Book Dragon: "Sorry I haven't updated. Trying to bring this to a close. Please be patient with me. Thank you for waiting. I am going to finish this story. Thank you for the reviews!"
Chapter 31: Family Tree
He turned, but wasn't quick enough. Something long instantly wormed around his stomach and lifted him with ease into the air. Started, he grabbed the thing as not to fall and found it smooth yet rubbery. His mind seemed to have gone dead with confusion as he looked down. The message from his mind finally got to his befuddled brain. It was green. An emerald green smooth rope. Yet, there was something wrong with that.
"YAMI!" Joey's panicked voice shot through the blurry perplexity.
The Pharaoh twisted his head around toward his friend, turned toward his left, and found the motorcyclist warped with two coils of the green, trapping his arms to his sides. The blonde was staring at him with great brown eyes and gritted teeth. Yami looked at the green rope, looked at how it held him upright and led down to the ground and didn't end there. As he followed its snaking and twisting green form, he started to see through the mist of his mind, something that his mind hadn't allowed right away.
He found the great green base. At least as wide of the trunk of a great elm, stretching up, up, up high, higher, until Yami's eyes founded the end of it. At that, his body finally registered the fact that the rope, no, plant was moving him forward. Closer to the base. Closer to the horrible overgrown bud at the end of it. A jaded-greenish red bud that was blossoming. Something that wasn't a bud at all.
Yami watched as the bud-thing widened the split down the center of it. Watched the bud lower that widening opening in his direction. Saw the great needle like thorns sticking out of the edges of that great gap and knew what was going to happen.
Saw that it was the biggest Venus Fly Trap he had ever seen.
(…)
Kaiba poured himself another mug of coffee. Black this time. He left it on the counter and reached up and opened the cabinets above that counter. He searched through them for some time with only the sounds of the bumping boxes and the whispering in the other room. Female whispering.
He had a headache. He was going to strangle Yugi when he got back. The same going for Bakura for making such an annoying creature. It was his daughter after all. His pale fingers finally paused on what he had been searching for. A cool smile slipped quietly onto his lips as he took the glass bottle down and placed it silently on the counter.
He uncorked the bottle, and poured some of the clear-looking liquid into the mug.
"If I have to stay here," he said to himself more than anyone else in this empty kitchen, "then I'd rather my son think I'm getting addicted to coffee." He put the bottle of vodka where he found it and took his Irish coffee with him.
He walked back to the family room, where he moved all his equipment after he had turned the TV on to try and distract the girl, feeling tired an annoyed at doing nothing for so long. Feeling more like a babysitter with each passing minute that went by. He noticed at how the wary look crossed over Christa's eyes and had to shove down a smile as he sat down in front of his computer. Her silence only lasted a sweet moment, before she started chirping back at his son. Kaiba wondered how in the hell Javas was taking it and decided he was more patient, like his mother. He was starting to feel bad for him.
He took several sips of his Irish coffee and hoped to god that Yami would get back soon.
(…)
Yami struggled in the green binding. Struggled with all his might to free himself. But it was no use. The tentacle like plant vine was holding him too tightly. He was as powerless as he had been when Kaede had captured him. It was rather ironic, and it would've been funny if he wasn't going to be eaten in a few minutes.
Through the corner of his eye he could see Marik fighting just as strongly and failing. Even if he had the rod with him, at that moment, he wouldn't have been able to use it. He was bound just like Joey. Yami turned his head as far as he could backwards and caught the slightest glimpse of Bakura.
He was slashing at the one that had encircled around his waist. He had been ready when the snaking plants had attacked. Yami was about to call to him when two more vines lashed out like whips and encircled his arms. The Thief King growled, and pulled with all his might to stay with his arms inward towards his chest, fighting, and loosing. Eventually, his arms were pulled taught outward and away from the vine around his waist that was now coiling itself around him vigorously. He was screaming thousands of different curses in the ancient Egyptian tongue.
Yami turned back to the awaiting mouth of the only carnivorous plant known to man and couldn't believe it was going to end like this. Even his Puzzle was completely useless to him. He had fought off the end of the world with on a dozen cases, defeated enemies that seemed immortal, and beat the odds so many times he couldn't remember them all.
And now he was going to be eaten by a plant.
He didn't stop struggling. He kicked the vine supporting him around his legs as much as he could, but it did no damage. He wasn't going to give up. He wanted to go down fighting at least. He was yelling at Yugi to go in his mind. Bellowing with his entire mind.
But he wouldn't budge.
"I'm not leaving you."
"You promised!" Yami growled back at him.
"I don't believe this is the end." Yugi replied.
