And now the entrance of some people you may have assumed I forgot. We're heading for a climax now, and I'm looking forwards to getting there. (And please bear in mind that however crazy my final resolution looks, we are dealing with a fandom that employ the Flying Catapult Turtle Castle Gambit as a matter of course.) Standard disclaimers apply.

"If you're like us, calling all riders, roll up beside us, no place to hide us,
all freedom fighters, let's unite us, switch on your nitrous and let go

Destination, for navigation, man up ya stations, feel the sensation

Surround invasion, with communication, move quick,

we might avoid contamination."

Phenomenon, Thousand Foot Kutch.

03:00am, New York International Airport, Arrivals Lounge.

They arrive in New York to find utter chaos.

Which would have been there anyway, considering that this is New York. However , it is not strictly the chaos that she had been expecting, there are... people, everywhere. Most of whom are not waiting for loved ones so much as waiting to find out what on earth is going to happen to their loved ones. The airport is more crowded than Ishizu has ever seen it before, even during the chaotic mess of Dartz's attack on Domino.

The air is tense and frantic. Airport employees are walking around without their trademark smiles and grace. People... argue and snap and complain, and small children cling crying to their parents ankles or pull their siblings hair. All it would take to instigate a rampage would be for somebody with an "END IS NIGH" placard to begin counting down from fifty.

No doubt about it, Ishizu thinks. The sense of tension is greater here than it was in Egypt.

Marik coughs. 'Ah. Well... this is...'

'Frantic?' Odion suggests. 'Chaotic? A psychic disaster waiting to happen?'

'I was going to say highly disorganized.' Marik says. 'And the atmosphere around here can't be helping people's nerves. Things could get nasty if this keeps up...'

Ishizu examines the crowd closely. The millennium necklace has not worked for her in years now, but Marik's statement seems far more like a prophecy than anything.

'Well, sister?' Marik asks uneasily. 'If you were planning to tell us why you brought us here then... well, now would be a good time.'

'I did not plan to bring us here, if you recall, Marik,' Ishizu mumbles. 'I was aiming for England. However, this may turn out not to matter if my estimate is correct.'

'Estimate?' Marik frowns. 'You're applying figures?'

'Of a sort. I hope it will become clear soon. Brothers, come with me,' she says, taking Marik's arm and pulling them steadily through the crowd. When a serviceman spots her to as her identity, Ishizu merely pulls herself upright and states in her most official tone that she is here as a representative of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, and hopes that sounds more important than it actually is. It has the desired effect; or perhaps the serviceman is just too frantic and on-edge to care very much about three oddly dressed stragglers in the middle of the airport.

They pass through the building unnoticed.

The Danube River, South 04:35 am

Joey grumbled, shoving a completely dead cellphone back into his pocket, and kicking at the cobbles by the river side, pointedly trying not to look over the railing into the thrashing black and white waters. 'I'm just saying that if I'd known yesterday morning that the fate of the world and our best buddies lives were both gonna be riding on our shoulders again, I would've charged my cell.'

'We know, Joey,' Mai sighs, pausing to remove her high heels for the umpteenth time. You'd think by now after so many apocalypses, she'd have thought to invest in something a little more practical. In their case it seems like even hindsight is never twenty-twenty. 'At least we still have mine, though we can't get an online connection with it anyway. I just think we should call up the other group and let them know how we're doing.'

'And I think we need a map here. I've got no idea where we are! And you're trying to tell me mister super executive business guy here doesn't have a phone with an online connection?' Joey points at Kaiba accusingly. 'Come on, man.'

'I have a portable laptop that I use for online purposes,' Kaiba says. 'I left it on a seat in the jet when we were attacked by monsters in mid flight. I was a little preoccupied at the time. And I see no reason why some know-it-all idiot decided to install Wi-Fi on mobile phones with screens the size of your palm. You can't do anything with a piece of software that small. Besides which, we do not need a map, Joey. We're following a damned river. There are only two directions we can go in the first place.'

