Chapter 2: The First Duel

Yori felt worlds better after a shower, and she was grateful there had been an arranged break before the semi-finals started. She'd spoken to a KaibaCorp employee before her shower, and the woman had given her a complimentary Battle City T-shirt, so at least she had a clean shirt to wear. There was nothing she could do about her underwear, bra, or jeans, which had dried stiff with ocean salt, but it was better than nothing. She could only hope the giant lettering across the front of the shirt that advertised the tournament and the KaibaCorp logo on the back would help distract from her scarred arms, which were showing more than she ever felt comfortable with.

In addition to the shirt, the staff member had given her a set of navy shorts to sleep in. If they'd been a bit longer and a bit tighter, she'd have just worn them for the tournament, but since Seto had warned her about conditions on top of the blimp, she decided to stick with her jeans, stiff and uncomfortable though they were. After she showered, changed, and dried her hair—saying hi to Anzu once when she stepped into the bathroom—she returned to her room to check on Mokuba.

Seto hadn't stopped by. Yori restrained a frustrated sigh.

"Hang in there," she said, knowing it would be barely any consolation.

Mokuba was curled up on the bed, hugging the solitary pillow. He gave no response.

An announcement aired overhead, calling the finalists to the lounge. Yori frowned, but Roland nodded to her from his place at the small table.

"Go on, miss. I'll be here."

So she exited her room once more. At the same time, two other finalists exited rooms in her hallway. One was a tall, blonde woman dressed in a mini-skirt and tube top Yori couldn't imagine dueling in, and the other was a Ghoul.

Under the heat of her glare, the Ghoul turned to look at her, but his dark, tattooed face revealed nothing. His room was at the front of the hall, so he turned the corner and disappeared while Yori was still struggling to gain control of her breathing.

The woman came her way, introducing herself as Mai Valentine. Yori somehow managed her own name in response.

"Ah, you are the famed Madame Yori, and you have quite the fierce expression."

"I just don't like Ghouls."

"Ghouls . . ." Mai's brow furrowed. "They are the card hunters, no? I had heard rumors."

Maybe Yori should have warned her of the things Marik was capable of, but they walked to the lounge in silence.

The first person Yori saw in the room was Yuugi, and when his face lit up at seeing her, she couldn't help her own smile. He motioned her over, so she and Mai joined his group, which was far and away the largest in the room.

"Did you get a chance to eat?" he whispered.

"Not hungry," Yori whispered back. It wasn't a lie to make him feel better; she honestly felt a little queasy at just the thought of food. She was well aware that didn't bode well for her semi-finals match atop a flying monster, but that was a problem for when she actually dueled.

She glanced around the room. Marik and his Ghoul stood together, and Ryou stood not far from them—the spirit of the ring, she corrected herself, which explained why he wasn't standing with Yuugi's group. Apparently Ryou had decided to allow the spirit to continue dueling for him; after what had happened with Marik, she couldn't blame him for wanting a break.

She would have liked to talk to him, ask if he needed anything, but when the spirit noticed her gaze, he flipped her off with a sneer that made it clear conversation wouldn't be happening anytime soon.

Still . . .

She reached out gently with her mind, the Millennium Bracelet warming against her wrist.

/Hanging in there?/ she asked.

/I'm fine, thanks,/ Ryou said almost immediately.

That was at least comforting, so she let it go. And she felt a surge of confidence at how easy it had been to use her bracelet. She was really starting to get the hang of it.

"Can we get on with this?" Seto snapped. He made the demand before even fully entering the room.

"Of course, Mr. Kaiba," said the employee waiting beside what Yori could only assume was the lottery machine. "We're only awaiting one finalist."

"They'll hear the announcement if they get picked. Start the machine."

Since Ishizu was the only one missing, the call was a smart one. She'd probably either decided she was too good to gather in the lounge or was too busy polishing her Millennium Necklace to care.

"Very well, sir." The man cleared his throat and addressed the room at large. "Finalists, you have each been assigned a number from one through ten corresponding to the order in which you qualified for the finals. As soon as the two duelists for the first match have been revealed, they will proceed immediately to the dueling field. No changes to decks may be made after learning the identity of your opponent."

"Hey, Fuguta!" Joey grinned and pointed both thumbs toward himself. "Lucky number three to duel first!"

Yori raised her eyebrows. "I didn't realize you already knew all of Seto's staff, Joey."

Joey puffed his chest out. "It's called workshoppin'."

