Chapter 16-Jou
Dinner was great. That night was great, everything was great, except the fact that two immortals, or at least I thought they were immortals, nearly spot me, and if I didn't run for it they probably could have killed me. Pretty cool for a night, hai? The only reason I didn't beat the guts outta them is because I can't; they're gods, for heaven's sake! It's not like I have no magic anyway. I'm like the Meiling of the Li clan or Tomoyo of the Clow gang, the difference is instead of two of us, there are four; Anzu, Mai, Honda and me. Now you may be wonderin: what about Mokuba and Kaiba?
Here's the deal. Yugi and Ryou happened to have magical powers thanks to their millenium items. And to fill ye in, no one else can have them other then their rightful owner, because...if Ryou didn't tell ye, then Touya had told Seto that Yami and Akira happened to be-I got it wrong. Ryou and Yugi happened to be the reincarnations of Yami and Akira. The only problem was, because of the whole Shadow Game deal, Yami and Akira's souls split, ( ouch) into two pieces. One, the darker half, got stuck in the millenium items. The other, the lighter half, went to wherever they go to be reincarnated some five thousand years later. So basically, Yami and Yugi are the same person. Ryou and Akira are too.
Anzu, Mai, Honda and I are just losers. We got no magical powers, we could only sit back and watch. The good thing, as Touya had pointed out, is that no magician can locate us, so we can go sneak and do some spyin if we have to, since they don't know who we are. As for Seto and Mokuba, both of them have magical powers, and I'll tell ye, if they ain't, I'd swear Seto wouldn't be as smart as he is now. Seto happened to be more powerful of the living magic, as Syaoran had called it ( since we have two types workin here; Yami's magic, which is dead magic, and Syaoran's type, which was, of course, living magic, purely because of the fact that Yami's stronger in the Shadow realm and someone like Clow Reed would be stronger in this one.) We learned quite a lot of stuff from the Kinomoto and the Tsukishiro, but not from the stuffed animal since he's too busy eating.
It had turned out Syaoran was a brat before, at least as close to one as he can get, but when Touya heard about what happened to his father he started to gag and immediately admitted that he gives credit to Syaoran for not going insane after that incident. Syaoran admitted that he was very close to getting there, which happened; not during dinner but sometime after. We never mentioned Tarkot in front of Syaoran, but Yami described what he was willing to tell to Yukito and Touya the best he could. He didn't elaborate. We don't know all the details. Syaoran was supposed to be clueless. But in any case, this was basically what Yami said: Tarkot ran into the palace grounds and was caught. Yami, for some reason, decided to keep him as his slave, ( and Yami quickly excused himself by saying that during that time the economy was based on slavery) and for a while Yami never knew his name. Didn't see him either. Tarkot turned out to be a good and smart kid, and then something happened they got into an argument about the Shadow games. Yami heard that Tarkot's father was one of those thieves; was he a tomb robber? And was stealing some kind of precious material and was executed when Tarkot was three. Plague starts, wipes out virtually everyone Tarkot knows, which was why he ran into the palace grounds in the first place. Some shoutings about the game, challenges, which Tarkot lost to a close game, Tarkot loses hope, falls ill, dies.
Not very emotional, I would say. But at least he got the point across. Yukito and Touya were smart enough to know that there was more to the story then just Fight, argue, die. They were mighty puzzled about Tarkot's father, dying at the same time, and Yukito mentioned something about Sakura's mother dying as well. Then something about the plague. Yukito had asked Yami if he knew what it was. Yami forgot. ( Nice memory.) Did he know how Tarkot managed to survive? Yami had no idea. Smart Pharoah. Then Touya suggested that perhaps Tarkot had been carrying the disease all along, and asked if any servants caught the disease during Tarkot's stay. Yami shook his head. No, they didn't.
Of course, the discussion was sadly, interrupted by Syaoran, who came in,
running away from Mokuba who was protesting something about...candy canes?
We had to stop the discussion, anyhow, since Yami didn't want Syaoran to
remember everythin. Touya and Yukito seemed to understand and said they will
listen to it later, after Syaoran is rescued from Mokuba.
Several days later, school had already started, of course, and that was when
Syaoran chose to get sick on us. And in fact, we never noticed until he was really
really sick. You've probably heard about people going ' as pale as snow', and all that
weird stuff about lips turning white and all that. Well, I know this sounds crazy, but
in fact, that's what happened. Syaoran's face went whiter than Ryou's hair at one
point, and of course started a good deal of commotion. Anzu happened to pay more
attention to hygiene then the rest of us, although she doesn't like it, and finally came
up with the obvious conclusion. Syaoran has a fever.
