Atemu flicked his bangs out of his eyes and concentrated on his mission. It was harder than he had thought it would be. He shot down two guys and slowly turned, looking around for more. If the man they had caught and interrogated had been right, there should be one more guy. There was suddenly a loud BANG! And everything went black.
GAME OVER
It was amazing how annoying those words on a TV screen could be, especially if you had seen the same ones over and over and over. Atemu looked mournfully at the young boy beside him. Yugi laughed.
"We can just turn off the game and try it again," he said. "We saved before the guys shot at us, remember?"
"Yeah," Atemu said, perking up slightly. "Yeah, we did." The alarm clock rang out, and Yugi jumped up.
"Oh, shoot, I gotta go. See you later, Pharaoh!" he called as he ran down the stairs.
"That is not my name!" Atemu called after him. Lately, the whole 'pharaoh' thing was getting on his nerves. He vaguely wondered how he had dealt with it when he had been Pharaoh.
Loud noises floated from outside through the open window. Atemu put down the controller and stood, looking out the window. Yugi and his friends were all walking to school, laughing and joking around. Atemu suddenly wanted to go with them, to be a normal person. He hadn't usually done anything like that, he had never before wanted to be normal. He simply accepted his weirdness and dealt with it. He had never even thought of being normal.
Atemu stood and left the room. He felt that he needed to do something.
His 'doing something' ended up being going to the park and watching the little kids playing in the sand and the grass. He couldn't remember being a little kid. More likely than not, his younger days had been spent learning at that (as Yugi said) 'crap' that the pharaoh must know. He had most likely never had any time to play.
Atemu ended up staying at the park for quite a while. When he got up and started to walk back to Yugi's house, the sun was beginning to set. He somehow felt different. More…calm? Satisfied? Something like that. In any case, as he walked, he heard fire sirens. Atemu started to run, afraid of what he would find.
The house was on fire. A blazing mass of building, nothing more or less. Firemen were attempting to put the fire out and not succeeding. Yugi! Atemu thought in horror. Then, Wait, Yugi is at school, isn't he?
After watching the fire burn, he looked around. He was looking for someone, anyone, that he knew. Over by the fire truck, he saw a huddled form, and a crazy hairdo that only two people that he knew of had.
"Yugi?" he asked, coming up behind the person. They turned, and it was Yugi indeed.
"Atemu!" he gasped, jumping up and hugging him, something that surprised Atemu quite a bit. "I thought you were inside!" Yugi said, letting go and smiling. "Glad you weren't!"
"Me too," Atemu said fervently as he watched the flames consume his and Yugi's home. "You know what, Yugi?" he asked as they both sat down next to the truck. "I wish that I could be normal. You know, your age. And go to school with you guys and stuff. I really think that would be neat."
Yugi laughed. "It would be interesting, all right!" he said, leaning against the truck and watching his grandpa tell some of the younger firemen a story about his adventures as a archeologist.
They fell asleep in the police department's lobby. They were still waiting to find out what was going to happen to their house. However, Atemu hadn't forgotten about his wish.
I guess no one ever told him to be careful what his wished for.
It just might come true.
Atemu awoke in a strange house. He was wearing strange clothes and felt strange.
Where the hell am I? he wondered. Just then, someone, a woman, yelled up the stairs, "Atemu honey! Wake up, it's time for school!"
School? he thought, confused. I don't go to school. Yugi does. Just then he swung his feet out of the bed and jumped down, he saw a mirror and froze.
He was a little shorter than he had been before. His eyes were no longer that pink-ish purple color, they were now a dark brown. His pajamas were plain, something that relieved him. When he spoke aloud, "Holy crap!" his voice even sounded different. I sounded…like a younger kid's, the way Yugi and his friends' did.
The woman called back up the stairs, and Atemu trudged down them to see a woman standing there.
"Atemu, you were supposed to get up and get dressed," she complained. "What am I going to do with you? I hope you're not going to be late for school!" she glared at him, then laughed and ruffled his hair. "Oh well," she said fondly. "What are sons for but to annoy their mothers?"
Mother? Son? School? Poor Atemu was so confused. He sat down at the table and discovered his father sitting at the other end, already dressed and, by the looks of it, in the process of leaving.
"Bye son!" he called as he left. "I'll see you tonight at basketball practice!"
What's basketball? Atemu wondered. Instead of asking that, he asked instead, "Um…Mom? How old am I now?"
"Why, you're…well…" his 'mother's face went blank. Then she perked back up. "Time to go to school, Atemu!" she said cheerfully. "Bye!"
