Urgh. Seriously, I swear I'm slipping. The ideas for this story worked so well in my head originally but now I just seem to be forging on against all odds even knowing that what I'm saying doesn't entirely work. I hope the occasional faltering of logical consistency won't bother you too much. I'll do better next time, I swear. Also, this chapter's ending kinda hurt more than I was honestly expecting it to. Hm...

This chapter was brought to you by Murray Gold's "Source", from the Doctor Who Season Four soundtrack. Just felt like getting that fact out there, because this song equals drama.

Vienna International Airport, the "Travelling Man Arcade". 4:41 am

The empty darkness at the back of the arcade is strange and mesmerising. Usually these places are brightly lit and full of noise. Seeing one so still and quiet makes Mokuba uneasy.

Though really, quiet is the wrong choice of word for this. There are noises out there. The pounding, screeching sounds of things that aren't quite human anymore.

Mokuba comforts himself in the darkness by reminding himself that whatever is going on now, however many monsters there are baying for their blood, and however unlikely their chances of survival may be, it still beats having your soul trapped inside of a playing card, and your body trapped inside of a dark and dirty dungeon. If nothing else, at least he's capable of movement and cognitive thought processes this time.

He works as quickly as he can beneath the control panel at the back of the arcade, fiddling with wires and rerouting links and...

He needs a power source. The whole building is dead.

The heavy sound of something thudding against the marble flood makes Mokuba look up from the panel and wince. 'Marcus!'

A few moments later his body guard reappears, clutching what looks too much like the remains of a broken chair for comfort. Especially since all the chairs in the corridor are attached to the floor with large steel bolts. 'Sir, they're—

'Here. Yeah, I know, Marcus, give me your radio!'

'..What?'

'It's an isolated power source, right? Quickly, hand it over!'

Marcus looks unconvinced, but he reaches out anyway. 'Okay. But I hope you know what you're doing, Mister Kaiba!'

It's as Mokuba is taking the radio from his hand that the first of the monsters appears, crawling around the edges of a driving simulator, tearing the leather fabric of the chair with its thin claws. Marcus immediately leaps to the fore, guarding Mokuba from an oncoming attack, and Mokuba struggles to hold in a scream as the sharp white claws lash across the bodyguard's forehead, and sends him careering into a nearby display.

Marcus falls to the ground with a heavy slam.

Without a moment left to lose, not even to panic, Mokuba rapidly hotwires a few more cables together ripping apart and reconfiguring the radio as easily as if it were a remote control for a toy car. And Mokuba has been building working toy cars since he was eight years old. He staggered to his feet, giving a loud yell as he brought his hand down hard on the control panel.

The arcade erupts in an explosion of light and sound.

The Danube River, Shadow Realm Nexus Point. 4:50 am

It was a simple plan, in theory.

Somewhat suicidal, yes, but simple.

Yugi needs to close the rift, and to do that he has to touch it, reach into it and close it off with the power inside of his own mind. This intention was complicated by the fact that there was over half a mile of thick, dark magic shielding on either side of the central point. There was no way whatsoever that somebody without any dark magical potential would be able to survive walking through half a mile of shadow magic unshielded. Not alone.

But that was the thing about being Yugi Mutou. He was never really alone. Not even when they're stuck in a city with no telephone connection. The slightest signal they'd been able to get a few minutes earlier had been to Joey's cell, and Joey was in the same city. And now even those calls weren't getting through. They knew this because Yami had been bashing the keys of Téa's phone for the last twenty minutes now, and was still receiving no signal.

By the time Joey and the others have caught up ('Sorry we're late, we got a little distracted, what with the residents of the Local Zoo all being determined to drag us into the Shadow Realm. And there's something you don't say every day...'), the darkness is cracking the paving slabs, stinging their tongues, and there are shadows of things that are no longer mortal clambering over the walls of the surrounding terraces. The wall reaches upwards farther than they can see –no hope of getting in that way, then...

'It kind of looks like that Pyramid of Light thing, only, you know. Not light,' Tristan shivers. 'Remember?'

'How could I forget?' Kaiba mutters. 'The dome cost a fortune to repair. You're saying this is a similar phenomenon?'

