Eye Gate Deep 07
"Voices and runes" By Elanor PamOctober 14, 2002: Wai~!! Began a very promising chapter!! Yuugi finally started with the puzzle… er, he's started a long time ago, actually, but we all know that this time will be definitive!! Anyway, you guys are going to notice that "Yami" is a bit different in this Yuugi-verse from what he is in other fics. I prefer not to tell, though. It's up for you to notice the differences ^____^
October 16, 2002: Something I forgot to state in the other chapter – the part that says "the universe is infinite because it's one and not two" was taken from a Dragon Ball Z fanfic (about Vegeta and Bulma ^___^) in Spanish, written by Nyaar (shinsekai.dreamers.com). I don't remember which one, though.
October 21, 2002: Geez, just when I was catching the pace of this chapter, these nasty school tests had to come. Worst of all, though, is that they were on Saturday and Sunday. Do you have any idea of what it is to wake up at 5:30 in the morning, on a SUNDAY?? It sucks. Anyway, today there was something interesting in my English course. A Canadian boy went to class and we asked him a bunch of questions about Canada that he probably thought was stupid. I was itching to ask him if he liked Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings or if he had ever watched animes, but I refrained myself and asked him about snow sports. It was fun, though. A classmate of mine asked why his nails were so weird (I personally didn't notice his nails, they just looked a bit bitten for me) and made our whole class want to crawl into a hole and die. After he was gone, my teacher was very pissed… Anyway, is it just me, or my random talk before chapter became a blog?
October 28, 2002: Gyaaaaargh!! Guess What!! I got 1 in Language/Literature!! 1 in 10!! That sucks!! Now my mom's putting me to study and read some boring classic books (Jorge Amado, etc); that's making things harder!! And my first University Entrance Tests are coming November 17, I'm in an extra course specifically for this test (damn course at weekends) and Dad's forgotten to gimme my weekly bus-money!! (Ok, that's off the point, but let me vent my anger) I'll go ahead with this chappie as much as I can, but it's hard!! School's draining my creativity cells!!
Disclaimer: You know the drill. Yu-gi-oh and its charas aren't mine, but the Underground idea, the made-up charas and this whole Yuugi-verse are my thing, unless stated otherwise. You'd better not steal them, or I'm going to make a voodoo to bring you writer-block.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Yuugi almost dropped the two puzzle pieces he had just snapped together.
'Wha… wha…? They're shining!!'
He could only look at them, breathless. The shimmer was weak, but it was still a big add-up on the darkness surrounding him. The twilight surrounding him from the floor seemed to get weaker in front of it; his heart raced…
Suddenly, he felt something cold touch his other hand. Startled, he turned his head to look – another piece.
He hadn't noticed when his hand reached out for the box again. The pieces inside it were also shimmering lightly, a warm, secure, beckoning light…
On its own, his hand moved, snapping the third piece in its place. Shaking hands, Yuugi noticed the three pieces together seemed to glow a stronger light.
His hand pulled the box to his front, and picked another piece. Glazed eyes, Yuugi felt his head light; almost in a trance, he snapped another piece, and the object in his hands shone more. His heart thundered; he could feel humming from everywhere, as if some kind of energy was vibrating around him, affecting him; he wasn't even sure of what he was doing, as the puzzle in his hands glowed more and more with each added piece, and he felt more and more detached from his own mind, slowly slipping into a warm, secure, light filled void… caring hands taking away his own when they were faltering, moving them, caressing them, blowing on them softly; and, around him, the room gaped at the blinding blaze coming from the puzzle… some part of himself smiled, laughed in ecstasy, in an almost insane happiness; finally, it was almost complete, almost, just a bit more, just one more, and everything would be ok…
Suddenly, his dreamlike state was disturbed by something. Something faint and far, but that seemed to shock the small part of his mind still awake; struggling through a numb mind, he noticed, in a detached daze, that…
His hand was inside the box. The empty box. The puzzle was radiating with a burning golden light, filling the entire room, making the naked stone look a sand-like color – but there was a piece missing.
