Chapter 26: The end!
And that's when Yami solved the mystery. The events happened so rapidly—first, Marik leaning down to actually, truly kiss his aibou—
Then him actually doing it—
Then Yugi kissing him back—which Yami thought was disgusting, by the way—
Then the Egyptian's sinewy bronzed figures reaching back around the form of little Yugi, and nimbly snatching up his wallet. Marik smirked into the kiss before he shoved his playmate backwards into the wall.
"What the--?" Yugi's grasp on what was going on was hazy. Marik let out a long cavalcade of his trademark laughter.
"MAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!" he, well, mahahaed™. "Look who has five bucks now!"
The petite blonde blinked. "What?" he cried out, his voice tiny. Yami stood up and revealed himself from behind his mediocre hiding place. The Pharaoh squared his shoulders and marched over to where his nemesis was laughing hysterically at something that was not funny.
"Marik!" he shouted. He raised his arm up to point at the man he was addressing.
"Dude," lamented the Egyptian, "I'm right here. You don't have to yell."
Yami sweat dropped. The angry, three-thousand-years-old teenager decided to raise his voice to an even more offensive level, since Marik had asked him to be quiet.
"How dare you steal money from my aibou!" he roared. He was louder than the lion at your local zoo. Y'know, the one they get to do tricks for those treats; the one that ate that small boy last year. Yugi, realizing what had happened slowly, (he'd taken a pernicious blow to the head when Marik had thrust him against the wall,) let out a cry.
The Egyptian's Cheshire grin was devastating in Yugi's eyes. "Well, he needed to give shujinkaku his five dollars," he explicated. "And I figured, hey, if I could do some extra damage while I worked at it, well then, all for the better. So I worked out this little ersatz romance that Yugi played to perfectly."
Marik laughed in Yami's face. Yugi's cries escalated into the sobs of a heartbroken ingenue—except Yugi was a naïve boy, and ingénues were naïve girls.
"I don't know what ersatz means, but one thing is certain, Marik: you're through!" Yami raised both arms in an attempt to be dramatic. But, think about this: imagine Yami with both of his arms raised to the sky. …Dramatic? Kind of. A lame attempt at Yami being a cheerleader? More than likely.
"You… you!" Yugi stole a hankie out of a plot hole and blew his nose loudly in it. Afterwards, he tossed it aside, where it hit Joey smack dab in the middle of his face.
"EWWW!" Joey had to peel the kerchief off of his face. "Yug', das' gross!"
Joey stared at Yugi for a minute. A light went on upstairs.
"Yugi! Your head's bleeding a little bit!" Joey pointed out.
Yugi groaned. "Thank you, Captain Obvious," he moaned.
"Yeah, but they stopped reviewing at Chapter 18," Joey stated. "You could thank dragonlady222 or something."
"I said Captain Obvious, not CaptainInuyasha777," Yugi snapped.
"Oh. Sorry. I should probably take this time to thank all of the reviewers that reviewed more than once, huh," Joey said. "Also, to point out that people who had reviewed only once, can fix that by reviewing this chapter, and…"
"Joey, Joey, Joey." Yugi reached up and lightly brushed sticky fluid that was matting the hair by his ears with his fingertips. "You're totally breaking the fourth wall." He applied a tiny amount of pressure to the small wound. He winced. "I shouldn't of done that," he reflected as the tender skin throbbed painfully.
"It's 'I shouldn't have done that,'" Yami corrected worriedly. "Yugi, Marik was just misleading you so that he could retrieve the currency that you stole from his other notorious self."
Yugi burst out into tears.
"Aw, now look what you did," Marik said with false concern. "Awww, it's okay, wittle Yugi! I don't hate you! I just want to stomp on your irritating glasses. Get contacts, for insert Egyptian god here's sakes!"
"So you really did steal money from Malik?" Joey asked the bawling boy, astonished. Marik rolled his eyes, and Yugi even let out a hyperventilated huff that sounded like a small sigh in the middle of his tearfest.
"For Nut's sakes, Joey! The first time you heard of it was in the second chapter! This is the twenty-sixth!"
"Stop breaking the fourth wall!" Yugi sobbed.
"Why did nuts have to come into this?" Yami asked, confused.
