Gijinka Renamon: Apologies, but I think the best person to write that character is yourself. You know your character better than I ever could.
"I've had it up to here with this honor stuff!"
-Captain Salamander
"Don't you worry. I once saw Joey play a video game for 3 days straight
without blinking or nothing."
-Tristan
Four: Opened Gate
Joey shrugged and tore into another bag of chips. "Got the flu, I guess. Too bad. They're missing out on a great party."
"Weren't you supposed to visit Yugi yesterday?"
"Yeah, things came up. I called his grandpa; he was okay with it. Said he'd tell him. Say-what's that?"
Near all the boys in the class were gathered in front of the Playstation-endowed TV, looking ready to tear each other apart. Tristan turned and answered Joey's question. "Raptor rented that new monster game. We can't decide who should play it first."
"Shouldn't he do it, if he rented it?"
"I mean who goes after him. And, who gets front-row seats."
Téa ruminated on this for a moment, then began ripping a piece of paper into strips. Once this was done, she whispered to Rex, whereupon he nodded. She then took his hat and held out a bunch of the strips. "Everyone who wants to get closest, put your name on one of these and put it in the hat." This was quickly accomplished. "Okay, I guess that's everyone-"
Whereupon Seto Kaiba approached her, delicately extracted one of the remaining strips from her hand, wrote his name, and dropped it in. "I'd like to have a look at their excuse for a game," he informed them. "It's not like there's much else to do in here."
"Why that stuck-up-" Joey began, but was cut off when Téa grabbed his hand and stuffed it into the hat, then pulled it out and opened it, removing the clinging strips and handing them to Rex.
She smiled sweetly. "Would you do the honors?"
Rex duly read off the names. "Kaiba, Wheeler, Nozaka, Devlin…" The early birds in the crowd let out a collective groan as they realized all the names read were entered later and thus at the top of the pile inside the hat. This done, Rex shook out his hat and settled down to play, the chosen ones scrambling for their priority spots, except for Kaiba, who stood and looked on with his trademark lofty expression.
"An empty canyon?" Duke remarked. "Oh, that's so exciting. I could get more entertainment watching paint peel."
Joey shoved him. "It's the opening, ya moron! Whoa, look at that! It's like the freaky floating castle in OW!" The last word was effected by Kaiba stepping on his foot. "Why you-"
Miho screamed.
Joey jerked around and gaped. He could hear Téa shouting, "Everyone, get away from the TV! It's short-circuiting or something!"
Then he heard Kaiba saying "What the-" and Rex completing that sentence with a considerably less tasteful word.
The teacher said "Mr. Raptor!"
Everything went spinning. I must be getting a fever, he decided, then pulled himself up to try and get to the nurse.
He promptly fell (a rather long way, he felt) and crashed onto something cold and hard. Joey tensed for the sound of the TV glass shattering, and a tremendous amount of cash to be paid, but it never came.
He heard Rex say the word again.
***
Bakura jerked awake, kicking Diamant in the side
as he did so. Diamant twitched, and he apologized. He grabbed a card and
concentrated until he got what he wanted, then announced, "We're going
now."
Diamant craned her neck around. Her eyes immediately
widened.
Bakura smirked and adjusted Lady of Faith's headdress
before bending down to return the shoes that had come with her outfit.
"Don't worry, it's just a copy. She's still decent." He wouldn't have been
caught dead in it normally, but it figured that Ryou hadn't taken a hat
with him.
***
Rex rolled to the side out of instinct; the giant
hand barely missed him. He rolled back, grabbed his deck, and got to his
feet, then dodged the hand again.
"Raptor," Kaiba yelled, "what have you done!"
"What do mean, what have I done?" Dodge. Kick giant
finger out of sheer being-ticked-off.
"Ah, how amusing."
"I'll give you amusing, you- YEARRGH!" Joey Wheeler
was lifted into the air by the other hand, this one clenched into a fist.
"Put me down, you, or I'll-"
The next moment he was falling and Kaiba was saying,
"Not only are you a dog, Wheeler, you bite like one too."
