Disclaimer
I would just like to state that I have no rights Yugioh, or any of the other pop culture references used in this story. Emma however is my own creation.
Research has gone into making this story but may not be 100 accurate.It is written based mainly on the
US dubbed version of the show, as that is what I am more familiar with.
This story features cards that I made up myself, and is set during the Waking the Dragons series.
This story has been rated T as it contains scenes of violence, torture and death that some people may find disturbing.

Chapter 1

The door of the conference room opened and Emma left as the flashes from the news reporters' cameras continued behind her. She made her way along the corridor and passed Kaiba's office to get to her own that was next door to his.

When she had decided to stay in Domino city the first thing she had to do was find a place to stay and a job. Not surprisingly all her friends had offered to help her out, and in the end she agreed to stay with Bakura, just until she could afford to pay for her own place. It had been fun for the short time that she had stayed there as neither of them became lonely, but once he had started to get in to a more serious relationship with Sarah, Emma thought it would be best to move out. She didn't want any misunderstandings about Bakura breaking out between Sarah and herself as the two of them had also become good friends. And when her generous new boss had paid her a month's salary in advance, she didn't hesitate to make the move.

The first thing that Emma did once she'd entered the room was make herself a cup of tea. Tea was the answer to most problems and tasted a lot better than coffee. She removed her suit jacket while she waited for her tea to brew, as she hated having to look formal when no one else was around.

She remembered how she had turned down Kaiba's job offer several times before taking it. He had offered her a job the moment he learnt that she was staying, but she didn't accept it in case any rumours about them two being an item were started, which probably would have been started by Joey in an attempt to wind Kaiba up even more. And she had continued to refuse the offers made until Kaiba had appealed to her weakness and sent his brother to ask her instead. Emma always found it hard to say no to Mokuba and so ended up taking a job as a spokeswoman for Kaiba Corp.

Grabbing her drink she crashed down in to the chair behind her desk. She threw the glasses that she was wearing on to the desktop and rubbed her eyes. She was tired as she had been having a lot of trouble sleeping over the past few days, and felt like the tea was the only thing keeping her awake at the moment. She turned in the chair so that she could look out of her windows and out across the city of Domino. The sky was lit up by bright wavy lights that resembled the aurora borealis. She sipped her tea as she watched a flock of duel monsters fly by her window.

For the past couple of weeks, the creatures that were part of the duel monsters game had been roaming around the city. At first people blamed Kaiba Corp and accused the company of having faulty technology with their dueldisks which they believed to be the cause of the monsters that they were seeing. With Kaiba in America opening a line of amusement parks it was left down to Emma to answer all of the questions that the public wanted answering.

But what do you say on a situation that you knew very little about? Emma had almost no idea about what was going on. She was beginning to feel very stressed and run down after spending almost twelve hours a day answering questions in front of countless TV crews and news reporters. She rubbed her tired eyes once more before she continued to watch the flight path of the monsters that had flown by. If it wasn't for Yugi then she wouldn't have even known the little that she did.

From what Yugi had told her, Emma knew that the monsters had appeared after Yugi had visited the museum to try and help unlock Yami's memories of being the pharaoh in ancient Egypt. When the three Egyptian god cards had been held in front of the stone tablet there, it somehow managed to open a gateway between the real world and the duel monster world, so in fact the monsters were real and not holographic projections from circuit blown dueldisks like the media were suggesting. She had been meaning to meet up with Yugi to discuss things further but the never-ending conferences had kept her so busy that she had missed him completely as he, Joey, Tristan and Tea had flown out to America too. Emma wondered why they had gone, and just what was it that Yugi had wanted to tell her before he went?

Emma watched as yet more monsters appeared and disappeared down in the streets below. Even though they were trampling through the city, the monsters weren't actually attacking anyone, and only a handful of people had claimed that they had. She watched as some toon monsters playfully surprised a group of teenagers and her thoughts turned to her brother.

She hadn't heard from him since he called her last month to wish her a happy eighteenth birthday. She was beginning to get worried about him, but knew that he must be okay as he had invited Duke Devlin over to discuss even more new editions to the Dungeon Dice Monsters game. Maybe he was just busy caught up with business deals like she was with news conferences? She wondered if Industrial Illusions were facing the same accusations over the appearance of the duel monsters that Kaiba Corp was facing.

Down below, Emma could see all of the media crews leave the KC building. She was glad that they had finally gone as it meant that she too could leave. Quickly she finished the last of her tea before she left her office.