'Yeah, sure, that logic worked great until about now. And Bakura doens't even own a phone!' (Which is weird, who in the heck doesn't own a mobile phone?)

'Some people just don't keep up with the times.'

Okay, he's definitely close to holding an actual conversation with this guy. Now Joey knows he's going nuts.

Bakura winces. 'Guys, I am still here, you know. And if you'd please? I'm trying to concentrate and you're not making it easy.'

'Oh. Sorry, just...' Joey shrugs. 'This atmosphere, you know. It's freaking me out. I keep thinking we're gonna see jumbo's big brother around the next corner.' Actually, they haven't seen any of the shadow monsters at all for a while now, except for those strange creatures crawling around in the water and they, for the most part, have left them well enough alone. That's kind of strange. He would've thought this place would be crawling with stiffs...

'I hardly think that knowing the name of the street you get killed on will help you, Joey.' Mai sighs. 'And you even sure you know what you're doing, Bakura? You've never done this kind of thing before so how can you be sure it's working?'

'Quite frankly, Mai, I'm not sure,' Bakura sighs. He has his eyes closed and his hands reached out in front of him, like a water dowser. From the way his face is crunched up, he's not having any luck. 'Yugi is far more experienced with this than I, and my own previous experience with shadow magic came from... well, more dubious sources.' (Namely Yami Bakura, god only knows why 'Kura puts up with him after everything he did...) 'I'm definitely aware of something, but it's like trying to find a single slightly blacker pin in a haystack full of regular black ones, you know?'

Kaiba stares at him. 'No.'

'Oh. Well,' Bakura sighs, eyes opening. 'I can't think of a better analogy I'm afraid. Whatever I'm trying to do it isn't working.'

'I'd love to say I'm surprised,' Kaiba scowls. 'Though I'm not sure your efforts are even needed, anyway. Look at the water,' Joey looks before his brain can think to protest Kaiba's rudeness. The water is still crawling with ugliness, but... not crawling as much. There are places where the water is almost entirely pitch black.

'Yeah, we're looking,' Mai says sarcastically. 'Snakes, severed limbs... floating monsters, generally disgusting examples of the Shadow Realms inhabitants... what about it?'

'Can't you tell? There are less of them. The river's a lot clearer here than it was back where we started. And it's getting clearer as we walk.'

Bakura blinks. 'Oh. Well then that would suggest that—'

'That we drew the short straw and we're going the wrong way. Away from the epicentre,' Kaiba says. Looks like Yugi and the others got it right. They're going in the right direction while we're off on a wild goose chase.'

'Ah... well, that would certainly explain why I'm not feeling much, Bakura mumbles.

'Oh, now who thinks we don't need a cell phone?' Joey growls. 'Mai?'

'Hold on, hold on,' Mai is scrambling around in her coat (if you can call it a "coat"... how the heck does that tiny little thing even have pockets, he'd like to know?) 'It's in here somewhere, let me dig it out.'

And then Joey isn't looking at Mai anymore. He's looking right past her and at Bakura, who has dropped his hands to his side and is staring at something in the depths of the river.

'Bakura? What is it?' It's too much to hope for probably, but he can't help asking: 'Do you sense something?'

Bakura swallows visibly, the colour draining from his already rather pallid cheeks. 'I... No... but I see something, and I don't think you're going to like the looks of it.'

The look on his face reassures Joey that this is probably true. But he has to turn around anyway, and when he does, he realises he hears strangled, muffled groans and hisses, not just from the water below, but from the streets all around them. The noises scratch at the back of his mind like fingernails, coming closer with every heartbeat.

Mai stops looking for her cellphone. Kaiba swears, and Bakura does the only thing he could probably think of to do; the same thing they'd been doing ever since they arrived here. He reaches out to grab Joey's wrist, and for just a second before he starts pulling, Jounouchi feels that same crackling buzz of electricity that he felt from Bakura on the airport runway, as well as the tension in Bakura's wrist, indicating that he is absolutely determined not to unleash such destruction again.

