The Weaker Sex Chapter 5: After, In The Dark, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

Author's Introduction:

So, here they are, for the first time. Sailor Moon had her Queen Beryl, Bart Simpson had his Principal Skinner, and…Yami and Kaiba are just stuck with each other, it seems. *chuckles.* The clash of duelists continues, so get your popcorn:

Chapter Five, Tenth Duel: After, In The Dark

La vatda rah ruena

La sdatda rei rueno arda vannarew

Nur une lu doo anmy yendy lue on

Nur lyela un sorlai

Dar shut ray ruena dennay

Dar lat a mueha vatky arch sadadie

Gunner aiya e undu et suinan lo

Nur lyela un sorlai

Oh dohaddy

I've been waiting for you...

(If in this world

there were no such things as words...

Even though I could have dismissed

such a hunch as just an inconvenience

I may lose you

so saying, life became hard

like a baby, if you cry

everyone would turn around once

so I would do that.

I`ve been waiting for you,

even though we`ve been separated far apart.)

(After, In the Dark)

(Macross Plus)

Yami smirked at Kaiba as she made a note on a scoring sheet at her side. "Your life points have dropped from 2000 to 1500, Kaiba. I'd be careful if I were you--as punishment, the loser will know death in a penalty game!"

"Know...death?" Kaiba swallowed hard, unable to stop the lump from forming in his throat. He stared at the girl across from him. She stared back, her eyes bloody beneath her dark hair, the vanilla bangs framing her bronze skin with light. Beautiful, deadly, waiting, waiting for him. And her dragon sat before her folded arms on the table, as obedient as a fire-breathing kitten. Waiting.

I've been waiting for you...

Kaiba laughed, a joyous chuckle spilling from his lips. "This...is good."

For the first time tonight, Yami looked a bit confused, dark brows meeting over her red eyes. "What?"

"I said, this is good," Kaiba repeated. "I'm glad I took your challenge! This is the extreme game I've been looking for!"

Yami had recovered herself by now. "Then take your turn."

"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to rush?" he teased, drawing a card. Chuckling, he tossed it almost carelessly onto the table in attack position. "Well, well. Will you look at my Battle Ox?" He leaned forward eagerly to watch the card take form, and the ox brandished its axe. "It's got 1700 attack points and 1000 defense points. It's one of the strongest beast monsters, and it's about to slash your dragon to ribbons!"

Yami gritted her teeth. "My dragon's attack and defense are lower than your monster's."

"Exactly! You strike back in vain!" Kaiba snickered like a comic-opera villain as the Battle Ox swung its axe in a mighty downward stroke, severing the Blackland Fire Dragon's head. "And you lose 200 life points."

Yami pouted, looking cagey as she drew her next card. She placed it in defense mode. "I summon the Mystical Elf, in defense mode. Her attack points are only 800, so I'll use her 2000 defense points to guard my life points."

The Elf swirled into being on the table, and Kaiba could hear her chanting a soft spell in the quiet of the poolhouse, surrounded by a halo of her own radiance. Kaiba's lips twitched into a smirk. "Very smart, Yami. The Mystical Elf's defense beats my Battle Ox's attack by a safe margin. If I attack, I'll just hurt myself, so I'll put my Ox into defense mode as well." He turned the card with his index finger.

"A stalemate," Yami observed softly over the quiet chanting of her Elf.

"Not for long," Kaiba countered as he drew a card. "Well, well. I'll save this for next turn." He placed it face-down on the table, and Yami's reaction was exactly what he wanted. Her eyes flickered with worry as she drew her own card.

"Skull Servant," she announced. "In defense mode."

Kaiba chuckled. "Very well, since you can't do anything else. Now it's my turn, and I play this magic card on my Battle Ox!" He flipped his face-down card up to reveal its picture to Yami. "Giant's Might! This will raise the Ox's points by 20%!" He chuckled, grinning evilly down at the Ox. "Now, grow!"

Yami's eyes widened, gold-tipped lashes touching her skin all around as the Battle Ox roared, power filling it.

