Chapter 30: Epilogue
"You've done well." A familiar voice swum nimbly into her mind, clear and strong through the lingering darkness, smooth and dark sounding, the kind of tone you'd expect a shadow madden to carry.
"And we are proud of you." Another voice rang in, with a sort of accent tune of a gun slinger.
"And," added a deep voice never heard before sung out, a male voice clear and husky, yet smooth and elegant, right into the blackness the most vivid and clearest of the three, "You must awake and greet your friends."
"ANN! WAKE UP!" Ann through her eyes open, and squinted at the huge amounts of lights excelling. She rose her hand, but found a huge pang of pain leap to it, making her wince, then blink as it suddenly subsided, and then blocked out the cloud of bright. She looked up into the bored and yet concerned faces of Brian and Kyle, both smiling at her awareness to the current reality.
"About time you woke up."
"Well, what do you expect? I can't sleep with you shouting in my ear. Where's everybody else?"
"They're taking care of Bakura and Malik. Turns out Bakura won a shadow game, if you can believe that, and Marik had other plans than letting go. It took a lot of physical persuasion to get him out." She didn't have a clue what they were talking about, but nodded her head and felt very much like laughing. She didn't instead; she returned a grin and looked thoughtfully around the room to find they were standing back in Bill's house. Funny how she was happy, yet disappointed to see the place. She opened her mouth to ask exactly what was going on with Bakura and Malik when someone slammed the door open and a ruffled haired and red faced Ammon walked into the room, shoulders hunched so it looked like he had no neck. Bill walked in busting with laughter and pointing at him, also red faced but not for the same reason.
"I can't believe it!" Bill gasped.
"The Pharaoh as lost his mind… 'it's just Queen's We Will Rock You' a complete waste of time- oh, you're awake, good afternoon to you, and you two," he suddenly said, turning his direction away before she could ask her question to Kyle and Brian's blank faces.
"Lessons, ten minutes, prepare your minds, oh, and get out, she needs her rest." Ammon walked out as fast as she walked in, saying a small good-bye, and leaving the four friends in the room.
"What's going on?" Ann finally asked. Brian and Kyle looked at each other, each smiling a smirk, and spoke with deep pride.
"Bill and you aren't the only ones with powers…" Brian began.
"Yeah, we've got em too, and why not? We have imaginations, too."
"But Ammon is getting all educational about it 'You need lessons and training combat to blah blah blah.'"
"Why? We can teach ourselves, why give teachers all the credit?" Brian finished boredly.
"And don't think you're getting out of it. Ammon insists you take lessons, too. I mean, you were supposed to take 'em." Bill said, wagging his finger at her. Ann shrugged, not really caring about it right now.
"Hey, do you think I can go home? My parents probably think I'm dead right now."
"No they don't. I called them…I think a few days ago, said we were in Maine on vacation, asked if they didn't mind." Bill replied.
"Well obviously, you're the friend, when I get home they'll be pissed." Ann pointed out. Bill helplessly shrugged.
"Give yourself a day…hey; I got you a get well present." Bill added, beaming.
"More like you made one."
"Well, it's the thought that counts, right?" Ann thought about it, and then nodded. Bill smiled and rolled up his sleeves, shaking his hands out, and then snapping his fingers. Out of a sudden puff a smoke a rectangular object flopped out of thin air and thumbed softly on the end of the bed. Ann looked curiously at it a moment, then saw the bright silver letters, exclaiming DELL.
"A laptop?"
"Well…yeah, I heard Kaiba broke your computer last year, and I figured I'd whip you up a good one…one that can get emails from the anime world…" Ann nodded her head and immediately took the laptop, turned it on, and started pushing buttons, making it her own.
It took a day for her to recover, even though she was walking around saying she was okay before hand, but people told her to go back into her room and rest. In that day she changed around her desk top, played solitaire, and questioned everyone you even went by her room. Yugi was unfortunately the first victim, and she asked what happened to Kakra's sword.
"Well, think of it as the Millennium Puzzle for a moment. It's smashed up, but she's still in there. The only way for her to return would be to forge the sword a new with all the original pieces. Ammon knows about this, and asked Isis, Shady, and Malik on their way back to Egypt to hide them in the tombs, no 24 hour guarding, Ammon already put a spell on them so only one with a pure heart can touch them, so that won't be a problem."
Ann asked Joey how things were going with Marie when he came in to check on her, with a steaming cup of coco and a wide grin spreading on his face.
"Oh, we understand each other… she loves someone else, and that's fine with me…"
"What about Kaiba and Serenity?" Joey nearly dropped his coco on the floor.
"…well," He started through clenched teeth, "It seems Mr. Jack-ass explained that it was a whole mistake, and it's her that has the crush. It'll all blow over…hopefully." Ann was even uncomfortable with the idea of Joey and Kaiba being brother in laws to each other. Think of the horrible Christmas dinners were the whole family attends. There would be so much broke furniture.
When Ann 'fully recovered' the first thing she did was went home. It wasn't that bad of a telling off, she was only grounded for a month, which wasn't so bad. She wasn't grounded from the computer at least, and sometimes when she locked herself in her room, she would be 'indisposed' or 'sleeping' when she made visits.
