(A/N: This is a work of fiction, and I own no characters save those I have created, who are copy-written solely to myself. For convenience, the city of Domino has been given the same coordinates as Tokyo, and though it has not replaced that city, that is where it will be located. The inspiration for this story came from deepsenseremix; credit to her for the plot line. There will be a slash version of this story out whenever I can get it written.)

Sixteen Thousand Four Hundred Forty-Three Miles

Chapter 1: Forty-Seven Degrees North, Eighty-Four Degrees West

Blinding white light... pushing... pulling... burning... freezing... screaming... Yugi... Yugi? ... Puzzle?... Yugi... melting... twisting... flying... pain...

Yami's eyelids fluttered open slowly, his head spinning and his stomach feeling like it was standing on end.

Where was he? What had happened?

He looked around, carefully sitting up as he did so. Not too quickly now; his head felt like it had been beaten in a number of times and he was quite sure his stomach wouldn't be able to control itself if he moved any faster. He appeared to be sitting in some kind of alley-way, brick walls rising on either side of him. There were random scraps of garbage and whatnot littering the ground, but where he was seated was more or less clean. It was rather dark out so it must be late evening or so, and -he shivered- more than a little cold. Gazing upward, he saw odd white particles floating towards the ground, melting when they touched his bare shoulder.

Leaning against the graffiti-covered brick, Yami slowly rose to his feet, wrapping his arms around himself for warmth. Something wasn't right here. He'd never seen this white stuff before, and there was certainly none of it in Japan! Instinctively, as he usually did when he couldn't fathom something, he tried to speak mentally with Yugi.

Okay, this was bad.

He couldn't sense Yugi. At all. It struck him that he should have noticed this before, but his mind was only just coming to proper thought process once again, and Yugi's presence had been known to be feeble when the boy was sleeping. But it had always been there to some extent. And it wasn't. He couldn't even tell if his partner existed anymore.

What exactly had happened? He was deathly confused.

Closing his eyes, he sought to remember recent events and feelings. 'Come on now...' He thought to himself, straining his memory, 'Remember...'

An enormous flash of piercingly white light... feeling contorted and stretched and ripped and torn... a blazing heat, erupting around his body... an icy cold, spreading from the inside out... a squelching sort of suction feeling... floating... spinning... flying...

Yami pressed his hands over his eyelids; everything felt blurred and mashed together and that memory wasn't making anything remotely clear. What was this cold stuff?

Wait a moment.

Cold.

He was cold.

Therefore he was solid.

But how could that be? He needed Yugi's body to have a solid form! And Yugi wasn't here, he'd already determined that. Maybe Yugi had been destroyed... killed. Maybe he, Yami, was all that was left now.

'No,' Yami shook his head, then stopped because it made the world wobble quite badly, 'Don't think like that. I simply have to find my way back to Japan. I am surely no longer there.'

And so, shivering and with an aching head, he set off through the night, thinking dully to himself, 'Why are things always infinitely easier said than done?'

Interlude 1.1

Domino City

"Yugi?"

'I don't want to wake up.'

"Yugi!"

'I can't feel my other self. I don't want to wake up.'

"C'mon Yugi, wake up, buddy!"

'I don't want to-'

WHACK!

'Ouch!'

"Kaiba! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Waking him. If he refuses to do so, then pick him up and carry him, we simply cannot stay here. It's too dangerous."

"That doesn't mean you can hit him!"

"I'm alright," Yugi mumbled softly, placing a hand to his head and struggling to sit up. He felt a hand on his back, and gratefully leaned into its support. His head felt very woozy. He blinked a few times, dust in his eyes, then looked around, confused, "What happened?"

"We don't know..." Jounouchi's voice came from behind him; so he was the one supporting him.

Suddenly, a large chunk of cement crashed into the ground only feet to their left, making Yugi jump. He looked around, eyes wide with disbelief. Everything was in ruins. Broken shards of glass littered the ground, which was filled with cracks and debris. Telephone poles were strewn about as if a giant's child had thrown a tantrum; cars were crushed beneath them and some were straight through buildings. Looking up, Yugi saw that they were underneath a tin sign that was leaning against a cable box, which was open and displaying crackling live wires.

