Hey, I'm alive! Sorry it's taken so long to finally meet people; I could say I've been busy, or had writer's block, but the truth is I've had this written out and was simply unmotivated to type it. But now I've mustered my determination and my small reserve of work ethic, and I'm going to type this bit out once and for all. Then we can start getting to the interesting stuff!
Reviewer replies are at the end of the chapter; that's really all I have to say at the moment. So enjoy…
Chapter 3b: Meet the Gang
"That's what friends are for!"
-the vultures in The Jungle Book
One hour after they began playing, the score was Laurel: 1, Yami: 2. "I don't see how you do it!" Laurel told him after his second win, scratching her head in confusion, "Are you sure you've never played this game before?"
"Positive," he replied with a smirk.
"And I've been playing for years. I'm not that good, especially since I haven't played much lately, but I should still be able to beat a newbie. Or at the very least, put up a decent fight." She stared at the configuration of the cards again, "I don't think I've ever been beaten so soundly. You're really good at this."
"Thank you. This isn't too different from Duel Monsters, and I have a knack for games in general."
"No kidding," Laurel replied, shaking her head.
Just then, they heard the door open, bells tinkling. "Yo, Yug'! You around?" a voice called.
"Hello, Joey," Yami called, "Yugi's upstairs. Laurel and I are in back."
"Oh, hey Yami. Whatcha doin' back there?" A boy with unruly blond hair and warm brown eyes came around the shelves to have a look. "Oh, cool, you taught her…wait a minute, those aren't Duel Monsters!"
"No, I taught Yami to play Magic: the Gathering. He can beat me every time now. Hi, I'm Laurel Arbor." She extended a hand.
He took it. "Nice to meet ya, Laurel. I'm Joey Wheeler, and this is my sister…" he turned and moved aside as if to make way for someone behind him…but there was no one there. "Sis? Hey, Serenity!" He looked around wildly.
"I'm over here, Joey," said a pretty auburn-haired girl, appearing from behind a shelf, "I was just looking at some of the games." To Laurel she said, "Hi, I'm Serenity. Don't mind my brother; I don't."
Laurel giggled at their antics. "It's nice to meet both of you. Why don't you let us clean up here, while you two head upstairs. Yugi has some snacks-" she was interrupted by an inrush of air to the spot where Joey had just been "…set out?" She looked around, "Where'd Joey go?"
Serenity sighed a little. "You mentioned food and a location. That's where you'll find my big brother," she informed Laurel.
"Oh, one of those, huh?" Laurel replied with a grin, "We'd best follow him if we want there to be anything left for us!" They laughed, and trooped up the stairs, chatting amicably.
…And leaving Yami to clean up the game. He sweatdropped briefly, then scooped up the cards and set them on the counter. Then he hurried upstairs after the girls.
Laurel and Serenity were sitting on the couch, discussing their siblings. Yugi and Joey, meanwhile, stood over at the snack table, apparently talking about the new Duel Monsters expansion. Yami caught snatches of the girls' conversation, and moved closer to listen in.
"You wouldn't believe some of the stunts he's pulled," Serenity was saying, "Once, he jumped out of his bedroom window with a parachute made of bed sheets, after he'd been sent to his room." They laughed.
"My sister's had her moments, too," Laurel confessed, "I remember a time when she was two…"
"What did she do?"
"Well, see, I had this fish…It was one of those hundred-yen goldfish that you get at elementary school carnivals, you know the type." Serenity nodded. "Anyway, it wasn't much, except that I was seven and it was the only pet I could have. So we'd had the fish for a couple days, when Cara came to our cousin – who took care of us 'cause we were orphans – sobbing out something like, 'I just wanted to look at it!' She led us into the kitchen, and there was my fish, floating upside-down in the bowl with finger-shaped bruises on its sides. She had, as we found out once she calmed down, wanted to see the fish closer. Unfortunately, she didn't know that fish can't survive out of the water." Serenity, at this point, was laughing so hard she was almost on the floor. "So she had picked up the fish, and it flopped around pretty hard, of course, trying to get back into the water. This in turn meant that she held on pretty hard, hence the bruises. So there's my little sister, holding onto a terrified, breathless, bruised goldfish, waiting for it to stop flopping so she can pet it." Laurel laughed too. "I acted more upset than I was; it's not like the goldfish was a real entertaining pet."
