Rating: K+

#20 The road home

"What the… what is that?"

Shizuka stopped short and looked where her friend, Mariko, was pointing, but before she could see anything, her other friend, Fujita, ran into her, almost knocking her over. Mariko and Fujita were two of the first friends she'd made when she'd transferred out of the school for the blind to the regular public high school, and the three of them would regularly walk home from school together.

"Would you watch where you're going?" Shizuka snapped at Fujita.

"You're the one who stopped right in front of me," her friend shot back, brushing off her blue sailor uniform.

"Would you two stop and look," Mariko said urgently.

Shizuka and Fujita looked where Mariko was pointing and gasped. "That looks like a Duel Monster!" Fujita said as they took in the giant alligator hovering over the rooftops of the buildings around them.

"Alligator Sword," Shizuka said immediately.

Mariko and Fujita both looked at her. "How do you know?" Mariko asked.

"My brother has that card in his deck," she said, unable to take her eyes off the huge monster.

"A giant reptile attacking Tokyo. We're living a cliché," Mariko said.

"It's not attacking, Mariko, it's just sitting there. It must be one of those duel disk holograms," Fujita said, "but I had no idea they could be so big."

Without even realizing she was doing it, Shizuka started shaking her head slowly. "No," she said, more to herself than to her friends, "that doesn't look like a hologram. It doesn't feel like a hologram."

Mariko and Fujita looked at each other and then at Shizuka. "What do you mean, it doesn't 'feel' like a hologram? What else could it be?"

Shizuka bit her lip, and shrugged. "I don't know." Then she looked up at her friends and screwed on a smile. "I'm just messing with you. Come on, let's go to my house. With a giant alligator floating over Tokyo, you know this is going to be on the news."

As it turns out, an alligator over Tokyo wasn't even close to the biggest news. Apparently there had been similar sightings all over the world, all of them giant Duel Monsters. Shizuka didn't recognize most of them; she really only knew her brother's favorite cards and a few from Yugi's and Mai's decks. Fujita played occasionally, so she could name more of them. No one could explain the sudden odd appearances of giant holographic (they assumed) Duel Monsters all over the world, but there was a lot of speculation about a system-wide malfunction in Kaiba Corp's duel disk satellite network despite the fact that Kaiba Seto himself gave a press conference to say that he had shut down the entire system and still the monsters kept appearing. Mariko and Fujita both rolled their eyes and made cracks about lying corporate executives, but Shizuka couldn't help but hug herself and shudder. Something was very wrong, she could just tell. And when something weird was going on that involved Duel Monsters, she knew her brother would be right in the middle of it.

She ached to call him, but she didn't dare. She never called his apartment for fear their father would answer. Sometimes she would leave a message at Anzu's or Yugi's, but she had a feeling they would be in the thick of whatever was going on and she wouldn't have any luck getting a hold of them, either. Nevertheless, as soon as her friends left, she would call them both and leave messages.

After a couple of hours of watching the news, Mariko and Fujita got bored with it and decided they wanted to go to the mall. Shizuka declined to join them and said good-bye to them on her doorstep.

"Don't look so worried, Shizuka. I'm sure it's just some sort of Kaiba Corp publicity stunt," Fujita said, giving her an air kiss as she and Mariko left.

It was two days later when her brother finally called her back.

"Hey, Shizuka, got your messages," he said breezily and Shizuka knew right away something big was going on. She could tell from his voice that he was trying too hard to be cheerful.

"What's going on with all the monsters everywhere?" she asked.

"Oh, that," her brother laughed. "Who knows? Something funky with Kaiba Corp, I'm sure."

"Don't you lie to me, Jounouchi Katsuya," Shizuka snapped. "What about those weird lights in the sky all over the world last night? Was that Kaiba Corp, too? I don't remember duel disks doing anything like that. And I read in this morning's paper all about what happened in Domino. A giant eye in the sky? And a tornado? Don't think for a second I don't know that if all this is going on in Domino, you and Yugi are right in the middle of it!"

"Shizuka—"

"Katsuya—"

On the other end of the line, he sighed. "We don't know what the deal is, okay? All we know is some loser motorcycle gang stole the Egyptian god cards—"

"Someone stole the god cards? The ones Yugi won in Battle City?" Shizuka gasped.

"Yeah, and that's about when all the monsters started appearing. Yugi dueled one of the guys and he played some freaky card none of us had ever heard of before, the Seal of something or other, and even though Yugi beat him, he wouldn't give Yugi the god cards back.

"Then last night Yugi had some weird dream like something out of the Legend of Arthur where he pulls a sword out of a stone, only it's a giant ice dragon instead. And when he wakes up, he has a new card with a dragon called Timeaus on it. And somehow the card stopped the eye thingy."

After everything she'd seen in Battle City, she didn't even bat an eyelash at the concept of a card stopping a giant eye in the sky. "And?" she asked.

"That's it, that's all we know."

"Okay, but there's still something else, Big Brother. I can hear it in your voice."

"It's no big deal, okay?" he said, going for that light tone again. "It's actually pretty cool. I'll be leaving Japan for a while. Don't catch cold."

"Don't you hang up on me, Jounouchi Katsuya, we're not done yet!" Don't catch cold was sort of a sign-off he'd adopted over the last few months. He would tell her that when it was time to say good-bye and there was still more left to say, like how much he missed her, how much he wanted her to be safe and well. It was too much to say, so he'd say don't catch cold instead, and she would say I won't, you either and they'd hang up. But no way he was hanging up on her today. "What do you mean, leaving Japan? Where are you going?"

"To America. California."

"America? And that's no big deal?" she cried. "Katsuya, why are you going to America all of a sudden?"

"I'm telling you, Sis, I don't know, okay? Pegasus wants Yugi in America and it has something to do with all the weird stuff going on, but that's all we know. I swear."

"Isn't Pegasus the same guy you said cheated Yugi in Duelist Kingdom?"

"Yeah. He's the one who created Duel Monsters."

"And now you're going out to America just because he said so?"

He sighed again. "Yeah, we think he's reformed now. And you know Yugi. Pegasus thinks Yugi can help, and he's got that weird dragon card thingy and everything.

She chewed on her lip. "When do you leave?"

"Tomorrow. Pegasus is flying us out in one of those fancy private jets."

She wanted to be excited for him, flying to America on a rich man's private jet. She wanted to be proud of him for playing the hero again. But she was afraid. There still was something he wasn't telling her, and nothing she said could get it out of him. All she could see in her mind's eye was the very end of his duel against Marik as he fell to his knees, the shadows swirling around him.

"Big Brother, please be careful. Please don't let anything bad happen to you in America."

"I won't, Sis. Pinky swear."

She smiled despite herself, but when she hung up the phone, her smile faded. "Stay safe, Big Brother," she whispered at the disconnected phone. "And come home."