Chapter Four: No Rest for the Wicked
When Yugi got to the game shop, the door was unlocked, though the sign was flipped to "closed." He sighed through his nose and gently closed the door behind him. The tinkle of the bell made his lip twitch up with nostalgic pleasure.
"Grandpa! I'm here!" he called. He locked the door and walked behind the counter, to the threshold of the living space contained behind the shop. He heard the warble of Sugoroku's old radio.
"In the living room, Yugi!"
Yugi toed off his browned, peeling sneakers.
"Shoes!" the old man chimed in sing-song Japanese.
Yugi laughed. "I know, Grandpa."
"Just making sure you didn't forget, living the college life and all that. Have you been eating well? Did you and Joey enjoy those bananas?"
Yugi stepped into the living room. The short old man was slightly reclined back into a chair, though propped up enough to comfortably read one of those huge educational books he liked so much. Yugi paused a moment. "Yeah, I've been eating fine. And the bananas were pretty good."At least the one that he ate was. Peel and all. He settled onto the couch, fell right into an old divot. He patted the sofa's arm as if it were a long-time friend. In a way, it was. "How's your back?"
"Still hurts. The doctor says that I still can't do any heavy lifting. But Tristan's been stopping by to help me with the new shipments."
Yugi smiled and picked at a tuft of lint on his pants. The fact that all of his friends treated his grandpa as if he were their grandpa… "I'm glad. It upsets me that I can't be here to help you like I used to."
Sugoroku lowered his book, looked over the edge of his glasses. Those purple eyes were the same ones that Yugi saw in the mirror every morning. "Your education is more important than moving boxes for some old fart." His eyes narrowed.
A snort left Yugi to hide his gulp, and he sarcastically swung his head to face his grandpa, his eyebrows cocked. "You're not just 'some old fart' to me, Grandpa."
The book closed with a solid, dry thump. Leathered hands set it on the side table, and fingers with knotted joints plucked the wire-rimmed spectacles from Sugoroku's square face. "You've lost quite a bit of your baby fat since I saw you last. Going through a growth spurt, eh? Every day, you are looking more like your father, Yugi."
Yugi nodded, more in self-confirmation than in response to what his grandfather was saying. Of course the old man would notice his changes in appearance. Nothing ever escaped his keen gaze. "My father looked like you, Grandpa." Though Yugi couldn't pluck his father's face from his own memories. Only old pictures his mother had kept.
"Handsome man, he was," Sugoroku said with a gut-deep laugh. Yugi laughed with him, sank farther back into the cushions. The tension drained from him, trickled out from his fingers and toes. He'd needed this.
Before he knew it, he was blinking heavily, breaths deepening and warming. The weight of cloth dropped over him, and he was adrift.
A red glow hovered close. Two oblong shapes, floating. Eyes. Eyes were staring into him.
"Yugi."
Jagged angler-fish-like teeth gaped apart, dropped close together, shaping the syllables of his name in such a gruesome, alien manner. "Yugi."
"Yugi!"
He gasped and pitched forward. The blanket that had covered his chest fell about his lap and waist. A hand was on his shoulder. His eyes shot up.
"Grandpa," he gasped.
The old man blinked down at him, owlish and worried. "Bad dream?"
Yugi slumped back and nodded. He brushed a hand across his forehead. It was slick with sweat.
Sugoroku patted his head. "I was about to wake you anyway. It will be dark soon. You should probably head back."
Yugi struggled to get out of the divot in the couch. When he was standing, He languidly stretched and glanced at the clock on the wall. "Why did you let me sleep the whole time?"
"You looked tired. You were sick earlier. You obviously needed the rest."
Yugi sighed out of his nose and rubbed his eyes again. "Yeah, I guess you're right."
"Of course I am."
The pair chatted as Sugoroku walked his grandson to the door. Yugi slipped on his shoes.
"Those must be getting tight."
"Huh?" Yugi blinked up at his grandfather.
"Your shoes. You've had them since high school. I'm guessing they must be getting tight," Sugoroku explained.
Yugi wiggled his toes around. "A little, yeah."
"Next time you visit, we can go out to get you new shoes."
"Sounds like a plan to me."
They embraced one another.
"I missed you," Yugi said quietly. For once, he could actually set his chin on his grandfather's shoulder. He actually must have grown since his visit the week before.
"I missed you, too, Yugi. Take care and call me when you get back home."
"Will do!" Waving over his shoulder and smiling warmly, Yugi walked down the sidewalk.
His phone began ringing.
Joey (Joseph Wheeler)
He quickly answered it and lifted it up to his ear. "Hey-"
"What the actual fuck, Yug'!" Joey hollered.
Yugi flinched and gingerly held the phone away from his ear until he could no longer hear his best friend's bombastic shouting. He cautiously brought it back to his ear. "What?"