Atemu dazedly walked out of the house, taking the backpack the woman who called herself his mother handed to him.
When he got to school, he remembered what the classrooms were, and he had found a schedule in his backpack. He had often accompanied Yugi to school in the puzzle, and when their minds were linked, so he could see the hallways, and he dredged up every memory of every turn.
It wasn't long before the class he was in was the next-to-last before lunch. However, Atemu wasn't paying attention to that. What he WAS paying attention to was the boy in front of him, the boy that he shared the same hairstyle with, and even the same name at one time.
"Yugi Motou, please sit up!" their teacher squawked. "Atemu Yuzuki, please solve the problem."
Atemu looked at the board, and it made no sense. "I…don't know." he admitted, and the entire class laughed. He went red, and Yugi turned to give him a 'poor you' look. Atemu glanced back at him and thought furiously.
Yugi! he thought. Yugi Motou! Don't you even know who I am?
At lunch, Yugi sat beside him. "Can I sit here?" Yugi asked. Atemu nodded, smiling.
"Of course," he said, moving his lunch.
Yugi put out his hand. "My name's Yugi Motou." he said. "You must be the new boy."
"You mean…" Atemu was stunned. "You mean you don't-"
"Yug!" a loud voice called, and Atemu turned to see Joey walking toward them. "Wow!" Joey said as he sat on the other side of Yugi. "You guys look alike. Are you like…family or somethin'?"
"No, I don't think so," Yugi said, turning back to Atemu. "Anyway, as you were saying…"
"Um, you mean, you don't recognize me?" Atemu asked, hoping something would happen.
"Nope!" Yugi replied, turning and taking a bite out of his sandwich. "Should I?"
"Well…probably. I mean…we were friends…"
Yugi swallowed and was about to say something when all his other friends came over. Atemu noticed something. After Atemu had gotten his own body, Yugi had gotten a safe and put the Puzzle in. Now, he was wearing it again.
Atemu was silent as Yugi started to introduce everyone. Finally, after introducing Joey for the second time, Atemu burst out.
"That's Téa, and that's Tristan, that's Ryou Bakura, and that's Joey, and you're Yugi Motou." he said impatiently. "I'm Atemu. Don't you remember me? I remember all of you!"
Everyone shook their heads. They had no idea what had happened. They had no idea that their former friend was in front of them. Atemu was frustrated. "Ryou," he said, finally throwing caution to the winds. "where's Bakura?"
Everyone in the little group froze. Yugi stopped chewing, Joey and Tristan stopped hitting each other's shoulders, Téa stopped laughing with Ryou. They all looked at him, and he looked back blankly. Ryou clutched his Ring, he still wore it even though Yugi and company had told him time and time again not to, because it was dangerous.
"I'm right here!" Ryou said. He laughed, but it was a very false laugh.
"No," Atemu said, eyes glittering. "I mean the other Bakura. Yami Bakura."
Ryou stopped smiling and turned serious. Joey and Tristan both stood up, looking slightly menacing, but Yugi stopped them.
"All right," he said, sighing. "I still don't have any idea who you are, but you seem to be absolutely convinced that you know us. Meet us at the Kame Shop. You…do know where that is, don't you?"
"Yes. Remember, I lived there once."
"Um, yeah." Yugi stood and his posse followed. For the first time, Atemu actually found this annoying. He was now alone, and perfectly sure that Yugi and his friends all thought he was nuts. Maybe he was. But he had to make sure.
That night, Atemu met his friends at the Kame Shop, just as they had asked. Yugi was there, and everyone else was waiting in the living room.
"So," Yugi said settling on the couch, leaving Atemu to sit on the floor, while everyone watched him. "Why would we believe that you actually used to know us?"
For Atemu, the entire day had been spent deciding on exactly how to convince Yugi that he was for real, that he had actually been their friend. It had taken a while, but on the way to the Kame Shop, he had come up with a good idea.
"Well," he said. "It all started when your grandpa gave you the pieces of the Millennium Puzzle…" and he went from there. Atemu told the entire story as he knew it, from the moment Yugi and he connected to the time they defeated Pegasus. He told the story all the way through, until he had awoken and found himself in a strange house, in a strange body.
Throughout the story, Yugi and the gang would occasionally gasp and look at each other. Yugi clutched his Puzzle and stared at Atemu. Everyone else simply stared at Atemu in a mixture of awe, disbelief, and something else that he didn't recognize.
