Song of the Chapter: Wellness by Last Dinosaurs
Ruka lays the piece of paper flat on the coffee table. The rest of us, on the couches or floor, are immediately drawn in, the hairs on the back of everyone's neck standing high. The Sharpie hits the sheet and, with it, she creates a triangle. The shape is divided into three horizontal pieces, the first tip being the smallest, the second chunk the second largest and the third the biggest.
The youngest Signer eyes us all then. "There is very little I know about the realms. What Regulus has told me in the past is just a gist. But even so…"
Ruka points to the upper tip of the triangle: "This is the Spirit World, the home of all duel monster spirits. Out of the three, it's the oldest and smallest. Ancient Fairy Dragon is its guardian."
The next: "This is our realm, The World of the Living. It's the youngest to be formed. The Crimson Dragon is suspected to be our guardian."
The final section: "And this is the Graveyard, as the spirits call it, or as we know it, the Underworld. Others and the souls of the dead are here, and because of that it's the largest. I know it was created shortly after the Spirit World, but I'm not quite sure who oversees it."
"It's probably that humongous tar-monster we fought in the Signer War," Crow comments, then shivers.
I mumble. "Do I wanna know?"
"I think I'd rather not," Bruno decides, a small frown perching upon his lips.
"So this," Aki points to the Graveyard, "is where Maria's Other originated?"
Ruka replies, nibbling the corner of her mouth, "I'm assuming since that's where all Others come from—even ours, the Immortals."
"And Maria's Other traveled up from the Underworld to here, our realm?" Jack stresses as if he's sorting out all the pieces from last night's puzzle all over again. "Which the Immortals did, too?"
Ruka's pigtails swish to one side as she tips her head, eyes clouded with thought. "Yes to the first question. I don't know to the second. If I'm to take a guess, though, I'd say not exactly; the Immortals didn't come here in entirety like Maria's Other did. They're already connected to our realm by the Nazca lines, so I think the rules are a bit different for each situation.
"Which reminds me of something else important: the how." Ruka draws circles on the lines between the Spirit World and the World of the Living, and the World of the Living and the Graveyard. "There are portals that connect the realms to one another. However, the Spirit World and Underworld aren't connected whatsoever, so the only way to get from one to the other is by going through our realm. And for this reason, the World of the Living tends to have the most portals of the three realms."
Crow pipes up, "And most of the weird shit."
"How do the portals look?" Rua asks his sister. "Maybe if we can find them all we could close them up or something."
"That's not possible. Not only are the portals themselves apart of the realms, they could be anything and anywhere."
"Well then how else do we stop Others from coming into this world? How do we know more aren't following in Maria's Other's footsteps?" Bruno questions.
"Others, in general, aren't a problem," sighs Ruka as she leans back against the bottom of the loveseat. "Regulus said that the natural layout of the realms is much like gravity; those up above," she points to the Spirit World and drags her finger across to the other end of the triangle, "can easily come down."
"But those below can't come up," Yusei follows.
"Exactly. That's why, other than the Immortals, there's never been a concern about them."
My hands' grasp tightens around my arms. My eyes cling to the terrace door, like the raindrops cling to the glass outside. "He must be in there. It's the only thing that makes sense." I turn to everyone. "Ancient Fairy Dragon said Zephyrus has been missing for centuries. Now, out of the blue, he comes to her with all the right answers about the one thing she—the Head of the Spirit World—doesn't know? How else if not for being down there himself?"
Ruka processes it in a murmur, "He can't come back up."
"And maybe that's why it's so difficult for you to reach him," says Aki, eyes shifting sympathy in my direction.
Jack is straight to the point as usual. "So how do we free him?"
Up from the floor comes Rua's hesitant question, "Is the portals option back on the table?"
"No," Yusei commands, his tone emptied of its relaxed nature. He eyes us all. "No one's going anywhere."
"So, we're just gonna sit and talk some more?" I retort, incapable of keeping my voice from prickling. But as the lamp light in the corner across from me flickers, I begin to regret giving into the impulse. I survey the room as Yusei had, this time searching for any realizations. Thankfully, the instance seemed no more than coincidence to those who noticed. With a deep, hopefully soothing breath, I state, "We need to do something, and it needs to be done now."