Joey growled on the other end. The sound crackled over the speaker. "You ate all of the cupcakes. I didn't get a single one, ya bastard!"
Yugi grimaced. "Sorry. When I… got over my fever I got really hungry."
"Jesus, you don't say?! We haven't got any food anymore!"
"Sorry," Yugi repeated, not sure what else he could say. He really did feel sorry, but a distinct part of him felt… smug. My cupcakes.
The sound of shuffling and the cacophony of the bottom of the trashcan hitting the floor echoed over the receiver. "Also, did you eat this whole fuckin' brick of cream cheese?"
Yugi stayed silent.
"Oh my god, you're such a weirdo, Yug'. If I knew you were this weird to live with, I never would have moved in with you," Joey mumbled.
Yugi's dark brows furrowed. "Excuse me?" They'd been living together for almost two years now, and Joey decided to complain now.
"I'm just kiddin', Yug'. I know you haven't been feelin' well." Joey sighed. "At least I'm not the one eating us out of house and home for once."
Yugi chuckled sheepishly. "Yeah, something new, huh? Anyway, I'm on my way back."
Joey said, suddenly serious, "Do you need a ride?"
"No, you've driven me around enough today. I can manage the subway."
"Be careful, Yugi."
"I will. See ya in a few."
"See ya."
Before long, he was descending into the subway tunnel. Luckily for him, he made it just in time to get the right train out. It was much less crowded at this time of the evening, so he took a seat in the corner again. He avoided staring at the glass, and he fought off the exhaustion still teasing his eyelids. Either could conjure that haunting stare.
The back of his neck prickled, and he sat upright. He looked around. A handful of people shared the car with him. A businessman. A couple of teenagers. A man in the corner. The back of his neck prickled again. The man met his gaze.
"Don't look!"
He jolted, eyes zipping down to his hands on his knees and blinking widely. "What the hell…" he muttered.
"He's following us."
He slapped a hand to his forehead. Good grief, now his subconscious was no longer subconscious and it was speaking plurally. "I need a psych evaluation." He shrugged the thoughts off. He was just tired, and now apparently paranoid.
They rattled to a halt.
"We need to leave."
He gritted his teeth. It wasn't his stop yet. No way he was getting off the damn train.
"Now."
His body flashed cold, and suddenly surged up from his seat. He whipped a hand out, gripped the back of the seat next to him. Okay, he did not tell his body to do that.
"Now, Yugi!"
Shaking with terror and adrenaline, he stumbled off the subway train. He stood, dazed inside the terminal. Another pulse of cold, and his legs were moving of their own accord again. The back of his neck prickled, and he hurried to the surface. The breeze wafted around him, and he breathed gratefully.
Yugi felt like he'd had enough of tunnels and caves.
The thought made his brow furrow. What the hell?
"Keep moving."
That eerie prickle.
"Don't look."
"He's still following us," Yugi muttered in self-confirmation. He bit his lip at his own choice in words. Us. Us?!
"Our small body makes us an easy target for thugs."
Yugi's brows wrinkled in offense. Okay, he didn't have a lot of self-esteem already, so that was a bit of a low blow from his subconscious.
That brief wave of cold washed over him again, and his body moved with jerking strides into an alleyway.
Yugi wondered briefly if this was what it was like to "act on instinct." (Even though the sensations felt more detached than even that.)
He didn't have long to wonder. Footsteps echoed behind him in the darkening alleyway. He sped up, even though a brick wall greeted him on the other end.
Fucking hell. Did he just corner himself? If he was acting on instinct, his instincts were total shit. Also, it felt like his instincts were a bit offended by the sentiment. Weird.
"You made this rather easy for me. My prey doesn't normally walk itself like a lamb to the slaughter," the man rasped. "I don't normally stalk my prey like this… but you seem pretty distracted."
Yugi's haunches tensed. His heart pounded in the strangest of ways. Instead of going faster, it seemed to expand with each beat, as if it were taking a deep breath like a set of lungs. His blood pumped through him in hot, dizzying pulses. The images before him swam and throbbed with greater intensity.
He turned. "I don't want any trouble." The barrel of a gun brushed against his forehead. The cold metal made his eyes widen.
"Then give me your wallet, shrimp. Phone, too, if you have one."
This was too real to be a dream. At the same time, he felt no fear, no terror.
"You won't shoot me," he said, voice deepened by its firmness.
The man sneered at him. "What makes you say that?"
"If you fire the gun, everyone around us will hear. This way be a rougher neighborhood, but a gunshot will not go unnoticed. Someone will call the police. And, as far was I can tell, you are also trapped in this alley. There is only one way out." Yugi felt a smirk curl his lips. "And you'd rather have a mugging on your hands than a murder."