'Basically, yes...' Yugi nods. Actually there's not much about this scenario that they haven't dealt with before in some shape or form, he thinks. From the people transforming into monsters, to the shadows of darkness creeping across the land, to this strange pyramid... The only thing that's missing is a game of Duel Monsters.

And contrary to popular belief, not everything evil in the universe can be held back by a game of Duel Monsters. A card game certainly isn't going to get them out of this one. Yugi reaches out a hand towards the glistening wall of power and energy before him, feeling cold and afraid and almost hopeless. Touching it doens't help. It's like sinking his hand into cold rice. He pulls back, shivering. 'Oh-kay, not good.'

'Mai, you're bleeding.' Bakura says quietly, and Mai curses as if she hadn't noticed, wiping at the cut on her arm.

'It's nothing. Casanova here held on a little tight when we were running from those monsters.'

'I was keeping ya from toppling into the river!' Joey mutters. 'Heck, if it weren't for that little trick we pulled with Yami's real name, we'd probably be dead by now.'

'Yami's real name?' Téa frowns.

'Yeah. Apparently it works,' Kaiba says, coldly. 'Not that I especially enjoy feeling as if somebody is trying to rip my teeth out just because I spoke a single word.'

'We used it to scare off the monster,' Mai explains, gingerly brushing her fingers across the wound in her arm, dabbing at the blood with her fortunately black gloves. 'Just like Yugi used it to take control of the monsters before... That wouldn't be any use to us now, by any chance, would it?' Mai looks at Yugi hopefully. 'I mean, could you take control of these monsters again? Like you did before? Those ones back there were willing to die for you, surely...'

Yugi shakes his head rapidly, interrupting Mai's sentence. 'Sorry, but no. Last time I did that, it felt as if my head was gonna explode. That it even worked before was mostly because they still had enough human in them to respond positively to the light, and now...' He trails off; not wanting to admit that there's so little left that might be done for these people, consumed by the Shadow Realm...

'I don't suppose it'll work on something like this, anyway,' Joey sighs uncomfortably. 'Man, how're we gonna get out of this one?'

'I don't know,' Yugi says, trying to ignore the anxious confusion on his friends' faces as he speaks. 'I could try, I mean, maybe I could get through it...'

'Don't you dare,' Yami snaps. 'Don't even think about running into that thing, Yugi, you'll never survive.'

'Yami, we're not going to survive anyway. At least this way we have a chance.'

'He's right, Yami, I could help.' Bakura suggested uneasily. 'I'm light magic in origin too, aren't I? So I might be able to reinforce Yugi's ability.'

'Bakura, I—' Yami paused, sighing and running his temples. 'Look the offer is appreciated, but it's still impossible, even both of you don't have the combined energy to breach this kind of dark shielding. I'm not sacrificing you both for nothing.'

'Forgive me for interrupting this little debate,' Kaiba says evenly. 'But we do still have a plane that may be capable of flight. We could still get out of here.'

The looks Kaiba receives in respond to this suggestion, Yugi thinks, could floor a mutant pachyderm. Kaiba merely shrugs nonchalantly, as if their disapproval means nothing to him. And in truth, he isn't making a bad suggestion.

'I don't think that's really an option now, do you, Kaiba?' Téa says, with more firmness and certainty than she must surely feel. 'Even if we could get out of here, what about the people? What about the rest of the planet, this... this thing is just going to keep spreading until everyone in the world ends up like the monsters here; just like Samantha. Besides whatever this is, we may already be... infected with it.' She shudders at that thought, realising it's the one they've all been pondering since they got here, but have not quite dared to admit.

'Téa's right, Kaiba,' Yugi says uneasily. 'There's no way into this. And now there's no way out, either.'

'Just... just think about his for a moment,' Téa continues, sounding more and more certain with every word. 'We've never been beaten like this before. We've never backed down. We've faced darkness just as strong as this one and we've won. And there's only a few of us here, right?' She looked up into the darkness, eyes shining. 'When there were only four of us, standing against the shadows, we won... We can pull people back from the Shadow Realm together.'

'You still believe that,' Kaiba says. But his tone is more one of quiet acceptance than of scorn or derision. As if he's run out of contempt.

'Why shouldn't I?' Téa snaps. 'We've done it before, we'll do it again!'

