/…/ Hikari
… Yami
Téa/Anzu bashing. Be warned!! XD
Everything Yu-Gi-Oh! is owned and copyrighted by Kazuki Takahashi.
Chapter 7: Pharaoh Yugi-sama and Yami MutouA vast sea of people extended to infinity before the pharaoh, who was clothed in a white sleeveless shirt and blue cape, his head adorned with a band of pure gold in the shape of the Eye of Ujat, the bangs of his tri-coloured hair cascading over it.
/What in Domino City am I supposed to do?/ the pharaoh panicked at the sight of the crowd, he had never been the center of the attention of such a huge crowd in his life. It seemed like every eye in Egypt was scrutinizing his every movement, waiting for him to make a mistake. To his relief, he wasn't exactly alone—a man who looked exactly like his grandfather was by his side.
/Grandpa?! What's he doing here?! / the "pharaoh" shrieked through the mind link.
Oh, that's my advisor… He's quite a nice guy, exactly like grandpa. came an amused reply.
/ What are all those people doing here?! /
Don't worry about it… It's a celebration of the pharaoh's birthday. You sure chose the right time to switch bodies with me… Yami laughed at his aibou's awkwardness, glad to an extent that it was his aibou who had to deal with all the mollycoddling. Neither enjoyed having so much attention dumped on top of their spiky heads.
/Yami? You didn't tell me it was your birthday! / Yugi said dismally.
I didn't think it'd really matter…
/Yes it does!! Happy birthday Yami!/
Thanks. Now I have to get back to doing your homework. Just yell if you get into trouble.
Squirming uncomfortably in his seat, Yugi felt a tad taller than he'd been, which pleased him. The vertically challenged hikari in the pharaoh's body had always desired to be taller. His height had been the bane of his existence ever since he was ten; everyone but him seemed to grow, and Jounouchi-kun especially enjoyed taking advantage of this weakness of his. Now if I could just borrow Yami's height permanently… I'll never get beaten up again.
A handful of gold dust raining on him jolted his back to reality, and he looked around, wide-eyed, at the robed priests chanting arcane blessings. Recognizing Kaiba and Ishizu, and a girl who looked like the Dark Magician Girl, he heard a voice telling him to stand up. He did a double take as he found that he could understand everything that was being said—in ancient Egyptian! But when "grandpa" told him to summon his Ba, Kuriboh, he knew he was in trouble. He had absolutely no idea how to summon it.
/Yami! How do you summon a Ba?!/ the light panicked, drops of sweat forming on his forehead.
Oh, I forgot about that part in the ceremony! You can understand everything that they're saying?
/Yes…/
Just relax and think about Kuriboh, it'll be summoned. You know, even if I never ever learned the math you're learning, I know exactly how to do your homework. We switched bodies, but my abilities as pharaoh are still in Egypt, and yours are still here.
/I'll try… /
Shutting his eyes, Yugi concentrated on Kuriboh, and wondered whether it would really work. Astonished gasps filled the large compound, and the temporary pharaoh cracked one eye open in anticipation.
Dark Magician, clad in its traditional purple armor and staff, appeared before his eyes.
/Oh no… What did I do wrong…/ Yugi watched nervously as the girl who looked like the Dark Magician Girl moved towards him.
Aibou? Yami began, seeing Egypt at the back of his mind, and glanced at the Dark Magician, conveniently leaving out the fact that he had already died quite a few months back. Don't worry. The Dark Magician guy's just there to help. He's actually one of the priests in charge of summoning the Ka and Ba.
Having the Dark Magician around somehow filled Yugi with courage, and he no longer felt jumpy. Attempting to summon Kuriboh once more, he confidently spoke a few lines of an Egyptian that burned through his mind, and a brown fur ball with eyes the same shade of amethyst as its summoner leaped into his arms. Kuri!!
The little light released the breath he didn't know he'd been holding, and a big smile lit up his face like a Christmas tree.
/Yami… I did it! / he cried joyfully.