"Its attack points are now 2040, higher than your stupid Elf's defense!" Kaiba announced. "Battle Ox! Attack the Elf! Off with her head!"

The Mystical Elf shrieked as the Ox's axe struck. Yami could only watch helplessly with fearful eyes as the Ox mowed down her Skull Servant as well, scattering bits of bone all over the table. Kaiba laughed scornfully. "No matter what card you draw, my minotaur will hack it to bits!"

Kaiba was right. Regardless of what cards Yami drew, what moves she made, the Battle Ox destroyed one monster after another. Her red eyes remained wary, slightly panicked, the color of a bad moon rising as she feverishly drew and flipped cards. Her golden bangles shivered as her hands jumped from deck to hand and back again.

Kaiba folded his arms over his chest, looking as contented as if his smirk were closed around a canary. The girl across from him was now little more than a shuddering, trapped animal. She was flushed, chest heaving slightly, small pink tongue flicking out to wet her parted lips as she weighed her dwindling options. It was a vision to provoke to most wanton cruelty in a male heart, this helpless girl, this crushable girl. Her life points were at 500 and she sank a little in her chair as if to feel the corner she was backed into.

"Give up, Yami," Kaiba murmured, almost a purr in the quiet of the room. "Give in. There's no way you can win."

Yami's eyes never blinked as she reached a queenly bronze hand to her deck. She had to know what was at stake as she drew her next card, the one that would decide her fate. She held it for a long time, just staring at the picture, lightly running fingers over it. Kaiba saw for the first time that her fingernails were painted black and gold, to match her jewelry.

Kaiba was about to tell her to just get on with it when she suddenly reflected his smirk, as if he'd looked into a mirror of arrogance.

"Meet my new boyfriend," she said, laying the card almost reverently onto the table in attack mode. Kaiba saw a grinning skull look out from the picture a split second before the monster burst fully formed from the card, spreading ragged wings of dark sinew and bleached bone, a growl trickling fom jaws that death had fixed forever in a smile. "The strongest card in my deck, the Summoned Skull!"

Kaiba's eyes shot wide, the whites as empty-colored as the bones that made the monster. "The Summoned Skull!?! The Skull Demon?" He pounded a fist onto the table, making the cards jump. "That's one of the five strongest fiends! How could you have such a rare card?"

"Yeah, he's quite the stud, but he gives me a lot," Yami joked, leaning seductively over the table and the Skull. "I'm very jealous of him, but I think I'll let him kiss your Battle Ox goodbye!" She pointed across the table at the minotaur. "Lightning Strike!"

The Skull's attack power was 2500 points, more than enough to wipe out the tricked-out Battle Ox. The Ox roared its pain as the grinning Skull called lightning to its bony fingertips and jolted the current through the beast.

"My minotaur..." Kaiba choked out, watching the smoke clear where his beast had once stood.

Now it was Yami's turn to smirk from the safe vantage point of counterattack. Her jewelry glistened not half so bright as her smile as the Summoned Skull crushed every card that Kaiba drew, and the CEO felt a thin trickle of sweat slide down his forehead as the girl and the demon presided happily over his downfall.

When Kaiba's life points were at 800, he knew it was time for drastic measures.

"The outcome isn't so clear now, is it, Kaiba?" Yami asked, her red eyes deep and taunting. Kaiba wanted to smash that smile, and in his pocket was the perfect way to do it.

If things continue at this rate, I'm going to lose, he realized.

He remembered Yami's cry of surprise as the limo splashed past the curb, drenching her...

I KNOW my deck has cards that can beat the Summoned Skull, but the odds that I draw one in the next turn are pretty low...

Yami's angry, tear-filled eyes as she spoke of her grandfather's heart, of the ties of family.

But there's one sure way to win this duel, Kaiba thought. It isn't in this deck, but of course I brought it with me.

"The needle on my record player has been wearing thin..."

He shook the thoughts away. No. The girl doesn't matter. This is about the win. And this game's rules went out the window when the cards started coming to life. Time to show the girl who's the real champion.