When he was finished, there was a silence. Yugi took a deep breath and let it out. "Well," he said hesitantly. "Your story…it's…"
"Very close to reality." Ryou threw in. "Most of those things have happened."
"But a lot of it didn't." Joey said. Out of the group, he seemed to be the one that was the least eager to believe Atemu's crazy story. Strange. Joey used to be very trusting.
Then a revelation rocked Atemu's mind. If they don't remember me… he thought. then anything I influenced, anything that happened because of me…all disappeared.
Atemu did not voice this thought. But he tucked it away into the back of his mind, telling himself that he would take it out and examine it better later. Meanwhile, Atemu looked Yugi in the eye, and something happened. Some sort of connection passed between the two (Atemu is technically one now,) boys.
Yugi looked over at Joey slowly, then said in a confident tone, "Joey, he's telling the truth. I don't know how it's possible, but it's true."
"How do ya know, Yugi?" Joey asked, nodding toward Atemu. Yugi stood and went over to stand beside Atemu. Atemu realized that in this new body, he was actually only a little taller than Yugi.
"I just know," Yugi replied. "Come on Joey, how else could he know everything that has happened to us?"
"But parts of it were wrong," Tristan said, siding with Joey.
"Yes, but the majority of it was right." Yugi shot back.
"Yugi," Téa put in. She hadn't talked for a while now. "What about the real Pharaoh?"
"What?" Atemu cried. "I am the real Pharaoh."
"No," Yugi said, turning to him. "She's talking about the other Pharaoh."
Atemu's head spun. He sat on the floor and closed his eyes, leaning against the wall. "But of course," he said, sounding more like his old self. "If I fell out of the timeline…too much had happened because there was a Pharaoh. So whatever granted my stupid wish created a new Pharaoh."
There was a pounding down the stairs, and Yugi looked alarmed. The living room door opened, and a man walked through. He looked at everyone gathered there, but then his eyes rested on Atemu. The two Pharaohs looked at each other, not moving, not blinking.
The other Pharaoh was tall, as Atemu himself had once been. However, he looked a little different. First of all, he had a strange look about him, a, almost Kaiba-like look. He seemed very self-assured and confident in himself. When his eyes had rested on Atemu, they filled with contempt. The other Pharaoh also didn't have the blonde hair that Atemu did, it was more like Yugi's. The purple-ish hair was now more red than purple, too. So the change during battles would be more noticeable.
Yugi and his friends watched this exchange of glances nervously.
"Well," the other Pharaoh said. "is this your cousin, Yugi?"
"No, this is my new friend, Atemu." Yugi said. Atemu, who was looking the other Pharaoh in the eye, saw a flicker of something pass his eyes, but it continued on. Atemu later swore it was fear, but no one really knows.
"Really," the other Pharaoh said, not taking his eyes off Atemu's. And Atemu wouldn't take his eyes off the other Pharaoh's, either. He stood, and they shook hands. "My name is Rane," the other Pharaoh said.
"You already know mine," Atemu said, dropping the handshake. Then he turned and looked at Yugi. "They didn't find a very good substitute," he commented. "You'd think the gods could do better, but oh well."
Rane clenched his fists but said nothing. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"Oh, only that you are not nearly as good a Pharaoh as I was." Atemu said offhandedly. He normally wouldn't have been so rude, but his blood was boiling, even though he looked and sounded perfectly calm. "Hey, I have to go," he said, waving to the others. "I'll see you tomorrow at school."
And with that he turned on his heel and left.
It was raining, hard, when he stepped out of the Kame Shop. Thunder and lightning, the whole shebang. Atemu put his head down and walked into the wind. Half an hour later, his found his 'house' and went in. His mother frowned at him when he came in. He was sopping wet and dripping all over the carpet.
"Don't stand there and soak the carpet!" she said, handing him a towel. "Go to your room and change. It's almost dinnertime, you're lucky you got here when you did."
"Yes Mother," Atemu said, scooting upstairs. After he had changed into dry clothes, he stood in front of the mirror. He sighed and then walked back downstairs, where his food was already set out. His parents talked pleasantly, asked him how his day was. His father didn't seem to remember that his son hadn't turned up for basketball practice, but that was a good thing for Atemu.
By listening to his 'parents' talk, he discovered that they had moved just recently. His father worked at some kind of car place, and had had a job transfer, so they had to move. His mother's job had many stores all over the place, so it was no problem for her, she worked at some department store. They asked him if he had met any new friends. Atemu thought about the people he had known for a long time, and they had only just met him. He nodded slowly.
"Yes," he said thoughtfully. "I think I have…"