The Sky Sage: Someone has been paying attention~.
-Laughs- Kuriboh1233, all of the yes. I avoided it in Duelist Kingdom because I did not want to be too forward about it and a lot of things changed since, but it was something that was going to happen no matter what, and it is one of the things I couldn't avoid for much longer.
So I will say it outright, we are having a new participant in Battle City, and I'm pretty sure a lot of you can guess who.
As for the clarifications, you're welcome, Lalalei. I honestly thought it was necessary because a lot of people are going to get impatient otherwise. And yes, Kaiba is and will always be a jerk. That's not gonna change.
And last but not least, thank you so much for the compliment, miss McCarthy! I'm sorry I ruined your sleeping schedule, but I hope you enjoy the rest of the story.
Now, for this chapter, I'm sure a lot of you can guess what this is about. I still hope you guys enjoy it and the fact that Kaiba proves that he's a big idiot.
Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh.
The Butterfly Effect
Chapter XLIX: Creating a Duelist
I hadn't even had the time to realize that I was starting to have a routine, this time.
Yes, it had been hectic. Yes, the fact that it had involved a fire and the start of something bigger than everyone in my group had been noted too many times to count. But it had been routine, for lack of a better word, and it had been holding steady in the past few days and weeks along with been fun. Shadi was kind despite his strictness. Yami was starting to mellow out. Mokuba was, like always, a great friend.
"How do you keep losing?!"
Nothing like his slave driver of a brother.
He'd trusted me with a company secret that I had to hold back on at least until the summer. He'd given me the equivalent of a prototype of something called a duel disk but looked nothing like a disk at all. He'd handed me a Duel Monster deck and given me the explicit rules of his upcoming "tournament" – He was turning the city into a battleground for an entire day, explaining the whole spiel Miss Ishtar had been on about – before throwing me into what he'd called a training simulation in which I ended up losing more times than I could count.
By the end of Saturday – he'd made an official invitation for me to come and had even insisted on dropping me and my brother off so that he could make it an entire scene, the prick – I wanted to smack the duel disk into his gut. By the end of the following week, I wanted to take said duel disk and make the expression "having a stick up someone's ass" a very literal one.
I settled for yelling at his face, though.
"Ever thought that I know nothing of the goddamn game?!"
And watch him pale behind the glass he was so comfortably encased in with sweating scientists as he slammed his fist against said glass and stormed out seconds later, making Mokuba who'd been sitting next to his brother until that very moment flinch.
It was an oral contract. I very much knew that. There had been no dotted line to sign, no license agreement that had been made. This was a very, very oral contract for the sake of privacy and the fact that Kaiba Seto had no intention of showing that he needed someone from the "loser crowd" that Yuugi's group was.
But I also realized by the end of the first Saturday that this – this was a mutual agreement I needed to get behind. That neither Kaiba or me could walk out of, and not just because of the God Cards he was intent on keeping away from Miss Ishtar's careful hands.
He'd seen the fact that her visions had been faulty. He'd loved the fact that she'd hesitated, if only for a second, when she'd been so confident the night she'd spoken to him. And he'd deduced that out of all the people who could destabilize someone that confident, it had to be someone that had, apparently, lived through death.
He needed me on merit alone and the fact that I was friends with Mokuba was a bonus.
And my reasons?
Yami was going to need help. He was going to need all the help he could get. He was going to try to obtain a Millennium Item with powers unknown from the tournament. Who knew what that Item would do without the proper handling, and who knew how strong it was? Not to mention the fact that the Ring, the Thief was sure to see an opportunity. He would see the opportunity and I couldn't sit and watch as Yuugi and Yami fought two evils at once. I needed to fight. And the fact that this – the disk around my arm felt right didn't help at all.
Yes. The disk felt right. It was those damn cards that didn't.
"You really have to yell at my big brother like that?"
"I'm not lying, Mokuba."
"I know, I just... ugh. Give me a minute."
It was that goddamn deck that I knew Kaiba had built because I could feel his imprints all over the cards and that refused to obey me despite my efforts to work with them. I forgot effects, ended up with fewer monsters than I should have had, and, while the deck had a wonderful synergy – I would never say that Kaiba didn't know what he was doing when he built the deck – it just didn't work with me. Powerful, but too lonely. It didn't need me.
That was why, like every time I made my way to the booth where the Kaiba brothers had been while disengaging the disk, I felt dejected.
I put the disk away, on a table near the door of the simulation chamber, before settling with a sigh in a chair facing the simulation, not bothering to open my eyes and instead rubbing the bridge of my nose in hopes of getting rid of the budding headache I knew would be a full blown migraine by Sunday. I thanked whoever it was that put a glass against the counter – the distinct sound of glass against glass was unmistakable – and, after giving it a sniff to make sure that there were no odd smells, downed the glass, glad for the refreshment, and settled in the chair further, trying to rest.
Said rest lasted until the door opened and I felt a very angry aura coming from it.
Oh great.
I snapped an eye open to watch Kaiba glare at me, "What?"
"Come with me."
"I'm not signing any more contracts, Kaiba."
"Will you just get up so we can this over with!"
But still got up as asked only to wish I hadn't.
No, he didn't grab me by my ponytail and drag me throughout the house, but he might as well have. He jabbed, he pushed, and he gave no explanation as he continued to shove me around, making me land on my front once we got to a small room with shelves upon shelves of containers.
"You have an hour," was the last thing I heard before the door slammed closed, making me freeze before I rushed to the door, slamming my fists against it before jiggling the handle.
Locked. Great. Just fucking great.
I heard screaming on the other side of the door as I slid against it. I buried my face into my hands as I made out the distinct sounds of Mokuba screaming at his brother, too far for me to hear the words being said, but, from the sound of it, it was an argument. A heated argument, at that. About what? I could only hope at this point that it was about his brother locking me for an hour in a room with nothing to do.
... Nothing but listen to chimes coming from the different containers?
I got up. I slowly, carefully got up before approaching the loudest container, pulling it out and setting it down before opening it, the scent of aging paper playing in my nostrils.
Paper?
... Cards. Duel monster cards. Thousands upon thousands of them stacked in an order that seemed easy to determine as all the cards in front of me were a specific type.
Angels.
I felt my pulse pick up. I felt my breath near stop.
And, when I pulled out the first chime, the first pulse, I was left to blink as my legs near gave out from under me.
It – It couldn't be...