"What kind of nuts?" Joey asked as his stomach rumbled. "I hope they're not peanuts; I'm allergic to them…"
"It's an Egyptian deity," Marik explained. "Goddess of the sky, daughter of Shu and Tefnut, mother of Seth? Any of this ringing a bell?"
Yami stared at Marik with an expression on his face as blank as blank page that had white-out drizzled all over it. (Which means it was kind of bumpy and very dumb-looking.)
"Obviously, you have no idea who I'm talking about," Marik realized, and a smug serpentine smile spilled across his face. "Don't you remember? Seth's mama is so large that her fingers and toes touch the four cardinal directions. Ra goes into her mouth at dusk and is reborn out of her vagina every morning. Actually, when the Pharaoh dies he's supposed to enter her body, and later be reborn. Probably out of her vagina like Ra. That's an awesome word. Vagina." Marik took in a big swuck of air, preparing to repeat the word to himself like a small child who had just learned his first curse word. (A/N: Don't be offended because of me. Marik did it. Besides, I'm funny.)
"That's disgusting!" Yami disdained. "Who on Earth would worship such a strange… disgusting… you said the Pharaoh?" he asked. Marik nodded wisely. "Aw, nuts. That was my culture, wasn't it?"
"That's 'Nut,'" Marik corrected him. "Goddess of the Sky. And wait until I tell you how Ra created the gods Hu and Sia."
"Nuts," Yami swore.
"Close," Marik admitted. but not quite. See, he took blood from his own—"
"That's ENOUGH!" Joey screamed, his hands fixed in a defensive stance over his crotch. Even Yugi had calmed his strained sniveling enough to give Marik a really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really odd look. Unfortunately, as priceless as this look was, Marik was too busy taunting the Pharaoh and totally missed what could have been the perfect Kodak moment.
"Indeed," Yami growled. "Stop trying to distract us with talk of Egyptian gods and what comes out of them!"
"…What?" Joey looked slightly dazed.
"…Sneck up, Joe," Yami commanded disgustedly.
"…What?" The blonde—oh, wait, they're all blondes. o.o The (quoteunquote) "mutt" appeared nonplussed. Yugi started to sob quietly again, upset and now perturbed by the M-rated conversation around him.
"Yugi, what's wrong?" Joey asked as he hadn't heard Yami tell Yugi that Marik had deceived him. Yugi didn't reply. Yugi felt like a failure. How could he have ever thought that one was capable of creating an entirely New Them? The New Yugi was an apparition made up of frustration and full of hot air. Of course Yami no Malik had seen right through him. It must have been like looking through a sheet of glass, just like looking through someone's glasses to see their eyes.
"Marik tricked Yugi into thinking that he liked him," Yami explained. Joey looked at Yugi with eyes as wide as a butterball moon. For you young hermits and hermitesses out there, if you have never seen the moon, it is very, very big. Bigger than your uncle's beer belly. (The one he used to be able to scrunch up to make it resemble the faces of famous people while he imitated their voices.) …Yes, that big. Bigger! I shall give you a moment to reflect on this in awe.
…
"Wow," Joey said in the voice of Moral Oral. "You fell for that?"
Yugi looked up at his best friend, his heart hammering heavily in his chest. His chin lowered just a fraction of an inch, then rose back up, which Joey automatically took to be a nod.
"Yugi, that's just kinda…" Joey scratched the back of his neck. "I mean, you really oughta… you'd of hafta…"
"That's 'you would have had to,'" Yami corrected.
Joey ignored him. "Yugi… Well, I mean, you can be naïve at times, and I know you're a forgiving person since after all you even forgave Kaiba and Kaiba's a heartless, soulless—" Joey coughed. "Sheesh. My allergies are acting up big time. No wonder; it's like Dust Bunnies Gone Wild back here."
"It's my own private collection," said the bumess that Yami had long since forgotten about. …Omigod, bumess is a word! …Oh, wait, never mind. Spell check just wasn't working. -- There go my dreams. I was really excited, too.
Joey continued with, "They ought to hire maids to dust the alleys. French maids. Yes, French maids will do."
Yugi sulked as his friend once again spaced out. Even though Joey had googley eyes now, just a minute ago his chocolate eyes had been horrified, effusively evincing the point that Yugi had shocked his friend by being such a naif. Tears made Yugi's cheeks tender as they began once again to slip from his disappointed violet orbs.
