Ten Little Duel Monsters
Ryou and Serenity exchanged glances that plainly said, "Kaiba. I KNEW we should have looked after Yugi!"
"How did he die?" Marik asked, voice strangely high-pitched.
Kaiba pulled the sheets off of Yugi's body. "No marks." He leaned Yugi's head back, exposing his neck. "There's no bruising on his neck; he wasn't strangled. So I guess he was poisoned. Either that or-" Kaiba lifted up one of Yugi's eyelids, then leaned forward until his nose was only inches from Yugi's eye. "He was suffocated," Kaiba announced with finality.
"What? How do you know?" Serenity asked, lip trembling. Joey gave her a hug and she began to cry into his shirt.
"There are faint yellow splotches on the whites of his eyes. Do you think that Gozaburo didn't make me study medicine?" Silently, Kaiba cursed. That had just slipped out! He didn't normally talk about Gozaburo.
"Look! He has something in his hand!" Marik said, pointing. He immediately tried to open Yugi's hand.
"Don't bother. It takes tremendous strength to break the grip of someone who's been suffocated," Kaiba informed him.
"So help us!" Ryou said as he joined Marik. Eventually, with everyone's help, they managed to break Yugi's grip.
In his hand was a single brown hair.
Several things happened at once. Ryou gasped and looked at Kaiba. Serenity squealed and hid behind Joey, as though afraid that Kaiba would attack everyone then and there. Marik glanced at Tristan. Tristan and Kaiba looked at each other. Joey glared at Kaiba. Ribbon looked from Tristan to Kaiba and back to Tristan. Then she began to laugh hysterically.
"I just got it! The rhyme! Don't you see? A star fell on one... and then there were seven! But not for long! BECAUSE WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" She began to laugh again, although she looked scared to death and began to tremble.
Kaiba moved swiftly forward and slapped her hard across the face, perhaps with more force than absolutely necessary. She stumbled backwards and fell against Ryou. He wrapped his arms around her protectively while glaring at Kaiba, as though daring him to hurt her again. Serenity stepped out from behind her brother at the sound of the slap, squealing, "Don't kill her, Kaiba!"
"Look who's talking," Kaiba said.
"What?" Serenity said in outrage. "You think I'm killing everyone!"
"Not at all. My money's on someone else. I'm just wondering how you knew that Yugi was dead before you saw him," Kaiba said. Tristan nodded as everyone else stared at Serenity.
"I knew because the Dark Magician's gone!" Serenity said.
Everyone stared at her again, but this time it seemed the general opinion that she was insane.
"The Dark Magician china figure downstairs," Serenity clarified. "I was going to make breakfast."
"You were all alone downstairs. You could have broken the Dark Magician figure yourself," Tristan pointed out.
"I didn't do it, Tristan!" Serenity protested.
"You know, there is a possibility that no one seems to have thought of," Kaiba said. "The killer isn't necessarily one of us."
There was a shocked silence. He was right; they hadn't thought of that.
"So here's what I propose. We need to search the island, starting with the house."
"We can hear the details later. Can we leave the room?" Ryou said, trying to avoid looking at Yugi's body.
"Yeah. Can we please leave. And possibly eat breakfast?" Joey suggested.
After everyone had eaten, they decided to split up and search the house.
"Three of us should guard the front door to make sure the killer doesn't escape if he or she is in the house; I don't think he or she would be foolish enough to jump out of a window on the second floor or higher. The other four people should search the house from the attic downwards," Kaiba instructed.
"Why can't we have groups of two?" Joey asked. "It would go faster."
"Are you joking or are you actually as stupid as you look, Mutt?" Kaiba asked disdainfully. "If we split into pairs and a member of the pair was the murderer, the other member of the pair would be alone with him or her! And being alone with a killer is a perfect plan- if you feel like being murdered! Although if you want to be in a random pair and risk being killed, that's perfectly fine with me."
Joey muttered profanities under his breath.
"Now, as I was saying, we should draw jobs out of a hat. Or something."
Ryou ran to the kitchen and returned a few seconds later with a bowl.
"Give me that," Kaiba said. "And just so you know, that was really foolhardy. You don't run around alone on an island that has a killer loose on it. Who has a pen and paper?"
"I do," said Serenity, pulling paper and a pen out of her purse. (A/N: The i.d.p. in all girls' purses... don't ask.)
Kaiba wrote down either "search" or "guard" on seven slips of paper and then put them in the bowl face-down. "Draw one," he instructed everyone.
Ribbon drew hers first. "I'm searching the house."
Ryou pulled his paper out of the bowl next. "So am I."
"I'm standing guard at the front door," Serenity said after she'd read her slip of paper.
Glancing at his slip of paper, Tristan said, "I'm searching the house."
"I'm standing guard," Marik said.
Joey pulled out his slip of paper. "I'm searching."
"So that means that I'm standing guard," Kaiba said, taking the last slip of paper. Serenity paled.
Marik, Kaiba, and Serenity stood guard at the front door. Bored, they turned to the topic that first came to mind: who the killer was.
