The Magicians' Realm Chapter 104: Sucked Into Deeper Trouble, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

Chapter 104, everybody, and happy Day of the Dead! :D

Good news, folks—my writing on this butted up against parts that I had already written (and in some cases rewritten—the original stuff was started in 2008, it was overdue) so for a good chunk of this month, we have updates! :D You know, if FFN lets me….

Movie this week is…most of the Harry Potter films they were having a marathon. Told Mom I didn't like the later movies because they got so dark—Mom: "Yeah! These are not kids' films!" Me: "Yeah but also look at the screen everything's brown."

Angiembabe, thanks for the review! Me too—and me too….

References:

Original characters, + setting © Kineil D. Wicks (myself, not the girl in the story)

"You are all of you under arrest," Crux continued. "Anything you say can and will be used against you, if you so much as think about trying anything—"

"I say we run," Kels hissed. "He can't catch all of us."

Bakura nodded. "I can't go back to jail again."

"HEY!" Crux barked when they scattered—Yami deflected a spell aimed at Bakura's back—"You are resisting arrest—"

Skellington hopped into the trail behind Crux as he ran by, yanking him off his feet and holding him up. "And you are proposing arresting a bunch of children. Oh wait can you arrest them for stealing they stole my foot and I'm sure Skul would give me a whole line if I don't go for the I'm a foot short joke and by the way I like him a lot better than you he wouldn't be screaming like a little girl right now."

Crux managed to get something regaining decorum, enough to blast Skellington's head back off.

"Now that was uncalled for," came from the bushes.

*\*/*

Teana took the next day to explore Skellington's library—on a whim, she assured him, go to work already.

Lil' Stevie's chirp alerted her to the fact that she had company.

"Doing a little light reading?" Kineil asked.

"Nothing to be concerned about," she said, glad she hadn't brought her notes down.

Kineil looked at one of the books, made a dismissive noise in the back of her throat, left—came back about fifteen minutes later with a stack of books.

"The ones that actually have the theorization on time travel and alternate dimensions and whatnot," she announced, depositing it on the table.

Teana blinked at her. "What?"

"I'm guessing you're wanting to avert my untimely death—I am too." Kineil plopped down, pulled a book from the stack. "Let's get started, shall we?"

She doubted very much that this would be any help, but she supposed it wouldn't hurt to give it a try—worst case scenario, maybe she could go back and tell herself where it went wrong.

"What's the general opinion on telling yourself where things went wrong?" she asked aloud, flipping through a thick tome.

"It depends," Kineil said, flicking through her own doorstopper. "If you're two dudes in a phone booth, nothing bad happens. If you're a couple of wizards with an hourglass, lots of bad things happen. Generally the concept with time travel is that the time travel itself is part of the stable loop—whatever you do when you go back in time won't affect anything, because it already existed, so it was always going to happen that way. I don't know, there's a lot of discourse on the topic and I don't rightly have the patience for it."

Answer: time travel wasn't going to help. Sigh, keep flicking—

"What does alternate dimensions have to do with any of this?" she had to ask.

"Ah—that theory I can give something more concrete on. See, the idea is that every time you come to a decision that could have more than one outcome, when you make that decision there's a chance you could have gone the other way, and that possibility splinters off into its own dimension. It's not little decisions like changing your socks, either—it's like, say you decided to go one way instead of the other, and if you had gone the other way you would have met someone life-altering. That decision you skipped out on becomes its own dimension and plays out like you chose it."

Well that was horrifying for about ninety-nine percent of her threads. "So somewhere out there in the multiverse there's a version of me who didn't meet Yami." When Kineil nodded: "That lucky duck."

"That was my opinion of the Kineil that didn't meet him," she agreed. "That girl has no idea how good she's got it."

They flicked through pages in silence for a few minutes, Lil' Stevie busy grooming himself, mostly because he couldn't pick up any of the books to read.

"Is there such a thing as someone able to see across dimensions?" Teana asked.

"Not sure," Kineil said. "Sounds horrifying though…maybe this one story I read? Mostly what I've heard suggests the closest we can get to that is someone who can see potential futures."

So yay for her.

"Except," Kineil muttered, glaring into the middle distance pensively.

"Except what?" Teana prompted.

"So there's this pair important to Chaos lore—Sheut and the Queen Bee. They're able to jump dimensions without a problem, operate purely on that theory I just told you about with the branching dimensions, and have but one goal: to spread Chaos wherever they go. Everyone thinks that Chaos Weather is what will bring the Chaos back? One of the common stories I've heard is that when those two come back, so will the Chaos, and there'll be nothing we can do to stop it."

Teana frowned at that. "I…don't think I've ever heard of those two."

"I think there's a book somewhere, hold on," Kineil said, standing and retreating through the library. Teana continued flicking through the book, scanning for something useful…maybe she could peek at the threads for a future where she did find something helpful.