Téa is looking at Yugi now, eyes bright, arms folded tightly over her tracksuit top. She is beautiful and shivering and terrified and so very, very brave, and Yugi understand why even Kaiba thought it so important that she be brought here. That she be able to fight with them.

Téa hadn't needed to come here. She could've stayed away, in New York, where it was at least reasonably safe. She could've avoided all of this. All of them could have... but they hadn't. They had come here, in the dead of night. They walked into the shadows because Yugi called for them. Yami's eyes are as cold as a winter's dusk, probably as he ponders the same things as Yugi. In spite of himself, Yugi finds himself smiling at Yami's determination.

Still. They need a miracle, Yugi thinks again, while wrapping one arm around Yugi and another around Téa's sleeve, or else an extremely fast and heavily armoured vehicle capable of breaching dark magical defences. Shame they can't summon an X Head Cannon into reality, as they could in a virtual realm. Heck, if faith and fury alone could quell the darkness building all across the world right now, then this problem would have been solved before it even began. Heck, even just Yami's name has the power to...

The power to...

He exchanges a look with his other, a glimmer of understanding passing between them like a knife cutting paper.

Yami looked up a glimmer of something that might be hope in his eyes. 'Wait... hold on.' Everyone falls silent under his sudden glare. 'Mai, you're saying that my name still has power here? Amongst all of this darkness?'

'Well it must do,' Mai mutters. 'I mean, we're still alive, aren't we?'

'A-and what use is that, exactly?' Bakura asks, nervously. 'I mean... Yami, all the power of your name usually does is cause explosions, or other forms of property damage.'

Yami doesn't answer for a moment. He's looking at Yugi and smiling that strange, hopeful smile which people usually associate with an almost-lost Duels that he's about to turn on their heads and win anyway. 'Maybe so... but if we can use it differently, then I might just have an idea.'

A rustling like the sound of a flock of birds dying in symphony fills the air and everyone shudders, feeling the darkness deep inside of them. The shield before them is bubbling and buckling, and for just a moment, Yugi allows himself the illusion that maybe the cracks weaving their way across the huge shields surface are a good thing, a sign that it's breaking down of its own accord... Except that he knows that can't be true. The cracks aren't cracks at all – they're veins, expanding as the shield slowly grows, like the aftermath of an explosion bubbling outwards.

'Whatever it is, we have to do it now,' Kaiba hissed. 'Because our time just ran out.'

New York, 9th Avenue Television Centre. 4:15 am

'Ah.' Marik says, as his sister quite calmly (and without acknowledging her brothers' bemused expressions) picks the lock of the building and opens the doors wide into an empty silence of reception decks and chairs. Of course, where else would you find the epicentre of dark magic?'

'Marik.'

'I'm just saying, sister; there's something ironic about this. The core... you're certain that it's here?'

'I... don't know.' Ishizu admitted, frowning slightly, as if she had only just realised the fact herself. The darkness was pushing in and clouding her senses. Finding even a nexus point of darkness in all of this was the equivalent of finding a specific, slightly sharper needle in a haystack consisting entirely of other needles. She had walked the entirety of 9th Avenue in a half-daze, following the faintest of tickles of light in the corner of her brain, willing the millennium necklace to give her some direction, some kind of clue as to where to turn. She wasn't sure if the Millennium Necklace has anything to do with her finding her way here, but something had certainly drawn them in this direction.

The television studio was silent and abandoned – strange, really, given that a news corporation should honestly be staffed throughout the night, most likely with several film crews working at the same time. Yet not even a security guard had blocked their entrance to the premises. In fact, Ishizu could've sworn she heard a frightened whimper from within the booth gate besides the car park entrance.

Then, in the darkness, something moves.

It happens very quickly. Faster than any human being can think, even one who could once see the future. One moment there is only darkness and something shuffling uneasily in the absence of light. The next there is a shuddering breath, and Ishizu is slammed onto her back, something clawing at her throat, cutting off the air so efficiently that she can't even scream. Odion is crying out in rage and frustration, and Marik is screaming her name. There is a glisten of steel as he unsheathes the Millennium Rod in one quick movement.

