Disclaimer: Still don't own it.
Chapter Two: Into the Shadows
"Stop where you are brother. I cannot allow you to take what does not belong to you. You would be betraying the very thing that our family has long kept honored." The raven-haired woman stood strong, blocking her younger brother's path. She would do whatever was necessary to stop him, but she hopped to avoid his death. She dearly prayed that his death could be prevented.
Her brother's terrible laughter caught her off guard. Her brother had never laughed like that before, not for as long as he had lived...which meant but one thing. This was not her brother. "You think that you can threaten me dear sister? I am in the right in this situation. Long has our family protected the memory of the Pharaoh, long have we struggled to honor that power that long ago faded away. But that memory, the power of the Pharaoh, belongs to me and I will take it using whatever force is necessary."
The woman's eyes widened as her brother extended the golden rod towards her. She could feel the shadow magic flowing through her brother into the rod and from the rod into her brother. "You would use the power of the Millennium Rod on me? Your own sister?"
He sneered and gestured for her to move aside with it. "It would be no harder then killing father was. Though less enjoyable to be sure. Now move aside or you will feel the power my item possesses...the power that I possess!"
"But you know what must be coming! You have seen him just as I have, you have seen those terrible eyes in your dreams, I know that you have! You must see that this is pure foolishness. The Awakening has already taken place and soon the Pharaoh's destiny will begin to unfold. You cannot hinder that, it is our duty to protect and assist the Pharaoh, and most of all to assist the Devourer."
His eyes became suddenly and horribly cold. They showed not the evil they had moments before, but emptiness. "I make my own destiny, the Devourer be damned!" A golden light flared from the Millennium Rod, and everything changed. Isis Ishtar's last thoughts before darkness covered her where of the simple fact that if the Devourer was damned...then all life would be as well, and Malik's chosen destiny might lead to the unraveling of the destiny of all others. Everything would stop...just so her arrogant brother could have more power.
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Autumn yawned and held her Millennium Staff out at arms length to examine it. It was almost as tall as she was and solid gold, though it always felt very light, contrary to gold's nature. She knew a little bit about the other Millennium Items from what the spirits within her staff had told her, and her item was very similar to the Millennium Rod, at least in appearance. Power wise the spirits said hers was weaker, and also less dangerous.
She found this sort of odd because the power to expel a person's soul from their body seemed excessively powerful to her. It frightened her that something might be more powerful than that, but she was certain she'd never encounter the Millennium Rod so rarely gave it a thought.
Things were different now, just as the spirits told her and from what she sensed herself. Misuno always found amazingly disheartening things to say about the dark presences she kept feeling and AB tried her best to keep everything calm between hikari and yami, but there was always an edge of worry to her voice. She to sensed the darkness and was afraid.
Her eyes shot wide open as a person walked by the street corner she was standing at. He didn't seem to pay her any mind, but it was the powerfully evil aura that he exuded that left her starring after him. The feeling was different from the dark presences that she had been sensing before, but there was something familiar about it, as if she had sensed it before in a weaker state.
"Misuno...AB...what now?"
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The attacker, who Ryu recognized as an old friend, sheathed her sword as Ryu lowered his gun and smirked, "You shouldn't be jumping people for fun ya' know."
"I just wanted to see if you kept your old skills...apparently you haven't," replied Hinata, she pointed to the gun "otherwise you wouldn't gave used that."
"Yeah, I'd really go hand against a sword," replied Ryu, "So what brings you to Domino?" Hinata pulled out her deck, "I've heard rumors about an upcoming tournament. Are you gonna enter?"
Ryu reached under his sleeve, carefully so not to reveal the Gauntlets, and took out his deck, "I don't know. Maybe. I don't really know anything about the tournament, and I'm not exactly a top-ranked duelist. It'd be my first tournament."
As Ryu stood up, Hinata looked over at the grave, "Is that where they buried my brother?"
"Yeah."
"Seems like just yesterday when mom and dad got the news that you and my brother ran away. Why did you guys do that anyways?" Hinata had a hint of anger in her voice, giving a clue that she thought that Robert's death was his fault.