"Mm, pretty sure you mean 'networking.'"

"Nah, that's a computer thing."

Yori laughed, as did most of the group.

"Ready, finalists!" Fuguta stepped up to the large machine and pulled a lever. An air blower roared to life, and ping pong balls jumped around inside the large glass dome, rebounding off walls and each other. The dragon head at the center of the dome opened its mouth wide, and after several seconds, a ping pong ball fell into its gaping jaws, reappearing in the mouth of a second dragon head on the outside left of the machine.

Fuguta plucked the ball from its resting place, rotated it, and announced, "Duelist number five!"

Mai flipped her hair like a supermodel. "Ç'est magnifique!"

"And her opponent will be . . ."

On the right side of the machine, the third and final dragon head spit out a second ball. Fuguta checked it.

"Duelist number ten!"

Yori wasn't familiar with the raven-haired teen who stepped forward. He wore a red vest over a black shirt with a diamond-patterned headband in the same colors. He also had a small tattoo extending from his left eye down his cheek, and his left ear had a dangling earring that ended in a white die.

Even if she didn't, other people seemed to know him well.

"Mai's gonna wipe the floor with you, Dice-boy," Joey called out, sneering.

His sister glared at him and said, "Give it your all, Duke!"

While Joey leaned back, looking wounded, Duke smiled, brief though it was.

Yori leaned close to Yuugi. "I think I missed something."

His cheeks colored. "There's a little bit of history. But Duke's a good guy."

Which, coming from Yuugi, wasn't actually a very helpful character assessment at all.

"Duelists, follow me to the arena! There will also be viewing platforms provided for everyone else to watch."

Fuguta exited the room, followed immediately by Mai and Duke. Yori watched Seto closely, and when he moved to follow as well, she ducked away from Yuugi's group to walk beside him.

"You know, there's somewhere else you could be," she said.

He scowled, refusing to look at her. "Only a third-rate duelist skips opportunities to study the competition. Maybe if Wheeler was dueling, it would be another story."

"I heard dat, Rich-boy!"

Yori glanced over her shoulder only to realize the entire group had crowded into the hallway behind them. Even Marik and his Ghoul were tagging along, though at a significant distance. The only one she didn't see was Ryou.

Joey jogged forward to pluck at Yori's shirt sleeve. "Also, how come Yori got a cool new shirt while you're holdin' out on the rest of us?"

Seto's scowl doubled.

"I got it from a maid, Joey. You just have to ask." She moved her arm self-consciously, but he didn't comment on her scars.

Everyone piled into the elevator, and although it was cramped, they somehow found enough room to still give Marik and his Ghoul plenty of space.

Except for Seto. He stood right in front of Marik and stared him down with a glare that could have melted steel. Marik stared right back, one hand resting on the rod in his belt. The metal siding of the elevator shaft flew by behind the glass walls. Fuguta coughed once, but no one else broke the silence, and it was a relief when the cart came to a stop and the doors slid open.

When Yori stepped out onto the roof, that relief vanished along with her breath. The wind swept directly into her face, cold and powerful. She'd almost managed to forget how raw her nose and throat were until the wind brought a harsh reminder. She barely kept herself from coughing and only because she figured it would make things worse.

Tall railings extended out from either side of the elevator to form an oval around the blimp's top. The center of the oval raised into a dueling field with stairs on both sides and railings at the front and back, where duelists would stand.

"Joey, the lights!"

Yori turned to see Serenity rushing down one length of railing. She came to a stop and leaned forward, pointing down at the colored lights that outlined the cityscape below them before ending abruptly at the black ocean. They were pointed toward the open sea and still flying, so the lights would soon disappear into the distance behind them, but for the moment, they were beautiful.

"Just don't fall," Joey said, eyeing the long, black drop. The railing came halfway up Serenity's chest, but Yori couldn't fault him for the warning anyway.

The two duelists for the match followed Fuguta up the stairs onto the dueling platform, and everyone else spread out across the two viewing platforms on either side. Seto took the platform on the left. Since Serenity had already moved to the right, Joey, Yuugi, and the rest of their group moved onto it as well. After a moment of hesitation, Yori joined Yuugi and his group. Marik and his Ghoul moved to the left, although they stayed at the back while Seto stood at the front.

"Duelists, shake hands!" Fuguta declared, voice carrying against the wind.