"Not for you if you leave!" Yami yelled. The opening laced with needle-like teeth was closing in now. He would be devoured shortly. If Yugi didn't leave in a few seconds he wouldn't be leaving at all. And yet, he still felt his vessel. Snug and deep inside himself. Waiting.
"Yugi, please…" Yami begged. He could feel the beginning of tears prickling his eyes. This was madness. He promised he wouldn't put him in danger again. And now he was going to kill him.
Yugi suddenly laughed. It was a well-humored chuckle. Yami was sure he had lost his mind.
"Yami, it's a plant."
"It's going to kill us."
"No, it won't."
"Yugi-"
Suddenly, a mere foot away from the giant open mouth, the vine's slow movement halted. This close, he could see the blackness that led into the gullet of the plant, past the teeth and tongue of the-
Yami froze with the curiosity that some feel when death is too close. He was stuck with the wondering that the doomed often feel before they die. He had never heard of a Venus Fly Trap having a tongue. Was this a mutated plant made especially from the villain behind all this just for them? As some final twisted away of ending the game?
The purple tongue suddenly moved.
"Are you the King of Sands?"
Yami stared in amazement, barely aware of the silence behind him. Joey and Marik had halted and were staring the same way the Pharaoh was staring. TombRobber was still gritting his teeth, not very impressed, and wondered why it had to get their attention like this.
Yami couldn't hear that silence due to the light chuckling in his head that belong to Yugi. He had been right. Looking at it right then, with the pressure off, he finally figured out what his light had meant. It was a plant. The only person that could change the plants was Kaede herself. And she wouldn't have tried to harm them in anyway.
The vine under him creaked suddenly.
"Well are you or not?" flicked the great purple tongue of the plant. His amazement widened at the fact that it was actually annoyed for a moment before Yugi told him to say yes.
"Yes!" Yami yelled.
"It's about time you got here." The thing snapped, irritated.
"Beore woke me up just to get you three sun stretches ago. I don't appreciate having to change into this form, and the sooner I deliver you and your kin to the Lady's side, the sooner I can take my place against the great red cliff that you call the side of this house and go back to my regular duties." It took Yami a couple of seconds to figure out what to say next. What do you say to a giant plant?
"I'm sorry to, er, hear about that." Yami replied, as humbly as he could. He felt the vine under his shudder and groan as he, Marik, Joey, and Bakura where shaken, slightly, as the great plant uprooted itself, and started to form great knobs at the bottom of it's other major vines.
"How long will it take to get to the 'Lady's' side my I ask?" TombRobber asked in a shouted snarl.
"Two sun stretches and give or take a half." said the Vine, the one that had once helped Kaede escape from the bathroom window a week ago, not really answering any of the humans' questions at all. It lifted one of the knobbed vines forward, letting the other seven follow, taking it slowly across the room. Walking like a giant spider.
No one said anything for a couple of minutes.
"So where is Kaede, I mean, the Lady?" Yami asked above the thudding booming sounds of the thing's movement.
"At the Highest point, for you humans. Apparently, you don't climb walls as well as we plants do and the Black Emperor made it so that was the only way to reach his lair. He uses air to ascend to his stair. Since Beore was sure you couldn't do the same, he wisely sent me to do the job for you."
"Who the hell is Beore?" TombRobber asked viciously. He had never heard of his character that knew Kaede. It made him tense and angry, and secretly worried, because of it. And deeper down than that, to the point where he didn't know it existed, jealousy created that anger. Yami, sensing that feeling from the thief, would've smiled if he, himself hadn't been so curious.
"Beore was the First of the Great Oaks. You would call him a King. He is one of the Eight Great Ones. Their force is so powerful that they can grow into any tree form they desire. They Die and Wither only to return again. In your words, they can not truly die until the Mother perishes. Humans call her Earth. Beore is one of Her Eight Children." The Vine explained, not stopping since it knew humans were so curious of things they did not know or understand. It didn't feel like answering many questions. TombRobber was annoyed, not having his question answered in his sense. He reworded himself quiet bluntly.
"What would he want with Kaede!" He demanded with a seething tone that made Marik shiver. He had never seen him so angry before. Yami was staring with a strange sense of wonder at the boy, pondering how deep these feelings actually went, and how oblivious the Burglar was to them.
The Vine was quick to snarl back at him, apparently being able to house the same anger at being yelled at so rudely.
"Beore would be considered with the safety of Lady Kaede, Daughter of Lady Ryelle, who was the Adopted Daughter of Acer , The First of the Great Maples, who is Beore's only Sister, the only Sister in the Great Eight, the Youngest of the Eight. Beore would be concerned about his Great Niece, wouldn't he?"
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