They run.

03:15am, New York John F. Kennedy International Airport, Main Entrance.

They step out into the darkness of the New York streets, and almost immediately, the sense of chaos around them increases. It's a peculiar sensation, one that even perfectly ordinary people with no experience can feel: a kind of crackling in the air, like static on your tongue. She might have expected to receive more strange looks with regards to their peculiar clothing and appearance, but this being New York, they don't stand out particularly anyway.

The night air is warm, but it's not a patch on Egypt, and Ishizu tells herself that this is why Marik shivers as he tries to work out the cab routes, and continues shivering after they have successfully flagged one down.

The driver of the cab is shivering a little too, rubbing his hands together and muttering. 'Funny night out here, huh? You guys travelling for business or pleasure?'

'Neither. We had to take an emergency flight.'

'We were heading for a completely different continent.' Marik says, unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice. 'But what with all of these diversions we ended up here.'

'Yeah, some craziness that is,' the driver whistles. His accent is sharp and heavy and suggests a man who has lived in New York all his life, but has many relatives who don't, and has picked up one their accent. 'Those guys in charge, they say they've got everything under control but... I've seen the online videos; you know you can see the storm clouds in Austria from England? Lucky for us we decided not to take that trip to Paris, my old lady and me. Where was it you asked for again?' the driver leans back over the chair.

'I didn't. The Main street, please. Near the Empire state.'

'The Empire? That's gonna be one helluva bill there.'

'We'll be fine. I appreciate your concern, but we will do the best we can.'

The driver shrugs, as if he hears this all the time and has learned not to comment. 'Just be careful out there at this time of night, it ain't exactly a good time for a midnight tour of the city, you know?'

'That would stand to reason,' Odion says, calmly. 'The physic energy of the darkness is spreading extremely quickly; it stands to reason that some sensory echoes would be affecting people even as far away as here in New York. Fear not. The crisis shall be dealt with.'

'Ah...' the driver glimpses at Odion in confusion, and Ishizu resists biting her lip. 'Right. So uh... whereabouts did you guys say you come from again?'

'We didn't. And Egypt,' Ishizu says as politely as she can. 'Please excuse our lack of desire for small talk but we are in something of a hurry.'

'What, to get to the Empire state? At this time of night?'

'If we don't get a move on then by tomorrow there might not be an empire states for us to visit,' Marik says, shuddering slightly.

'Uh... right, so, there's a five dollar call out change to begin with.'

Ishizu hands over the money. Nobody asks how she has managed to get a hold of American dollars. Then driver accepts the money with a wary look then shakes his head and turns back to the wheel.

'Least he didn't try to identify our accent. I hate when people spend half an hour trying to identify my accent.' Marik mutters uncomfortably, and Ishizu reaches out and wraps her fingers around his, knowing full well that his discomfort has absolutely nothing to do with anyone's interpretations of his origins.

It's still a half hour's drive to their destination, and Ishizu can only pray that she is following her instincts for the right reasons.

The Nevada Desert, 10:15 am.

This stinks.

Officially. This stinks even more than that time when some creepy guy with weird hair took away her beloved's soul (she still calls him that; it's a strange force of habit that she just hasn't gotten over. Not in five years, and probably not even in twenty). It stinks like losing a duel because of a bunch of characters based on fairy tale books. It stinks like being turned down for Prieston, or stuck in the middle of a desert on an archaeology dig you're only going on because it makes your grandfather happy.

And damn it, why did she choose this one week to be away from the university and therefore away from a decent internet connection? Damn it, why couldn't grandfather's birthday be some other time of the year?

'Rebecca, dear, I think you're exaggerating a little.' Grandpa says, and Rebecca realises she's been ranting out loud again. Her fingers stagger on the keyboard, running her coding.

'Grandpa, look at the news.' She sighs. 'On any channel. It doesn't matter which you pick. I am so very much not exaggerating right now. The world is going to pot, and my dar— and Yugi is right in the thick of it, as usual. And also as usual I've been left totally out of the picture.'

