Téa now has an accent mark! This is another chapter that has to be braided into the canon story arc. These require finesse I am not sure I have. I feel a little creaky, honestly. My writing has been confined to applying for PhDs. The characters are the property of Kazuki Takahashi.

Tumbling: Questions

Why does this keep happening? Téa wondered as she fell, screaming, through a wormhole into a parallel dimension. Seriously, how did I get here?

After Kaiba, Téa did not go back to sleep. As she came back to the room, she kept her head down, scared to look the security guard in the eye and discover that he had heard what went on, or saw Kaiba leaving her room. She was grateful to see that the guard was sitting by Mai's bedside.

She stayed by Mai's side, careful not to lean too far forward, or flex her inner thighs. Not moving kept everything at a dull throb, while every movement of her legs felt like a rug burn.

She refused to think about Kaiba. He was unimportant, in the great scheme of things. This was the world that was at stake, a standoff between good and evil. He had taken way too much of her time from her friends and their needs.

Yet, she couldn't stop thinking about him. She couldn't decide how to handle this. If she went out of her way to avoid him, she was certain he would know why she was avoiding him. If she just acted like normal, she would have to interact with him at some point—she had never been afraid to speak to Kaiba normally. When was the last time she talked to Kaiba casually? Now that she thought about it, had she ever?

These were her weak moments, moments she dragged herself away from to try to concentrate on how she was going to help her friends? How could she help them?

It was a good question, and the churning of it in her mind was a distraction from the abrasion, even though the question hurt more. What skills did she have? She could play Duel Monsters, but not well enough. What good was she?

As the sun rose higher and higher, Téa sank lower and lower.

Téa heard two staff members outside the door. Though she had to strain to hear, she picked up that the dirigible had wandered off course inexplicably. I can guess why, Téa thought bitterly, even though, intellectually, she knew Kaiba wasn't flying or navigating the ship.

People were moving toward the dining area, though nobody seemed to have much of an appetite. Téa had the feeling that Joey and Tristan would prove her wrong, though. She didn't feel like she had the guts to find out.

She would force herself.

She winced her way out of her chair. Mai still slept. Téa wondered what she was seeing in the shadow realm, and what was happening to her there. It couldn't be worse than what was happening to Téa herself.

Don't think like that, she admonished herself. It's like what you told Joey. Kaiba can't bring you down. You can't let him.

At the door, hand on the knob, she took a deep breath. It's okay to be scared, she told herself. You just can't show it. And if you're angry, channel that toward making a difference. No matter how small it is.

As she opened the door and stepped through it, she bumped squarely into a narrow chest that smelled of dust and myrrh. It was too short to be Kaiba, and Téa found herself feeling strangely calm when she made eye contact with Yami Marik.

He grabbed her shoulder and leaned closer to her. The smell made Téa want to cough. The veins pulsing on his face were nauseating. Téa imagined them bursting and squirting black blood.

"Well, well, well," he chuckled, his voice a gravelly, electronic boom. "I wonder how the Pharoah will feel if he finds out his little Queen is letting herself be diddled by Seto Kaiba. He won't be pleased, not pleased at all."

Téa stared back at the bulging, graying whites of his eyes, the tiny pupils.

"You know what the old pharaohs used to do when they found their wives or concubines were making the beast with two backs with other men?" Marik -Thing licked his lips with a purple tongue. "They would throw them in a pit of scorpions and scarab beetles. Alive. So, if I were you, I wouldn't spread my legs. Or, at least, I wouldn't let news about my legs spread." Marik laughed hard then, impressed with his own wordplay.

Téa slapped him.

In the seconds that followed, when Marik stumbled, recovered and stared at her, Téa's first priority was not fleeing but washing her hand as soon as possible. Wow. I didn't pop his veins, she thought.

Marik grinned at her. "Fiesty wench," he laughed, vibrating the phlegm in his throat. "The puny Marik did well choosing you for a vessel."

"Yeah," Téa said, thinking of drops of blood splattering onto the tile of her bathroom floor. "Well, I'm not his vessel anymore, and both of you better not fuck with me."

She turned and walked away as Yami Marik howled with laugher, a maddening, croupy sound.

So, this is me going crazy, she thought, I slap possessed people and say the word "fuck." She remembered Kaiba in the bedroom, his accusation clothed as a confession. Well, I handle insanity better than Kaiba, that's for sure.

"You stupid, silly girl," Marik said behind her. She turned back. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, his face gloating. "You don't know anything, do you?"

"What don't I know?" Téa crossed her arms and tried to look nonchalant. "Enlighten me."

Marik smiled and shook his head. His lips seemed impossibly wide, splitting his face from ear to ear, reminding Téa of the split-mouth woman from the urban legends. The veins, the bulging eyes, the slash of a mouth displaying that squirming tongue—she wanted to look away, but yet couldn't stop staring.

"Oh, you don't know!" His eyelids lowered lazily. "I can never hope to enlighten you."

"Whatever. You're wasting my time," she continued walking down the hallway, stepping a little bit quicker with each stride, wanting to put distance between herself and the laughing Marik-Thing as soon as possible. She hated having her back to him—the spot between her shoulder blades tingled and flinched, as if someone were stroking their fingers bare millimeters away from her skin, as if she were anticipating a blow—but she was not going to turn around and expose her fear.

Was there something she didn't know? Were she and Joey still in danger of Marik's mind control? Something worse? Or was he messing with her?

What's more, why could she slap Marik, but not Kaiba?

While investigating the green grass and flowing streams of the strange place they found themselves where the dirigible docked, Téa felt curious, even comfortable. Her friends were around her, and her friends were her fortress against Kaiba, her cozy blanket that shielded her from the monsters in the closet.

The flowers looked real enough to smell. As she leaned in to see if they had a scent, she saw familiar legs and feet, and as she slowly panned up those legs to the face glaring down at her, she felt like she could swallow her own tongue. There was Kaiba, in front of her, staring at her, when she knew for a fact he was standing behind her, at least 40 feet away.

This was a nightmare. She would wake up from this. Or she was lying in a hospital bed next to Mai, and this was her Shadow Realm.

She would test this. She would talk. Say anything. If she could talk, it wasn't a nightmare, and if her friends responded, that meant that they were there with her, and she wasn't in the Shadow Realm. Whatever happened, she would not take her eyes off this Kaiba until she was sure.

"Um, Kaiba," she said. Her voice sounded normal, if cracking. "Did you change your clothes really fast or something?" She scooted back. This was another good sign. She could move.

"Relax," Kaiba said behind her. His tone was mildly annoyed. "It's an avatar I created."

There was more conversation after that, but Téa had to admit she didn't really care. All that mattered to her was that her friends were still with her, and she could talk and move away from anything that might harm her. Of course, this all had to do with Kaiba, same as always. She wasn't surprised at that, though it did kind of amuse her that five grown men who were angry that they had been fired orchestrated all of this. After all she and her friends had been through, this seemed kind of banal, not to mention immature.

Then the ground gave way, and she bruised her butt on the rocky ground of a canyon, dust billowing up into her sinuses. Yugi wasn't there to help her up, and she almost broke her ankle wandering through the dust and stones. She decided that if she lived, she would incinerate the shitty shoes she was wearing.

Then the Hitotsu-Me giants came, and Téa ran until she was knocked unconscious.