"We were involved in a gang fight; I was still like nine or ten when it happened so they just hid me in a floor tile. Your brother and I were the only ones who survived and the onslaught left both of us alone, with the rest of the enemy after us. So we had to run away," Ryu explained, "A few years later, he was killed when the two of us were caught in the middle of a gang war."
"Oh……"
"Listen, I gotta go now," Ryu lifted up his backpack, "I swear, there's about a hundred pounds of homework in here."
As he walked away, he looked back to wave goodbye but Hinata already disappeared. He then walked away, towards his home. Halfway, he decided to take a shortcut through the middle of the city.
Halfway though a dark alley (A.N.- where else?) he was confronted by someone he knew from school, "Hey Drake."
Drake had been 'hunting' Ryu for a while now. It wasn't hard to find out more about since he worked as a programmer for Kaiba Corp. Drake didn't know him that well from school, but he knew enough not to mess with the guy in a fight. Drake was tough, but while the 17 year old was shorter then he was, the guy was known to be an excellent fighter. As for dueling skill, Drake had drawn a blank because there was no record of Ryu ever having competed in a tournament.
"Hey there Ryu. Here, take this." With one swift motion he tossed Ryu something. The older boy caught in and looked down at it, he looked a little confused. Whether it was because he didn't recognize the device or because it was just strange to get tossed something like that in the middle of the night by someone you didn't really know was uncertain.
"A duel disk? What for?" Drake gave the older boy a look that said, 'what do you think we use it for?' and then attached his own to his arm.
"We use it to duel. So that's what we're going to do."
Ryu looked down at the disk again and then back up at Drake. "Why in would we duel at all? Especially now?" Drake grinned and inserted his deck into the disk, but before he could give an answer something happened.
Ryu's eyes widened as a small medallion hanging around Drake's neck lit up with a golden light...and moments later Drake's entire demeanor had changed. He no longer seemed remotely friendly, in fact he seemed downright cruel. Instead of a grin he wore a smirk and he even held his body differently. Something was definitely off, and it was about time Ryu left. "This is getting weird...so I'm just gonna say goodbye and walk away, okay?"
"Hardly. You won't be walking away from this, in fact, if you don't beat me in a duel then you'll never leave a world of eternal darkness. If I win you get stuck there and I get to take your Blue Eyes." Drake's smirk widened as the alleyway began to contort, it was no longer small and dark...it was endless and dark. A vast purplish darkness surrounded them that seemed to stretch on infinitely.
"What is this place?"
"Welcome to the Shadow Realm! You can find exits nowhere, later on we might bring peanuts, but unless you win there won't be any movie, and without a movie you're bound to get bored with such a long stay in such an empty place. There's no telling whether you'll go mad before you starve to death, but either is perfectly unpleasant for you and fairly amusing for me. So feel free to forfeit at any time if you really want to."
Ryu rolled his eyes as he attached the duel disk to his arm and inserted his deck. Drake was acting like your traditional anime villain, dishing out death threats as jokes left and right. "Drake, I'm in no mood to duel right now, especially not here."
"Too bad, so sad. But your choices still remain as dueling or forfeiting automatically and spending the rest of your short life here. So what do you say?"
Ryu knew that Drake was a very good duelist, and didn't think he could beat him. He reached into his pocket for his gun, he was prepared to make a threat. He soon realized it wasn't there. Now there was no backing out. "So how do you do this?"
Drake smirked and drew his opening hand. "You should know, you're the programmer here, not me." Drake knew full well that Ryu was merely stalling for time, and wasn't going to brook any more delays.
Ryu sighed and watched as the life point counters rose to 2000 and he drew the first five cards. His hand was a decent one with two basic monsters, one ritual monster, and two traps. As the challenged duelist he was supposed to go first, so he drew his sixth card and then decided what he was going to do. "I'll summon Darkfire Soldier #2(1700/1150) in attack mode and lay one card face down."
