Chapter Two
Crump stopped talking when he realized Yugi was distracted. "What's up?" he asked.
"Oh . . . some friends are going to be visiting," Yugi said. "You remember Mako, of course, and the Hawkins family."
"Of course," Gansley said.
"Evangeline said Mr. Tsunami stayed in New Orleans for another week or so and then left for Los Angeles," Lector said. "Apparently he felt that something in that notebook of his father's was pointing to Los Angeles."
"I wonder what it was," Téa said.
"I also wonder why he's coming up with the Hawkins," Yugi said. "Of course, it'll be great to see them all," he quickly added. "I know Rebecca's been disappointed we haven't made it down there yet."
"And you said something about Atlantis." Crump snapped his fingers. "That's where the name Critias comes from! It was a thing Plato wrote about Atlantis!"
"It's also a way cool warrior guy who helped us save the world," Joey said.
"What's this about Critias?" Mokuba asked Crump. "He looked like Seto. . . ."
Before Lector could explain about his bizarre dream, Solomon pulled up in his truck. To everyone's surprise, he had the guests with him.
"Yugi!" Rebecca squealed. She hopped out of the cab and glomped him.
Yugi went red. "Uh, hi, Rebecca," he stammered. "I thought you were writing from Los Angeles. . . ."
"I was writing from here," Rebecca beamed. "We went to see your grandpa and he said you were here. So we came here!"
Solomon chuckled. "I was quite surprised myself when they all turned up on our doorstep!"
Mako leaped out of the flatbed. "Hi, my friends!" he greeted with a wave. "So this is the Penguin World we've heard so much about?"
"This is it!" Crump grinned. "Of course, we're still not ready to open yet, but we're almost there now! We've even got some of the penguins!"
"Marvelous!" Mako said.
George gave him a deadpan look but didn't screech.
Mako bent down to be more at his eye level. "Well, hello there," he greeted.
"That's George," Duke told him.
George tilted his head to the side, blinked, and started to preen his feathers.
Joey looked to the handler. "So, is it a good thing or a bad thing when he yells or doesn't yell?" he asked in an undertone.
"We're still not sure," she whispered back. "But he looks like he feels pretty content right now."
"Naturally," Mako said. "I have a way with all the creatures of the sea." He petted George and straightened.
Yugi looked to Professor Hawkins. "Hi, Professor," he greeted. "Rebecca said you'd found out something new about Atlantis. It must have been really big to bring you guys out here!"
"I like to think so," Professor Hawkins agreed. "I'm very excited about it."
"Well, don't keep us in suspense, Arthur!" Solomon exclaimed. "How about we go inside one of these buildings and you tell us all about it?"
"I can start telling you as we're walking," Professor Hawkins replied. They all started to walk, including George. "I decided to dive around in the area where the Orichalcos Temple went down to see if I could find anything else about Atlantis, or to even find the ancient city itself again. I ended up finding Atlantis and some more carvings, apparently depicting the Legendary Knight Critias with five men who served him." He looked to the Big Five. "I must say, they all resembled you five."
"Seriously?!" Crump yelped.
Lector stopped walking, stunned. "Did you find out what happened to those men?"
"Not from those carvings, no," Professor Hawkins replied, "but then I went into the Orichalcos Temple, which was apparently built after Atlantis sank. Dartz carved into the wall that the five men fled the Battle of Atlantis and had been considered cowards ever since."
Nesbitt grunted. "You came all the way out here to tell us we had cowardly ancestors?"
"There is more," Mako said. "I met Professor Hawkins and Rebecca and they told me about what happened when Dartz tried to destroy the world." He clenched a fist. "They told me how he killed the loved ones of the men he tricked into working for him . . . that for one of them, he sent a monstrous tidal wave. I am furious that he dared to manipulate the mighty ocean waters! But then I started to wonder if that man Raphael was the only person with whom he tried such an outrage."
Téa gasped. "Oh no. . . . You wonder if he sent the tidal wave against you and your dad. . . ."