The stiff, high-pitched ring of the phone erupts, drawing everyone's attention.
—
D-Wheels and D-Boards alike slide into the parking lot of Sector Security Headquarters. Removing my helmet, I spot Carly's buggie down the row of vehicles, the reporter standing at its trunk.
"I saw you guys on the highway coming up here," the reporter says once greetings are done with. "You got Ushio's call, huh?"
"I'm hoping it was worth the drive," I respond.
"Let's hope it's more than."
Once paged to the front desk, Ushio and Mikage guide us upstairs. It takes two elevators to get the entire party up to the sixth level of the building. Ushio opens a door on the left and invites us in. The room looks meant for a conference, with a long table and dozens of chairs. On the farthest end stands a man beside the table. His head's full of hair and held back by a pair of shades. His face is naturally mature, it appears, with a sharp nose and square jaw. Despite that, I'd guess he's somewhere in his fifties.
"This is Dr. Dale Meyers," Mikage introduces him. Dale nods and grins. "He's been helping us translate the hieroglyphs Maria and Carly found in the cave."
"I'd shake all of your hands, but that's a lot of hands," Dale chuckles. "And I'm assuming you'd much rather get into it, anyhow."
As the rest of us find places at the table, Dale activates the overhead projector. Its blue light flickers awake and, at first blank, displays a glyph, hovering above the table in two-dimensional space.
Dale clasps his hands behind his back and clears his throat. "Now which is it that we want first: good news or bad news?"
Heads turn toward me. I gulp down the anxiety, but it lodges in my throat in its descent. My answer comes out cracked. "Bad first."
Dale glances at the room and tries to unravel the tension. "There's no need for all the, uh, gloom and doom. 'All glyphs are good glyphs,' I say." He's the only one who laughs. "Um, well. The only bad news I have to tell is that, as far as I can tell, these markings don't have substance."
"You're saying they're meaningless?" asks Carly, neck craning in an instant. Dale's words may have well been an insult.
"Oh no! No!" Dale's hands wave as protest, but they don't return to his back once he's finished. Instead, he points to the holographic image, swiping one to the next. "They do translate as words, roughly: sun, companion, fire, water, snake, father, bird."
My eyes dart down to the table as the bird hieroglyph sits in the light. All the quivers and chatters of the cold come back to me with ease. Knowing she's looking, I meet Carly's eye with a rigid smile.
"What's the problem, then?" Jack's browline dips.
"He doesn't have to tell you guys anything, you know," Ushio pipes up from his post at the wall. After a warning glare, he leaves the show to Dale again.
"What I mean to show by this is that, usually when we find a large quantity of glyphs in one space, it's because they tell a story or recite a historic event. However, these—with the repetition and non-specific order—don't appear to be anything like that. My best guess is they're scribbles, ramblings."
Sensible or not, if they meant something to the Other, they mean something to us.
"And the good news?" Crow prompts the hieroglyphist.
"The good news… The good news is that this find is," Dale laughs again, his clean-cut features rounding out, "remarkable."
Noticing his audience's mystification, he continues, laughter dissolving into excitement. "You see, neither me nor my colleagues have seen anything like this in all our days. Here, let me show you.
"You all know of the Ancient Egyptians, yes? Well, their writing system is believed to be one of the oldest on earth, dating back as far as 3000 BCE." Dale pulls up an arrangement of Egyptian hieroglyphs. "Notice how simple the characters are in all of them, how thin and crisp the lines are.
"Now, compare these with glyphs from the Mayan peoples." The rows of images switch out again. "Their way of writing is bigger, bolder. Every hieroglyph is detailed and curved.
"These line patterns are something very minor to you, I'm sure. They are something so minute they could have easily been dismissed when you found these. But they are quite the opposite, believe me. My initial thought about these glyphs was that they seemed familiar. And while I was right, I was also wrong."