'Now now, Yugi knows how busy you are, I'm sure he would've contacted us if he thought it was....' Arthur stops that sentence mudflow, probably realising that it does not get much more serious than the entirety of Europe being carpeted in shadow fogs.

And never mind Europe... Rebecca peered uneasily out of the trailer window, noting how dark it seemed to be across the Nevada desert, considering it was almost mid day in the middle of spring.

Rebecca Hawkins knew an End-Of-The-World level occurrence when she saw one.

'Grandpa, we can't even see Europe anymore! We have friends over there! Relatives! This is beyond serious. Okay, so maybe it's not quite on the same level as giant duel monsters appearing on the streets...' Rebecca shook her head, shaking out her hair from the bandana she'd been using to protect herself from the Nevada sun.

'I know, I know,' Rebecca sighs. 'I'm just starting to wonder, grandpa, how many degrees, birthdays, and commendations I need before they'll start seeing me as anything other than a spoiled little eight year old brat who'll just get in the way.

'You were never once a spoiled brat.'

'Well no... Not a spoiled one, anyway.' Rebecca smiles slightly, then turns back to her computer.

'Ah, you know, Rebecca, we have the Mutou's phone number in the book, there's really no need to hack encrypted government databases to find that information if you need—'

'Heh. Sorry, gramps, that's not what I'm doing. I'm trying to find out what the official authorities are saying about this whole mess when the general public isn't looking their way.'

'Ah. The CIA then.'

'Right.' Rebecca says coolly. 'Somewhere on these websites there's got to be some real information about what's really going on. And I plan to find out what it is.'

'You could get into serious trouble,' Grandpa says, but he's speaking in that voice which Rebecca has come to recognize as having the tagline "but I won't stop you if it's really that important, I trust you."

'I know. But I think Yugi's in big trouble right now. We know he was in Vienna when this whole thing started, and if I know those guys...' she bites her lip. 'Well, they'll find a way to get to him, I know they will. I just... I wish I could too...'

'I'm sorry, dear, if I had known an apocalypse was going to break out, I wouldn't have dumped you on a dig site in Nevada with no transport to the nearest airport.'

Rebecca pauses, turning round in her seat. 'Grandpa, would you really let me buy a ticket and fly out into that mess anyway?'

'If I had refused, would you have accepted it?'

Rebecca hesitated, caught off guard for one long moment before her grandfather smiled at her and she felt compelled to smile back. Then she sighs and turns back to her computer. 'Okay... okay, let's keep working on this. Oh, I am going to kill those guys when I get my hands on them!'

The Danube River, South 04:39 am

They don't manage to run very far before the creatures appear.

The first of them come from the river. Hands that are not really hands clamber up across the metal railings. The second come from the buildings all around them, clambering out of smashed windows, and the smallest of them clambering up from the drains in their hundreds, like swarms of insects. In fact, Joey realises, that's probably exactly what they were. As if bugs and worms weren't creepy enough to begin with, these ones had been given a Shadow Realm makeover.

'Great. What is this, night of the living dead?' Mai talks tough, but she always does. Her voice is tinged with terror.

'Maybe... maybe we can sneak past them.' Joey suggests uneasily. 'I mean, go through the back alleys or something.'

'Unlikely,' Kaiba mutters. 'It's not us specifically that they want. It's Bakura. Wherever he goes they'll follow.'

He's right, Joey realises after a moment. Kaiba's right and Bakura knows it. The creatures were drawn to his light just as they were drawn to Yuugi's, and unlike Yuugi's monsters, they weren't bound by the power of Yami's true name. Unable to pull away, but unable to keep from destroying it when they reached it. and Joey realises that the only reason none of them have attacked yt is fear. They know what Bakura can do to them if he wants to. They know that they've been running into s death trap. And they'll still destroy everything in their path in order to get to it. Including Joey, I, and Kaiba.

'But why now?' Mai snaps. 'I can't work these damned things out, already!'