"I can imagine," Serenity replied still giggling a little, "So where is she?"
Laurel looked down, humor gone. "She's at a friend's house, last I heard. I had to leave her there two years ago, and I don't dare go back," she said quietly.
"Why not?" Serenity asked with a sympathetic look.
"There are people chasing me; I don't want to put her in danger. I wish I could be there with her, more than anything in the world, but she's safer if I'm not there." Laurel's tone was frustrated.
"Oh, wow, that must be awful. Why are they chasing you?"
Laurel sighed, "Can we wait until everyone's here? I'd like to be able to say it just once."
"Oh, of course. I understand." Serenity nodded. Just then, a voice came up the stairwell.
"Hey, folks! The cavalry's here!" A teenage boy with brown hair that came to a point in front entered the room, followed by one with long black hair, green eyes, and a dice earring. "Hey, Serenity!" the brunette continued, "Hi Joey, Yugi, Yami." He looked at Laurel, "You must be the reason we're here. I'm Tristan Taylor, and dice-boy here is Duke Devlin."
A blonde woman with large violet eyes came up the stairs behind them, looking amused and slightly annoyed. "Haven't you boys ever heard of ladies first?" she asked them. Tristan looked chagrined, while Duke took his distraction as an opportunity to sit on the couch beside Serenity.
"Uh, yeah. Oops," Tristan replied, not noticing Duke. He turned to Laurel, "This lovely lady is Mai Valentine."
"Your valentine?" Laurel asked, one eyebrow raised, "That's sweet, but it's July, not February. What's her name?"
"Mai Valentine. Spelled M-A-I," the blonde-haired woman announced. "I don't know what my parents were thinking."
"Oh." Now it was Laurel's turn to look embarrassed, "Sorry. I'm Laurel Arbor, nice to meet you." She stood up and walked around the couch to shake Mai's hand; Tristan immediately claimed her spot.
Mai took the proffered hand, "Charmed. Don't worry about the name thing; happens all the time." She turned to Yugi, "Ryou was a couple blocks behind us; he should be here in a couple minutes."
"Good!" Yugi replied, "Then we'll just have to wait for Téa and Mokuba."
Laurel shook her head with a grin, "Yugi, you have a lot of close friends."
"I meet a lot of friendly people," he responded, "And I tend to see friends in places other people don't." Everyone nodded.
"An' aren't we all glad you do, too, Yug'," Joey said, ruffling the smaller teen's hair.
Downstairs, a bell tinkled faintly. "Hello?" a soft voice called, with a trace of an English accent.
"We're up here, Ryou!" Yugi called down to him.
A boy with long, slightly spiky white hair came up. "Hello, everyone!" he said cheerfully.
The room broke out in variations on the theme of 'Hi, Ryou!' Laurel approached him, but as she came near, he tripped on the top step.
"Oh, goodness, are you all right?" Laurel reached down to help him up, but he waved her off politely.
"No, no, I'm fine, happens all the time," he said with a sheepish grin.
Serenity was at the window. "Hey you guys, there's a limousine parked out front."
"Kaiba," Yami said.
"How'd you guess," Serenity said dryly. "Wait…hang on, looks like he gave Téa a ride, too. They're all coming in…and there goes the limo." She turned back to face the room, "Kaiba's staying?"
"I guess so," Yugi replied, then, hearing the bell jingle, called down the stairs, "Hi, guys, we're up here!"
"Hi, Yugi!" a girl with brown hair and blue eyes said as she came up the stairs, "You guys will never guess what happened to me on my way here."
"Kaiba stopped and offered you a ride," Tristan 'guessed' with a grin.
The girl was dumbstruck. "How did you...?"
"Serenity saw out the window," replied Joey, "The question is, why'd 'e do it?"