He smiled at her, the easy smile he'd shown her earlier in the day, watching her duel Wheeler. "I have to say, Yami, you're pretty good! I didn't think it would be this close. You ought to enter the next tournament! But...this is as far as it goes." He slid the card from his pocket and palmed it to make it look like he'd drawn it from his deck. "I've got a special card I've been saving for just this eventuality, and that card is..."

He slammed it down onto the table, revealing its splendor. "The Blue-Eyes White Dragon! The rarest card on earth!"

Yami actually jumped out of her chair, starting forward, both hands on the table. "The Blue-Eyes! My grandpa's card!" she cried as the dragon pulled away from the card, shrieking with how it felt to be free. It gleamed in the dim light, its blue eyes fixed on Yami.

"You're wrong, Yami! This is my very own card! I just happened to get it from someone!" Kaiba chuckled madly. "This is so cool!"

"Someone like me, you mean!" Yami said angrily, sitting back down. Her red eyes glittered with unshed tears.

"Your Summoned Skull's attack power is 2500!" Kaiba said, trying to get her focus back on her impending defeat. "My Blue-Eyes White Dragon's is 3000! The difference is 500 points...which just happens to be all you have left, Yami!" He grinned at her. "That would leave you with...zero."

Yami steeled herself, gripping the edges of the table, whether in fear or to stop herself from leaping for him, Kaiba didn't know. Tension sang through her slim bare arms.

"Go, Blue-Eyes White Dragon!" Kaiba announced with great pomp. "Finish her!"

But the dragon didn't move. It fluffed at the air with its wings, hovering above its card prison, blue eyes intent on Yami, who slowly let go of the table. Even when her hands were in plain sight the dragon didn't attack. It remained floating harmlessly above the table, tilting its pristine white head to one side like a questioning bird.

"What?" Kaiba growled. "Why don't you attack?"

Yami smiled sadly and reached past her Summoned Skull, which was still standing like a sentinel, waiting for orders. Yami's bronze hands were gentle as they stroked beneath the Blue-Eyes' mighty jaws. "Kaiba, you still don't understand the true meaning of this game. This card will never attack me, because your soul isn't in this dragon."

"Soul?" Kaiba asked. "What are you talking about?"

"I can see it," Yami murmured, almost to herself, as she leaned forward over the table. Her red eyes were hooded and dreamy as they met the dragon's blue ones, and it made a questioning sound at her. "I can see the soul of my grandpa behind these blue eyes!"

The dragon turned away from Yami, ducking its head low, and she took her hands back as the white skin flickered a bit in the stingy light.

"My Blue-Eyes!" Kaiba choked. "It's...it's disappearing!"

It was. The dragon seemed to collapse in on itself, blinking out like a bad television picture, and then it was simply gone. "No!" Kaiba whispered.

"You still don't get it, do you?" Yami asked, shaking her dark head, a little to the right, a little to the left, the straight hair brushing just above her bronze shoulders. "To my grandpa, that card was much more than a collectible. The dragon may have been fated to destroy, but its loyalty lies with Grandpa's soul. It chose to destroy itself as the only way to fulfill its duty."

"That," Kaiba said through gritted teeth, "is impossible! There's no way that cards can think!"

"I believe it's my turn," Yami said, calm as the sea. "As you can see, I've been keeping this magic card face-down, but I'd like to use it now." She flipped the card to display an ankh that matched the ones dangling from her ears. "Monster Reborn!"

For the first time since the Blue-Eyes had appeared, she allowed the tiny smirk back onto her lips. "What monster do you think I'll revive, Kaiba? Three guesses--first two don't count!"

Kaiba had to shield his eyes a little as the Blue-Eyes White Dragon reappeared over the table-on Yami's side. He knew it was crazy, but it looked almost happy to be there, and its razor jaws seemed to mirror her smirk.

"White Lightning!" Yami cried, and Kaiba had no defense against the dragon's attack.

"No!" he growled above a sudden wind that accompanied the dragon's lightning blast. "I lost..."

"That's right," Yami's voice came above the roar. "And now for your penalty game!"