Of course Tea wanted to date Yami instead of Yugi. Yami wasn't a fool.
'I guess my foolishness even overrides the fact that I'm still alive while Yami is technically dead,' Yugi decided sullenly. 'That's depressing, if nothing else is.'
Yugi suddenly felt himself being pulled up roughly, a bronzed hand wrapped around his arm.
"Skin doesn't really feel so weird," Marik reasoned. The Pharaoh shot him a curious glance that said that he wanted to know what the dark was talking about. "Oh, did I say that out loud?" The Pharaoh nodded.
"Yami, why aren't you doing something?" Joey crossed his arms. Yugi's nose had begun to run what looked like the 100 meter dash. Obviously, he looked very undignified, like a naked mole rat with a tiny mole rat-sized towel draped around its waist. Then again, the Old Yugi was never quite the perfect picture of nobility. (Especially since nobles usually didn't have such outrageous hair and didn't wear their navy blue school uniform on Sundays, when they didn't have to. Yami always managed to pull it off, though, so Yugi had hoped…)
"Yami!" Joey barked. "Yami, are you going to defend Yugi or something? Marik's got him by the arm!"
"Yes, I see that, Joey," Yami answered immediately in a steely voice, "and I am!" The sound of metal gnashing again metal rung out behind him as he jumped back into vengeful friend mode after several moments of being neutral. (The ringing metal was a nearby garage band practicing. ...It's easy to see why they were practicing, given the description of the sound quality they were producing.)
"Marik," Yami said, puffing out his chest, "I challenge you do a duel!"
Marik stuck out his long, ghastly tongue. …Seriously, what is up with that thing? Was Marik a frog in his past life, or what? Anyway…
"I'd love to duel you some other time," Marik said, batting his eyelashes flirtatiously in a way that made Yami's stomach crunch, "but you see, this is o-shujinkaku-sama's duel, not mine. It's his money, honey."
"But you're the one who – don't you ever call me that again – you're the one who hurt Yugi," Yami argued. As if the short boy's name was a cue, Marik reached down and tickled the boy (who he was still holding on to) under the arm. Yugi shuddered a bit, but didn't laugh.
"…Alright, don't be ticklish then. Fine." Marik harrumphed indignantly, as if Yugi had done him a great wrong by neglecting to giggle. He let go of Yugi, who fled to Joey's side.
"Marik," Yami began, his tone low and dangerous. His purple eyes shone like a cat's would when they caught the light, and became two golden glowing disks. The eye of Horus began to glow impressively on his forehead, and the school uniform of Yugi's he'd been wearing (assumably sized up through ancient Shadow magic) began to take on the properties of a cape. The spiffy music that usually plays towards the end of the American opening song riffed out of nowhere, and even the strange voice that no one could place was heard echoing across the alley, saying "Yuuuuuuuuuuu-gi-ohhhh."
"It's time," Yami averred, "to d-d-d-d, d-d-d-d-d-d-duel."
Marik narrowed his eyes in annoynace—annyoance—annoian—dang! "Talk much?" he asked. "Or is this your first time?"
Yami also narrowed his eyes to cat's eyes-slits, but didn't give Marik the satisfaction of a rejoinder. Surely Marik would see that Yami was above his little taunting games.
"Speechless, I see," Marik chuckled. Yami grimaced. Apparently not. "Anyway, so… I noticed your sporting the eye of Horus. Kind of late on the year for that particular fashion trend, it's sort of yesterday's thing, although it's rather fetching on you, really. Oh, don't give me that look. I know that with all that leather you like you must be into appearances somewhat. It's a compliment. …Don't wince like that!" Marik pouted. "My compliments are great! Aren't they Yugi?"
Yugi gurgled disdainfully.
Marik paused. "…Did you know that during an 80-year-battle with Seth, Seth tore out Horus' left eye? I suppose that is why they call it the eye of Horus instead of the eyes." Marik wanted to imitate the drums that should've been playing as he let loose the corny joke and say "Ba-duh-dum!" But it was already too late; you had to do that before your audience started groaning at your awful joke, and Yugi looked just about ready to throw up (although he hadn't shut up for quite some while now).
Yami wrinkled his nose, and finally responded with, "Ok, so Horus became a godly and righteous Tenorio. So what?"
"You dog!" Marik exclaimed happily. "Tenorio dies after he shoots the owl, so he doesn't really defeat Ultima, but oh my Ra! I didn't know that you could read."