Drake's smirked remained as he drew his sixth card and with barely a glance at his hand made his first move. "I play this card in defense mode, and lay one more face down. That ends my turn."
Ryu was curious as to why Drake had started with defense, but shook it off and drew one of his best cards, 'Perfect.' "I'll lay one card face down and summon Girochin Kuwagata(1700/1400) and end my turn." Ryu blinked a few times as he felt like breathing was a little bit harder then normal. It was probably the surroundings effecting him.
"I flip my face down monster and activate his flip effect. My Vindictive Old Magician(450/600) allows me to select one of your monsters and destroy it. Next I'll summon Chaos Magician(2400/1900) in attack mode!"
Darkfire Soldier exploded as of the old magician's effect, but before Drake could call an attack with his other magician a hole opened up under its feet and it fell into it, destroyed immediately. "You've activated my Trap Hole card." Drake just shrugged and passed his turn to Ryu.
Ryu drew in a sharp breath at the start of his turn. He had felt a twinge of pain right as his soldier was destroyed...but that was probably just a coincidence. "I'll summon Battle Ox(1700/1000) in attack and then have Girochin attack your monster." The insect monster flew across the field and crushed the old mage between its mighty pincers, but its destruction didn't seem to effect Drake, so Ryu knew he had to have been imagining things.
Drake smirked as he added his next card to his hand. "I'll play a monster in defense mode and end my turn."
Ryu held out his hand to call an attack with Battle Ox, whose big axe was swiftly stopped by the defenses of Mystic Elf(800/2000), meaning he lost 300 life points.
Ryu: 1700
Drake: 2000
As it became Drake's turn again, the experienced duelist began to smirk again. He had obviously come across something good. "I'll set this card and summon Skilled Black Magician(1900/1700) in defense mode. That'll end my turn."
Ryu grinned at the start of his next turn. Drake had made a serious mistake by not attacking with his magician while he had the chance. Now he was going to pay the price. "I'll summon my best monster, the Blue Eyes White Dragon(3000/2500)! Next I'll equip him with Megamorph to double his attack!" Ryu was about worried when Drake seemed unfazed by facing the massive white dragon with an attack strength of 6000.
"I activate Just Desserts, doing 500 damage for each of your monsters." Ryu moaned in pain as his life points dropped to 200. Obviously something was up, when a monster of his was destroyed it hurt him, and when he lost life points it hurt, but nothing like that seemed to be happening to Drake. Trying to shake it off he called for the Blue Eyes to attack, and the black mage was swiftly annihilated. Then to keep his life points safe he switched his other two monsters into defense mode.
Ryu: 200
Drake: 2000
"It's all over now. I play the Shadow of Eyes card to switch your monsters into attack mode...and now I play Change of Heart to take control of your own Blue Eyes and order it to attack your monsters!" Ryu was blasted backwards by the white lightning that enveloped his monsters, and mere moments later the duel ended and Ryu had lost.
He struggled to stand but felt that the pain was too great, he wasn't even able to move to stop Drake from snatching up his Blue Eyes. "This is mine to keep now, but I'll be giving it to a man named Malik. If you're curious as to why I'm telling you this, its because I want you to stew over it during your time locked in here.
Ryu shook his head and pushed himself to his fist, clenching his fists. He felt a surge of power flow through him from the gauntlets. "Why are you doing this?" Drake smirked yet again.
"Because I desire power above all else, and I can get some of that power from keeping you trapped within the Shadow Realm. Nothing personal. Though in truth I do get a kind of amusement from seeing mortals like you squi...impossible!"
Ryu watched in shock as Drake grabbed his head in between his hands and bent over groaning in pain. Suddenly the world seemed to shift...and standing in front of him were two Drakes. One looked malevolent, the other kind, and slowly the first one faded into a female form, pretty, with hair and eyes just like Drake's, but a petulant mouth that complimented the arrogance flashing in her eyes.
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Next Time: Ryu and Drake make it out of the Shadow Realm, but you probably knew that would happen, not saying how though. However just when Drake thinks his troubles are over, he's forced into a duel against a Rare Hunter who claims to the the Master of Light...