Kaiba didn't know if she was smiling when she said it. Indeed, he couldn't see her at all. The poolhouse was gone, the dragon was gone, Yami was gone. There was nothing but white light and the dragon's shrill trumpeting shriek of victory, and Kaiba had to squeeze his eyes shut against the brightness, unable to stop tears collecting at the edges of his lids from the pain of seeing. He tried to throw an arm over his face to shield it, but he had no arm, no way to protect himself. No self...

When he could feel arms, legs, hands, eyes again--and that was only by realizing that they all hurt--he realized he was lying on dirt. The back yard? He lifted his head slowly, unable to stop the landscape from sliding down his vision in waves of color.

"Oh..." he groaned, dizzy. What had happened?

He realized that he should have been staring at the poolhouse, but there was no poolhouse. In fact, this place wasn't his property. He got to pins-and-needles feet unsteadily, looking around at a dark horizon and air full of mist. "Where...?"

With a sickening shock, he realized, somehow, exactly where he was. It was a world his mind spent a lot of time in--the world of Duel Monsters.

"How...?" he began to ask the empty, misty air, but was cut off by a roar. Whirling, he saw the gaping jaws of Yami's Blackland Fire Dragon, dripping and poised to kill as it reared above him, far too close. The heat of its breath was as real as life, as real as...death...as it advanced closer and closer.

Seto Kaiba discovered he did have arms this time, flinging them up to protect himself. And a voice, to scream, because he knew it would not help.

In the dim light of the poolhouse, Yami Motou looked at two cards in front of her on an otherwise empty table for one.

One of the cards was the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, gleaming with pride in its painted stance, forever poised to attack, a vision in pure white and brilliant blue. Yami ran gentle fingertips over the picture, feeling its reality beneath her hand.

The other card held quite a different picture. A boy, with hair the color of caramel in shadow, with ice blue eyes gone wide in shock as his hands fled to cover his face, eternally too late. The card's name was scrolled just above the picture.

Seto Kaiba.

Yami took only the Blue-Eyes White Dragon with her as she rose from the table gracefully. "Kaiba...you will probably experience death in that world..." she murmured to the other card, which still remained on the table. "But don't worry. It's only a nightmare...only an illusion." She stroked her fingertips lightly over the picture, just as she'd done to the Blue-Eyes. "This is my wish--that by becoming a card, you will come to understand the heart of the cards. Then, just like my grandpa, you'll become a true gamesmaster!"

She walked around the table to the door of the poolhouse, letting herself out into the night. "As for you," she murmured to the card in her hand with a smile, "I'll return you to Grandpa. Then you'll be happy, and he'll be happy." She stretched slim bronze arms above her head, to the ink-dark sky that only the three o'clock hour knows.

"And so will I..."

Seto Kaiba woke with a start. "No! No..."

His back hurt, and his eyes felt like he'd slept with shards of glass in them. He realized that his cheek was pressed not against dirt and rocks, but against the cool surface of a table. He'd tipped forward from a sitting position, his arms stretched above his head, fingers grasping for...something. His duel deck lay scattered on the poolhouse floor, as if it had been knocked off the table.

Did I dream the whole thing?

When he was sure he could get up without falling, Kaiba dropped to aching knees and picked up the cards, rifling through them. The Blue-Eyes White Dragon was gone.

"You were here," he murmured aloud, needing to hear his own voice, to hear the words aloud. He spoke not of the dragon, but of the girl. "You were here. You were real, I didn't dream it..."

Fatigue was replaced by confusion, by panic, and Kaiba realized that not only could he walk without falling, he could run. Slamming open the poolhouse door, he ran across a yard bathed in early morning light. How long had he been asleep? Where was Yami?

Sprinting towards the gate, he was greeted by a rather surprised guard. "Mr. Kaiba! Are you all right?"

"I'm alive, aren't I?" Kaiba snapped. "You can see me...can't you?"

The guard's brow crinkled as he took in Kaiba's tousled caramel hair, his wrinkled clothes, his pale and panicked face. "I can see you, sir. Are you sure you're all right?"