Mai and Duke shook hands and cut each other's decks. Then Mai moved to stand in the spot closest to the elevator, and Duke took the spot at the nose of the blimp, back to the wind. Fuguta stepped onto a circular area beside the left-hand stairs that extended from the platform and obviously served as the referee's box. Yori had never before participated in a duel with an official referee, but she shouldn't have been surprised—it was a tournament, after all.

After everyone was in place, the dueling platform emitted a low-pitched mechanical whir and raised itself six or seven feet in the air, as if it hadn't been dramatic enough to start with.

Fuguta shouted a "Duel start!" echoed by both players, and then the semi-finals were off.

When the first hologram appeared on the field, Serenity let out a gasp that made everyone around her chuckle. Her cheeks went pink, and she pressed her cold hands to them, but she couldn't fight her smile. The world was brighter and bigger and newer than it had ever been, standing there next to her brother over a thousand feet in the air.

She touched the sides of her head, still adjusting to not having the bandages there. Her eyes didn't strain at all, and though they were sore, she felt better than she had in years. She wished she could capture every moment she saw as a photograph—Joey's wide smile, the red-and-white city lights like fairies beneath their feet, the vibrant brown and gold of Mai's monster—and keep it forever.

"Kick his butt, Mai!" Joey shouted. Anzu and Tristan added encouragement of their own.

Serenity wanted to shout encouragement—and it certainly wasn't that she didn't like Mai because she did. Very much.

But . . .

She glanced over at Duke on the far side of the field, gripping his cards against the wind, face grim. He'd adjusted his ponytail to keep it from whipping him in the face, and by all counts, he looked calm and collected. But he didn't look like he was having fun. Serenity didn't know what had happened in the past to make Joey all bristly against him, but she did know that he'd probably saved her life earlier, and he'd been a real gentleman about it.

And not a single person was cheering for him.

So when his turn came and he summoned his own monster, she took a deep breath, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted.

"Kick her butt, Duke!"

She turned so red her ears hurt while Joey gave her a look like she'd booed his favorite sports team. But when Duke smiled at her the way he had in the lounge, except longer this time, her heart flipped in her chest, and she didn't regret it.

"Attack, Orgoth!" he ordered.

His beefy warrior charged across the field and slashed a sword through Mai's monster, who disappeared into particle effects. Serenity winced, watching through one squinted eye, but then she cheered again.

"Serenity." Joey heaved a sigh like she was a child who needed a lesson. "Don't cheer for the hack."

"He doesn't even belong on a dueling field," Tristan chimed in, as if he was the authority on all belong-on-a-dueling-field people. "He totally ripped off Duel Monsters to make a dice game and then pretended it was all his idea."

Serenity frowned, but she didn't waver. "He made his own game? That sounds pretty impressive."

Tristan shook his head. "Not when ninety percent of it is all Pegasus's stuff. Duke is like those people who copy someone else's homework and then change a few words to throw off the teacher."

"Hey." Joey scowled. "Stop teachin' Serenity how to cheat."

Serenity rolled her eyes. "I'm not five, Joey. I know how to cheat."

Joey gaped.

"I didn't say I do. But everyone knows how."

"Anyway." Tristan laughed. "Joey's right—he's a hack. He's probably only competing for the publicity it'll give his game store."

Serenity almost pointed out that owning a game store sounded pretty impressive, too, but she let it go and turned her attention back to the field. Mai had activated some cards Serenity didn't really understand, and Duke activated one in return. He looked a little more relaxed. A tiny bit closer to fun.

So she would keep cheering the whole game.

"This is my first duel," she said firmly. She looked up at Joey and waited until he hesitantly nodded. "So I get to experience it however I want, and that includes who to cheer for."

The frown he gave her in return was stubborn and unforgiving. "Cheer for who you want, then, but Mai's wipin' the floor with this hack, and that's a fact. 'Cause unlike him, she's a true duelist."

Tristan nodded. Serenity looked to Anzu for support, but the other girl had her arms folded and her eyes fixed on the duel. Either the match was the coolest thing she'd ever seen or she'd zoned out; either way, she wasn't helpful. Yuugi and the red-haired girl Serenity hadn't met yet were a little farther down the platform and also didn't join in the conversation.

So she would have to stand alone on the court.

But that was fine. Joey might not have known it, but Serenity's coach called her "built for competition" because even if her tennis skills weren't the best in the school, she was calm under pressure, and her logic could appeal to her emotions even in the worst matches.