"Exactly!" Mako cried. "It would have been around the same time he was searching for others to recruit. So I had to come here to ask him. My new friends told me he lives here."
"Yeah, he does," Yugi agreed. "But he's free of the Orichalcos now. When he did all those horrible things, it was because the Orichalcos was poisoning his mind. It corrupted him for ten thousand years!"
Mako frowned. "That is indeed a treacherous fate. But are you saying that in his right mind he's not the same person?"
"He's not at all," Atem said. "He's a noble and good man. I cannot imagine the weight of the burden he bears because of all he did."
Lector looked to Professor Hawkins. "There wasn't anything else in those carvings?" he asked. "What about a child?"
The professor blinked in surprise. "I did see something in the Atlantean carvings about Sir Critias having a younger brother," he said, "but it didn't say anything else about him."
"No way," Mokuba gasped. "So I had an ancestor back then too?"
"For that matter, Critias is apparently your ancestor," Gansley said to him.
"Yeah, but I meant an ancestor that looks like me," Mokuba said. "There really isn't one in Egypt; that Khu guy is apparently my counterpart back there." He shuddered. "So not cool."
"Why did you ask about a younger brother?" Professor Hawkins queried, looking to Lector.
The Southerner looked caught. He really didn't want to blurt out about a bizarre dream he'd had to someone he'd only met once. "I just wondered," he hurriedly replied. "Mokuba just got through telling us that this Critias looks like Mr. Kaiba, so I couldn't help being curious as to whether he had a younger brother like Mokuba."
"Ah, I see," Professor Hawkins nodded.
"But . . . uh . . . what if those guys really weren't being cowards when they left?" Crump stammered. "What if they had a good reason for leaving?"
Rebecca frowned. "What kind of reason could they have? They just didn't want to die, that's all."
"Even if that was all, you couldn't blame them for that," Johnson said.
"They had a duty to stay with Critias," Rebecca retorted. "Whether they were scared or not, they shouldn't have let that interfere!"
"Maybe even if they were scared, that wasn't their reason," Lector said.
Gansley looked back and forth between Lector and Crump. They clearly had an idea in mind, one that he was picking up on from knowing Lector's dream—and he had to admit, it sounded plausible to him. That is, if he was going to believe Lector's dream was real and not just a dream. He hadn't been sure what to think at first, but now that the professor had brought his news to them it seemed too much of a coincidence. Lector's dream likely had shown a real scene from the past.
"This younger brother of the knight's wasn't mentioned anywhere in the Orichalcos Temple?" he asked.
"Not at all," Professor Hawkins said. "It would seem he slipped quite out of sight."
"He probably died in the Battle of Atlantis," Rebecca frowned.
". . . Unless someone took him away from there before the fighting even began," Nesbitt spoke.
Professor Hawkins stared. "Say now, do you really not know anything about this?"
"Nothing definite, Sir," Lector said. "We're just asking questions."
"I know you wouldn't like thinkin' your ancestors were yellow or something," Joey said. "But you really sound like you know something."
"How could we?" Gansley grunted.
"It looks like this is something else we should all ask Dartz," Mokuba spoke up. "Maybe he'd know!"
"Works for me," Joey shrugged.
Everyone reached the building and stopped walking. George walked into Nesbitt and shrieked.
Nesbitt flinched. "Does he hate me or something?"
"He's probably just saying Hello," Crump said. "Or he wants you to pay attention to him."
"I was looking right at him before and he screamed in my face," Nesbitt retorted.
Lector laid a hand on Nesbitt's shoulder. He could relate to this. He remembered having similar feelings when his nephews and later, Noa, started treating him poorly. In his case, his nephews had certainly hated him even if Noa really hadn't.
"George is a character," the handler said. "But he's a good guy." She patted the large bird. "Penguins make sounds like that as a form of communication."
"That's obvious," Nesbitt shot back. "What I want to know is what he's communicating!"
"He might be telling you he's claiming this as his territory," the handler told him. "Or like Mr. Crump said, it could be Hello. Penguins make sounds for both reasons, and many more. What he did when he got out of the van was similar to the territorial call. But the body language can also mean he wants to avoid confrontation."