Dale's smile turns wider with every word. He grabs another image and enlarges it—three sets of lines spiking up and down. "This is the Egyptian glyph for water. And this," another glyph rests next to it, a square with a circle of crisscross lines locked inside it, "is the Mayan glyph for water. Finally, this is the one you found in the cave. And look."
Dale taps the Egyptian marking. The hieroglyph alights and moves to the center of the newfound glyph. He taps the Mayan drawing too, and the same happens. The rounded square that outlines the crisscross lines flies to the three zigzags and takes its place around them.
"It seemed like sheer coincidence." Dale shakes his head, his hands momentarily on his hips. "And it would have been, if not for the same phenomenon happening in all seven of the glyphs you all found."
The Mayan and Egyptian glyphs find their ways into each of the newer markings, fitting as snug as puzzle pieces every time.
"This is not coincidence," Dale whispers. "This is language."
"So, these carvings," Mikage pauses, expression scrunching and squinting, "they're from a time when Mayan and Egyptian cultures blended together?"
"No, not a blending. Blending would insinuate the two cultures were close enough to integrate and become one. And there's a pattern of Mayan subtlety in comparison to Egyptian prominence…" Dale gazes over us after his appraisal. "This is not Egyptian and Mayan. This is Egyptian to Mayan. This is a transition."
Sun. Companion. Fire. Water. Snake. Father. Bird.
How many times have I read it now? A billion and one? The frustration sits clearly in my throat, lines my eyes until the drops come pouring out. Isn't there anything else you know how to do, Maria? Anything more useful than bawling your eyes out all the time?
I spent all night with my best friend Google again. Of all our times together, last night was by far the worst or, at best, least fruitful. Dale's insinuation that some group of Egyptians branched from the main empire and settled in the Americas proved difficult to validate.
There is no such thing as Egyptian-Yucatec or Egyptian-Spanish, for that matter, surprise surprise. The two cultures did have commonalities, but there were no parallels unseen between other ancient cultures. The single victory in the search were images of cities shielded by vines and jungle, hidden to man's eye until recently, so there were no obvious contributions to our case that we could use aside from Dale's.
Although I called it quits shortly after that and went to bed, my mind was far from a resting state. I lied there, too worried about what skulked around in the dark of night and too afraid of what my subconscious would bring to light. Before I knew it, the sky was speckled orange and the streets sputtered of morning traffic.
In short, it was a night I would not recommend. Zero out of ten.
The elevator dings, alarming me out of my hole way, way down in the dumps. Yusei steps out from the lift. I shoot him a brief scowl. I wish he would've buzzed. Then my heart wouldn't currently be trying to jump out of my chest.
The frown turns upside down (sorta) when he focuses his eyes on mine. "Hey."
"Hi." I rock myself up from the dining room chair, shutting the moleskine and snatching the check all in one swift motion. My bare feet slap against the floor as I walk up to him and bestow the slip of paper. "Here you go."
Yusei stares at it, confused. He stares so long and so silently that I shake the check at him just to make sure he hasn't fallen asleep or anything.
"I can't take that," he finally says.
I scoff, "Of course you can. Unless it's too small—is it too small? I just looked up all the stuff you did on the truck and added it up, then put in a little more for the parts. But if it's too small I can pay you more."
"Nayla's truck was a favor, Maria." His wild, raven hair dances in every way when he denies, "I can't take that from you."
"Uh, you can and you will."
"No."
"Gimme your hand." The thought crosses my mind that asking ruined the whole 'element of surprise' part of the attack, but I lunge for him nonetheless. Yusei locks both hands behind his back. Grinning, I threaten, "Give me your hand or I'm gonna call Martha!"
"Have to try harder than that."
"I'll drink all the coffee in the world and you'll never have a drop ever again!"
With chests pressed against one another, I can feel the burst of air run up and out his nose. "That seems pretty impossible."
It's then that I realize how close we are. It's the closest we've ever been—well, aside from my breakdown at Rally's apartment. It's the closest we've been in normal context, is a better way of putting it. Despite realizing this, the full brunt of the epiphany doesn't hit me until we're eye-to-eye. In his eyes lie the truth. Just like mirrors and the light, they are just another thing to avoid.