Kaiba's voice came next, calm and critical, "We can't stay here. If it starts to rain, we're already dead. It's not safe to try and figure out what's going on, so unless you want to risk further injuries, I suggest we get going."

Yugi looked behind him, seeing that Jou had a deep gash on the side of his face and one leg of his pants was torn and blood-stained. Beyond him, Honda was supporting Ryou, who looked to have passed out, his arm sticking out at an odd angle. Kaiba, to their right, initially appeared unhurt, but when he turned a certain way, Yugi could see him wince.

When Yugi struggled to his feet, he discovered that his right ankle refused to take his weight. Without comment, Jounouchi began to aid him in following Kaiba, apparently oblivious to the pain in his own leg. Honda lurched into movement with Ryou, and the group moved off down the wrecked streets of Domino, each wondering what exactly had happened to their fair city.

Location: Cold-town

Dawn found Yami huddled in a doorway, a moth-eaten old black coat thrown haphazardly over his bare shoulders in an effort to keep warm. Not that it did much good. He shivered and tried to shrink further into the doorway; the wind was biting and positively freezing. Obviously, what clothing was suitable in Japan was not suitable here. His leather pants felt like blocks of ice against his skin and crackled when he moved, and he found himself wishing he still had his own coat, instead this abandoned scrap and his sleeveless shirt.

To make matters worse, he wasn't any closer to home than he'd been in the middle of the night.

Knowledge of where he was: None, save that it was chilly.

Knowledge of how far from home he was: Damned far.

Knowledge of what this white stuff was: Cold and wet and seemingly never-ending.

Yami sighed and sank toward the ground, curling into a ball and pressing the heel of his hand into his forehead.

This was so bad. Just bad. How in the holy name of Ra had he gotten here? How was he going to get home How –he shivered and tried to shrink into an even smaller ball- was he going to survive? He had no food, no water, no money. He checked his pockets, finding nothing more than dust and damp lint.

Hmm. That was odd.

He didn't have his duel deck. He took that with him everywhere, and as far as he remembered, he'd never removed it from its pocket. He bowed his head into his arms; this was looking bleaker by the minute.

"Hey man, what are you doing out here in no sleeves on a day like today? You'll freeze your tail off!"

Yami looked up, surprised that someone was talking to him. He saw someone who looked to be about nineteen years old, with a shock of violently red hair poking out from under a black toque and bright blue eyes peering owlishly at him. Yami blinked, trying to absorb what the man had said and, finding it pointless, gave a perplexed, "Pardon?"

"You got anywhere to stay?" The man continued, his hands in the pockets of what looked like a very warm jacket.

Yami shook his head, still trying to decode the slang in the man's first phrase.

"Well, come on with me. I'm not really supposed to bring bums into work, but you've got a pretty face and you don't look all that poor. Jenna'll like you." The man grinned and extended his hand to Yami, who took it and pulled himself up, the black coat on his shoulders falling to the ground. "I'm José. What's your name?"

Yami hated that question. "I don't remember." He replied softly, wrapping his arms around himself.

José cocked his head at him, asking with concern, "Amnesia?"

"No, it's a long story. The last person I knew called me his other half. His dark half."

"Dark half, eh? Odd." José shrugged, then appeared to think for a moment, "We'll have to find you a more normal name than that. No way Kolin's going to let you stay with some weird name like that. What if we called you Felix?"

Kolin? Felix? Yami's head was spinning, but he gave a nod, feeling that it was probably a good idea to accept this man's help, even though he didn't quite know what it was yet.

"Alright, Felix then. If you'd like to come with me I can get you something a bit warmer to wear." José poked Yami's goose-pimpled arm with a grin, "I don't know what possessed you to wear leather and no sleeves in the middle of December. C'mon."

'If you only knew.' Yami thought savagely, following José down the street, wondering if this easy-going man would believe his story.