Chapter Two: Into the Shadows
"Stop where you are brother. I cannot allow you to take what does not belong to you. You would be betraying the very thing that our family has long kept honored." The raven-haired woman stood strong, blocking her younger brother's path. She would do whatever was necessary to stop him, but she hopped to avoid his death. She dearly prayed that his death could be prevented.
Her brother's terrible laughter caught her off guard. Her brother had never laughed like that before, not for as long as he had lived...which meant but one thing. This was not her brother. "You think that you can threaten me dear sister? I am in the right in this situation. Long has our family protected the memory of the Pharaoh, long have we struggled to honor that power that long ago faded away. But that memory, the power of the Pharaoh, belongs to me and I will take it using whatever force is necessary."
The woman's eyes widened as her brother extended the golden rod towards her. She could feel the shadow magic flowing through her brother into the rod and from the rod into her brother. "You would use the power of the Millennium Rod on me? Your own sister?"
He sneered and gestured for her to move aside with it. "It would be no harder then killing father was. Though less enjoyable to be sure. Now move aside or you will feel the power my item possesses...the power that I possess!"
"But you know what must be coming! You have seen him just as I have, you have seen those terrible eyes in your dreams, I know that you have! You must see that this is pure foolishness. The Awakening has already taken place and soon the Pharaoh's destiny will begin to unfold. You cannot hinder that, it is our duty to protect and assist the Pharaoh, and most of all to assist the Devourer."
His eyes became suddenly and horribly cold. They showed not the evil they had moments before, but emptiness. "I make my own destiny, the Devourer be damned!" A golden light flared from the Millennium Rod, and everything changed. Isis Ishtar's last thoughts before darkness covered her where of the simple fact that if the Devourer was damned...then all life would be as well, and Malik's chosen destiny might lead to the unraveling of the destiny of all others. Everything would stop...just so her arrogant brother could have more power.
***********************
Autumn yawned and held her Millennium Staff out at arms length to examine it. It was almost as tall as she was and solid gold, though it always felt very light, contrary to gold's nature. She knew a little bit about the other Millennium Items from what the spirits within her staff had told her, and her item was very similar to the Millennium Rod, at least in appearance. Power wise the spirits said hers was weaker, and also less dangerous.
She found this sort of odd because the power to expel a person's soul from their body seemed excessively powerful to her. It frightened her that something might be more powerful than that, but she was certain she'd never encounter the Millennium Rod so rarely gave it a thought.
Things were different now, just as the spirits told her and from what she sensed herself. Misuno always found amazingly disheartening things to say about the dark presences she kept feeling and AB tried her best to keep everything calm between hikari and yami, but there was always an edge of worry to her voice. She to sensed the darkness and was afraid.
Her eyes shot wide open as a person walked by the street corner she was standing at. He didn't seem to pay her any mind, but it was the powerfully evil aura that he exuded that left her starring after him. The feeling was different from the dark presences that she had been sensing before, but there was something familiar about it, as if she had sensed it before in a weaker state.
"Misuno...AB...what now?"
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The attacker, who Ryu recognized as an old friend, sheathed her sword as Ryu lowered his gun and smirked, "You shouldn't be jumping people for fun ya' know."
"I just wanted to see if you kept your old skills...apparently you haven't," replied Hinata, she pointed to the gun "otherwise you wouldn't gave used that."
"Yeah, I'd really go hand against a sword," replied Ryu, "So what brings you to Domino?" Hinata pulled out her deck, "I've heard rumors about an upcoming tournament. Are you gonna enter?"
Ryu reached under his sleeve, carefully so not to reveal the Gauntlets, and took out his deck, "I don't know. Maybe. I don't really know anything about the tournament, and I'm not exactly a top-ranked duelist. It'd be my first tournament."
As Ryu stood up, Hinata looked over at the grave, "Is that where they buried my brother?"
"Yeah."
"Seems like just yesterday when mom and dad got the news that you and my brother ran away. Why did you guys do that anyways?" Hinata had a hint of anger in her voice, giving a clue that she thought that Robert's death was his fault.