She imagined a tennis court atop the blimp instead of a dueling field, imagined trying to focus past the cold and stay calm against the wind, imagined hearing the crowd cheer for her opponent and send nothing but cold shoulders to her side of the net.

Serenity didn't care who had more skill or who deserved to be on the field or whatever. Nobody should have to compete without a single person on their side.

"Go, Duke!" she shouted, louder than before.

His smile lasted even longer this time, and she thought he almost laughed. His bright green eyes found hers, and she smiled as widely as she could while giving him double peace signs against her cheeks. He lifted his free hand just above his Duel Disk, almost a wave. Then he drew a card, and the duel went on.

Anzu had barely seen the opening turn of the duel before everything around her changed. The dueling platform became a polished black stage with velvet red curtains, which she was viewing from an auditorium chair. Though she was in the front row, Mai and Duke seemed miles away, and the more she tried to focus on them, the more her head hurt.

"Less headache if you simply let things play," said a voice.

She turned to see Marik one seat down from her, right leg crossed over his opposite knee, a bucket of popcorn in his lap. The Ghoul cape was gone, as was the rod, and the sandy-haired Egyptian looked like he was relaxing on a couch at home.

"In fact." He pointed thoughtfully at nothing. "I generally let reality be more of a radio in my mind than a TV screen."

Anzu glanced around at the empty theater, at the pristine seats that stretched forever and the gleaming, perfect stage. The duel had faded to barely an outline, an impression of what was happening, and with that, the rest became clear.

"Un. Be. Lievable." She scowled. "You took control of my mind."

"I did not." He popped a kernel in his mouth. Made a face. "I'm in your mind, but the control is all yours. What is this?"

"It's popcorn, you savage."

And she didn't expect it, but that made him laugh. When he laughed, his face lit up in a way that made it obvious how unnatural it looked when stern.

"Savage," he repeated, shaking his head. His pointed gold earrings swung back and forth with the movement. "You have no idea. Regardless, this is terrible."

He tossed the bucket into the orchestra pit; it vanished before it hit the floor.

Anzu frowned. "If this is all in my mind, how can you even taste it?"

"Taste is in your mind as much as everything else, obviously."

"Okay, no." She turned in her seat, jabbed a finger in his direction. "I don't care, and you can't distract me from the fact that you have no right to be here."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're the one who told me to come find you."

"In the real world. As in, walk up to me and have a conversation. Like a normal person."

"But I'm a savage."

"You are. Don't be proud of it. It's a bad thing. Savage. Bad."

"I'm aware of that." He frowned. "I've owned who I am from the beginning. I believe my introduction was clear."

He pointed at her hand, and although the brace was gone in her mind, she remembered it all too well.

"You're the one," he continued, "who sought me out."

He did have a point there. She blushed.

"So why did you?" His pale eyes were uncomfortably piercing.

She chewed on the inside of her cheek painlessly. Debated. Thought about trying to drive a car on an ocean.

"No reason," she finally said.

He raised both eyebrows, then tilted his head back to look at the ceiling. Anzu followed his gaze and saw a giant crack across the auditorium ceiling like the imprint of a lightning bolt.

"You can lie within your mind as easily as you can lie in the real world," he said. "But here, the cracks will always show."

Which really wasn't fair.

"So this is exactly what I thought it was." He scowled and shoved himself to his feet. "In that case, you can take—"

She squeezed her eyes closed. "I saw the light."

". . . Is your philosophical epiphany meant to mean something to me?"

She wished there was a way to just show him, a way to communicate in the ideas and feelings that made sense to her instead of the words that didn't quite fit.

"Ah. This light."

She blinked in surprise only to realize they were no longer in a theater. She hadn't even felt the transition from sitting to standing, but she was standing next to him in an underground stone passageway, looking up at a faraway circle of light that ached of hope and sacrifice.

And there was a child who was unmistakably Marik, a boy maybe five years old, if that, who reached with both arms into the sunlight beaming down from above. Who smiled.

And Anzu felt in her heart the same thing she'd felt originally: She understood that boy.

A man came charging down the corridor. He was dressed in a simple white robe like little Marik, and though Anzu somehow knew the man was his father, there was no trace of kindness or fatherly care in his bearded face. He grabbed Marik roughly by the arm, yanked him away from the light, opened his mouth—

And then everything was back to the theater.

"So you saw something in my mind," the grown Marik said, reaching for something invisible in his belt only to flex his fingers and lower his hand, "and you just couldn't help the curiosity."