Great! Yami congratulated, and muttered, Now all you have to do is get through the rest of that embarrassing celebration!!
Yugi caught what Yami's thoughts, and was beginning to suspect that Yami had used his aibou to skip the whole thing, but it wasn't like he minded. It was great being honored for once, instead of being trodden underfoot.
Yami is so lucky to be the pharaoh, he'd said it was boring and quite a chore, but I think it's quite fun. And it's nice being tall and sounding so cool. But somehow I miss Domino City. Especially Kaiba and Bakura. This place is so formal, and it sure looks like you can't have fun being the pharaoh. I'm glad that the switch is just for a day…
—
Finishing up Yugi's homework, Yami stretched and yawned widely. It was only one in the afternoon, and the homework hadn't been too tough, considering that his aibou was usually all ears when it came to schoolwork. This is so relaxing. I wonder if Yugi's having fun. He said he didn't like being here, but it isn't all that bad.
A soft voice gently skittered across his mind. /Yami, I'm sorry I forgot to tell you, but I'm supposed to meet Kaiba at his house at two, he wanted to show me and Bakura something./
I'll be there. Yami assured.
I wonder what exactly Seto wants to show Yugi and Bakura. It's not like him to want to be friends with my aibou, last I saw him he was all insults and criticism. He's a great duelist, but not really a friend.
Lazing about until it was almost one forty-five, Yami remembered that Kaiba's house wasn't quite a stone's throw away—it would take at least twenty minutes to get there, he might make it on time if he ran. Throwing on his blue jacket, he ran downstairs, tripping over the last few steps due to Yugi's shorter legs. "Ow!"
Groaning, he picked himself up and rubbed his chin, having fallen flat on his face, and felt a sharp pain in his ankle as he tried to walk. Ignoring it and continuing his walk to Kaiba's house, he called out to his partner,
Don't blame me if anything goes wrong.
/Why do you say that? Does this ceremony include and back carving or anything that hurts?/
I don't think so. You having fun?
/Kind of…/
Yugi didn't really show his excitement or anything, but Yami knew that his hikari was enjoying himself. If anything, it would help him forget all his troubles, and hopefully he wouldn't cut himself again.
—
Yami plopped down on the swivel chair beside Kaiba and Ryou, and peered at the glowing computer monitor, trying not to look impressed as his rival opened the DMRPG program, and the three appeared in the virtual world. The same old Egyptian palace that Yami was intimately familiar with had replaced the office.
"Yugi, can you ask Yami whether it looks exactly like the real thing?"
Why is he calling me Yugi? Yami pondered for a moment, then remembered that he was in Yugi's body.
"Um, yeah it does," Yami replied in Yugi's relatively high-pitched voice. Shocked at how different he sounded, Yami tried to lower his pitch until he sounded like himself. Obviously, this did not go well, and led to Kaiba inquiring whether he had a sore throat.
"But the stone walls are a bit sandier, what do you think?" Yami suggested in his little light's polite, tactful manner. "Anyway, how's Mokuba doing?"
Having been filled in about Kaiba and Mokuba's quarrel, Yami had been instructed to ask about it and hopefully solve the problem between the two brothers. However Yami wasn't the patient sort like Yugi was, and when Kaiba started talking about his little brother, he didn't quite know what to say.
"Mokuba's still angry with me, and when I tried to apologize, he just pretended that I was invisible." Kaiba groused. "He hasn't talked to me in weeks."
Stifling a giggle, Yami replied, "Maybe it's just a phase that he's going through…"
Kaiba apologizing? No way!!
Kaiba looked truly upset, and the pharaoh felt sympathy coursing through his veins. This was a side of Kaiba he'd never seen before, but he knew that he cared about his brother very much. At that point in time, he saw not Kaiba from Domino but Seto from Egypt sitting beside him, the Seto that had fallen for Kisara, the girl with the Blue Eyes White Dragon. Kaiba had somehow changed—he had crossed the huge abyss that had once separated him from Yugi and his friends. And quite a large part of it was due to Mokuba.
