Chapter 21: Mind Games

"I'm dead?" Yuugi laughed, mostly because he didn't know what else to do. "I can't be . . . dead. I can't . . ."

"What's that silly expression? 'As a small bit of metal.'" Ra gave the slightest shrug. "You took on an attack meant for someone else, and now you've put me in a conundrum."

"A holographic attack. In a game. I know it was a shadow game, but . . ."

Dead? What about Grandpa? What about his friends?

"Oh, no . . . Did—" Yuugi's voice cracked. "Did my friends find my body? Are they okay?"

"Curious priorities."

The god seemed disinterested, but Yuugi's breath came faster with every subsequent horrifying thought. Anzu would cry if he were dead; he didn't want her to cry. And Joey would—

What about Yami? Was he trapped in the puzzle without a host?

Or was the truth something even worse?

"You know, compassion"—Ra smiled, and somehow it was both a friendly and empty expression—"is mostly seen as a human emotion. As is selflessness. They're both godly, of course. Nothing is human without also being godly. But immortality has a way of eroding those two in particular. You could say we've seen too many forests to care for the trees."

"No offense, but I didn't get any of that." Yuugi doubled over, bracing his hands on his knees, trying to keep himself from hyperventilating his way into a panic attack. His body sure felt alive: breath and lungs and heartbeat and all two-hundred-or-whatever bones. He didn't feel like a spirit, not even like he did in the puzzle; he certainly didn't feel dead.

Should he cry?

Was it weird to mourn his own death?

Was it weirder not to?

"You're in shock." Ra's smile remained in place. "Also godly, believe it or not."

"You're certainly not what I expected," Yuugi muttered. He had a human head, for starters. Yuugi couldn't count the number of times he'd seen images of Ra from his grandpa's research, illustration after illustration of a human body with a falcon head. The man before him had gold hair, but it was human. He had gold eyes, but they were human. It was hard to make out details on his gold headdress, but it may have had the beak of a falcon.

"You expected something?" Ra turned his palms out, hands dangling from the arms of his throne of light. "I created your species; the sun itself moves at my command. In sixteen breaths of life, what exactly did you comprehend of me, child?"

Yuugi swallowed.

"As I thought."

When he looked away, Yuugi's eyes caught on the upward staircase, spiraling to heaven. Was he meant to climb it? Was heaven actually a—?

"This isn't normal." His mind continued to race, but he managed to grasp a few details, to see the gaps where they didn't add up. "It can't be. Thousands of people die every day; you can't possibly care to greet them all. If you did, another one would have appeared by now."

"I am a god; how dare you tell me what I'm capable of." Ra's smile returned. "You're correct. Does it make you feel special, Yuugi Mutou?"

It made him feel sick. "Not when you're the one who killed me."

"You're not wrong." The god hardly looked apologetic.

"You meant to kill my sister."

"You're an only child, child. And you were barely born, at that. I almost had to wait another thousand years to see the puzzle solved."

Yuugi's mind spun, trying to remember everything he'd learned from his grandpa about the past. "You're the reason I don't remember Yori, the reason Shadi took my memory. Why?"

"I feel no need to justify myself."

"Well, I'd like a reason for my death."

As soon as school started on Monday, Yuugi was supposed to turn in a report on Julius Caesar. He hadn't even finished his summer reading, and he wasn't sure why it of all things worried him at the moment, but an almost hysterical smile crossed his face as he wondered what his teacher would think when news spread that Yuugi had died on the last weekend of summer break in a Duel Monsters tournament during a match that wasn't even his.

He'd wanted to protect Yori.

Dying for her had probably made her feel worse than ever.

"And if you cared enough to meet me at the gates," Yuugi continued, still smiling his not-turning-in-a-book-report smile, "I think you should care enough to tell me why Ra the God Card was going to kill my sister when Obelisk didn't kill Ryou and Osiris didn't kill Yami."

"Perhaps she deserved it." Ra's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps Ra the God Card is not a monster to be trifled with."

Yuugi considered that. "You created our species; the sun itself moves at your command. Yet in sixteen breaths of life, Yori somehow got under your skin?"

Ra shook a finger at him. "Clever. There's the mind that solved the Millennium Puzzle."

"I'm not wrong."

"You are; it took her seventeen. Now she's on her unapproved second batch, of which I already robbed her once, and though I hate to repeat myself, today's opportunity was irresistible. It's a shame you interfered."

"Sorry to wreck your day, but I'd imagine we can call it even."