"It wasn't curiosity," Anzu said.

She imagined Pegasus, and there he was at the edge of the stage, smirk on his face, empty eye glinting from behind his curtain of hair.

"With Pegasus, I hated him all through Duelist Kingdom. Really really hated him, like I'd never hated anyone before." She looked down, and he was gone. "When Yuugi beat him, I wished he would have lost more than a duel. Then someone almost killed him for his Millennium Item."

Marik smirked. "Wish granted."

She shook her head. "After that, we found out he'd only been doing everything he was doing because of his wife's death. It didn't excuse any of it, not even close, but if I'd known sooner, I wouldn't have hated him. I just would have hated what he was doing."

Marik's shoulders lifted in a miniscule shrug. "I fail to see the difference."

"Well, I feel it. And it matters to me."

"So you think I'm Pegasus." His eyes hardened. "Whether you see me as human or savage makes no difference. Whether you hate me or not changes nothing. And I am not of a mind to pretend anything else in order to appease your feelings."

She scowled right back. "Hey, sunshine and roses, say whatever you want, but no one enjoys being hated. If we were in your mind right now, there would be so many cracks in the ceiling that it would fall right on your fat, stupid head."

He blinked at her. Then he snorted. "No one's ever dared speak to me like that."

And she realized he was a literal gang leader, someone who commanded obedience from thieves. She'd seen the men in cloaks at the tournament, seen the cold carelessness in their eyes. Someone had set the business model within the Ghouls; someone had started the heartlessness and sent it bleeding down the ranks.

She recognized that. She understood it.

But she also understood something else.

She raised an eyebrow. "Probably because you have no friends, genius."

Marik shook his head, waved a hand. "One moment I'm stupid, the next I'm a genius."

But he didn't contradict the assessment.

"Sarcastic genius is still stupid."

"Well, that's stupid, so you're stupid." He cracked a smile, as if giving the childish comeback was entertaining.

Anzu couldn't help smiling in return. The back-and-forth was similar to at least a hundred conversations with her brothers. "Your face is stupid."

"How . . ." This time, he laughed. He was definitely most human when he laughed. "My face isn't a separate entity in intelligence from the rest of my being."

"I don't know about that. Have you seen it?"

"That doesn't . . ." He scratched at the gold bands around his throat. "You're some variety of insane."

"Your face is some variety of insane."

"So this is how you say friends talk to each other. Just insert 'your face' before repeating what the last person said."

"Actually, yes." Laughter bubbled in her stomach. "It's not far off."

"Your face isn't far off."

The laughter spilled over, and she turned away, a hand pressed to her mouth that did nothing to hide it.

"It's ridiculous," he said. "Completely inane."

But he was still smiling.

And if Anzu had doubted anything before, now she didn't; all those people she had thought were unsavable never had been. Yuugi had just looked deeper than anyone else was willing to, and he'd seen the human behind the enemy, just as she saw it now in Marik.

"Friends are ridiculous," she said. "Because everyone needs to have fun once in a while. And the good ones tell it how it is, even if the truth is messy. They help you fix things you can't fix alone, and they stick around even when things are rough."

"Right." His smile faded. "A mortal Nehmetawy."

She frowned. "What?"

"The goddess who 'embraces those in need,' though I've certainly never seen any evidence of it. If a deity can't manage selfless devotion, a mortal certainly can't."

Anzu started to speak, then stopped herself. She wanted to say it wasn't possible that he'd never seen anyone be selfless before, that he'd never done something selfless for someone else. But she was learning to be more careful with assumptions and judgments, so after a moment of thought, she opted for a different approach.

"I'm not religious."

He blinked as if she'd just said she didn't breathe.

She smiled. "So you'll have to give me a crash course. Is 'no-mah-toy' one of the top goddesses, or is she sort of a statue-on-a-mantle-and-call-it-good type?"

For a second, she was genuinely worried he'd had a heart attack—either that or she'd offended him, which was probably more likely. He turned away, gripping the closest seat back like he would collapse without it.

"Name-a-toy?" she offered.

He held up a hand. "Stop trying."

She did her best to conceal her smile. "Okay."

"First"—he took a deep breath, eyes closed in what seemed to be real, physical pain—"I'm familiar with the concept of a 'crash course,' and there is no such thing for this topic. Second, my father would have outright killed you for that statue-on-a-mantle blasphemy."