"Maybe we could try forcing him to talk to you?" Yami suggested. It wasn't something that Yugi would suggest, and the darkness usually had weird ideas, but they sometimes worked.
"What do you mean, force him to talk to me?" Kaiba looked beseechingly at Yugi/Yami.
"We tease him until he gets fed up, and starts crying, then you play the good guy and calm him down."
All of a sudden, Ryou started laughing his head off, and quipped, "Good one, Pharaoh-sama!!"
This caught Yami by surprise—Ryou could actually tell that Yugi and Yami had actually switched? "Yugi, you shouldn't listen to your yami too much, you know," Ryou continued. "But this could work!"
"So go make Mokuba mad for a while, I'll be up here, tinkering with the computer," Kaiba said, his spirits soaring to new heights at the prospect of being reunited with his brother. "I think he's playing the Playstation downstairs."
Heading downstairs, Yami leading the way, Ryou seized the opportunity to speak to Yami alone. "You're not Yugi, right? You're Atemu."
"So you do know?" Yami was taken aback at his friend's observation.
"Actually Bakura was the one who sensed that something weird was going on in Egypt. He said the pharaoh was acting weird, too shy to be Pharaoh Atemu."
"So should we tell Kaiba?" Yami wondered aloud.
"No… I don't think so. It might make things a bit messier. But he does know about his past in Egypt," Ryou replied.
"Let's go make Mokuba angry with us then."
"Are you sure it's a good idea?"
"I'm sure of it."
"Hi Mokuba!" Ryou greeted overly enthusiastically. "Do you mind if we play with you a while?"
Ignoring them, Mokuba rolled his eyes and turned away, but was now facing an extremely persistent Yami who was sitting on the other side of the twelve-year-old.
"What are you playing? Chaos Legion?" Yami questioned. "I can help you get past that part where you're stuck…"
Silence.
Reaching for the controller, Ryou gave Yami a sly grin, and commented, "Don't worry, we'll help you get past this boss, we're pretty good."
Mokuba looked at them as if they were a bunch of psychos, and tried to escape from the clutches of the two, but with Yami and Ryou and the controller cable blocking all exits, he was stuck there for the moment.
Ryou pressed all the buttons on the controller simultaneously, and made no effort to dodge the antagonist's attacks, obviously he lost. Yami, the king of games, shut his eyes and kept pressing the buttons stupidly, even though in his mind he knew exactly what was happening onscreen. For the first time, he was defeated in a game, but it had been of his own will.
Mokuba made as if to grab the controller back, but Yami held it out of reach, trying not to laugh. "You can play when I defeat the boss, alright?"
For about three hours Mokuba sat squashed between the two boys, who kept dying in the game like flies. Soon Ryou could tell that he was really frustrated, since he was frowning his face off. Finally the teasing had gone far enough, and Mokuba's patience had worn thinner than ice.
Standing up, he yelled for his oniisan, "Big brother!!"
Kaiba, who had been sitting in his study, absorbed in his work, perked up when he heard something he hadn't heard for quite a while. "What Mokuba?" he inquired, standing at the bottom of the stairs. "You've been playing with Yugi and Bakura?"
Yami and Ryou gave the most innocent looks they could muster, and reported, "Yeah, it was fun playing with Mokuba."
Running to the safety of his big brother, Mokuba cried in one breath, "They didn't let me play!! They kept losing and they said they were good!!"
"Don't worry Mokuba, I'm here, you don't have to be afraid of the two bad boys." Kaiba bit his lip to keep himself from laughing out loud. To Yami and Ryou, he said fake-coolly, "I wanna talk to you two."
"Scold 'em bad, big brother!" Mokuba encouraged enthusiastically.
"Pharaoh Atemu, it's now time for the ritual to ensure your good health in the next year," a soft voice interrupted his thoughts.