'There's a piece missing—' his mind repeated, the warm feeling fading into a cold, lifeless void.
Slowly, the numbness in his mind turned into dread, and the dread turned into utter despair.
The puzzle fell on the floor, bouncing, as his body supported itself with both hands on its own, shaking with sobs, as he cried, both outside and inside… in his cold, despaired void, his anguished mind could only repeat and echo tidbits of roaming phrases, on and on…
'There's a piece missing—'
*There's a piece missing—*
'Missing—'
*The last piece—*
'It is—'
*Oh, gods—*
'It's gone—'
*Why, why—*
'Gone, it is—'
*Can't be—*
'It is—'
*CAN'T BE—*
'It is—'
*YOU LIE!!*
'It is—'
*NO WAY!!*
'Why, why—'
*Gods, why—*
'The piece—'
*Is lost…*
His body swung back and forth with his uncontrollable, heartbroken sobs. Lost, the last piece was lost…
[I found it today, fallen just under your desk…]
DO-KUN
For a second, Yuugi's heart stopped.
*Jounouchi-kun—*
'Jounouchi-kun found it.'
[Look, Yuugi! It's just like the eye in this piece!]
'Then we were separated from the others.'
*Jounouchi-kun has it.*
'Jounouchi-kun had picked the piece when it fell on the floor.'
*Jounouchi-kun has it!*
'Jounouchi-kun, where are you—'
*Jounouchi-kun, come and bring it—*
'Jounouchi-kun, please come—'
*Jounouchi-kun, hurry up—*
'Jounouchi-kun, please come!!'
*Jounouchi-kun—*
'Jounouchi-kun—'
*'JOUNOUCHI-KUN!!'*
"JOUNOUCHI-KUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!!" Yuugi's anguished voice echoed through the walls, reverberating in the tunnel outside and dying just before reaching its end.
~~*~~*~~
Honda was almost reaching the weak light he was running towards; he could already make out the outline of someone (apparently) sitting on the floor, holding it.
After getting nearer, he noticed hazel-blond hair reflecting some of the light. He was almost sure of who was it, but it was better to check out… he breathed deeply…
"BOO!!" he screamed, the sudden loud sound reverberating along the corridor.
"WaAAAAH!!" the person dropped whatever the shining thingamajig was, and seemed to be trying to climb the wall.
Honda decreased his pace, since we was sure of whom he had found, and calmly approached the spider-blond.
"Stop overreacting, man, it's me."
Jounouchi stopped running up the wall, letting himself slid to the ground. He squeaked a bit, obviously trying to say something. His whole body trembled.
"Geez, you sure overreacted, dude!" he laughed a little, picking the shiny thingy from the floor and sitting behind the blond.
He then saw that Jounouchi was neither laughing nor angry. In fact, he could barely manage to shot the dark-haired a reproachful and slightly hurt glare, between gasps for breath. Honda looked at the floor, sighing.
"I know, I know. Bad joke. I shouldn't have done that. Sorry."
Jounouchi patted him on the shoulders, still unable to utter a word, and turned to sit, slumping on the floor and somehow bonking his head against the wall. He moaned weakly. For a minute, the only sound was Jounouchi's trembling gasps for air, and even they calmed down.
"Now…" Honda broke the deafening silence. "What's new?"
"I'm lost," answered Jou through pale lips, his voice barely audible, but with a playful undertone.
"Now that's some coincidence!!" exclaimed Honda, in a delighted tone. "I'm lost too. How incredible! The world is so small…"
"Not really," breathed Jou, picking the shining thingy from Honda's hand as if the dark-haired was a child holding his mom's earring, when it should have been in other place. "If it was smaller, maybe we wouldn't be lost."
"That's some impressive logic," Honda stated, in a casual tone. "Now, what's that shining gizmo you're holding? I didn't even have time to look at it."
"Prepare thyself, brother," Jounouchi smirked, his lips still pale. He held it out for Honda to look at.
Honda's lips parted, but no sound came out. The eye carved on the puzzle piece looked at him innocently.