As Ra laughed, the light in the room pulsed brighter with the sound.

"So you didn't mean to kill me." Yuugi swallowed. "So just undo it."

"Gladly." Ra leaned forward, bracing his hands on his knees. "Say the word, and I'll trade her life for yours, as it was meant to be."

Yuugi didn't have to give his answer a single thought. "Never!"

"Well, then, child"—Ra's smile was once again that eerie mix of empty friendliness—"let's see how long it takes to change your mind."

Light blinded Yuugi's vision like it had during Ra's attack. He covered his eyes against the brilliance, and when he opened them again, blinking the spots from his vision, his surroundings were blessedly familiar.

He was back on the blimp. He was in the med bay. Yami was there. Yori was there.

Yuugi nearly collapsed in relief. "Yami, what happened? Last I knew—"

But Yami didn't turn.

Just as quickly as he'd absorbed his surroundings, Yuugi realized the true situation.

He was back on the blimp, but he was still dead.

And not even Yami could see him.

The ship was still quiet, but Anzu's heart thundered in the silence. She ran forward even though she felt sick. Her heavy steps echoed in the metal hallways, and the dimmed overhead lights cast looming shadows in every corner.

She told herself to turn around. Lock herself in a room. Stay safe.

Instead, she kept running.

The last time she'd run on the blimp, she'd been escaping Marik's room. This time, her path took her straight to it.

Anzu told herself not to knock.

And as always—

—she disobeyed.

She pounded on the door until her hand hurt, until she was certain she must've woken everyone on the blimp.

And then the door slid aside.

Marik stood in the entryway. But it wasn't Marik. He surveyed her with a lazy, empty smile, and his bloodshot eyes had an eerie almost-pink glow in the low light.

"Well, well—" he started.

Anzu whipped her hand from her purse, holding a black tube of lipstick aimed at Not-Marik's face.

"This is pepper spray," she snapped, "and if you don't let me say what I came to say, I'll spray it in your eyes, and you can enjoy the rest of the tournament blind."

He laughed, but he didn't speak. Maybe it was only out of morbid curiosity, but she would take the opening while she had it.

"Marik, I know you're still in there." She stared directly into his eyes, willed herself to see past the monster. "I don't know what this is, but I know you're still inside."

"He's not," Marik drawled. "I've been chipping away at his mind for years. Only the scraps remain."

"Liar." Anzu nodded toward his arm, where his brown skin was smeared with dried blood. "I know you did that, Marik. You saved me; now save yourself."

Laughter rumbled through Marik's chest again, but Anzu pressed on.

"I know it's easier to hide, but you don't get to. No matter how much it hurts, you don't get a free pass out. I don't care what you did. You're going to get your body back, and you're going to face me here in the real world, and we'll talk. Okay? Because that's what friends do."

Marik rolled his eyes. He reached for the rod, lifted it from his belt. The ever-present third eye on his forehead glowed brighter.

Anzu's hand trembled around the lipstick tube, but she only raised her voice and kept going. "Maybe you killed your dad because you're a monster, and maybe I'll ship you off to prison myself. Fine. But maybe it wasn't your fault."

She thought of that little boy aching for sunlight, and her voice broke. Her eyes burned with tears.

"I don't think it was your fault, Marik." Wherever he was, she willed him to hear. "I don't think that's who you are."

"I grow bored with your—" Marik's words cut off in a hiss as he grimaced. For just a moment, his right eye wasn't bloodshot, and it was fixed directly on her.

Anzu's heart lifted.

"You're not alone, Marik," she said, nearly breathless with hope. "I won't stop fighting, so neither can you."

Then the monster clutched the right side of his face, ducking away with a snarl. He swiped at her with the rod, but she was already running again. Before he could recover, she darted around the corner and down the next hallway.

She pounded on another door; it opened to reveal another Ishtar.

"I need your help," Anzu said, ducking into Ishizu's room. She swiped at her cheeks, cleared the tears before the tombkeeper could see.

The door slid closed, and Ishizu raised an eyebrow. "Ms. Mazaki, only hours ago, I would have known the reason for your visit before you even arrived, but I'm afraid now you'll have to tell me in plain words."

"I'm going to save your brother," Anzu said. "And I need your help."

Marik was dreaming. Sometimes he walked through metal passageways and people spoke to him in warbling, underwater voices. He wasn't sure if he ever answered. Sometimes he thought he felt his mouth move, but he couldn't make out the words. He thought he might have been dueling once, but he couldn't grasp the cards.

