Chapter Ten: Friends to the Rescue
"What a good little brat you are," laughed Gozaburo, holding Mokuba's chin in his hand as White-Hair tied the struggling boy's wrists together with twine.
"Get off my brother, you bastard," Kaiba snarled, whom Marik had flung onto the ground; he would've gotten up, but his right leg was broken.
Gozaburo let go of Mokuba's chin and looked down at Kaiba.
"I admire your spunk, boy," he sneered, "But I don't think you're in a position to call me names."
"Let my brother go!" Kaiba snapped, trying to stand only on his left foot by pushing up on a table, "He's done nothing to you!"
"I'll let him go in due time," Gozaburo replied evilly, "Whether he will be in one piece or not is up to you."
"Let him go…unharmed," Kaiba repeated in cold fury.
"Certainly, certainly," Gozaburo smirked, "When you give me the silver shoes."
Kaiba looked down at the shoes on his feet. "But the Witch of the North said not to!"
"Very well," Gozaburo whispered coolly, before looking at White-Hair and ordering, "Take the boy into the river and drown him!"
"NO!" Kaiba shouted, "No, don't! You can have anything you want, just don't hurt my brother!"
"That's a good boy," Gozaburo snickered, "I knew you'd see reason…"
But when he tried to take the shoe off Kaiba's wounded leg, sparks of electricity shot out at his fingers, burning Gozaburo's fingers.
"I didn't do it!" Kaiba insisted, "I didn't know…don't hurt Mokuba, I didn't know it-"
"Fool I am, I should've known," Gozaburo interrupted Kaiba's words with his own furious ones, "Those shoes will never come off…as long as you're alive."
Kaiba's eyes narrowed, not with fear but with determination. Death never had scared him; as long as Mokuba wasn't harmed, he didn't care.
"But that's not what's troubling me," Gozaburo continued, "It's how to do it…these things must be done very delicately…or you hurt the magic."
Then, to Kaiba's surprised relief, Mokuba jerked the rope binding him out of White-Hair's hands.
"RUN, MOKUBA, RUN!" he yelled.
"CATCH HIM, YOU IDIOT!" Gozaburo snapped at White-Hair.
Mokuba, followed closely by a flying White-Hair, raced toward the exit of the Wiz's castle, and the little boy ran down the drawbridge and toward the woods beyond.
He'd been too fast for him…!
"Say hi to your Tinman for me, boy," White-Hair muttered in Mokuba's ear before the boy dived into the bushes beyond.
"He got away!" Kaiba whispered as he watched Mokuba run into the darkness from the window, "He got away…"
"Which is more than you will do!" growled Gozaburo, "Damn you and your brother! You've been more trouble to me than anything else…but it'll be over soon enough!"
Gozaburo turned over a large silver hourglass.
"An hour," Gozaburo whispered, "That's how long you've got to be alive…and it isn't long, boy, it isn't long at all. But don't expect to actually count the whole hour away…a half-hour will be enough for your mind to waste away in the darkness of the Shadow Realm."
And with that, the Wicked Wiz slammed the silver door behind him, locking Kaiba in the room alone.
"There," stated Yami, "You're all put back together. You feeling okay, Jou?"
"Define 'okay,'" Jou quoted Kaiba sadly, "What are we going to do?"
"We go out and find Kaiba and Mokuba, of course!" Ryou said in surprise.
"We've got no way to find them without journeying for days and days," Jou moaned, "By the time we find Gozaburo's castle, they could be dead!"
"Oh, come on, Jou," Yami reproached, "This isn't like you. We have to go rescue Mokuba and Kaiba so you can get your brain and Ryou can get his heart and I can get my courage!"
"The Wizard's probably not gonna help us, anyway," Joey muttered, "Even if we do find the Wiz and kill him."
"Jou, don't say that," Ryou tried to calm him.
"Kaiba's gonna die and I'll never get to tell him that I love him!" Jou sobbed.
Yami finally got fed up with Jou's whining, and slapped him right over the face.
"PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER!" the lion roared, "We all care for Kaiba and Mokuba, but that's no excuse to cry like you are, you're acting like a big baby! If you really loved Kaiba, you wouldn't ever give up on finding him! Kaiba never gave up on any of us, right? He didn't even give up on me when I was moaning about not seeing the Wizard! Sure, we may not find them very quickly, but it's better than sitting here on our fat asses and waiting for a miracle to fall from the sky and onto our heads, so get up and stop crying already!"
Was it not for the surprise of cowardly Yami yelling at him, Jou probably would've replied to the speech. Instead, he clutched his cheek and tears silently went on his cloth cheeks for a moment.
"Yami? Jou? Ryou?"
The three turned with joy at the sound of the familiar voice.
"MOKUBA!"
The younger Kaiba brother came out of the bushes, to be hugged by the still-crying Jou.
"Thank goodness you're alright," Ryou sighed in relief.
"Where's Kaiba?" Jou asked as he pulled away from Mokuba.
"He's still in the Wicked Wiz's castle," Mokuba told them, "The Wicked Wiz said that he can only get the silver shoes after Seto's dead, but he said he had to kill him delicately or it would hurt the magic…something like that."
"Then we better barge in there and rescue him before that happens," Jou decided, his eyes again aflame in fiery determination, "Let's go."
The four climbed over the mountain, and peeked over a formation of rocks, to see the drawbridge drop to admit the Winkie soldiers.
"There it is," whispered Mokuba.
"Do you really think we can do this, Jou?" asked Ryou.
Jou smiled. "Of course. Kaiba never gave up on us, didn't he?"
Yami smiled too. "No, he didn't. What's the plan, Jou?"
Jou thought a moment. At last, he replied, "Steal uniforms."