Oh sure, fever, what's the big deal? Tell that to Seto Kaiba. The guy went nuts. We knew that something was wrong with him; fifteen years old, running a company, trying to keep his reputation as Duel Monsters Champion, un, we know how that feels like. Sure, Seto's under stress, that sounds reasonable, we can take that. But the poor guy is definetely suffering from a nervous breakdown. Not that he did anything stupid like send Syaoran to the hospital in an ambulence; Seto's a lot smarter than that. But the fact was he wouldn't stop worrying about him. It's a fever, for god sakes! Geez, you'd think that Seto had suffered from fevers and knew how ' deadly' they were. I mean, unless you were suffering from some kind of mortal wound or had been diagnosed with some weird thing like Hepatitis B, well, alright, fevers, you have a reason to worry. It's a darn virus! Wake up! But iie, Seto, at least he didn't do anything stupid, but he did act very, well, overeactive. That eventually caused him to be very malnutritioned and a couple of weird things happened, but that's for later, and for Seto himself to tell.
Oh yeah, I didn't forget. Syaoran's fever, yadda yadda yadda. I think...hehe, I did forget to mention, that Syaoran did give Seto quite some trouble. The poor kid was very sorry for it, not that he could help it. Li-sama woke up Seto quite a few times late at night slash early in the morning, ( say, four to five a.m.) to which his fever burned up real, man. He was like a toaster. Of course, Syaoran wasn't really concerned about it, as he had pointed out,
" There's a cycle for a fever, you baka." Was his exact words to everyone. So that kind of explains why he gets another fever burndown at like...say, ten to twelve in the morning, then lowers down to nearly perfectly normal, deceiving us to believe he was close to being cured, then gets another fever somewhere around six or seven, I think that was the time, then another almost normal temperature, and I say almost because it's still high, and then, wakes everyone up at four in the morning. I don't like the cycle.
During that time we found out hanging out without Syaoran was no longer
quite as fun. I mean, we like to tease him and all. I enjoy beating someone in a
game. Although Anzu was still a target.
" That brings your points down to zero." She smiled at me. I seriously do not like losing and I tolerate it less and less. Of course, since Syaoran had brutally scolded me for going crazy over a little ' game', I managed to control myself, and iie, I did not go jumping off the top of the Tokyo Tower, nor did I go jump off the Eiffel Tower. I have a life, ye know.
" Although you are getting better at it." She smiled. " The only problem is, I got
better too. The other trick you pulled with my trap card was pretty good."
" Arigatou." I answered sheepishly. It was after school, of course. We were at the
Duel Monsters Trading Card center. Syaoran had went over and when he saw so
many people dueling each other he got really scared, and said something about "
Duel Monsters Haven". The poor kid was really intimidated. At that moment I had
thought about having Syaoran come over and actually play within the crowd. We
did get to know a few people here. Yugi was pretty famous, anyway.
If only he could get better soon.
Which he did, after three days. Seto looked majorly ill. If we hadn't known
better we would have thought he was going to fall sick. Which he didn't; Seto was
pretty tough. But in any case, I remember that second time when we brought
Syaoran, now a little weak because of that nasty fever of his, into the center. He
looked even more scared than before, I don't know if he's actually more afraid or
nervous or amused.
Since this center was focused more on middle schoolers and high schoolers, Syaoran quickly became the baby of the group, and needless to say, everyone grew interested in him. Mokuba never came here so he never got a chance. There were actually some pretty good duelists around here, and since Syaoran was rather young and very kawaii, some of them offered a game to him.
Hehe, Syaoran surprised everyone. He didn't exactly win really, but came
very close to, and I could tell from Yugi's expression that he was proud.
" I summon Curse of Dragon." Syaoran didn't say it very confidently, rather
robotic. " And I put down a trap card. Don't ask." He snapped when Yugi raised an
eyebrow.
He always put a comment in the end. ' Don't laugh', or something like ' I have no idea why'. Alright, not always. Just sometimes. In the end, he lost, nine hundred to zero-zero to nine hundred, I mean. The guy, Shigeru, was very impressed. When Shigeru said ' I win.', Syaoran smiled this funny smile that made us all laugh at the sight of it. I never did find out why he smiled like that. It was one of those, ' Did I do that?' kind of smile, and of course, when Syaoran smiles, it always made him look more adorable. What can you expect from an eleven year old kid?