Based on what she'd seen of the man, that statement seemed to be more serious than joking. It got a little harder to breathe just at the thought.

"Come on," she urged. "Just tell me the basics of who's who."

"There are no basics. Are you—?" He stepped away, shaking his head.

"Top five Egyptian Gods? I can imagine a chalkboard if it's easier to draw things out."

"This isn't a beauty pageant."

She wasn't sure he knew what a beauty pageant was, but she chose not to comment on it.

"Okay, okay." Anzu heaved a sigh. "You can't give me a crash course. I accept that. I'll just have to live out my days in religious darkness."

Marik rolled his eyes. It was the first time she'd seen him do so, and she found the action strangely . . . charming. It was human. Like his laugh.

After a long stretch of silence wherein he eyed her from head to foot and shook his head again, he turned away completely. Since she'd failed to connect with him on a topic he seemed to know a lot about, she was at a loss of where to go next, but while she was scrambling—

"Ra," he said. "The great creator. Humanity was born from his tears."

Anzu smiled. She almost made a quip, then held back.

"Got it," she said. "What else?"

The invitation opened the flood gates. Marik laid out for her the voyages of Ra across the sky to give light to man, told her how the Eye of Ra, the sun, watched over the earth during the day and the Eye of Horus, the moon, assumed the duty at night. He told her how Osiris, the firstborn son of earth and sky, flooded the Nile to give fertility to the land of Egypt, how he was murdered by a jealous brother and resurrected by a faithful wife. He told her of Bastet, who stood as the watchful guard at every woman's home to ward against evil spirits and disease, then took feline form to guide fearful souls in the afterlife. He spoke of Thoth, Anubis, and Nephthys, of Mut, Selket, and Neith.

Anzu forgot most of the names and confused the details, but the stories were entrancing, especially because as he spoke, Marik conjured images on the stage. She saw ancient murals and carvings that he must have studied in his life, saw aged papyrus records written in stacks of hieroglyphs, and even while she couldn't read them herself, at the same time, she could—because he could.

"This is incredible," she breathed.

"This is barely the surface." He smirked. "But at least I've saved you from ignorance."

"You, too." She turned from the stage to look at him. "You're incredible. Even if I'd studied this all my life, there's no way I would remember it like you do."

He looked away. "I had no choice."

"That's what my teachers tell me about learning biology, but that still doesn't mean I can remember all the parts of a cell or successfully find the liver in a frog."

His expression tightened. "Then your teachers don't know how to motivate as well as mine."

She swallowed. She opened her mouth, hesitated, then pushed forward. "Your dad is your teacher?"

"Head of the clan instructing the next head of clan. There is no other way."

" . . . What's your dad like?"

He leaned back against the row of auditorium seats, perched on the wooden arm between two chairs. He surveyed her with a blank expression.

"I came here," he finally said, "because just as lies are obvious within the mind, intentions are, too."

She shifted, wondering if he was going to come up with some reason to condemn her again.

"Your intentions are honest."

In what she considered a great show of maturity, she resisted a "told you so" response.

He smiled grimly. Shrugged. "Maybe in another version of the world, we could have been . . . friends."

The word seemed to stick in his throat before he forced it out.

She raised an eyebrow. "What's wrong with this version of the world?"

His answer was quick and harsh: "I'm going to kill the pharaoh. If I have to drag him to Anubis by going myself, I will. If I have to cut a warpath through his friends to reach him, including you, I will."

Her stomach folded in on itself, cramped against her spine. She took a step back.

"There's the genuine reaction"—he smiled, but it was an empty expression—"to the savage I really am. Save your friendship for someone who deserves it."

And then he was gone.

The theater around her softened, blurred, and then sharpened into her normal vision, where she still stood on a viewing platform looking up at an in-progress duel she wasn't following and didn't care about.

She lowered her eyes, stared across the empty space below the raised platform to the second viewing area on the opposite side of the blimp. Marik was visible just past one of the metal pillars that held up the dueling platform, but he didn't look at her. His eyes were on the duel, and his hand was on the rod.

"I'm going to kill the pharaoh."

The wind felt colder than it had at the start of the duel, but it wasn't the reason for her shiver.

Note: Happy August! In two weeks, I'll be moving to a new apartment, and I cannot tell you the depths of my loathing for packing-hence why I haven't even started yet. Asdfghjkl gotta get on that. Next update will be Thursday, August 8th.