"Fine." I pull away and step back a few times. The check falls on the table. "You don't want the money, it's… I just thought you deserved it."
I walk into the kitchen and grab a little milk bottle out of the fridge, along with the strawberry syrup. Pour it in and shake it up. I face him again.
"Do you want something to drink?" I offer up.
His answer doesn't come. Before speaking, his lips purse together. "I want to talk to you."
The glass bottle stills in my hand. "We're already talking," I say softly.
"At the hospital, you said—"
"None of that was real," I try to convince the both of us. With ease, I erased the confession from my mind once the twins had woken, but my words came back to me like a boomerang that same night. I waited at their sides and hoped the admission wouldn't spur conflict, just as I am now. "I drank a little more than I thought I did at the club, and I was the drunken blubbering cliché."
"You said I didn't think you changed, and you were right." It hurt him to say it; the pain sits as evidently across his features as his criminal marker. Even so, he goes at it again, "I don't think you've changed and I wish I could say otherwise."
"Well," I blow out, glancing at my toes, "there we go."
"No, Maria," he rebuts. "It was only until the night at the hospital that I thought that. And I thought it only because I could see that you did, too. I…we—everyone believes in you. I'm sure you know that."
"I do, but," I sigh, sliding the bottle onto the table, "I was just venting. Really, this isn't necessary."
"You say that because you don't see what we…what I see, Maria. You say that because you see what you want to see, and not what's there. It's not a matter of if you've changed or not. It's that you don't believe you can."
I free my lip from my teeth's bite. Whispering, I explain, "It's not that easy."
"It's not." Yusei comes forward, but stops no farther than arm's reach. "It's scary and new. It's something that takes time. And it's worth it. You deserve better—you deserve to see what I see."
Like the moon does to the ocean, Yusei's stare pulls me closer. After a while, I close my eyes. My pinky raises in the air and I feel his wrap around it. When my eyes reopen, I say, "Only if you take my money."
His gaze looks off in amused annoyance. "Fair enough."
"Then we have ourselves a deal." We shake on it.
The mechanic slips the check into his jacket pocket. Though, I salute him off, his mind doesn't seem settled on the door just yet.
"One pep talk a day is all I can handle, y'know," I jab, leaning on a dining room chair.
"I promise I'm done," he smiles. "I just wanted to tell you that I'm leaving."
I glance from him to the door and back. "I see that."
Yusei clarifies this time, "I'm leaving New Domino tomorrow morning. I have some business to take care of with an old friend."
"Machine-fixing business," I slowly press, "or pep-talk business?"
"I think it might be the pep talk kind."
"I see. Well, I hope your friend ends up okay."
"So do I." He nods. "I shouldn't be gone more than a week."
"Alright. But if it takes longer, it takes longer. It's best not to rush things like that." I smile at the irony. I couldn't take advice for shit, but oh how smoothly could I dish it out.
He agrees and states, "I'll tell the twins when they come by the apartment later."
"They'll understand. They won't like it," I point out, "but they'll understand."
A bout of quiet seeps into the room. Yusei's the one to sweep it away, nodding goodbye and turning for the elevator.
"Wait." I follow hastily, my hands on the walls the only thing from keeping me from running into him once I stop. "When you get back, do you think… Would you come with me to visit Nayla?"
His lips slope into that signature smile. "You don't ever have to ask."
Can I get a hell yeah for worldbuilding?! Ugh, I'm so happy we're starting to get to this part; worldbuilding is hands down my favorite part of the writing process, yall. I know this chapter's kinda short and not as intense as some of the most recent ones (I'm sure some of you are just fine with that lol), but all chapters count for something.
I really don't have free time anymore, but of course I write when I can. I'm not quitting till the last chapter is finished and uploaded! And I wanna say thanks again for all your guys' support—especially reviews because they're my landline when my creative juices are running dry! Since I have the next few chapters outlined, in theory, it shouldn't be long before the next update.
I hope to hear from you cuties in the meantime! TTFN