"I got him to do it!" said a voice. They turned to see a little boy with long, spiky black hair. "I can get Seto to do anything!" He scampered into the room, making way for a tall, brown-haired teenager in a trenchcoat. He cast one look around the room with his cold blue eyes, then moved over to stand by his brother.
In the meantime, the girl had spotted Laurel. "You must be Yugi's new friend!" she said, "I'm Téa. It's nice to meet you!"
"Likewise. My name is Laurel. So that means the tall one is Seto and the cute one is Mokuba?"
"Yup!" replied Mokuba with a grin.
"And now everybody's here, right?" She looked at Yugi.
"Right."
"Which means you can get down to the business you called us here for," Kaiba spoke for the first time.
"Okay." Laurel drew a deep breath. "Everyone get comfortable, it's a kinda long story." She told them the pertinent details of how she got the medallion, and the people who were chasing her.
"So, I ended up here. Yugi, Yami and Grandpa have been kind enough to let me stay here with them. That was yesterday, and I'm still sort of settling in." She sighed, then looked around. Most of the faces showed sympathy; Serenity looked close to tears. Kaiba's face was impassive, but his eyes weren't quite as narrow as before.
"I don't get it," Joey said, breaking the silence that followed, "What do those guys want wit' dat medal?"
"It's a medallion, not a medal," Laurel corrected, "Yami? You understand it best."
Yami nodded. "It is the Medallion of Bastet, and it allows travel between different planes." He explained what that meant. "If the wrong people get their hands on it, they could throw the multiverse into imbalance; that would be a catastrophe."
"What would happen?" asked Duke.
"No one knows entirely. It starts with unusual weather: snowstorms in June, extreme heat waves, that sort of thing. Then holes start opening in the fabric of space and time, allowing passage between planes. It's happened before, but someone was always there to stop it before it got past that stage." He sighed a little, "It appears that we're it, this time. Fortunately, we can prevent it from even starting by not letting them get the medallion. Questions?"
"I got one," Joey said, "What can we do against these dudes? I mean, you and Bakura, and Kaiba, too, according to you guys, you guys got powers; what've we got?"
"Joey's right," Mai put in, "You and Bakura have your Shadow games, and Kaiba has dragons, but not everybody can use magic to summon cards outside of a duel."
"Actually, you can learn to do it," Yugi said, "but it'll be very draining, especially right at first, so other methods are probably better if you haven't been trained to summon. But you can still tell us about anything unusual that you happen to see. And it's good to be warned, so you don't underestimate them. Also, from what Laurel tells us, at least one of them is vulnerable to hand-to-hand combat techniques. That's the guy with the cougar; he seems to be an ordinary human, so you just have to watch out for the cat."
"Mrrow?" said Cinnamon, poking her head out of the hallway.
"And watch out for that cat, too," Laurel told them, "She kills anything, as long as it's ankle-height or lower!"
That broke the mood, and everyone (except Kaiba the elder) laughed.
"'ey, I'm hungry!" said Joey, "I think it's lunchtime."
"Yeah, let's get something to eat," agreed Tristan.
The crowd dispersed into conversation groups. Some people headed for the kitchen, led by Joey and Tristan. Duke, taking advantage of the momentary absence of both competition and protection, started flirting with Serenity. Kaiba followed the kitchen group at a distance, keeping an eye on Mokuba, while Mai and Téa struck up a conversation. Laurel hung back a bit, cradling Cinnamon in her arms and blinking back tears. Yami noticed, and moved to stand beside her.
"Are you all right?" he asked softly.
Laurel nodded vigorously, "Wonderful. Ever since I got here, everything's been wonderful. I just can't remember ever having so many people willing to help me before, even when I lived with my cousin. Instead of assuming they can't do anything and just letting us do the work, they ask what they can do. It's a little overwhelming, is all." She wiped her eyes hastily and sniffled, "Look at me, in tears twice on the same morning. I must be going soft." She flashed him a sardonic half-smile, "I'll be fine, go on and hang out."
"If you're sure…" he said hesitantly.