"…holy @#&#%!!" he exclaimed, after half a minute.
"Yeah, that pretty much sums everything up," Jou sighed. "But this thing saved me when I was in the edge of a nervous breakdown. It kinda seems the thing Yuugi'd do for you; give whatever little comfort he can to save your soul." He laughed a bit. "I wonder where the little messenger from above ended up. For some reason, this piece being here makes me worry…"
"Well, Yuugi'd never part with it, you know," Honda begun. "But the pieces fell on the floor and you just happened to pick this one when everything went weird."
"I remember I had a similar dream on the night of Friday to Saturday…" Jou's eyes became distant, as he recalled the details of the dream. "We were in the classroom, picking Yuugi's puzzle pieces, and then I was going to pick this one just under his desk when it shimmered and suddenly things went numb… I let it go and then the floor disappeared and I started falling into a dark place…" he shuddered.
"So…" Honda was trying to absorb it "Saturday, when you really found it, you remembered the dream and shuddered?"
"No, I didn't… I just had a weird feeling, I dunno…" Jou was thoughtful. He looked at the piece, shimmering lightly in the middle of the dark, and for some moments he let himself be mesmerized by it. For some long moments… until something hit his mind.
Honda almost ran up the wall when Jounouchi suddenly straightened his body, as if a needle had pricked him.
"Hey, hey!! I know that was a bad prank, but no need for revenge!!" he shot, hand in chest, his heart racing.
No response. Feeling a bucket of cold water being turned on his guts, Honda turned to his longtime friend.
He was pale. Pale as the Death.
"J… Jounouchi? Can you hear me? JOU!!"
The blond boy didn't hear. Inside his ears, reverberating through his head, another sound echoed, far, far away…
*Jounouchi-kun!!*
*Bring it, bring it quickly!!*
*Bring it…*
*This is the last opportunity… Jounouchi-kun—*
*COME, PLEASE!!*
The piece fell from Jounouchi's hand.
"Ho… Honda…"
Honda was already shaking him by the jacket. "You awake…" he breathed out. "Thank goodness, I thought you had become autistic or something…"
"I… think I heard Yuugi's voice…"
Honda blinked at him, the place falling in silence.
"I take back what I said. You are autistic." Honda let him go, as if afraid of catching some disease.
"I'm serious," Jounouchi's voice trembled with anxiety and fear, as he stood up, picking the piece and steadying himself with the wall. "I was looking at this… thing, and suddenly I started hearing this familiar voice shouting at me from far away… It was calling me… asking me to 'bring it quickly'…"
He held the piece a bit far from him, as if it could jump into his face, and, to their surprise, the shimmer faded a bit.
"What?" both sputtered.
Jounouchi pulled it to himself, and the glow increased. Deciding to use RPG-logic, he extended the light to his side… and the glow increased more.
"Maybe… maybe it'll lead to the rest of the puzzle," Jounouchi stuttered, as Honda looked at him, disbelief all over his face.
"What? What makes you think that? This whole thing is too weird, it shouldn't even be shining in the first place!! Jounouchi, this ain't a movie. This ain't a game. This-is-real. Got it? It's probably reacting with who-knows-what and having some chemical reaction or what-the-he…"
"Honda," Jounouchi began, his voice eerily calm "This ain't a movie nor a game. But you still got 12 in your composition, which shows you have no imagination at all. You just left your brain to rot in front of the TV while your body played soccer or whatever. Honda, nothing normal has happened in this last week. Hasn't this already entered whatever's left of your mind? The ghost, the tile, this damned tunnel, and you're freaking out because a puzzle piece seems to be calling something not that far. Damn, I'm friggin' freakin' out here but it's 'cause I'm a big child with a ghost trauma and I can't help it!! At least you, acting all brave, just like nothing has happened, should be able to ratiocinate better than me!!"
The blond couldn't help but pant after such a long speech. Snorting, he ignored Honda's open mouth and walked, holding the piece in front of him. With each step he walked, it seemed to glow a bit more…
He felt Honda's hand touch his shoulder.