"We were involved in a gang fight; I was still like nine or ten when it happened so they just hid me in a floor tile. Your brother and I were the only ones who survived and the onslaught left both of us alone, with the rest of the enemy after us. So we had to run away," Ryu explained, "A few years later, he was killed when the two of us were caught in the middle of a gang war."
"Oh……"
"Listen, I gotta go now," Ryu lifted up his backpack, "I swear, there's about a hundred pounds of homework in here."
As he walked away, he looked back to wave goodbye but Hinata already disappeared. He then walked away, towards his home. Halfway, he decided to take a shortcut through the middle of the city.
Halfway though a dark alley (A.N.- where else?) he was confronted by someone he knew from school, "Hey Drake."
Drake had been 'hunting' Ryu for a while now. It wasn't hard to find out more about since he worked as a programmer for Kaiba Corp. Drake didn't know him that well from school, but he knew enough not to mess with the guy in a fight. Drake was tough, but while the 17 year old was shorter then he was, the guy was known to be an excellent fighter. As for dueling skill, Drake had drawn a blank because there was no record of Ryu ever having competed in a tournament.
"Hey there Ryu. Here, take this." With one swift motion he tossed Ryu something. The older boy caught in and looked down at it, he looked a little confused. Whether it was because he didn't recognize the device or because it was just strange to get tossed something like that in the middle of the night by someone you didn't really know was uncertain.
"A duel disk? What for?" Drake gave the older boy a look that said, 'what do you think we use it for?' and then attached his own to his arm.
"We use it to duel. So that's what we're going to do."
Ryu looked down at the disk again and then back up at Drake. "Why in would we duel at all? Especially now?" Drake grinned and inserted his deck into the disk, but before he could give an answer something happened.
Ryu's eyes widened as a small medallion hanging around Drake's neck lit up with a golden light...and moments later Drake's entire demeanor had changed. He no longer seemed remotely friendly, in fact he seemed downright cruel. Instead of a grin he wore a smirk and he even held his body differently. Something was definitely off, and it was about time Ryu left. "This is getting weird...so I'm just gonna say goodbye and walk away, okay?"
"Hardly. You won't be walking away from this, in fact, if you don't beat me in a duel then you'll never leave a world of eternal darkness. If I win you get stuck there and I get to take your Blue Eyes." Drake's smirk widened as the alleyway began to contort, it was no longer small and dark...it was endless and dark. A vast purplish darkness surrounded them that seemed to stretch on infinitely.
"What is this place?"
"Welcome to the Shadow Realm! You can find exits nowhere, later on we might bring peanuts, but unless you win there won't be any movie, and without a movie you're bound to get bored with such a long stay in such an empty place. There's no telling whether you'll go mad before you starve to death, but either is perfectly unpleasant for you and fairly amusing for me. So feel free to forfeit at any time if you really want to."
Ryu rolled his eyes as he attached the duel disk to his arm and inserted his deck. Drake was acting like your traditional anime villain, dishing out death threats as jokes left and right. "Drake, I'm in no mood to duel right now, especially not here."
"Too bad, so sad. But your choices still remain as dueling or forfeiting automatically and spending the rest of your short life here. So what do you say?"
Ryu knew that Drake was a very good duelist, and didn't think he could beat him. He reached into his pocket for his gun, he was prepared to make a threat. He soon realized it wasn't there. Now there was no backing out. "So how do you do this?"
Drake smirked and drew his opening hand. "You should know, you're the programmer here, not me." Drake knew full well that Ryu was merely stalling for time, and wasn't going to brook any more delays.
Ryu sighed and watched as the life point counters rose to 2000 and he drew the first five cards. His hand was a decent one with two basic monsters, one ritual monster, and two traps. As the challenged duelist he was supposed to go first, so he drew his sixth card and then decided what he was going to do. "I'll summon Darkfire Soldier #2(1700/1150) in attack mode and lay one card face down."
Drake's smirked remained as he drew his sixth card and with barely a glance at his hand made his first move. "I play this card in defense mode, and lay one more face down. That ends my turn."