"Of course I can read!" Joey shouted defensively. "I go to school, don't I? I mean, I even deliver the newspapers around here, so c'mon! Give me a break! I was bound to pick up a few words, right?"
"…When I said dog, I wasn't talking to you, Joseph," Marik stated.
"…Oh. Sorry."
"That's quite all right." Marik turned back to the Pharaoh while Joey blushed embarrassedly. "So, when did you start reading stuff by Rudolfo Anaya?"
"Shut up!" Yami shouted, and in a great display of immaturity he cupped his hands over his ears. "La la la, I CAN'T HEAR YOU! Cool people don't read! I don't know what you're taaaaalking about! I've never even heard of Bless Me Ultima! I don't know that the main character is Antonio and that he struggles to find out who he wants to be due to inflicting cultures placed upon him by his parents' different cultures! I have no idea that some of the archetypes found in it include the Earth mother, Loss of Innocence, Good vs. Evil, and the Ritual! I can't recite the story of the golden carp and how one god convinced the other gods to be lenient in their punishment of people and turn them all into fish! I've never even heard of the Marez or Luna families! I don't even know that there's an an accent above the 'a' in Márez! What are you talking about, Marik? Cool people don't read! I'm a Pharaoh! Who says I could read?"
"…" Joey, Yugi, and Marik all stared at Yami with the hugest sweat drops the nearby bum had ever seen in all of her life hanging off of their heads. The sweat drops were so large and heavy, they strained their necks by tugging back on their heads, and making them tilt their head backwards. Joey took out a clothing pin and stabbed at the oversized droplets, causing them to burst.
"…You know, speaking of Horus," Marik said, choosing to go back to their earlier conversation, "he ripped off Seth's testicles."
"That's messed up, man," Joey stated. Yugi nodded, sniveling. When Marik nodded towards Joey, Yugi cringed and tried to fold himself up like a lawn chair, hugging his knees to condense himself.
"What do you expect? Our culture has a scorpion goddess helping women in childbirth."
"If I was a woman, I'd probably wince right about now," Yami said in an aggravated, sing-song tone. "Let's just get on with our duel!"
"Didn't I tell you that I wasn't going to duel you?" Marik asked.
"No, you didn't," Yami said stubbornly.
"I'm pretty sure I did."
"Are you afraid to duel me?" Yami challenged, tired of this long, drawn-out revenge scheme whose promise had wilted like an autumn leaf upon Marik's refusal to duel. "Because this is going to become longer than the time I went with Yugi to the DMV."
"Isn't that American?" Joey asked.
"I have my license?" Yugi wondered in bewilderment.
"…No, I'd just rather not duel someone associated with Horus, since I am actually kind of fond of my testicles," Marik explained.
"So am I," Joey blurted.
Yami cast him a confused, sideways glance. "Joey, I'm not challenging you do a duel."
"But I named them," Joey whined. "You better leave them alone."
It took Yami a second to process this.
"…That's nice," was all that he could think up to say.
"Everyone names them, silly," Yugi said. Marik grinned at him.
"Do they, gaki-me?" Marik rushed over to where Yugi was slouching and leaned over to give him a brief hug, like a cheerleader might do when she wanted to pretend she cared about a friend who had borrowed lunch money and never returned it but who hadn't made the squad so deserved some sympathy. Of course Yugi knew Marik didn't care. What Yugi felt the worst about was that he had been this close to convincing himself that he wanted Marik to care, and since he had been so close to doing so, he really, really wanted to be convinced. Even Yami had told him to give someone who liked him a chance. However, there was no one like that. He should have known.
The Old Yugi's tears had completely washed out the New Yugi's façade, reducing it to wet tissue paper. Marik had always known that Yugi was pretending to be somebody he wasn't. It had been obvious, once he'd realized Yugi was doing it on purpose, that Yugi's plan was going to fail. Things just didn't work that way. People need time to adjust to even gradual changes their close friends might go through. And Yugi, with his Old Self sniveling as silently as he could, hadn't really changed at all.
"Don't worry, gaki-me," he said crisply to the sobbing boy, kind of in awe that he'd been able to reel the boy in that well. Realizing that Yugi desperately wanted to be liked, Marik couldn't help but add teasingly, "We can always still be friends."