Brows furrowed. Yugi saw muscles tense and ripple, and then he was moving. The force of the man's swinging wrist resonated up Yugi's arm; he'd caught the man's wrist as he was about to strike him with the butt of the gun. Partially gripping the man's hand, Yugi squeezed. The man yelped, and the gun slipped from his weakening grasp and clattered metallically to the asphalt.
"That was a bad idea," Yugi heard himself drawl, and the foreign sonorous tone of his voice rumbled in his chest. He chuckled, dark and sinister. He squeezed again, felt the wrist bones in grasp grit and grind together. Just a twitch, and Yugi could fracture all the bones in this man's weak body.
The man gasped and whined in pain. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
"Sorry is not enough."
Cold engulfed Yugi's body, seeped from his face.
Dark eyes widened and flashed, and a scream of terror tore haltingly from the man's throat.
A roar ripped from deep within Yugi's chest, and somewhere above them, a fire escape ladder rattled loudly. He suddenly realized he was towering over his assailant, curled threateningly over the mugger's body. The man's eyes rolled back, but Yugi's hand, black and clawed and huge, gripped at the collar of the man's shirt and shook.
"Listen to me. Perhaps in your next life you shall think twice before deciding to prey upon those weaker than you," Yugi rumbled.
He felt his jaw stretch, and he surged forward. The sickening cracking of bones and the ripping of flesh stained the air. The tang of blood blossomed crimson and hot.
When Yugi's chest finally rumbled with a sated purr, he rolled his shoulders up to his full height. The gun glinted from where it had landed on the ground. Metal screeched and cracked. An immense foot crushed it. Yugi's foot.
A quiet shuffle on the other end of the alleyway caught his attention. A silhouette.
It took but the smallest leap for Yugi to reach a fire escape and scale up it. He disappeared into the glow and shadows of the city night.
Seto Kaiba cautiously stepped farther into the dark of the alley, his gun held at the ready at his side. The city surveillance cameras showed Yugi going into this exact place (it'd taken some half-hearted hacking on Kaiba's part to access them. A couple of facial recognition algorithms and Kaiba was tracking his former classmate through the streets and subway systems of Domino City).
Kaiba hovered close to the wall on one side.
A dark shape lingered, hunched over at the other end, a dead end. It stood up to its full height.
Jesus Christ. It's massive.
In his distraction, his foot slipped on a stray piece of cardboard box.
The head snapped over. Two oblong, angular eyes glowed red in the dark.
Kaiba's breath froze in his chest. Fuck.
A ripple of force, and it was airborne. With grace and speed uncommon for a being of that size, it scaled a nearby fire escape like a spidermonkey. Metal rattled, and then it was on the rooftop.
Gone in a blink of an eye.
He tapped a nervous finger on the side of his gun before holstering it, hidden beneath his trenchcoat. He'd have to have reinforcements. It'd somehow gained strength since escaping the lab. It could take on a form of its own, now.
But why? Why the sudden surge in power and energy?
Kaiba edged farther into the darkness. And then he smelt it.
Blood. The wave of copper stench slammed into him with the force of a bulldozer. The overwhelming miasma triggered his gag reflex, and he hurriedly lifted the collar of his shirt over his nose. It barely helped; his gut churned tumultuously. "Dear god," he choked.
It was too dark to see, and he was afraid to look.
Still, he fumbled for his phone and activated the flashlight function.
He staggered back against the wall.
A corpse. The head was missing, as well as large chunks of torso. Shredded flesh and pooling blood. So much carnage.
Saliva slicked his mouth, and sweat beaded his forehead, all signs of prospective regurgitation, but he stayed to survey the scene further.
He'd failed. An innocent bystander had already fallen victim to the creature.
He spotted crushed and crumpled metal. A gun, utterly destroyed.
Okay, maybe not innocent. Since Kaiba seriously doubted that Yugi was armed, it had to have been… this person's firearm.
At the lab, it attacked when it felt its life was in danger.
"You're killing me."
Did this man try to… mug Yugi?
It didn't seem to care about the state of its previous hosts. Why would it care if Yugi was harmed? If this man killed Yugi, it could just as easily hop to the mugger as the replacement.
"This host is inadequate."
Kaiba turned away, clicked off the flashlight function.
The first host had been wasting away; the parasite's metabolic needs sapped his vitality.
Kaiba's fist clenched. It needed the perfect metabolic match.
Who knew when it could find another so suitable to its needs. A perfect host was a resource to be protected at all costs.
He didn't know if he could save Yugi.
END PART
A little shorter chapter. Sorry. Still figuring out some of the trickier aspects of the plot.
ALSO, the promised removal of a human head via biting!
Seto has no idea what he's getting into. Yugi has no idea just what he's gotten into, either. Joey's just upset he didn't get any cupcakes. No Yami Bakura this chapter, though.
I'll see y'all next time!