'If it helps, I don't think they're anymore sure on the issue than we are,' Bakura mumbles/ 'They... they're afraid of the light. But they still want to get to it.'

'Right, horses to a burning barn,' Joey mutters, fists clenching as the area of free space to move around them gets smaller and smaller as the creatures move in. Some of them seem as if they were human once but really, most of them don't. They have too many teeth, too many arms... a couple of thin, white bodies scramble down the wall like dinner-plate sized spiders, and the noise.. .the noise is stinging in his ears. He can't think of a better way to describe it. Just being so close to these creatures wrapped up in darkness and panic makes his head hurt.

'I hardly think it matters why they're doing this,' Kaiba says. ' The point is that they're here, they're probably after him, and it's not like we can dump him.'

'Ah... your concern is appreciated, really,' Bakura mutters.

Lesson of the hour: Bakura has discovered the ability to be sarcastic when terrified. But Kaiba is still looking at Bakura, and Bakura is wincing, hands drawn in and wrapped around himself, as if desperate not to crack. 'You can thank us by doing what you did on the runway. We have to get through these things and get back to Yuugi.'

'No.' Bakura snaps.

'Bakura, listen—

'I said no, Kaiba,.' Bakura yells, sounding more serious than he ever has before. 'I won't do it. I won't... I...' He swallows, stepping backwards into Joey's shadow. Joey can feel the light of Bakura's body touching his skin and see the confused anger in his eyes. The fear of death and murder hanging over his head. 'I can't.'

'Kaiba, we're not talking about just the monsters!' Mai snaps. 'We can't tell which of those.. .those things come from the shadow realm and which of them are people!'

'I don't think they'll be so discerning when they're devouring us,' Kaiba hisses, stepping backwards and raising his fists and... Oh, yeah, he knows martial arts, doens't he? Not that it's going to do them the slightest bit of good.

They rise like a tide. Like a storm closing in, and all around you can hear nothing but their shrieks and screams and chaos. The monsters seem to glow in the darkness, so close to the source of their creation, but Joey knows that isn't light he's seeing coming from their bodies. Whatever humanity is left within these monsters is being quickly drowned out by their desperate thirst for destruction –their own included. And Bakura is staring at them in terror, his eyes large and dark, and Joey knows what he's seeing – he's seeing a woman named Samantha, dying in a pool of thin, white blood.

Mai shudders as something far too tall raises its wormlike head and screeches into the horizon. The other creatures join in, in a bizarre parody of warning. 'Times running out here, guys, think fast.'

Joey hisses as a lumbering body that may have belonged to an alligator once snaps at him from out of the deep black water. Water which burns when it touches Joey's skin, hissing right through his clothing. The nearest of the creatures, one with no facial features except for slits of nostril, flaring in the darkness, reaches out a claw towards him.

When he played the events back to himself later on, Joey would edit out his yelp of panic as he snapped away from the creature's jaws, colliding with Kaiba's back as he did so. 'Aw, man where's Atem when ya need him?!'

And then... well, then Joey doesn't know exactly what happens.

One minute he was yelling for Yami and the next, the creature was snapping away from him like he was a red hot stove or something, and in the time it takes him to shuffle as far backwards away from the creature as possible, Joey realises why. He didn't say Yami. He said...

'A-Atem...' he whispers it experimentally, picturing the face in his mind as he does so. The air trembles. He remembers the creatures Yuugi had gathered, being bound by the mere mention of Yami's name...

Mai frowns. 'What is it? Joey—'

Joey whirls round, gripping her hand tightly. 'Yami's real name! Mai, Kaiba, Bakura! Say it!'

'What?' Kaiba scowls.

'Just trust me! On the count of three, yell it as loud as you can. Think of it! Picture his face and know it's him!'

'But...' Bakura hesitates. 'Joey, wasn't the very point of calling him Yami to avoid the problems that happen when we call him—'

'Kura, just do it, okay? There's no time!' He feels Mai gripping his hand and phantom breath, icy cold against his neck. The monsters are so close he could touch them and no amount of beating at them is going to make them go away.

