She'd wasted so much of her life already fighting senseless battles.
She lifted her hand to surrender. Let it be the end of the tournament if that was what it took for her to live—she couldn't stand by Yami's side in the finals if she was a corpse.
But she never got a chance to finish.
The shadows howled when Yami stopped the duel. Red skulls rose to face him, and black fingers clawed at his skin. But he stared them down without wavering, commanded the shadow game to an end without a winner. If the shadows demanded punishment for such a thing, if they demanded a price, let them take it from his soul.
The Ghoul stared at him with wide eyes, and for a moment, the dark world hung frozen.
Then the platform beneath Yami shattered and fell—
His stomach heaved.
His vision heaved.
—and he fell with it.
He grabbed desperately for a handhold; his fingers caught nothing. His heart slammed against his ribcage, and the air fled from his lungs, leaving him to plummet in shocked silence through a darkness with no end. This time, the shadows made no offer of power. There was nothing he could do to save himself.
And then a scream shook the world around him, tore through his mind even as he heard it with his ears.
Yuugi.
The shadows retreated.
He slammed into the ground.
The glass rooftop fractured with the sound of thunder.
Yami gasped for air. Red and black spots battled in his vision. His ears rang. A strange taste spread in his mouth. He tilted his head, saw only swirling darkness in the sky. But it was different, wrong—
A raindrop splashed against his forehead, then another on his mouth. And he understood.
He was back in the real world.
After working himself into a state of hyperventilation, the Ghoul collapsed.
It wasn't the end Yori had expected, but she took it without hesitation. She darted forward, checked the man's pockets frantically, looking for a key, a switch, anything to open the room—
Nothing. Nothing.
She forced herself to take the shallowest breaths possible, reminded herself that this wasn't a battle either of them were allowed to die for. Her vision slanted dangerously to one side, and she couldn't tell if her head was tilted or if it was all in her eyes. The light-headedness forced her to put a hand down, to prop herself up.
He had to have a remote. Pandora had a remote.
She wrenched the Ghoul's arm toward her, checked his Duel Disk. A small gray box had been attached to the underside, but it had no buttons.
Her whole body tilted, and she caught herself again. Her mind fuzzed. It had to be the right thing, had to, but how? The duel, maybe. She shook her head hard. The world slid on ice. She slapped her hand down on the Ghoul's deck. His lifepoint counter flashed, registered the surrender, ended the duel.
The gray box beeped. A little red light flashed.
And the door unlocked.
Yori dragged herself forward, stumbled, grabbed, and heaved the door open, smacking herself in the head with it as she did. She fell backward. Blood trickled into her eye. But the pain in her head kept her conscious—maybe saved her life.
She grabbed the unconscious man's arm, dragged him from the room until she hit a staircase. Then she staggered up alone, tripped, forced herself onto the main floor of the building.
A woman saw her, saw the blood on her face, rushed to her side. She dialed the authorities.
Yori pointed wordlessly down the stairs, and another two people rushed down to check on the Ghoul. The woman guided her to a bench, told her over and over that things would be okay.
The world still dipped and wavered. Yori tilted in her seat, rested her head against a glass wall.
Outside, she saw the city lights against a sky darkened with rain.
She closed her eyes and breathed.
Seto Kaiba strode forward, towered over his fallen opponent. Rain streaked down his sleeveless white trench coat, soaked his black shirt sleeves, dripped from his hair. His only focus was on the locator card he found at the bottom of the Ghoul's deck.
He took it, slid it in the pocket with the others. The corner of his mouth rose. He touched his collar to activate the radio.
"Six," he reported, his voice sharp and crisp as the lightning that split the sky.
And Mokuba's voice shouted back with the thunder: "You're in the finals!"