"Oh, shaddup," Joey retorted. "I didn't see you
doin' anything besides running away."
"That would be because I possess a most useful thing
known as a brain."
"KA-AI-BA!" Further arguing was cut off by laughter
from the owner of the hands. Right around then, as Rex got his first
good look at same, he decided Sir Robin didn't have the wrong idea.
***
"Kohaku."
"Centaur," he said without turning around.
"You named the Unico after her?"
"That's right."
Celious and Dragoon had, for the occasion, cleaned
out the glass and the dust. They had also put Centaur's library back on
the shelves (some of the books had apparently gone missing, as shown by
the gaps). If the lack of glass in the windows was ignored, one could almost
pretend nothing had changed- until you noticed the Lost Disk on the floor.
Centaur took a long look at it now, while Kohaku did his best to ignore
it.
"I take it you're angry with me." No reply. "Tell
me, what should we have done?"
"It wasn't what you did, that's for sure."
"It is our custom."
"I've had it up to here with customs."
"You know, Captain Salamander said nearly the exact
same thing at one time."
"I'm no Salamander," Kohaku growled.
"I know." Silence. "So you believe I am a hopeless
traditionalist? Do you believe I'm obsessed with honor and ritual?"
"You call serving that slime because of a rigged
defeat the honorable thing to do?"
"Yes."
"…did you ever think he might've known you'd do
that?"
"Yes, he knew. He reminded me of it, actually."
Kohaku, in his quest to keep from looking at the
Lost Disk, took a look at the bookshelf. Specifically, at what was missing
from the bookshelf. His eyes widened. "Your journals…?" A nod; Kohaku carried
out a quick examination and determined what else was missing. "So in addition
to being slime, he is also determined to be well-read?"
Centaur smiled slightly in response. "I never thought
anyone would want to read my journals."
"So you were wrong."
More silence. "Why Julia?"
"How should I know? Why not you?"
***
This is just crazy, Joey thought. We get
zapped somewhere else and we don't even have time to figure out just what's
going on before we get into this stuff and start running around some weird
place and we don't even know where the exits are and now-!
Kaiba flailed his arms, or would have if they weren't
held in place by several blue things that called themselves Jells, which
were currently laughing their figurative heads off. Joey was strongly tempted
to sock them, except for the fact that they seemed to be rather flexible
and would probably grab his fist the moment he tried.
What were these things?
Rex made a quite loud throat-clearing noise, and
when Joey turned to him, promptly shoved the Red Eyes Black Dragon into
his hand. Joey flushed and gathered up the rest of his deck from where
it had fallen.
It seemed a bit stupid, actually, worrying about
the cards when Kaiba was all tied up (okay, it was Kaiba getting
tied up, but still…) and some freaky guy with pink fluffy hair was after
them. Really, could the Red Eyes Black Dragon come to life and save their-
Wait a minute. Joey again looked at the card,
now imbued with new significance. Hey, none of this is making sense
anyway, so… it just might work. Come on, deck, Heart of the Cards, don't
fail me now. C'mon, please, I need ya here.
His request was answered.
***
Mocchi was at first delighted at the thought of having
a new playmate; this departed when it turned out Lia had little to no interest
in the games he enjoyed even though she went along with them, whereupon
he got Genki to play them with him instead. Lia occupied herself with some
old puzzles Celious dug up; the fact that she wasn't close to solving them
did not deter her in the least.
Kohaku left an hour before the others.
***
Awaiting a response when there was no chance it was
coming anytime soon, Grey Wolf had decided, was one of the most boring
things in the world.
Certainly, Mu's plans were most likely in jeopardy,
and judging from the fate of the Cabalos, he would probably be lucky to
take the white dragon down with him. But that didn't mean he couldn't be
bored until that happened.
Katsuya and Murasaki had been sent on their way
roughly an hour ago. He had ensured that they were well informed of the
extreme urgency of their message, even if they had been too slow to figure
it out for themselves. The normally lazy Katsuya had practically fled in
the direction of Mount Cairos. When all this was over, he decided, he would
have to make certain that Katsuya continued to show the abilities that
thus far were only brought out when his hide was threatened.