What have they got to lose anyway? He takes a breath: 'On three, two, one...'

The name rings out loud across the city of Vienna; whatever remained of the city's electricity supply goes out with a flurry of sparks and a tremble of static, and the phantoms on all four sides of the small group screech in agony. Then they scatter. The creature rearing over the buildings staggers and falls, crashing into the surrounding buildings with a violent creaking. The insects scurry away with violent chaos, eating one another in their panic.

The pathway before them clears, as easily as Moses parting the ocean.

All because they said one damned name...

Joey clutches Mai's hand that little bit tighter. 'Now, run!'

03:50am, New York, 9th Avenue.

However much sceptics such as Kaiba attempted to deny it, the world around us is filled with magic, Ishizu was explaining to her brothers as they walked the darkened streets of central New York with nothing but the Millennium rod to protect them.

'And the magical potential of any one location so often comes down to people, inhabiting certain places at certain times.' She said, aware that she was filling her brother sin on information that the pair of them mostly already knew.

'Sometimes, an area is prone to magical phenomenon to begin with, though, Sister.' Marik says, shivering and folding his hands inside his jacket.

'Correct. Places such as Stonehenge, The Empire State Building, and of course, the Pyramids of Giza, were built in locations where the barrier between our world and the shadow world is particularly thin. Kind of like... Magical Nexus points. Our original destination in England was Stonehenge. I theorised that perhaps, if we could reach that place... we might be able to access the shadow world itself.'

That's why you aren't too worried about us being in New York instead of England, then, Sister,' Odion mutters. 'It is an epicentre for magical potential as well, isn't it?

'Yes. It seems that wherever humans congregate, the darkness gathers. It feeds upon the human spirit. More to the point, the entire Shadow Realm that exists within our own is connected on an imitate level.'

' The Undernile?' Marik guesses at what she is talking about.

'Yes. It's connected to every other source of darkness in the world, in one way or another. What is happening in Vienna is linked to what is happening here in New York.'

She pauses, staring up at the infrastructure of the city all around her. New York, Ishizu knew from stories that Tea told him, was a frantic city filled with everything from beautiful parks to ugly street gangs, from quiet coffee shops to bustling roads. From kind old ladies who loaned you tissues to people who would rob you blind as soon as look at you. There were few places in the world that displayed such a huge variety of human temperaments. New York stood as one of the testaments to human constructive achievement. For a world where everything was larger and bolder and stronger, where emotions ran high and secrets ran deep.

In truth, this was probably a better location than they could have hoped for.

'And from here,' Odion says, catching on. 'We can find some way to help stem the magical shadow flow rising in Europe.'

'I get it, Marik mutters. We could at least have made Yugi and Yami's job a little easier by helping reduce the pressure of the shadow magic worldwide. Like... turning off a tap, to stop a pipe leaking half a mile away.'

Ishizu shook her head slightly. 'I only wish that what s happening halfway across the planet were all we had to worry about, my brother. But the chaos is closer than we think. The threat that we have sensed is no longer contained to Europe. It spreads slowly across the world. I believe it is places such as here, in where the final unleashing of darkness will occur first.

'I can believe that.' Marik muttered, still shivering. He was more tuned to the darkness than any of them, Ishizu knew. She could only imagine what he must be feeling. 'So now that we're here... what can we do about it?'

Ishizu pauses for a moment, realising that few all her speeches, she isn't entirely sure just what to do about anything. She had been, as Yuugi might say, planning to cross that bridge when she came to it. Only now they had come to it, and still she was uncertain how to process. Without the omnipotence of the Millennium Necklace she had little idea of what the future held for them, besides darkness and danger.

And let's face it, you didn't need a magical item to sense that. 'We... locate the nexus point of this city,' she says, evenly. 'And then... well, we find some way in which to seal it off.'

'And then?'