Ryu was curious as to why Drake had started with defense, but shook it off and drew one of his best cards, 'Perfect.' "I'll lay one card face down and summon Girochin Kuwagata(1700/1400) and end my turn." Ryu blinked a few times as he felt like breathing was a little bit harder then normal. It was probably the surroundings effecting him.
"I flip my face down monster and activate his flip effect. My Vindictive Old Magician(450/600) allows me to select one of your monsters and destroy it. Next I'll summon Chaos Magician(2400/1900) in attack mode!"
Darkfire Soldier exploded as of the old magician's effect, but before Drake could call an attack with his other magician a hole opened up under its feet and it fell into it, destroyed immediately. "You've activated my Trap Hole card." Drake just shrugged and passed his turn to Ryu.
Ryu drew in a sharp breath at the start of his turn. He had felt a twinge of pain right as his soldier was destroyed...but that was probably just a coincidence. "I'll summon Battle Ox(1700/1000) in attack and then have Girochin attack your monster." The insect monster flew across the field and crushed the old mage between its mighty pincers, but its destruction didn't seem to effect Drake, so Ryu knew he had to have been imagining things.
Drake smirked as he added his next card to his hand. "I'll play a monster in defense mode and end my turn."
Ryu held out his hand to call an attack with Battle Ox, whose big axe was swiftly stopped by the defenses of Mystic Elf(800/2000), meaning he lost 300 life points.
Ryu: 1700
Drake: 2000
As it became Drake's turn again, the experienced duelist began to smirk again. He had obviously come across something good. "I'll set this card and summon Skilled Black Magician(1900/1700) in defense mode. That'll end my turn."
Ryu grinned at the start of his next turn. Drake had made a serious mistake by not attacking with his magician while he had the chance. Now he was going to pay the price. "I'll summon my best monster, the Blue Eyes White Dragon(3000/2500)! Next I'll equip him with Megamorph to double his attack!" Ryu was about worried when Drake seemed unfazed by facing the massive white dragon with an attack strength of 6000.
"I activate Just Desserts, doing 500 damage for each of your monsters." Ryu moaned in pain as his life points dropped to 200. Obviously something was up, when a monster of his was destroyed it hurt him, and when he lost life points it hurt, but nothing like that seemed to be happening to Drake. Trying to shake it off he called for the Blue Eyes to attack, and the black mage was swiftly annihilated. Then to keep his life points safe he switched his other two monsters into defense mode.
Ryu: 200
Drake: 2000
"It's all over now. I play the Shadow of Eyes card to switch your monsters into attack mode...and now I play Change of Heart to take control of your own Blue Eyes and order it to attack your monsters!" Ryu was blasted backwards by the white lightning that enveloped his monsters, and mere moments later the duel ended and Ryu had lost.
He struggled to stand but felt that the pain was too great, he wasn't even able to move to stop Drake from snatching up his Blue Eyes. "This is mine to keep now, but I'll be giving it to a man named Malik. If you're curious as to why I'm telling you this, its because I want you to stew over it during your time locked in here.
Ryu shook his head and pushed himself to his fist, clenching his fists. He felt a surge of power flow through him from the gauntlets. "Why are you doing this?" Drake smirked yet again.
"Because I desire power above all else, and I can get some of that power from keeping you trapped within the Shadow Realm. Nothing personal. Though in truth I do get a kind of amusement from seeing mortals like you squi...impossible!"
Ryu watched in shock as Drake grabbed his head in between his hands and bent over groaning in pain. Suddenly the world seemed to shift...and standing in front of him were two Drakes. One looked malevolent, the other kind, and slowly the first one faded into a female form, pretty, with hair and eyes just like Drake's, but a petulant mouth that complimented the arrogance flashing in her eyes.
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Next Time: Ryu and Drake make it out of the Shadow Realm, but you probably knew that would happen, not saying how though. However just when Drake thinks his troubles are over, he's forced into a duel against a Rare Hunter who claims to the the Master of Light...