"Here we go," Kineil said, putting a book down and showing the pages she had marked. The large illustration looked like a Ying-Yang symbol, with what looked like a dark hatted figure and a strange white mechanical thing circling each other. "These two theoretically are immune to the whole splintering versions of themselves—it's just them, hopping back and forth and forward and back across dimensions, coming up with long term plans to have every possible universe infested with Chaos."

Teana considered the page. "But if the universes keep diverging with every possible decision—"

"Then they'll never stop," Kineil agreed.

Teana suppressed a shiver at that, turned a page in her book—

"What the?" she noised, taking note of the strange construct illustrated there.

Kineil tipped her head at that. "I heard of that—the Dimensional Tower, it's called. Supposedly, it has the power to do what these two can, rip open a hole in time and space and go to a specific spot in a specific time in a specific dimension. Ruddy dangerous and impractical, I heard."

"How'd you hear about it?" she asked.

"Have you met Doctors Finkelstein and Grouse?"

"Say no more," she sighed, turning the page…turning back when something about the design pinged off her recollections of possible futures.

"Dangerous and impractical," she repeated. "Has that stopped anyone? No one's actually tried making this, have they?"

"I feel like you'd notice," Kineil said. "The repercussions would be…let's say whatever it does has a ripple effect? I don't know, I fell asleep halfway through. Yes I know that's rude." Look at the pages with her. "What I do recall is that there's a few failings of the device—it needs to have something from the dimension you're going for, and there's one piece that needs to be done precisely right in order to get the rest of it to work. And of course, everything else needs to be done precisely right too."

"What's the piece?"

"Not a clue," Kineil muttered, running through the pages before turning it to see if the next page had anything else going for it. "I think it had something to do with runes, though? I know China Sorrows was looking for blueprints for it so she could try it out—just to say that she could, she assures everyone. No one believes her."

Teana sighed, not feeling like this was being very helpful.

That was Kineil's opinion too, and shortly enough they were moving on to other topics. Teana kept that page marked, though.

She had the feeling it'd come up again, whether she liked it or not.

*/*\*

The kids regrouped a few crossroads over.

"You know what?" Jonouchi said, gasping as he came to a halt. "I don't know who came up with the idea, Kels or Bakura, but I vote we hop a train and make ourselves scarce."

"That was my idea," Bakura volunteered.

"It was my idea first," Honda said.

"Pretty sure I said it before you boys," Kels argued.

Yami's heart was thumping—running away wouldn't help but…Crux had seen them, seen them with Skellington—it was a small enough town he could find them—

"Look," Anzu tried. "We—can't we just tell him we were out camping in the woods and ran into Skellington and panicked? He might buy that."

"Crux isn't really someone you'd accuse of rational thought," Yami said. "We get someplace else and get an alibi."

"Sold," Honda said, picking a direction and taking off at a brisk pace. The rest of them followed—

Yami hesitated.

"Come on," Yuki said, tugging on him. "Come on, this was your idea."

Sigh—yes this was, all of this was his idea, and things were about to hit the fan hard.

"Well," he said, trotting after everyone else. "We talked about travelling some."

"We'll be fine," Yuki insisted—

Crux landed hard, crashing through the trees to hit the trail.

"Yes, see?" Kels asked, gesturing. "Crux isn't even going to live to arrest us."

"That's not a good thing, Kels," Yami said sternly—was cut off from further scolding by Skellington stalking down the trail, looking furious.

"Okay," he ground out, jabbing a finger at Crux, who was rapidly scrambling away. "I'll take the kids blasting my head off and stealing my feet—I can be fine with that, they're kids, it's a thing. You, you useless little grease smear pretending to be a man—I didn't even like you to begin with, and this is doing nothing for my opinion of you."

"I'm gonna leave now," Kels volunteered. "The less I see, the less I'm culpable for."

"Now that's cold," Honda told her.

"And you're staying?"

"No, come to think of it."

Crux scrambled to his feet, digging in his pockets. "Oh no you don't—none of you are going anywhere, except out of this dimension!"

"You need better lines," Skellington said, already moving—

Jumping away when Crux threw a spell down and skedaddled.

The spell flashed, expanded—nearby trees creaked as a multicolored whirlpool spread into existence—Skellington hit the edge of it, squawked as he was sucked in—

A different edge hit Yuki's ankles, yanking him back with a startled scream—Yami grabbed him, was grabbed by Kels, who was grabbed by Jonouchi, then Honda, then Anzu, then Bakura—

Except they weren't enough, couldn't fight it—the portal spell had them, was pulling harder than they could resist—

The last thing Yami was able to do between being yanked off his feet and swallowed by the portal was hug Yuki tight and hope this wouldn't end too badly.