When she came back they sometimes celebrated, holding huge parties where the police would sometimes show up, or just sitting on the couch watching horror videos. Ann noticed that Joey always sat next to Mai with these movies, and she'd notice Mai's hand 'slip' into Joeys on accident for several minutes. Ann didn't mind this, the two blondes were perfect for each other, and would probably live happily ever after, but Ann kept this to herself.
Ammon's lessons were annoying but educational. She found out that Kyle was actually a big pyro, and was talented with fire tricks and tactics, while Brian was his opposite, and valued ice attacks over all others, and Ann would often find Kyle or Bill with ice cubes in their coffee or frozen limbs when he was pissed with them. Of course, Ammon would unfreeze them; and find out Kyle and Bill was no more responsible with their powers, often finding favorite shirts on fire, or buckets of water falling on people's heads. Once they had accidentally set Kaiba's trench coat ablaze and covered it up by saying it was still at the dry cleaners whenever he asked for it, while Bill struggled to make a new one. He went completely off when he found it burned in Bill's closet, and practically cashed them all over until Ammon fixed it. Of course, that was nothing compared to the time they changed Yugi's hair gel into Honey syrup. Yami was so pissed it made Kaiba scared.
Calendae sometimes popped into her head, always scaring her. She'd say things were going fine with the big head honcho, and she was getting along great. She suggested to Ann that she should start writing stories. Ann tried her suggestion, and found many of them to be un-end-able, and had no where to go, even after weeks later, but she didn't let it bother her too much.
So the weeks past. It was some time later that Ann sat down at her desk at Bill's cabin, finding herself bored to death. She looked at the blinking curser boredly, and listened to Bill open her door and shut, as he came over with a steaming cup of hot coco and pulled up a chair, same expression on his face.
"What ever happened to Pegasus?" She asked him, suddenly curious, as she gazed at the blank page.
"He went home…I performed a ritual with Ammon…the 'seminars'. He was pretty pissed with the whole idea, but I told him we had to do it. So he did, and we had to have about thirty of them, before it worked. And he walked out the happiest man on the planet."
"What did you give him?"
"His old once dead bride…we performed the biggest trick, and denied death. It was surprisingly hard, and Ammon made me promise we'd never do it again."
"Will you?"
"Probably not." They didn't say anything for the longest time, and watched sadly at the blank page. Then after a while Bill chuckled.
"Hey, did you ever think about writing again?" Ann shook her head.
"No, I couldn't find anything interesting to write about, when ever I tried they'd end in blocks."
"Well, you know, all heroes have their stories. Maybe you should write a book about me. Bill's Adventure you could call it. That sounds nice." Ann rolled her eyes, and pondered about it a moment.
"I don't think so, Bill… but how about this?" She pressed the tab key, and started typing very fast.
Day Dreams
She leaned against the window in boredom. The bus shook at all the bumps in the road making her head hurt and blurring her vision. She sighed, how boring it was to do the same thing everyday. The bus stopped with a jerk and a boy got on, his hair crayon brown with eyes to match. He saw her big brown hair and sat next to her, how could you miss it? Her tree bark brown eyes did not see him; they stared blankly out the window. Her eyes were dull, telling him she was haft asleep. He greeted her.
"Hey Ann…" Ann hearing her name woke up and looked at him.
"Hi Bill… did you bring back the fanfic?"
"Hmm…good, needs humor though, why start here?"
"Well, you need a beginning…"
She kept writing for several hours, typing, not caring about the spelling at the moment, and paused when they had to meet Bakura at the local coffee shop, he said he had wanted to have a cup of coffee with them and figure out what they wanted to do for Saturday. Ann was sure she'd have to tell him no, she had to finish two stories, and start a book about Secacah: Madam Shadow Traveler, and Kalle: Gunslinger of Selvana , and some others. She had one in her mind at that moment though, her first male hero traveling in her head, with a voice clear and husky, yet smooth and elegant. She knew he would probably be the first of many, and to her surprise, he had characteristics of an old childhood friend, dead now, but very alive in her head. He could be very happy-go-lucky, like Bill, very serious, like Yami and Ammon, strong-willed, like Mai, peace-loving, like Yugi and Tea and Serenity, a hot temper, like Joey, a shy side, like Bakura, a love for his family, like Kaiba and Mokuba, a funny sort of courage, like Tristan, a deep understanding, like Brian, and Kyle's slyness, mostly with remarks. She tapped the desk, thinking of a name for her new creation, and decided on Rune. Yes, Rune was good. He was her friends, all pieced together, into one man, forged in the fire of creation burning in her mind, as may others, and she was already liking him more and more, as her mind slipped into a dream-like state, and his tale began to unfold…
BookDragon: "That, my friends, is the end. You have all been wonderfully patient with me. Bill wants me to write a third book, but it looks distant, very distant. I hope you didn't mind the whole story writing thing, I thought that would be sort of neat to end with. So, again, THANK YOU for all your review and support. YOU ARE ALL WONDERFUL!"