'Then we hope to the gods that Yuugi can resolve this without us,' Ishizu says, quietly

Vienna International Airport, Arcade. 4:41 a.m.

They're everywhere.

He can't see them in the darkness, but Mokuba knows they're there, because they shift away whenever Marcus turns the light of the torch upon them. Mokuba is counting the seconds he thinks it'll take them to get tired of holding back and rush the light anyway. He knows what it feels like when something wants to kill you. He's had the feeling many times before.

The industrial lamp sputters for several moments, then dies, taking the warmth and safety of its light with it. Marcus swears. 'Damn it, that was all we had that could hold them back!'

Mokuba bites his lip uneasily. The arcade has no entrance doors, just an opening straight into the plaza. There's no way to lock the monsters out, and even if there was, he doubts it would stop them.

'Sir we should move again. If they get in here we'll be completely surrounded.'

'We'll be completely surrounded wherever we go, there's no point!'

No way out now, Mokuba thinks. The only possible way out now is for them to bring back the light.

The Danube River, South 04:55 am

'Joey? Is... you?'

Yugi's voice is high pitched and trembling. Which is enough to push Joey's already on edge brain into overdrive, he fumbles with the phone in his grip, lungs still aching from their wild race across the city. The monsters have gone, knocked away by the mere force of Yami's spoken name. Bakura is leaning against a wall clutching his chest, Mai is trying to get out of her high heels and probably wishing she'd had the sense to invest in some running shoes, and Kaiba...

Kaiba's just glaring, as usual. Nice to know Status Quo is in place. 'Yugi? Yeah, it's us.'

'Are you... kay? You sound like... unning?'

'Sorry man, we just had a bit of a close encounter with the hellions over here. Oh, by the way, we think the epicentre's probably in your direction, just so you know. You're gonna run into it before we do.'

'Yeah, I know. And we... feel the aftershocks of your meeting with the shadow monsters from here,' Yugi chuckles humourlessly. 'We... ve a problem... oey.'

'What, bigger than the one we already have?'

'Ah... bigger woul... be the operativ... word, see...' Yugi's voice is crackling on the phone line and Joey has to bash the phone with his hand to get the sound coming through.

'Hey, Yuge! Speak up a little, this phone's being dumb.'

'Joey for goodness sakes, put the thing on speakerphone,' Mai mutters, rubbing at her feet irritably.

'Oh, right, yeah' Joey fumbles with the phone buttons. 'There ya go, man. Now speak up.'

'...Orry. Um... you know what we were saying, about that tear in the shadow realm we're looking for probably being really small? Like, say, the size of a duel monsters card?'

Joey feels his heart skip. 'Yeah?'

'Well um... it's not the size of a duel monster's card. At all. What we're sensing is just the farthermost reaches of the tear. I...' Joey can hear Yugi biting his lip. Actually hear it. And he's stammering. That's never a good thing. '...It's bigger than we thought it would be, Joe. A lot bigger.'

Joey feels his heart sinking into his sneakers. '...How much bigger?'

'From here... Yami thinks it's probably half a mile wide at the epicentre.' Yugi says after a moment of silence. 'And there's another third of a mile of highly concentrated power surrounding it. A huge section of the Danube has been poisoned right down to its source. Every single pipe, every single drain every single man hole cover in this part of the city... it's all infected, Joey. The tear in the shadow realm we're looking for is nearly half a mile wide.'

Joey looks up. Mai looks up. Bakura looks down, twisting his shirt in his hands. Kaiba swears.

'So...' Joey swallowed. 'So in other words, in order to get to that great big, almost-a-mile-wide epicentre, you and 'Kura...

'Would have to walk through it.' Yami's voice says, coldly into the speakerphone. 'And there is absolutely no way that even Bakura and Yugi together could survive inside of that. We can't get into the epicentre, Joey. There's no way either of them could make it and that was the only plan we had.'

'I think what Yami is trying to say,' Honda's voice says suddenly, down the line. 'without bein' too delicate about it, is that we're totally screwed.'