Disclaimer: Know ye by these presents that Yu-Gi-Oh! forms no part of my worldly goods.
Author's Note: Sparked by a request by Josie on the Kyokou Geemu message boards. Many blossoms shower upon Ideseth for beta-ing!
Rating: PG
Category: Psychological/Drama.
Pairings: Yami no Malik/Noa. Kind of. One-sided.
Summary: "Evil" comes in many blends. When two kinds sense each other's presence, what could happen?
Warnings: Suggestiveness. (Canonical) character death, kind of.
Spoilers: Through the end of the Noa Arc.
ShadowPlay
He tastes it, the evil. He smells it all around him here. He savors it: salty like sweat, acrid like seed.
Presently, he moves out from under the shadow of the blimp, which crouches motionless in this undersea hangar. He widens his nostrils, flings back his pale shock of hair, quests for the source of these sensations. All the while, his curved fingers pass over the bladed knob of the Rod he carries.
And though it was never meant to be a compass, the Rod responds to his desire, twists within his loose grasp, points forward and to his left. The knob glows, burns white-hot. As he saunters in the direction indicated, the man raises the head of the rod towards lips stretched in a feral grin. A long ruddy tongue flicks around the engraved eye, presses into the gaping pupil, then withdraws.
There is an entity that is not a living boy, nor an amalgam of software applications, nor a corpse, nor a web of electronic impulses, and yet is somehow all these things. It calls itself by its childhood name, Noa.
If Noa had survived in the outside world, he would be in late adolescence, about the same age as his greatest enemy. Since his body's death, Noa's mind and spirit have evolved, expanded much further than they would have if constrained by a physical form. But the image he presents to his new "visitors," the one he uses with the Five as well, is a luminous avatar of his 12-year-old body. Perhaps he means to confuse his guests about his true nature; or perhaps he feels nostalgia for that shape and age.
Soon enough, though, he will regain a body. Soon enough, the name Kaiba Seto will be borne by Gozaburo's true heir.
Imprisonment in the Original's mind after Malik's first, and only, bloodletting was akin to a baby being thrust screaming back into the mother's womb—a jail cell at once suffocating and life-giving. Like an embryo, the Darkness absorbed daily nourishment from every annoyance, every resentment of outer Malik's. Unlike a fetus, though, he made not the slightest movement; he had no wish to alert his host to his presence.
The hardest part was containing his frequent quivers of laughter. The original Malik fancied himself so powerful, so ruthless. -The eunuch wouldn't know what hit him-.
The man comes to a halt, brows snapped together.
Yes, he's out at last. But his foremost prey has vanished. Rishid has been spirited away by Ishizu. She'll pay for that. And now, the Pharaoh and his bleating flock are gone, swallowed by the same force that pulled them into the fortress.
A force that isn't seeing fit to let him in.
Abandoning for a moment his quest for physical entry, he lowers his head and flings his mind toward that other Presence.
Instantly, his groping makes contact.
This is not the thrumming heat of the Shadow Realm. The Being of the fortress is cool, sliding, coiled. He laughs, and reaches further. What is Snake looped around?
For a moment, his outermost senses touch it: a smooth leathery surface. An encasing.
An egg? Yummmmy. Breakfast. He bares mongoose teeth—
And Snake senses him and attacks. Burning rips across the edges of his consciousness; he withdraws it hastily, pulls himself back into his physical form.
A siren howls through the tunnel, and there is movement at his back. Turning, he takes in a group of automata, their mechanical arms poised as they roll toward him.
His mouth twitches upwards; his tongue gives an insolent flick; casually, he lifts the Rod.
The intellectual satisfaction of keeping watch from afar over Seto's movements, of enlisting and readying those lost servants of his father's, of setting this underwater trap for the group—all this is nothing compared to the exultation of having them here. Guests, prisoners, prey. Bodies lying helpless like incubator babies, minds surrendered completely to the game. His game.
The hours, days, years spent designing, remapping, configuring, expanding—every single minute has paid off. He feels it all with them. Confusion, fear, surprise, frustration, fury, even an unexpected moment or two of triumph and exhilaration: emotions come sizzling along the circuits. Nothing like the stale vengefulness, the chewed-over childhood woes of the Big Five. …Those lackeys seem worse than useless, at least so far as achieving their own ends is concerned. Still, they amuse, and their antics are keeping the game players fully engaged.
Except for Seto and Mokuba. For them, a special entertainment is planned, spun out of shared memories: of pivotal choices that Seto made. Fatal choices, at least for Seto.
As he turns his attention to that monitor, an electric surge crashes through him, and he laughs. Seto is angry again.
Great and golden, muscles bunching, a lion stretching after the satisfaction of a kill. This is Malik as he strides away from the glittering shards of his metallic opponents.
He wishes he could wrestle with Snake, but Snake's attention is elsewhere, and Snake's coils are pulled tight against him.
Pulse.
He cocks his head. What's that?
Pulse. Red. There's something else here.
The air beats loud and steady, as though he's pushing through the chambers of a heart. Such a ripe flavor to this presence: an old hatred seasoned to perfection, copper-edged.
Perversely, it displeases him. He likes his destruction disorderly. But still he flares his nostrils, breathes deep.
Defeat.
The others' emotions splash around the perimeter of Noa's consciousness. He ignores them all, though not by choice. It's because his own emotions are pressing them back. It is because he is feeling.