"Personally, I'm torn between Joey and Tristan," said Marik. "You saw how quick Joey was to jump to conclusions about Ryou. It makes me think that he was thinking about using Ryou as a scapegoat all the time, but his plans were ruined when he left the ring at home. Joey would therefore have to come up with a different reason to suspect him. As for Tristan, he seems totally unafraid, and the hair Yugi was holding looked a lot like his."
"It also looked a lot like mine. So why don't you suspect me?" Kaiba replied.
"Because I can't see you going nuts and killing people. Driving them into financial ruin seems more your style. If you really hated someone, you'd probably hire someone to do your dirty work for you. What about you? Who do you suspect?"
"That purple-haired girl always trailing after Ryou. Ribbon?"
"Yes, that's her name. Why her?"
"She's been really quiet for one thing. She looks like she knows a lot more than she's letting on. And she always helps prepare dinner, so she'd have a perfect way to poison someone if needed. By the way, what's with her?" Kaiba added, jerking a thumb in Serenity's direction.
Ever since they had settled in to guard the door, Serenity had been curled up in a nearby chair, crying softly.
"I think the events of the past few days have finally caught up with her," Marik said, recalling his grief over Ishizu dying. "Aren't you sad at all?"
"No. I told you, I don't like anyone who's died so far. Why would I cry over them?"
Marik stared. "He's a medical miracle. I thought that it was necessary to life to have a heart." (A/N: Aarrgh, that last sentence sounded odd!)
Joey, Tristan, Ryou, and Ribbon had started at the attic and were working their way down. In the attic they found nothing but dust. On the tenth floor was nothing. On the ninth floor was nothing. On the eighth floor they were surprised to find nothing. On the seventh floor was an astonishing amount of nothing. On the sixth floor they thought they'd found something, but it turned out to be nothing. On the fifth floor was enough nothing to fill five mansions. On the fourth floor they were almost depressed by all of the nothingness.
By the third floor, Joey found that the tears he head been holding in all day were threatening to spill out. "Men don't cry," he told himself stubbornly. "But... I'm going to cry anyway.. I can't believe Yugi's gone!"
"I'm going to the bathroom," Joey said, hoping he could have a quick cry and then come back.
"We have to escort you downstairs," Tristan reminded him. (A/N: The next floor down has the nearest bathroom, just to clear up any confusion. Why Pegasus couldn't put bathrooms on every floor, I don't know.) "If there is a killer loose in the house, then it wouldn't be a good idea to wander around alone."
Marik was just managing to calm Serenity down and she was beginning to lift herself out of the chair, which she'd become stuck in when she curled up into a ball, when the three door-guards heard a piercing scream coming from the second floor.
"Oh, no," Serenity whispered. She, Kaiba, and Marik ran upstairs to find Ribbon, Ryou, and Tristan staring into the second-floor bathroom as if in a daze.
"Who screamed?" Kaiba asked.
Ribbon pointed at herself wordlessly.
Serenity had realized who was missing. Heart pounding, she ran forward and pushed Ribbon, Ryou, and Tristan out of the way to see what was in the bathroom. Her heart stopped.
"JOOOEEEYYYYYYY!" she wailed, running into the bathroom and collapsing on the floor. Sobbing brokenheartedly, she wrapped her arms around the broken form of her brother and buried her face in his shirt for the last time.
A/N: Aww, poor Serenity. ACK! (runs from Mai and LLB)
LLB: What do you mean, "poor Serenity?" You just killed Joey!
Mai: I demand you bring him back to life right now!
Telecoi: MEEP! HERE! He's not quite dead! (throws Joey at LLB and Mai, who drool and begin to verbally abuse him, respectively)
So, what did you guys think? Read! Review! Guess who the killer is! (puts on puppy-dog face) Pleeeeeeeease?
TCD0012: Well, the next victim was Joey. What are you, psychic? Or am I predictable? NOOOOOOOOO! Anyway, thanks for your review! I'm glad the fic's making you think!
Cheddar99011: Yeah, I like Yugi too. Not as much as Ryou, but... (hugs Yugi)
kobear91: (adds tally mark under Kaiba's name on large chart) I killed all of your favorite characters already? I'm not being very nice to you, am I?
Athena777: Pegasus and Mai do have stuff to do in the story, but I can't say more... :P
KisarathedragonPaliden: And Ryou finally gets a vote! (draws tally mark under Ryou's name on big chart) I'm sorry, I would love to help your sister out, but I don't want to give away the chapter! If she's a Seto fangirl, though, she probably won't have anything to worry about for a couple of chapters (slaps hands over mouth) Man, I'm giving a lot away in my answers to reviews, aren't I? (scolds self)
Standings: The votes are thus: One and a half votes for Tristan, one and a half votes for Kaiba, two votes for Ribbon, one vote for Pegasus, one vote for Ryou, one-half of a vote for Yugi, and one-half of a vote for Serenity. There are no votes for Marik or Joey, as well as all characters that aren't here, except for Pegasus.