Emma waited for the elevator to arrive, but on its arrival she changed her mind as the doors opened and the dreaded panpipe music flowed out. She had asked Kaiba many times to change the music to something else, but so far he had refused. She suspected that he found it amusing to watch her wince at the sound every time that they rode the elevator together, so gave up trying to change it. It wasn't really harming anyone and brought a smile to her friend's face so she didn't mind too much, but right now she didn't feel in the mood to put up with the torturous music so decided to take the stairs instead.

Emma began to descend the many staircases of the KC building and hadn't gotten very far when she heard a familiar voice come from behind her. "Why aren't you fulfilling your destiny?"

She stopped in surprise at hearing Shadi's voice and felt the anger that she held towards him slowly rise in her. Calmly she turned to face him and asked; "Why did you leave me alone when I needed you the most?"

"Don't you know that it's rude to answer one question with another?" Shadi said, obviously not happy with the reply that he had just gotten.

"Then it's something that you too seem to have forgotten." Emma remarked coldly as she fort to keep her anger back. "Just why did you leave me?"

"You had lessons that needed to be learnt with the powers of your millennium key." Shadi calmly stated. "And from what I can tell, you still haven't mastered them yet. You've let your new friends get in the way of unleashing your potential." He now sounded really disappointed in her.

"My friends have been the ones who have been there when I needed them." She felt her anger boil as he had insulted her friends. "They, are the ones who gave me the strength to accomplish what I have. They, are the ones who believed in me and never left my side."

Shadi could see that Emma wasn't going to back down until he told her what she wanted to know. "I had to stop your brother from interfering, as he would only have made matters worse."

"Well your attempt to keep him out of the picture by causing his pneumonia didn't work." Emma sneered at her old mentor who looked rather surprised. "He got out of his death-bed to come and find me, and succeeded."

"Then neither of you understand the danger that you may now face." Shadi managed to say with grave concern in his voice, before he felt himself pushed up against the wall behind him.

"Shut up, I'm talking!" Emma spat as she pinned Shadi to the wall after losing control of her anger. "What have you done to him now? Why haven't I heard from him recently?"

"I haven't done anything else to him, nor did I know that he had found you." Shadi said sincerely and was released from Emma's grip as she realised that he was telling the truth. "What's happened to you? You've never acted like this before."

"I guess I just entered the real world." Emma said as she backed away from him so that she wouldn't try to harm him anymore. "And I have your betrayal to thank for that."

Suddenly she felt her anger disappear. She had been holding on to the fact that she felt betrayed by someone that she cared about for so long that now she had finally told him it all just disappeared. Her confidence and voice also began to waver as she continued to speak to him. "I looked up to you. I believed every word that you ever told me. Then you left me alone, and at one point I even thought you were dead." Her eyes began to fill up with tears. "You preach on about me fulfilling my destiny, but the night that I faced Sobek I almost died, and if it wasn't for the pharaoh's quick thinking to stop the shadow realm from taking me, then I would have."

For the first time, it seemed that Shadi began to feel slightly guilty about what he had done as he watched his former student fall apart in front of him. "What happened?"

"It doesn't matter, it's in the past." Emma told him as she wiped away the tears, ignoring the concern in Shadi's voice. "Just like you are." She grabbed hold of the chain that hung around her neck and removed the millennium key from herself. She looked down at the shiny golden ankh and for the first time realised just how much pain it was causing her to feel inside. Once she got rid of every memory of Shadi, only then would she be able to move on with her life. She threw the millennium key down at his feet. "I want nothing more to do with this nonsense."

"Hathor, you don't really mean this." Shadi said as he reached down to retrieve the millennium key.

Emma stared at him hard, not even bothering to argue at the name he had just addressed her by, before she turned and continued her way down the stairs. Even though she had hated him, she thought that the least she could do to leave on friendlier terms was to say goodbye to him for one last time, so after a few steps she turned to do just that, only to find that Shadi had disappeared.

It hadn't taken Emma long to finish descending the stairs and leave the building, to where she now walked outside in the company's car park. She approached a small red sports car with the number plate; KG007, and deactivated the alarm. The car had been her birthday present from both of the Kaiba brothers, but as far as Yugi and the rest of the gang were concerned she had bought it herself and was still making payments towards it. She hated lying about it but that was what she had promised Kaiba that she would say if any of them asked about it.

As she sat in the driver's seat and strapped herself in, she felt like a huge weight had been lifted from her. She no longer had to worry about Shadi or her so-called 'destiny', and was now free to live her life how she wanted with absolutely nobody to tell her what to do. She switched on her radio;

I wanna be young the rest of my life
Never say no - try anything twice
Til the angels come and ask me to fly
I'm gonna be Eighteen til I die

"Eighteen til I die!" Emma shouted as she joined in with the song and drove away.