"Hey, bro, you'll probably pass out when you see a rock dropped on the floor; s'meone has to go with you…"
"Thanks," Jou said, dryly. He didn't think he'd manage to pass out in front of a rock, but there could be worse things, worse even than what his imagination could create…
Honda and he were very good at double fight, actually. Better together than on their own.
~~*~~*~~
Haruno looked from the shadows; as the two boys crossed her, she shrunk into the dark as much as she could. So, everything was going as planned.
Her eyes narrowed as they went away. She'd been spying some teens that month, but from them, the blond one was surely one of the most intriguing. Other of the intriguing kind, of course, was Yuugi. Bah, none of them were normal, anyway. But this… Katsuya Jounouchi, yeah. This Katsuya had something a bit different from all the others…
Oh, yeah… it was obvious. He was blond. He looked like a gaijin, duh. She shrugged. She'd never grow used to gaijins, as much as she'd been working with them for years.
She blinked.
He had turned his head towards her. Of course he couldn't possibly be seeing her in the pitch-black darkness, but his troubled hazel eyes held the disturbing knowledge of *something* lurking in the shadows.
She shifted, uncomfortable. Yeah, of course. He and his uncanny senses. As stealthily as she could manage, she stepped backwards, backwards, backwards… until the faint light he was carrying started moving away again. But…
It was increasing its light.
She couldn't help but smirk. She'd never think things would actually go better than planned.
Haruno faded in the darkness.
~~*~~*~~
Sugoroku wasn't as weak as a man his age should be. But, still, walking all this time with nothing new to look at was tiring, and, worst of all…
He had no idea where Yuugi was. He could be passing by a parallel tunnel towards the opposite side, for all he knew. Sighing, he checked his surrounds again. It seemed the place he was had more cracks on the wall… and some on the floor, he noticed as he tripped on one, cursing.
Picking the flashlight he had dropped, the old man gasped as the beam revealed a very well known figure sprawled on the hard ground.
Anzu.
"Oh GOD!!" he ran to her, kneeling by her side, his chest squeezing as he took notice of the blood running down her forehead. It was dried already, but the bump looked ugly, a nasty purple color surrounding the wound in a large circle.
His hands trembling, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, pressing it against the wound as lightly as he could manage. Still, her face twisted, and she moaned.
Her eyes suddenly shot open; she soon closed them again, flinching – the flashlight was practically in her face. He turned it to another side, allowing her to open her eyes again.
She blinked at him, eyes hazy and out of focus.
"Mu… Mutou-san…?"
"…yeah…" he blinked at her, a bit unsure of what to answer.
To his surprise, Anzu laughed. It was almost a whisper, barely echoing on the surrounding walls, but her eyes shone and her lips curved graciously.
"…wha… what?"
"Mutou-san…" she whispered. "You looked a lot like Yuugi just now… blinking so innocently!…"
Her eyes faded out of focus once more, as she faced the darkness above her. Seeing her sweet smile, the way her eyes shone and her face melted in tenderness, Sugoroku was quite sure of what she could see in her mind…
Anzu blinked back to reality and tried to sit up, but failed. Noticing her difficulty, Sugoroku helped her.
"How did you get that bump?" he asked, grabbing a small towel from his backpack and wrapping her forehead with it. "It looks horrible… did someone hit you? Did you see who was it?"
"No, no one hit me…" she said, weakly, a hand on her forehead "I was just running and hit that wall," she motioned vaguely ahead of her.
Sugoroku turned the flashlight towards said wall, just to see if it was indeed a wall she had hit her head on. There, they saw a small smear of blood, already dried.
But that wasn't the reason he dropped the flashlight on the ground.
"Mu… Mutou-san…" Anzu gripped his sleeve, as everything seemed to spin. "Those… those were some kind of ancient characters, right? What are they doing here… we're in Japan!…"
She waited some time; there was no answer, though, as he looked ahead, wide-eyed. A possibility sneaked into her mind…
"…are we?"