"I'm sure," she smiled again, more sincerely this time. He gave her one last, searching look, then nodded and moved off toward the kitchen.
She isn't, though, he thought, I shouldn't press her…but she isn't all right. It's probably just memories of her family, nothing else. She's had a long two years, after all. Anyone could be expected to be a little emotional. He sighed. Why am I so worried? No one else seems to think anything's wrong. If everyone else believes she's fine, who am I to correct them?
Someone with more experience, that's who, he answered himself, Especially when it comes to the emotionally damaged. He watched as Joey tried to put a friendly arm around her shoulders. Laurel stiffened almost imperceptibly before politely shrugging it off. That isn't normal behavior.
It may very well be normal for someone in her position, the other part of him replied. He sighed, Wonderful, now I'm arguing with myself. Isn't that a sign of an unbalanced mind? At any rate, once the evil has been dealt with, she'll go back to her sister and live with her. This is only a temporary solution. An image of her tearstained face floated across his imagination. Gods, that was hard to watch…hard to not act upon. I wanted so much just to hold her, comfort her, make sure she knew I would be there for her… He shook his head, Hormones! I'm five thousand years old, and still seventeen. He blinked suddenly, realizing that while he'd been thinking about Laurel, he'd managed to fill a plate with snacks and sit down on the couch. When did I get here? I need to get more sleep, I shouldn't be spacing out like that. Upon a sudden impulse, he looked around for Ryou. The boy was nowhere in sight. Damn! I was supposed to be keeping an eye on him! He got up, carefully setting his plate down in his spot, and threaded his way through the group to the hallway. He reached the room that he and Yugi shared, and opened the door to find…
"Tomb Robber," he growled. Bakura looked around at him.
"Oh, it's you. Nice place you've got here."
"Yes, well, I'd prefer to know what you've got that we no longer have." Yami looked around. "Yugi's alarm clock." Bakura pulled it out of his pocket and replaced it sullenly. "His piggybank."
"Feh, it would have jingled too much anyway."
"The snowglobe he gave me for Christmas."
"Now how did that get in my sleeve?"
"…I think that's it."
"There wasn't much interesting stuff to take. You two need some more valuable knick-knacks."
"Just out of curiosity, why the clock? You took the piggybank because it's money, and the snowglobe because it would annoy me, I know that, but…"
"They don't make that style of Dark Magician clocks anymore. They're collectible. That thing'd fetch a lot from the right buyer."
"I'll remember that. Now, out."
"With pleasure."
Yami followed the thief out, and met up with Yugi in the hallway. "Hey, Yami. What're you up to?"
"Relieving Bakura of our belongings and kicking him out of our room. Let me know if I missed anything."
"Okay, thanks." Yugi went in. "Looks okay so far."
"Good. Oh, he mentioned that that clock of yours is collectible."
"Really? Cool!" Yugi came out and closed the door. "Ok, let's head back to the party. Were those chips and things sitting on the couch yours?"
"Yes, those are mine."
"Not anymore. Joey ate them."
"…Oh."
So, what'cha think? I hope I got everyone in character. How'd people like Bakura? I've mellowed him out a lot; he isn't out to kill Yami anymore, just to annoy him whenever possible.
Reviewer Responses:
MsRyoki: Thanks! I'm glad you like it.
Silver Dragon Golden Dragon: Dating a vampire? O.o. I'll admit that vampires are the only undead I don't automatically hate, but… Anyway, I'm glad you like the little anecdotes, I was wondering if I should include stuff like that or leave it out. And I'm glad you don't mind the gaps! I just don't often have a lot of time, and the time that I have I tend to spend reading fics rather than typing them.
Greenwood Dancer: Thanks! Don't worry about how long it takes to review, I'm not always consistent either. I'm glad you think it's funny!
Anyway, RR please! I'm going to start giving out Tribbles (Small fluffy things that coo when petted and multiply incredibly quickly when fed. They have no discernable head or face; they are literally balls of fluff) to reviewers. Please specify what color Tribble you want when you review. Thanx!