Grey Wolf had dismissed all the others, leaving
him to his own devices. He knew the Cabalos used conversation to alleviate
their boredom; he failed to comprehend, however, just what was so special
about it. It was just talking, after all. He had no argument against their
conversations away from battle, as long as it was understood that they
would not try and involve him in said conversations.
Back in the flying castle days some random Jell
had unwittingly given them all a demonstration of why breaking that unspoken
rule was not a good idea when he walked up and began yapping about the
weather. Fortunately for the Jell, it managed to melt more or less back
into the masses; after a time the ridicule subsided.
Grey Wolf instead lay down, and began to dream with
his eyes still open. It was a carefully orchestrated dream, done a thousand
times over with slight deviation if at all, but he hadn't yet tired of
it.
As night's fall began he was still imagining Tiger
of the Wind's demise.
***
"Are we almost there?"
Bakura dropped a candy in her mouth. "Yes, almost."
Diamant, reassured, turned back. Indeed, a few more
minutes and they would run right into the side of the mountain. Judging
from all the activity, not to mention the flying castle (that had no small
resemblance to the one of Dark Illusions) this was what he was looking
for.
By now he could see more walking purple tulip bulbs
moving about. No sign, however, of what he was looking for.
I suppose I'll have to do this the Shadow Magic
way…
After a while, the Ring understood that he was not
looking for the Puzzle this time around, and duly indicated a certain point
on the mountain. Diamant immediately set her course.
***
Making their way through (once they had extinguished
the fire that had caught in Kaiba's coat when the slime-creatures were
being fried) was much easier now, as Red Eyes Black Dragon simply fried
down the walls in their way. Joey had found himself in the figurative driver's
seat, perched on a spot at the base of the dragon's neck, and hanging on
to said neck for dear life, sometimes looking back to confirm Rex and Kaiba
were still following (the former dragging the latter). He observed still
more strange creatures now, including but not limited to red-eyed rabbits
with black and gray fur, green lizards with weird collars, winged red lizards
with weird collars… Joey saw most of these as the Red Eyes nearly ran them
over.
Finally, another door was blasted and beyond he
saw… snow? The weather here was probably skewed, he knew, but it was still
a shock to see snow when just yesterday even a T-shirt seemed far too heavy.
Oh well. No turning back now.
Red Eyes turned and shot a fireball at their pursuers,
then charged out into the snow, whereupon Joey nearly froze to death in
the first ten seconds; at least the teacher had made him wear the uniform.
There was a stone point in front of them, reaching
out a ways ahead. No handrails. Joey looked down at the sound of footsteps.
"Well, Kaiba? Ya got a brilliant plan in the works?"
Apparently Kaiba was not as able to suspend disbelief,
as he seemed to be reduced to sputtering, "What- how- that's impossible-
how could you-"
"I think a better question would be how did we get
here in the first place."
This galvanized him, in a way. "You," he snarled,
turning to Rex, "you were the one playing that stupid game!"
"Don't look at me," Rex yelled back, "it was a rental!
Go sue the store if you want!"
"Um, excuse me? I think they're catching up…"
***
Bakura dismounted, and Diamant zapped a few more
of the purple bulbs that had the misfortune to get in the way. After that,
she turned her attention to the ice, firing at the spots Bakura indicated.
Finally…
The body of a tremendous dragon could be seen, trapped
in the ice. Bakura knew this was it, but still, he was tempted to laugh.
What kind of all-powerful overlord has fluffy pink hair? Then again,
he was the one in the dress.
He worked quickly, enlisting some help from one
of his Morphing Jars, and by the time he heard familiar voices there was
only a void in the ice, which quickly fell in on itself. Nature abhors
a vacuum.
***
Kohaku practically flew through the forest, stopping perhaps once every hour. Sooner or later, he would have to reach the fortress, and then Grey Wolf would not be able to run away fast enough.
***
Centaur looked to the north, to the retreating forms
of the Searchers and their new friends, with an inscrutable expression.