"What about when he walked into me?" Nesbitt asked.
"He might have been saying 'Excuse you.'" The handler still looked amused. "George has always been unique. He's been in captivity from a very young age and has always liked trying to imitate the humans he's with. Penguins usually do like humans and enjoy being around them because they have no natural land predators and they don't see humans as threats." She looked to Nesbitt. "So I think you can be pretty sure he likes you. He has no reason not to."
Nesbitt slowly nodded. "I see."
Crump patted George on the back. "Well . . . I guess we'd better get him settled in at his new home and then go see Dartz."
"Do you really feel like tearing yourself away from the penguins so soon?" Gansley asked.
". . . Not really," Crump admitted, "but I do wanna know what Dartz has to say about these . . . Atlantean ancestors of ours or whoever they are."
Nesbitt pondered for a moment. "Why don't you stay here with the penguins and we'll patch you in on Skype?" he suggested.
Lector smiled. "Yes, that's a great idea. You've been waiting so long for this, Crump. Stay here with them."
Crump's eyes shined with hope. "If you're really sure. . . ."
"We're sure," Gansley said.
"Great!" Crump exclaimed. "But make sure to patch me in, okay?" He took out his phone.
"Of course," Nesbitt promised.
xxxx
Dartz lived near the mouth of Domino Canyon, quite close to the portal that had opened up to the parallel dimension everyone had visited not long ago. They could see it still open and swirling through space as they passed by on their way to the family's mansion.
"I wish I knew why portals either randomly open or randomly won't close except on their schedule," Atem remarked.
"We'll probably never know," Tristan sighed in resignation and a bit of disgust.
"Well, in this case it's a good thing the portal did open, so we could help that other poor Big Five," Téa said.
"Not to mention to learn what may be ahead in our future," Yami Bakura grunted.
Bakura bit his lip. Yami Bakura had had a long discussion with him that night, informing him that in the other dimension Yami Marik had teamed up with Zorc to wreak havoc, and now everyone wondered if the same thing would happen in their world. Yugi and Atem felt that was the battle Shadi had been saving Yami Bakura for, and it did sound plausible. Bakura was very worried, but had been trying to console himself with thinking that if Yugi and company could defeat Zorc without fatalities, Yami Bakura could too. It had to be possible, since Shadi had promised him he would fully earn his second chance and be mortal if he succeeded in the battle he had been saved for.
"Here we are," Yugi broke into his thoughts.
Everyone stared at Dartz's mansion. Professor Hawkins was particularly fascinated by the pillars and the carvings of Grecian-style figures on the house and around the yard. "I can see he tried to use Atlantis as an influence for the decor," he commented. "And yet it looks like a fairly modern house. An intriguing blend of the old and the new."
"Which is pretty much how his family lives, taking the best from all the eras they've experienced," Yugi said.
"That's nice," Rebecca said, but she still looked wary.
Her grandfather immediately picked up on the problem. "I know you're still struggling with forgiving Dartz for what he did to Yugi, Rebecca," he kindly told her. "But just try to remember what Yugi said about him only doing those horrible things because he was corrupted by the Orichalcos stone for so many millennia."
"I know, Grandpa," Rebecca frowned. "But it's still hard."
"And that's alright," Professor Hawkins said.
Téa found herself wondering if Rebecca would be able to refrain from screaming at Dartz when they arrived at the head of the walkway. At least, she hoped, Rebecca would refrain from kicking him in the shin.
It was rather a relief to the group when the front door was opened by Chris instead of Dartz. "Oh . . . hello, Yugi, Pharaoh," she smiled. "Everyone. . . ." Then she caught sight of the Big Four and gasped.
"What?" Crump said via Skype on Nesbitt's phone. "You haven't seen people who looked like us in ten thousand years and you still remember just like that?"
Gansley tried to resist the urge to facepalm.
"I'm sorry," Chris quickly apologized. "You're right, seeing all of you startled me for a moment. You used to work for Mr. Kaiba, didn't you?"