The air was hot. Maybe he had a fever, or maybe his anger was baking the oxygen. No, it wasn't his anger. Was it?

There were other passageways. Passageways of stone rather than metal. Sometimes when he was walking, his legs sank deeper than the ground, and he found the yellow-stone tombs. His father walked those halls, but he walked them as a corpse with unseeing eyes. His footprints were blood. If Marik tried to hide, there were always pools of blood when he looked down.

I'm sorry. He tried to say it, but he didn't have a voice to apologize just as he didn't have arms to hug himself, didn't have eyes to cry. He was nothing. Just a floating idea in changing scenery.

Something trickled from above. Orange sand. Metal or stone, whatever his surroundings, it always rained orange.

"How does it feel? To have your mind unraveled by guilt."

Unlike the voices outside, there was one voice he always heard with perfect clarity, a whisper in the dark that made him tremble.

"You asked for power. You wanted to kill."

He couldn't answer it. He could only listen.

"You enjoyed it."

Each time it spoke, the orange sand rained harder, filling the air until Marik could hardly breathe. He tried to run from the voice, to hide from it as he hid from his father's walking corpse. He searched for an exit, longed for one, tried to remember a life where the sky was blue instead of orange, where the air was cool and clean.

There were moments he almost reached it. Moments of clarity where he called for help.

But no one answered.

"No mercy for murderers." The voice was laughing at him; he could hear the invisible smile.

He sank into the tomb more often, could hardly pull himself from it, and at every corner, his father's corpse waited, staring him down with empty eyes. He wanted to scream, but when he tried, he screamed with his father's voice, and the sound cracked his spirit.

After an eternity in his unfeeling maze, Marik realized there was no escape in his future. He could keep trying, facing his skeletons at every turn, losing his mind granule by orange granule—or he could stop. He could stop, and he could sink. The realization brought a bit of sadness, a great wave of relief, and an outpouring of sand. The sand gathered at his feet. It soaked in the blood, clumped and turned red. Another layer collected, then another, and soon the red was buried. Marik could no longer move; he was trapped to the knees. He didn't care. Let it rain.

But another voice stirred in the darkness.

It teased at his mind. Familiar. Soft.

Who's there? He still didn't have a voice, but as he strained to hear, the falling sand slowed, quieted its own sound at his command.

He caught it in snatches. Feelings more than words—ideas like understanding, comfort, and a phrase that echoed in his heart: It wasn't your fault.

"It was!" hissed the condemning voice. "You asked for it. You enjoyed it."

"It wasn't your fault," said Anzu. Anzu, the stupid, reckless girl who'd tracked him down, brought him food, let him speak his mind.

"You're a murderer, Marik."

That wasn't what Anzu called him. She called him a friend. Even after she knew what he'd done, she called him a friend.

"You have no friends. Only people you control."

No, he had just the one. Even after he'd controlled her, after he'd cut her, after he'd shown his worst sides. He didn't deserve it, but maybe there were other things he didn't deserve.

It wasn't your fault. Marik clung to the words, grasped them without hands and spoke them without a voice. Inch by inch, he dragged himself from the sand.

And he kept searching for the exit to his cage.

Yori was in a cage. It wasn't anyone else's doing; it was her own. It was the first idea she'd had to protect herself from the beast.

She'd collapsed in the middle of her conversation with Seto only to wake up somewhere lightless. The dark stretched in every direction, no buildings, no edges, just dark. And it was no doubt the dark that saved her because she heard the beast before it saw her. She'd tried running first, but she couldn't outrun it forever—the tingle on her arms told her it was faster, stronger.

So she'd thought of the cage, and the bars had suddenly appeared around her. She had Seto to thank for the idea—his talk of tigers in cages. Except in Yori's case, the cage was her protection from the tiger.

"Come out, come out, little girl," it purred, rippling the darkness. "I'll get to you sooner or later."

"Over my dead body," Yori muttered.

"Your body is mine now. I can arrange that."

Maybe it could. Yori was in completely new territory. She wasn't an idiot; she knew she was facing the consequence of losing her shadow game with Marik. She just didn't know what that consequence entailed. Or how to beat it.

"So how does this end?" she called out. "Either you catch me or I outlast you?"

"There is no 'or.' I've swallowed you, body and soul. When I lick the last bit, you'll disappear forever."

"Just try it. I'll cut your tongue out."

"Fly from your coop, then."

The cage rattled, the metal floor vibrating beneath Yori's feet. Her eyes strained in the dark, and she caught what might have been the shadow of movement.

