Original Yu-Gi-Oh Series
Parallel
Chapter 042
Song: Cheetahmen Orchestra; Utada Hikaru - Hotel Lobby
Originally Written: Monday, April 18, 2022 909PM to 1044PM
. . . . .
Tea disturbed Seto before his upcoming Duel with Ishizu, except it wasn't Tea. He wasn't sure how many could see the eye on her forehead, but it was blinding him. "What do you want, Marik?" He resisted the urge to lean up against the doorframe.
"We're just reminding you to not screw up this chance." Tea gave him a no nonsense stare and a smile that didn't match the stare at all. "Or Mokuba will have a very bad evening." She ran a single finger across her throat.
"Ishizu won't know what hit her." Seto turned from him and walked into his room. "How are Yugi's wounds?"
"We should care because?" Tea folded her arms, and sauntered in the room, hips shifting from side to side.
"The shadow game you're inevitably going to initiate when you duel him won't take effect if he says 'I can't duel. I'm too injured,' before you get the chance to initiate it, and dueling is all you know how to do." He stood in front of his mirror and put in his contacts.
Tea scowled. "He wasn't supposed to jump in. Don't put that on me."
"I will put every bit of that on you. As will Amane. You are consistently missing the point that people will do the unexpected if you push them to the edge." He blinked, making sure his contacts were in correctly and not uncomfortable.
"Like killing their father?" Tea tilted her head, as though she herself was confused.
"If you're referring to yourself, the more appropriate example would be, saving their father to save themselves." Seto held out his hand behind him. His deck shot over to him like an arrow. He caught it, like this was something he had done dozens of times before. His duel disk did the same, and he caught that too. On his wrist. "For you, you're in a war."
"And you?"
"Just a pawn, doing what their General tells them." He put his deck into its slot.
"Is that why you shielded them?" Tea fell silent, watching him. "We understand. We'll keep this in mind."
Seto shooed Marik-Tea out of his room before someone caught her here. He looked at himself in the mirror. 'Why did it take either of us so long to do anything? To think of doing anything, Noah? We let her...I let her walk all over us.' He closed his eyes, and clenched his fists. He exited his room right as Roland announced over the PA system that the next Duelists had five minutes to arrive at the arena lest they be disqualified.
"Changed just for me, sweetie?" Ishizu was already on the field by the time he arrived. She had her duel-disk free hand on her hip and gave him a look his mind supplied as flirty, yet he couldn't figure out why. He hadn't changed anything.
He gave himself another look over to be sure. He didn't put on his trench coat, and so was wearing just the black underneath. He had pulled up the sleeves, and unbuttoned the first few buttons of the shirt. He blinked. 'Oh, I didn't fix my clothes after I got my deck.' He reached a hand up. He hadn't slept last night, but his hair was still messed up. 'How did I manage that?' He had looked in the mirror for a good ten minutes. He focused, and calmed himself, closing his eyes.
Duel now. Clothes later.
When he looked up, his eyes were steel blue in intensity. "Are you going to gawk at me all day, or are you going to duel?"
"I'm ready whenever you are, big boy." Ishizu had the nerve to wink at him.
The spectators, Yugi and his squad, decided to start squabbling about whether or not it was legal for contestants to flirt with each other before a duel. Seto was too focused on Mokuba, who dragged Duke closer to the side of the arena he was on.
"You're standing next to us. So brave." Marik taunted. "We're dangerous, you know?"
"I'm not standing next to you." Mokuba didn't spare him a look. "I'm standing behind Seto."
Seto nearly drew his first hand with a grin on his face. He managed to reign it in however. "Ladies first."
Ishizu drew and played a card, without looking at the card she drew. She waved her arm out. "Your move, big boy."
Seto gave her the fluke, and made his turn. Except, she did the same her next turn. And her next. And the next, and took some of his life points too. He pushed out Yugi's allies commenting on Ishizu's dueling strategy.
"I don't think I'd like losing against you, handsome." Ishizu put the hand holding her cards against her hip in such a way that you'd only be able to see her cards if you were standing behind her. Since she was standing in front of the entrance, no one could without making it obvious.
"Then how about you play your cards normally and quit with the magic?" He played his cards. "Before you find yourself disqualified."
"Magic? You think this is magic?" Ishizu laughed so hard it was difficult to make out her words as she played her next turn. When she finished, she held her hand out in front of her. The cards in her hand circled upright around her hand. "Oh sweetie, this is but a trick. When all is said and done, this will be nothing for you. Nothing more than a cheap trick. Baby Magic. I end my turn."
He couldn't see the cards, even when he looked through the gaps between the cards. The blue in her eyes seemed to pierce right through him as she looked at him. He looked at his cards, his mind racing. He nearly ran out of time to make his next move.