He picked the flashlight with shaking fingers, his lips trembling.
"Not exactly, Anzu… not really."
He pointed the flashlight to the writings on the wall; Anzu's blood was smeared on a crack in the wall just above it. It gave the eerie impression that the writings were bleeding.
"C… can you read what it says?" her voice trembled slightly. "You… you were an archeologist and all…"
"I can… they're ancient runes, that the Celts used," he answered, standing up slowly, Anzu leaning on him to do so. "That's kind of what's giving me the creeps, you know…"
"So…" she whispered, staggering on her feet. "What… what does it say?"
He breathed, deeply, and began, his voice echoing lonely through the walls.
"The One should have seen it – all that was to fall upon the world, destroying all that was learnt and built, leaving only ashes behind… but even wise eyes can fail to see it all; nonetheless, light is bound to chase the shadows away sooner or later… and it happened, in the most possibly painful way. All the Ones together had seen a lot, but unfortunately not enough… nevertheless, the right thing was done in the end.
The fateful day was to come; all the Ones had walked their own paths and followed their own beliefs; divided, some of them let themselves Fall and be eaten by promises of power and treasures, taking advantage of the power they had… innocent tools in the end. Then the wait was finally over.
But nothing went as they expected. The sky darkened; the ground shook; lightening showered down; the sun fell on the Earth; as people finally understood the foolishness of their own acts, as all the Ones held their hands like they should have done, fire consumed it all…"
His voice trembled at the end, as he put his hand on his chest, as if in pain.
"Mutou-san!" Anzu held him by his arm, fretful, and tried to hold him, even though her head was pounding.
"It's nothing," he breathed out, suddenly. 'That's… that's…'
"Like hell it's nothing!!" Anzu was getting angry and her head wasn't helping. "If you're anything like Yuugi you're probably having a heart attack and…"
"I'm going to have one if you keep scowling at me like that," he straightened himself, wiping sweat from his brow. "Look, Anzu, that thing is telling something few, but very few archeologists in the world know about. It's confusing and has a load of things I never heard about, but it seems to be talking about the legend of the first Cataclysm…"
The look Anzu gave him showed just how much she could understand of everything he had said. He sighed.
"Anzu… you probably know a lot of legends and prophecies made by a lot of religions and such, telling about the end of the world, right?"
She nodded, mouth slightly open.
"Legends don't come out of the air. Legends are facts. Facts that, after a lot of time and retelling, simply lost most of the touch they had with reality… some of them are written down, but in such a way that people take everything literally, and the true meaning of the words is forgotten. Yeah, that's a good way to put it – legends are half-forgotten facts."
She nodded again.
"That's all that archeologists like me have to work with. We take the legends, find out somehow where they took place, fumble everything and find a way to turn the legends back into facts. Some legends are simply impossible to work with; others are still a mystery, but seem to have something of true on them. Troy is a very good example of a legend turned into fact. Atlantis is a mystery, but seems to be a possibility if you take into account the theory of the Tectonic Plaques, when was the last polarity inversion of the Earth and the time of the discovery of agriculture…"
He stopped ranting when he noticed the rather dazed look in Anzu's eyes. He was worried for a moment, but when she blinked and looked cluelessly at him, he thought that maybe he should just get to the point.
"Anyway… some of us Archeologists believe that such colorful description of the End of the World must have come from somewhere. Usually people don't have all this imagination about something they have never experienced… and it seemed to connect with a cataclysm there was some thousands of years ago."
"Thousands of years ago?!" Anzu gaped, looking at the old man, wide-eyed. "How do you know that?"
She didn't ask anything more, but, by the look on her eyes, he knew the next question would have been 'are you that old?'. Maybe she hit her head really hard…
"There are scientific proofs, my dear. Scientific proofs."
She mouthed "oh" and blinked, interested in what would come next.
"Some researches show that, some thousands of years ago, a great geographic catastrophe happened. Some parts of the continents sunk, and others came up; drastic climatic changes happened all over the place… theories say it was because the Polarity of the Earth inverted; you know, before that, a compass would have pointed south and not north…"
The girl's blue eyes were wide as saucers; she had even forgotten to breath.