"That's right," Lector said.
"But . . ." She looked from Lector to Crump. "You know about the men from Atlantis who looked like you?"
"We've just been finding out today," Gansley said.
"Is it true they're still considered cowards?" Johnson blurted.
Chris looked down. "I'm sorry to say it, but yes. Grandfather was especially upset when they left."
Mokuba hurried out in front of the group. "Was there a kid who looked like me?" he asked.
Chris started. "Sir Critias did have a younger brother," she admitted. "We used to play together." She looked away. "He wanted to fight in the Battle of Atlantis. Sir Critias said No, but he was determined to help."
". . . And did he?" Yugi quietly asked.
"We never found his body," Chris said, "nor did we ever see him on our travels to the afterlife." She looked away, blinking back tears. "We really don't know what happened to him."
"Is there any chance that our ancestors took him away from the battle?" Nesbitt demanded. "Maybe they weren't cowards. Maybe they were just trying to save a kid."
Chris stared at him. "I'll admit sometimes I've wondered that. He was very close with the man who was Mr. Lector's ancestor. But we've never found any proof of it. Even if they tried to get away with him, the Orichalcos Soldiers probably found them and killed them. . . ."
"Even if that's true, wouldn't you want to know?" Atem asked. "It would change history where they're concerned."
". . . I would want to know," Chris said. "But I don't know how we'd find out. . . ."
"Come on!" Joey exclaimed. "Wouldn't Dartz know?!"
"I think if he knew, he would have told me," Chris said. "He knew how fond I was of Makarios." She sighed. "And he certainly doesn't have any way to get the information now; the Orichalcos and its soldiers are gone. Thank goodness."
"We would still like to speak with him, if we may," Mako spoke up. "I have a very urgent matter to take up with him."
"Oh? . . ." Chris blinked in confusion. "Of course. Come in, all of you. . . ."
The huge group trouped inside and Chris shut the door after them. She had barely done so when Dartz came down the stairs in surprise. "What's going on?"
"Father, all of these people wanted to see you," Chris explained. "Especially . . ."
"Mako Tsunami," Mako finished for her. He gave Dartz a long, hard look. "If you recognize me at all, then I assume you already know why I need to speak with you."
Dartz's eyes flickered and he looked ill. "You don't need to explain," he agreed. "I remember you, I'm sorry to say."
"Father?" Chris stared up at him.
"When I was trying to find suitable recruits to work for the Orichalcos, I tried this boy," Dartz said. "Because the tidal wave I had sent against Raphael's family was so successful, I tried it again."
"Oh no," Chris whispered.
Mako's eyes flashed. "Then it's true," he snarled. "You tampered with the sea that fateful day! It's because of you that my father is . . . lost. . . ."
"I am so sorry," Dartz said. "But that's hardly compensation for what I did to you. All the regret in the world won't bring your father back to you."
"Do you know what happened to him when the storm hit?" Mako demanded.
Dartz gave him a strange look. ". . . The boat was all but torn asunder," he said. "He tried to grab for anything he could to hold onto, but the wave was too fierce. It took the lifeboat off the vessel, and him with it when he grabbed for the rope. At first they were lost in the churning waters. But then . . ." His eyes flickered with the memories. "It was the most bizarre thing. . . . A vortex suddenly opened in the middle of the sea and swallowed them both."
"WHAT?!" Téa shrieked.
Mako stared. "You didn't open it?!"
"No." Dartz shook his head. "To this day, I don't know what happened. And my attempt to turn you to the darkness from the loss of your father failed; you were too strong-willed and too insistent on living the honorable life your father taught you to live. If only I had left you alone. . . . If only I had left all of them alone. . . ."
Chris took his hand.
Everyone exchanged shaken and bewildered looks.
"What the heck do you think happened?" Joey frowned.
"Who knows," Tristan shot back.
"I know." Mako clenched a fist. "Someone must have opened that vortex to save my father! It was probably some sort of portal to another part of the world, or even a different world." He looked up. "This only further strengthens my resolve! My father is out there somewhere, alive!"