/Téa!!/ His heart leaped as he saw the girl he had once liked a bit, but recollected that the new Téa had been quite mean recently. /Will this Téa be nice, like she was last time?/
—Flashback—
The sun was setting in Domino City, turning the sky a beautiful mixture of cherry, azure, purple, and crimson. Yugi pushed all thoughts that surfaced to the back of his mind. Most people thought he was just a pure, innocent teen, but he was much more than that. He cared for his friends—a trait that was now extremely rare in modern society. But his major flaws were that he got depressed very easily, and didn't really treasure life. Even now that Yami was around. He wasn't lonely, he had Yami, Bakura, and Kaiba—he just wanted some peace and quiet away from everything.
He felt a hard kick to his chest, but it didn't really faze him. After all, he'd gotten used to it all. Looking up, expecting Joey to shout out some taunts about his ex-best friend, his gaze fell upon a girl.
Téa.
He used to think of her as an understanding, compassionate girl who was a little—just a very little bit—cute, but seeing her in front of him made him feel ill. Her face thickly daubed with makeup, and green contacts in her eyes, her hair dyed blonde and tied in three ponytails, she was anything but cute. This was so not Téa. Now she was a horrid girl who used all her free time to make herself up and fling herself at boys. [A/N: Eww!! Icky Téa!!]
Feeling rare hatred, Yugi stood up, strengthened by his Yami inside his mind, and asked, "What's up, Téa?"
"I overheard that Yami's back." Téa began. "Where's he?"
"So you're saying that you remember everything about what happened… last time? But I asked you, and you said you didn't know anything."
"I do remember. So where's that cute Yami?"
"What do you want with my Yami?" Yugi challenged confidently.
/Yami? Do you want to talk to her?/
Of course not. I hate her—she was always clinging to me and whining about friendship. But…
"Your Yami? Forget it, he's mine," Téa snapped nastily.
Yami appeared beside his hikari. "What do you want with me, Téa?"
Throwing herself at Yami, she wrapped him in a tight embrace, and planted an overly-passionate kiss on his lips. [A/N: Get her away!! Yami fangirls look on in disgust]
Stumbling backwards, Yami shoved her away before she could damage him any further. "Téa, stop!!"
"Yamiiiiii…" she moaned. "I loooovveee you!"
"As if!!" Yami countered. "Yugi told me you say that to any random guy on the street."
"I know you love me too…" Téa insisted, her voice dripping with sweetness.
"I never thought I'd have to do this to you," Yami rolled his eyes sarcastically, and used his shadow powers to send her to the Shadow Realm with no regrets. [A/N: Yay!! XD]
Following the Egyptian Téa nervously, Yugi entered a room which was entirely of marble—the floor, walls, and ceiling were all of the same pearly-white marble. In the center of the room, on a structure that was of exactly the same material as the walls, lay a large amethyst the exact colour of his eyes.
He looked at her and she nodded. Touching the jewel, he felt a jolt of electricity flow through his body, and when he regained his senses a few seconds later, he saw that the marble surroundings were all gone, and he was standing in a void. Everything around him was a smoky purple-black.
"Now I've got you, Pharaoh Atemu!!" Téa's voice echoed around Yugi, and he instinctively covered his ears to block out her evil cackles.
—End of chapter—
A/N: Hope you guys liked this chapter, but describing Egypt is a bit difficult. I wonder whether anyone will complain about the Téa/Anzu bashing… I'm quite unsure about the direction this fic is taking, [I know what's going to happen next, but I still need more inspiration!!] so please review…
POLL: DOES ANYONE LIKE TéA/ANZU? AND WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE CHARACTER?
MORE FREE MANGA SCANS!!
invisible-eyes: Yugi does like Yami very much, and vice versa… hint I wasn't very sure if anyone would be able to understand the duel, glad you did. Yeah, Yami and Bakura would be mad at Kaiba if he got mad at their hikaris… Thanks for reviewing!
Yami tangela, pharaohs angel: Yay! Someone liked the body-switching twist!! Thanks for your input!
Azzie: Hehe sugar is good… I'm sure Seto is getting plenty of sugar too! That's why he's all friendly with the others… Thank you for reviewing!