"No thanks," she said. "It's rent-free, and I'm strapped for cash."

If she imagined her switchblade, she held her switchblade, the leather grip familiar and firm under the curl of her fingers. But there was no guarantee an imagined knife would be any good against the prowling shadow monster Yori hadn't seen. It spoke like a human; maybe that's all it was, but wouldn't it be ironic if she counted on that, leapt from hiding, and poked her little knife in a beast the size of Seto's Obelisk.

While the dark certainly had its benefits, it had its drawbacks, too. And the wrong gamble would cost her everything.

She tried imagining the monster away. If it worked with cages and knives, it was at least worth a shot. But after a moment of silence, the same scratchy voice returned: "You can't hide forever."

"Who says I can't?" Of course, Yori had no intention of hiding forever. She was, at heart, a fighter.

And just because she was in a cage didn't mean she couldn't go anywhere.

"Each item is limited by the imagination and strength of its user." That was what the spirit of the ring had told her in their shadow game. "You think all the bracelet can do is see spirits?"

She closed her eyes and calmed her breath, focusing all her attention on the bracelet. If she was trapped in her own mind—which she was certain she was—it was still on her wrist. Based on what Ishizu had said when she'd handed over the necklace, not just anyone could wield a Millennium Item.

The beast couldn't.

But Yori could.

"What are you doing?" the beast growled.

Yori felt the heat on her wrist, and she smiled. "Being imaginative."

Though the doctor urged him to sleep, Yami kept watch at Yori's bedside all night long. At one point, he tried speaking to Yuugi, but he was again met with only silence. It worried him more than he cared to admit. Soon enough, Yuugi would need to return to the real world; since it wasn't his natural state, he could never stay a spirit for too long. Yami didn't want the boy to return to a world he currently found too overwhelming.

More than that, it wasn't like Yuugi to keep completely to himself, no matter what was wrong.

/I'm still here, partner,/ Yami said finally. He wasn't sure what else to say, and he couldn't escape the pit in his stomach that told him this was all his fault. Marik certainly was, but more than that, there was everything Shadi and Marik had implied about the Millennium Items, about the past, about . . .

"Within the puzzle," Shadi had said, "is the heart that started it all."

Maybe Shadi was right. Self-pity was certainly an unbecoming color if Yami was to blame for all his problems in the first place.

The light in the room suddenly increased—and not from any overhead lighting.

It was Yori's bracelet.

Yami lurched forward in his seat, clutched her hand. "Yori?"

Half of him was terrified of seeing her eyes open only to realize it wasn't really her. The other half clung to hope.

But her eyes didn't open. In fact, she showed no changes at all. And slowly, the glow faded.

Yami thought of the maze he'd been trapped in when he'd seen Osiris. He swallowed. He kept one hand on Yori's while he reached the other to gently brush her face.

/Come back to me,/ he said silently, willing her to hear. /Please./

But the rest of the night passed with no change, and when the overhead system announced breakfast in the lounge, she was as unmoving as ever. The doctor came in to check her vitals, and there were no changes there either.

"You've been here all night, sir," the man said, setting his clipboard aside. "The holographic system is strenuous, and even with the vitals of a prize fighter, I'm afraid I must insist you at least take breakfast before competing. Unless you intend to withdraw."

"I can't withdraw," Yami whispered, eyes fixed on Yori's slack features, still hoping this would be the moment she'd wake.

"Then you must head to the lounge. Doctor's orders."

Yami hesitated, then forced himself to his feet. Before he left, he gently traced her hairline as he'd done several times throughout the night, imagined she could somehow feel his touch, somehow follow it back to him.

/Wait for me,/ he said. /I'll beat Marik, and I'll save you. I promise. Just wait for me./

"We'll try waking her again in a bit," the doctor said. "See if the episode has passed."

"Don't." Yami swallowed. "I mean, wait until after the finals. Please. If you can."

The doctor regarded him for a moment, then nodded as if understanding. "You'd like to be here when we do."

It wasn't the reason, but nevertheless, Yami nodded.

"We'll wait. Just come here when the tournament concludes."

"Yes, sir."

And even though it was the hardest thing he'd ever done, Yami checked his Duel Disk, checked his deck—

—and then he walked out the door without a backward glance.

Note: I've had some very strong feelings lately. Luckily, this chapter was the perfect opportunity to express some. I love the therapeutic effect of writing. Anyone else enjoy that? Anyway, this update came a little early thanks to all that. See you next Thursday, January 23rd.