Yugi's gang all commented on how slow he was suddenly dueling. Both Yugi and Bakura agreed that he was thinking.
"He's feeling." Mokuba spoke just loudly enough for him to hear.
Thinking? Feeling? He wasn't sure. He drew a card. Made his turn. Ishizu drew and made the perfect counter. She still didn't look at her cards. She didn't even look at them while she was playing. Seto thought or felt until he had 30 seconds left to make his move then started his turn. All the while he stared at the eye looking back at him from around Ishizu's neck.
"As I'm sure you've learned by now, Seto, I'm Marik's older sister. Marik is the youngest. Odion is our older brother." She continued by telling a story on her next turn. Her story intrigued the others. She spoke of how for much of her life until now, she lived near and in the old tombs of Egypt. Underground. It wasn't until she was a teenager that she saw the outside world she read about in books. She saw the sun, and thought it was a demon trying to kill her, despite knowing about Ra. "Your move."
Marik's shadow magic shifted behind him. A swirling mass of disturbing anger and potentially well-meaning yet ill intentions. Seto didn't respond to her story. It wasn't complete, and he had a turn to make. He made his move.
Ishizu's stance shifted. The slightest bit of a frown tilted down the corners of her lips. "Do you know what Marik fights for?"
"Freedom." The answer came to him almost instinctively. It helped of course that images and hallucinations of an unknown time flew by his mind's eyes while she spoke. "Freedom he asked his elder siblings to give him, and then denied him."
"The Nameless Pharaohs of the days of old gave a clan of their advisors and descendants the instructions to live underground for the rest of their days in 'hiding', until their return. Told them to carve their story into the backs of their clan members until history repeated itself again." Ishizu played her next move. "Did they damn them? Or save them? Punish them? Or exalt them? I end my turn."
Seto stared at his hands. Obelisk the Tormentor was on one side of his hand, and a Blue Eyes White Dragon was on the other. "Are you expecting an answer?"
"No, handsome."
"Okay then." Seto closed his eyes, and drew his next card without looking. He also played it without looking, including the sacrifices necessary. A Blue Eyes White Dragon roared on the field. Somehow, Noah programmed the roar Seto imagined it would have perfectly, despite him saying Noah never would be able to. Music to his ears.
Ishizu inhaled deeply. It sounded like a frustrated huff.
Marik started laughing. "You're losing it, sister."
"Perhaps." She smiled.
Three rounds into neither him nor Ishizu looking at their cards, Joey yelled in annoyance. "Can ya'll just pretend you're looking at 'em!?"
"No." They both replied, almost in sync.
Seto realized the exact moment Ishizu realized she'd lost was the exact moment Marik started laughing. However, she made him work for it. By the end he wanted to hunch over, gasping for breath. Yet, he remained standing upright, just like Gozaburo taught him. How the hell was this baby magic?!
Bakura clapped loudly and whistled, like he just finished watching an Orchestra play. "What a display! Absolutely marvelous!" His audience asked what he meant. "He answered her question, of course. You know Seto doesn't leave questions unanswered. I wonder what Ishizu's response will be."
Ishizu stood for a long while, hands clenched into tight fists at her side. She breathed. "I see. You're quite an enigma. Thank you."
"For what?" Seto blinked in confusion.
"...Seriously? You haven't realized." She facepalmed and shook her head, "I saw you play Obelisk. For months I saw you play Obelisk." She smiled and chuckled. "You finally step in front of me, and you play Blue Eyes White Dragon. Not just one. All three of them. You only needed one, but you summoned all three. I give you anything Obelisk is in your hands, handsome."
"O-Oh...um...You're welcome?" Seto picked the card out of his hand, and flipped it towards her. "Someone once told me: 'Fate is a series of visions, dreams that are no more than just a guide, a set of loosely worded instructions. It's up to you to figure out when and where to tell fate to go away.' " The same person told him that he didn't teach academic lessons much because what he taught never stuck with the students. Since he held a riding crop in his hand during all of Seto's lessons with them, it wasn't hard for Seto to figure out why.
Ishizu somehow managed to curtsy in the most elegant, regal and pompous of ways despite wearing heels, and a top better suited for clubbing and shorts that showed off more butt than they covered.
A/N: This is the chapter that made me realize I inadvertently created a crossover story involving a Fandom I couldn't write for without like a decade of research. Not to my standards at least. But telling you what that Fandom is atm would be serious spoilers for this story.
Song link on youtube. Put it after the equal sign. "jA7nRwQp_E". Horrid game. Excellent soundtrack. Amazing Orchestral cover.