"Don't worry about me," Kaiba said dismissively. "Where's the girl?" The guards should have detained Yami, should have asked her questions. If they hadn't, he was firing everyone and getting better security. No, something that would simply electrocute an intruder, yes, that would be--

Irrationally, he remembered the Summoned Skull's demon lightning in a flash of memory.

"Girl?" the guard asked, as if Kaiba had spoken in tongues.

"The girl," Kaiba snarled. "I had a visitor last night, a girl. The girl who came here last night."

"Oh, you mean the brunette, sir." The guard smiled with memory.

"Yes." Kaiba's voice was flat with the effort not to scream. "Did you see her leave?"

Suddenly the guard's face stilled, his eyes going empty as they stared into a middle distance. "I remember nothing," he said absently.

"What?" Kaiba asked incredulously. This was too weird. First Yami had turned his duel upside down, cards had come to life, then there had been a crazy dream that made no sense, and now nobody seemed to know what the hell had happened in the interim period.

Everyone was so fired, his dizzy brain insisted, focusing on subjects he could deal with.

The guard blinked like a waking sleeper, then turned. "Mr. Kaiba. Can I help you with anything?"

"No. Go back to what you were doing." Kaiba had already seen that it was pointless to question the man further. He stalked to the security office and began rewinding the tapes till he found one of Yami walking away from the house, calmly. The counter at the bottom of the screen read 3:18 a.m. Kaiba twisted his wrist to look at his own watch. 6:45.

He paused the video and zoomed in on the still to see her smile, assuredly, confidently, her eyes still managing to look mysterious and enigmatic even in grainy black-and-white.

"Who are you?" he asked the picture, but it gave no answer.

Study hall could be likened to any other class at Domino High, except that Chono wasn't trying to teach while everyone did something else. Today she sat at the front and redid her nails, causing everyone in the front row to gag from the scent of Sally Hansen's Hard as Nails topcoat.

Tristan Taylor was once again mooning over Miho Nosaka, who was busy writing a note--(Hey Sakura can you see what's up with Tristan Taylor? He's staring at me)--and Yami and Joey were busy playing tic-tac-toe on each other's hands. After losing for the eighth straight time, Joey leaned forward to whisper in Yami's seashell ear.

"What's with Kaiba? He looks like he's seen a ghost!"

Kaiba was a twitching, shuddering wreck. He was trying to read, but his bloodshot blue eyes kept sliding over the same paragraph again and again. His caramel hair was tousled and there were dark smudges under each eye.

Yami kept sneaking peeks back at Kaiba, but the CEO's eyes scanned warily back and forth like radar. He looked as though he kept expecting her to pull a dragon out of her compact or something. His teeth grit every time she looked his way, until finally he couldn't stand it any longer. He slammed his hands angrily down onto his desk and stalked to the front of the room.

"Ms. Chono, I want a pass. I'm going to the library," Kaiba growled.

"To finish your nap?" Wheeler snickered. "Take a rest, Sleeping Beauty."

Kaiba glared at him, but Yami interrupted sweetly. "Yes, Kaiba, how have you been sleeping?"

The dream flashed back to him--the realm of the Duel Monsters, the chase, his...death. He knew she had something to do with it, but would never be able to prove it. He growled softly at the sight of that sweet, knowing smile, the same as it was on the security video.

In the library, he hid amidst the stacks and relished the silence ringing through his ears. Finding a dog-eared book, he looked up "yami".

"Dark," was the explanation beside the word. "Darkness."

Remembering Yami's shoulder-length hair flickering, light and dark, in the night breeze as the dragon attacked...remembering those blood-red eyes as they sealed his fate...Kaiba could almost believe it.

Author's Note:

Mmm…Kaiba!

I'd like to ask everyone to please excuse all my musical references, but music is one of my favorite things in the whole world. I can't do anything without including it! I realized something I didn't include in either of the last two chapters, although there's a piece of it in both: the title of the song that first got me into punk music--"Hit Or Miss", by A New Found Glory, who will always have the "a" as far as I'm concerned, even though they broke my heart. *smiles.* As people and things will sometimes do…