The moment passes quickly. There is rage, noise, and light; a burst of familiar magic tingles on her tongue as Marik leaps quickly between her, and their oncoming assailant, trying to rip it's hands away from her throat. The air shudders as he sends out a psychic flash (she can think of no other possible word for it) so powerful it would crush the brain of any normal human being. The arms clinging to Ishizu's neck loosen, and she pushes quickly, forcing the body away. It lands besides her with a heavy, dead thud.

The Danube River, Shadow Realm Nexus Point. 4:53 am

'Bakura,' Yugi said quietly, still staring up at the bubbling wall of darkness before them, with all of them trying to ignore the shuddering beneath their feet, and the fact that they are so close to it. 'I need to you do something for me. It's quite a big something, though, so if you don't want...'

'Just say it, Yugi, anything.'

Yugi bites his bottom lip to suppress an inappropriate smile. Because that's so like Ryou. 'I need you to contact the other you.'

There's a pause of silence. Someone drops a torch. Bakura squeaks a response: 'I'm sorry?'

'I know it's a lot to ask, and I'm sorry, but... Our phone reception doesn't work anymore and we need to get a message to the outside world. You're the only one that can do it. I need you to get a signal to your other self, and then I need him to get that message to Duke, and then Duke... well, it'll make sense. Hopefully. If it works. Do you understand?'

Bakura continues to stare at him, bewildered, 'Of course, but I don't see.'

'When you hear the message, you'll understand.'

'You're sayin' we should trust that guy? Joey mutters uneasily.

Yes. He might be of questionable morality, Yugi mutters, 'but he won't want Ryou dead. Trust me, he'll take the message. Ryou?'

Bakura pauses for one long, trembling moment, and then takes a deep breath. Yugi knows what happened the last time his other self had been allowed inside of Bakura's head; he remembers the pain and fear in Bakura's eyes when he thinks about the monsters he killed, using his other self's power. The thought of returning the signal is very painful to him. 'Alright, Yugi. I'll try.'

Yugi takes hold of Bakura's arm, in a vague gesture of comfort. 'It's okay. We'll be right here the whole time. You don't have to be afraid of him.'

'I'm not,' Bakura says far too quickly. Then he pauses, glimpsing at the growing wall of darkness besides them, and smiles faintly. 'Well... not so much. Not anymore.'

He reaches out a hand to take Yugi's somehow knowing that this is what they have to do.

03:50am, New York, 9th Avenue Television Centre". 4:16 am

There is no question as to whether or not the creature is still alive.

In fact, judging from the way it flopped so suddenly to the ground, with a bone crunching thud, it had probably been as good as dead long before Marik got to it. Now it's lying in the corridor in the middle of the darkness. Its fingers curled up into insect-tight balls. Ishizu sits there for a moment, catching her breath and staring at the figure lying prone on the floor before them. Odion's hand on her shoulder is a warm and constant reassurance.

'He's human.' Marik says, speaking so calmly you wouldn't believe that a few moments ago he had been brandishing the Millennium rod and whispering ancient, cold incantations to freeze the monster in its tracks. Now the being lies prone before them, hands curled into claws, face trapped in an expression of paralysed rage. 'Or he was, at any rate. That much is clear... must've been one of the night security.'

'A human, infected by the darkness.' Odion said darkly, hands curling into fists. 'He's probably amongst the first to undergo such a transformation outside of Yugi's location.'

'But he's dead.' Marik frowns in confusion, I hardly did anything. 'All I meant was to shock him away, I—' and then he seems to notice the man's hands curled tightly around his own throat. He and Ishizu realise what must have happened almost simultaneously. They realise what the man had been trying to do, when he lunged at them out of the darkness. 'Oh.'

'He tried to take his own life,' Ishizu whispered, shivering, understanding coming to her so quickly that it's almost painful. 'This human must have been one of the purer ones.' One such as Yugi; one who couldn't tolerate the corruption of the dark magic spreading steadily across the planet; who was twisted and terrified by the sensation growing like a cancer from within.

Dark magic may have been ugly, but it was not by nature evil... And yet to one such as this, with nothing but light within their body, it was pure poison. This man had been lunging at them not just to attack, but to beg for his own destruction, to plead for relief...

Marik had given him his wish.

'Then we were correct,' Ishizu says, trying to shake away the coldness in her gut (honestly, she's seen worse than this in her time). 'The darkness is spreading. The fear and rage we see outside is only the beginning.'