So quite frankly it went pretty well, Syaoran's first public experience with a
bunch of good duelists other then Yugi and Seto. And as he was eleven, well, he
didn't really have to feel embarrassed by some dumb loss. And even after he lost
some duelists still wanted to play him. There were some pretty good duelists in our
town; this guy named...Toyota...I forgot his first name...he was one of the top sixteen
in the Duelist Tournament. Then there was one of Mai's acquaintances, her name
was I think...Mimi? Of course, you can't expect the kid to beat any of them, since
first of all, he's more or less of a beginner, and second, he ain't really into the game
as much as Pegasus would have liked, perhaps, and no wonder, since he's got his
own deck, man! ' Course, he never uses it really at that time.
We didn't learn anything new from Syaoran during this period. Of course, there came this problem about school. Syaoran was a little nervous about it when Ryou mentioned it to him, and no wonder. This place ain't Utopia. Besides, Syaoran had pointed out, he ain't sure if he has much of a future anyways. ' Cause one night we got a big bump on the head as a reminder of what's going on.
The guy that came into the game shop the other night...I think Anzu described that one, was actually Zodiac Tiger. Soon we figured out that unfortunately, the card captor gang back in Tomoeda only succeeded in taking out the four weakest zodiacs, which was the rat, the hare, the monkey, and the hog. Which kind of makes sense, because the stronger zodiacs ain't that easy to take out; none of the attacks worked-I mean, except for Yami's magic and the cards, of course, which Sakura never had a chance to use.
It was like this. Honda, Syaoran, Mokuba and I are at the park in the center of the town. I won't describe in detail, but there came this woman cloaked in black and gray. It turned out, she was Zodiac Horse, but at that time we didn't know. She was strong, man! Before we knew it, Honda and I were knocked out of the picture, but I was conscious. Mokuba had magic but he didn't know how to use it. And so it was the first time we saw Syaoran use magic to protect others.
He said something like, " Force, know my plight, release the light! Lightning!" And down came bolts of electricity out of nowhere. Honda and I were gaping, as was the rest of the people, and Syaoran muttered something about, ' out in public of all places'. Zodiac Horse probably couldn't care less if us mortals were confused and panicky, but Syaoran surely did. Unfortunately, his ' tiny' bolts of light, as Horse had said, couldn't harm her an itch, paraphrased, that is, and the throwing of magic quickly became swordplay.
It was the first time we saw him fight. And he was good. The sword came into view in his hand, and a staff came to view in the hand of Zodiac Horse. Metal clashed on ivory, blade clashed on pole. Syaoran's body was a blur. But he was only eleven years old, and only has so much endurance. Mokuba ran to us and helped us up, and we watched Syaoran and the zodiac in a kind of trance. It was not until Yugi and Ryou appeared did we finally wake up.
By that time, Syaoran was exhausted, and could only manage to block the blows. Yugi's millenium puzzled glowed and Yami took over. He flipped out a card and the Dark Magician stood before Syaoran, staff in hand. Yami commanded the magician to attack, and the magician did, but not with Dark Magic.
It was because the zodiacs were on a higher status then the monsters. The Dark Magician was partly under their command. But they were under Syaoran's, as well as Yami's. We didn't know that, and Yami had a puzzled look.
For a moment, at first, the Dark Magician and the Zodiac stared at each other. The Dark Magician had a blank look, the zodiac had a look of intensity and concentration. Zodiac Horse was studying the magician, as if daring him to touch her. The magician didn't dare defy any of his commanders and for a while stood there confused. Then he got into a defense position, in front of Syaoran, his staff held horizontally in front of him, ready to block any blow.
The zodiac had a sneering look of contempt and shot some kind of brownish ball of light at the magician. It didn't really kill him, exactly, but it did wound him a little. Only then did the Dark Magician attack, and as I had said, not with Dark Magic. Instead, he threw his staff and the thing, spinning like a frisbee, hit the zodiac right in the chest.
Ryou's yami took over and Akira commanded the Dark Magician in his turn. But his words were as useless as Yami's, because the Dark Magician made it clear that he wouldn't do as they say. He tried though, and he did attack, but soon it became pure defense.
Honda and I rushed over to the poor kid to help him up. Syaoran gave a call, and the Dark Magician whirled and turned around. Just as a spark of ray reached him he vanished, as if he had never been. And so did we, we were off and runnin, Mokuba struggling to keep up. Out of nowhere came a fireball, and we saw this huge tiger with wings, which we recognized as Kero.
" Get out of here!" He yelled, and we did. Kero and Yue never told us what happened. We just knew that Zodiac Horse never went home again.