"The story of it was probably told to descendants, that started to use difficult language to spice up the story or I don't know what… anyway, what was meant to be just adorned facts became a legend – fantastic things with no explanation, and hard to know if it's true or not. That writing on the wall seems to have a piece of such a story… but I don't remember ever hearing about this one – except, of course, about the special effects: the sun falling, lightening showering, that's commonplace."
He looked at it again, the flashlight's beam trembling a little with excitement. His eyes shone in the dim light.
"I… never thought I'd find something about it here," he whispered. "The eye of Horus is all over the place, but I never thought I'd find such a thing…"
Anzu kept on silence. Obviously, that was a very important moment for that old man; she should let him savor it. Also, it seemed to be some kind of historical treasure; she could feel an ancient aura around the place, and respected it.
"Anzu!!" Sugoroku's voice was bright as he turned to her, eyes shining with happiness. "Let's find Yuugi, quickly!!"
"Ahn?" she blinked at him, her vision still full of dark spots. Suddenly her eyes widened. "Yuugi… YUUGI!! WHERE'S YUUGI??"
She took some staggering steps forwards, and was quickly held by Sugoroku; she was suddenly dizzy, and her head pounded with each step.
"Easy, there," he patted her arm, soothingly. "Yuugi wouldn't want to see you like this. And you know as much as I do that he's capable of dealing with bigger problems when it's needed…"
He smiled as he helped her walk, trying to ignore the little voices on the back of his head that told him…
'Yuugi was sick, remember?'
'Hey, you didn't tell her everything…'
'It seems she has a concussion…'
'Why was that thing in runes? Horus is Egyptian!'
'Shaddup!'
~~*~~*~~
She huffed and puffed, her high-heeled shoes helping at nothing as they got stuck in cracks. Her only source of light was her digital watch.
'So, daddy's inheritance was really there!! That goddamned bastard was really smart, I have to give him that. He just never thought I'd come and face him; his face was wonderful when I shoved that gun into his face!!'
Suzuki-sensei smiled wickedly, but swore when one of her heels got stuck again; irritated, she took her shoes out, carrying them on a hand while she ran.
'I just hope there's no lost nail or glass shard around here…'
She stopped abruptly as her watch's limited light showed a wall just ahead of her. She turned to the side, seeing the way was open, and started running again.
'What I wasn't counting was that it would take me to some weird place today of all days…'
She snorted, and cursed loudly when she tripped in a bigger crack.
"Damn old place…"
~*~*~*~*~*~
October 29, 2002: Gyaaaa! Finally!! It was harder than I thought it would!! Anyway, next chapter is a mystery; it may come in December, after the two first Entrance Tests, or next year's December, if I don't manage to pass (you know, Mom's probably going to cut Internet for a year if I don't…) I had to get this out of my system or I wouldn't be able to study in peace. I hope I'm more in the mood tomorrow. I least I got a *checks out again* 95 in my English Mid-term. Not bad at all *grins*, in fact, I wish I could trade my grade in English for my one in Portuguese, then I wouldn't be in such a situation!!
Also, big twist on the way, and, sorry Yami didn't actually appear this chapter as I said he would. He has been there all the time, in a way, but his actual entrance will have to wait for the sake of good, non-rushed plot. I gave a bit more of Suzuki in this, and also a lot of Haruno; just come back a few chapters and you'll get almost all of it. Of course, the juicy thing is completely hidden, I gave no sign of it ^____^
Now I have a much better idea of Suzuki's place in this story, as well as the participation of the other guys on Yuugi's and Yami's matters throughout this set. I hope some things manage to be as surprising as I want them to be…
Also, big thanks to that nice old bunch of faithful readers and reviewers, which somehow kept me alive in this last month of suffering and torture. Speaking of torture, I have three math classes tomorrow… *groans* Let me say farewell before I drown you too much into my worthless life…