And now he can't remember why he wanted to feel. Feelings tear holes in logic; they make a joke of cause and effect.
It's bad enough that he lost the duel. Even worse that he made that rash attempt to take control of Yuugi. Am I as pitiable as the Big Five?
But worst of all is that Father has been with him all this time—and he never noticed. His carefully honed intellect missed the clues that Gozaburo surely left.
His thoughts are an endless loop of shame—that he failed Father.
No, his thoughts are an endless loop of pain. Father failed him. Father—Father hurt him, and doesn't care.
Noa hurts.
Malik moves quickly now, gulping at the burning redness. Where is it, the source? He's drunk, but not drunk enough. He knows there's more.
Doors open, and he looks up at a great metal sphere. It's a cold imitation of Ra's locked self.
Goodbye.
His forehead flames into brightness along with the Rod. The sphere bursts outward, a stillborn hatching.
Pain? What pain?
Noa can barely keep from dancing. Instead, he laughs, sending his voice bouncing off the walls of the pod room.
He has a body, not so different from the one he lost. Flesh. He moves briskly into the control center, leaving the still forms of Seto and Yuugi and the others in their space-age sarcophagi.
His fingers skate across the keyboard. Thanks for learning to touch-type, Mokuba.
There's a strange twisting at the edge of his mind; he dismisses it—a minor discomfort like that of breaking in new shoes.
As the satellite flickers into view on the monitor, Noa's mouth begins to water. He's surprised for a moment, then smirks: so it's true that revenge is sweet.
"Where are you, then?" Malik croons into the darkened corridor. "Snakey…"
Snake is moving now—Malik's heart speeds with the knowledge. The egg, though, seems to have disappeared. Too bad—he'll find it later.
Now it's Redness that has turned elsewhere. Everything slung its way simply disappears, swallowed in its dank fury. No sense wasting time on that, when Snake is so close.
Leaning toward the screen, Noa smiles at the figure waving its little golden stick amid a litter of machinery. An annoyance, but one easily outmaneuvered.
"Die with them."
"Ah…the control room."
Snake was just here. Ooh, it looks like Snake has set something up: something bright and cold and flickering happening on every screen. Snake's been very busy. Too bad, Snake, Malik is here now.
Noa's running, running, as Mokuba's heart jumps wildly in his chest. Is it too late?
He slams into the control room, bolts toward the control panels: and that same heart stops dead for a moment, because they have have been ripped apart, the monitors pulverized. That foreigner played a trick—I can't stop the launch!
A spurt of pain startles him—he's smashed his fist into the jagged remains of the keyboard.
Steady now. He gulps for breath, noticing in one tiny corner of his consciousness just how stale the air is in here, stale with a hint of singed electric wires. Then he's off again, shooting down the corridor towards the backup command center.
Huh. His feet, and the Rod, have taken him back to the ship again. He seats himself on the gangway, settles his elbows on the step behind him, taps the rod's bottom tip against the steel of the hatchway. Clang.
Snake had been sooo close for a moment there—but then Malik lost the sense of him. Redness is still pulsing away like an angry boil somewhere beyond the double-locked doors.
Where is Egg?
Malik fidgets, irritable. He'd have liked to make sure of destroying Egg.
A shriek from the ceiling. Malik looks up, then flings up an arm to block the morning brightness—the top of the hangar has reopened. Now, with a great grinding, the floor beneath the ship begins to rise toward the light.
Time to climb on board.
Time sifts away from Noa, from beneath his borrowed body. Everything is moving so quickly. His players—no, visitors—have dashed for the blimp—all except for Yugi and Seto…and Mokuba, floating anxious inside him. For a moment, he yearns desperately for his years of waiting, years free of the fear and guilt that now threaten to overwhelm him. If Seto dies…if Yugi dies…if Mokuba dies… Desperately, he calls to Seto and Yugi, opens wide the door to escape.
And feels a warm wave crash through him when they make it through.
Love, he thinks.
For a moment, time stops for Noa: he does not think, he does not plan, he simply sits there feeling Mokuba's love for his brother.
The moment ends. He stands up, moves with steady tread toward the module where Mokuba had lain. With sure hands, he lowers the glass dome over his head. A memory comes to him: sitting on his mother's lap before bedtime; and he sketches the words in his mind: Now I lay me down to sleep…
Malik sits impatient at the bar in his cabin. There's a curious stillness: Somehow he knows Snake is gone for good. In the background, Redness is starting to rumble, but it's muted by the blanket of quiet. He flexes his empty hand as though crushing an eggshell.
Like a thunderburst, Redness explodes into the air around the BattleShip.
That's better. Malik smirks into his drink. "Hurry—everyone will die," he announces to the empty room, then slides off the stool. Time for action--
He stills abruptly—there's a twitch at the nape of his neck. He begins to curse, softly and ardently.
So Egg survived after all. Reluctantly, he closes his eyes and watches:
Egg opening—
phoenixflaming into new green life—
winding itself around Redness—
But Redness burns the confining green net away, stretches a cavernous mouth around them all.
The blimp jolts, shakes, squeals around Malik—then bounds forward with a howl of engine noise. They are flying into the sky, piercing Redness; behind them it collapses sizzling into the wreckage of the fortress.
Malik casts a last strand of consciousness behind them. It's the familiar taste of death now; he's sorry he had so little to do with bringing it about.
But what's that—that unfamiliar taste—
He grimaces.
Ugh. Peace.
-End-