The man's face was pale, his skin seeming to have been stretched taught around the veins and arteries of his neck. His eyes bulged within his head.

Could this be a fragment of what had been happening in Europe? Were Yugi and the others facing down creatures such as this one? Humans turned into tools of darkness? Ishizu shuddered at the idea of Yugi ending up just like this poor mortal, and pushed the thought out of her mind urgently.

They need to find the recording studio. Something tells her this, so clearly and plainly that it might as well have been a spoken voice.

Ishizu decides that, spooky voice in her mind or no, they have no choice but to trust it, and begins to walk blindly into the darkness, stopping only to reach down and carefully close the eyelids of the man lying on the ground before them.

Ishizu mentally squints against the darkness swelling in her brain as they move deeper into the building. Momentarily, she finds herself cursing the Millennium necklace for getting her involved in this. For only the briefest of instances, Ishizu finds herself hating her own heritage.

The feeling pass quickly as she reminds herself that that is merely the darkness talking; the ugliness inside of her being brought to the surface by external shadows. Her brothers are experiencing similar sensations, no doubt. Particularly Marik, who had not stopped shivering since they arrived in New York, and was covering up his anxiety with bravado and false courage. He slowly reaches out and took her hand in both of his, allowing her to draw strength from him.

It was all that he could do, and Ishizu was grateful for it.

'Whatever your plan, Ishizu, we'll follow you. You understand that, right?'

Comforting as her brother's faith is, Ishizu still can't help but feel that she is walking them into a death trap.

Yami Bakura's first reaction to the unexpected intrusion is "What the fuck?" Coupled with a healthy dose of "get the hell out of here!" It's been a long time since he was on the receiving end of a direct mind-to-mind message and seeing his host body standing before him in the glare of his subconscious all of a sudden is not a little surprising.

'Ah, it worked. Um... hello.'

And yet, Bakura Ryou stands there before him, a nervous, shadowed outline in the depths of Yami Bakura's mind, gazing at him through deep, brown eyes. For all the world he looks exactly as he does in real life, if with the faintest outline of white surrounding his body. He hadn't thought the weed had the power to do something so massive...

'And what exactly are you doing in here?' Yami-Bakura mutters, his tone of voice more amused and intrigued than irritated. It's not like the speck can do any damage to him, after all... Not really.

'I-it seems to me that I have about as much right to be in your mind as you do in mine, Other Me.'

'Don't call me that.' Bakura grunts. He can't think of anything else to say. He looks his Other up and down appraisingly. The image of his small host stands before him in his mind, not trembling or shuddering or anything of the sort. There is no fear in his eyes or actions. He is merely standing there, looking a lot more firm and composed than Bakura knows Ryou honestly feels. 'What do you want, Surface?'

'To deliver a message from Yugi,' Ryou says. 'To Duke Devlin.'

How convenient. Yami-Bakura smirks faintly. 'Oh, and you want me to pass along this message?'

'Obviously.'

Ha. What is he, Yami Bakura thinks, irritably; a shadow-powered email service? 'And why would I do that, little host? What incentive could you give me?'

'How about this: if you don't then everybody will die. We're in Vienna in case you didn't know,' Ryou Bakura explains calmly. 'The shadows are so deep here you can't find the light anymore. We're trapped here and we're going to die. And then the rest of Europe is going to be transformed into a shadow hell. And then they'll probably all die as well. You don't want that. Not really. You're not Zorc.'

'Really?' Bakura mutters, testing the waters a bit. He wants to see how much his host understands him, he wants to know... 'Fair enough. You're not much use to me dead.' Bakura reaches out and runs a hand through his host's not-quite-real hair and sneers. 'Alright then, little Ryou, what is it you'd like me to say?'

Domino City Airport, 10:53 am

'What the hell—?!'

The air catches in Duke's throat, mostly because Bakura has just grabbed his arm and is clinging on with all the fierceness of an angry, white haired lobster. Serenity yelps in confusion, clinging to her seat and frowning.

Duke grunts, extracting his arm 'Gah! Bakura, wha—?!'

'Shut up.' Bakura snap, and when Due glimpses at him to yell some more, he notices the spirit's eyes are dull and dark and that his mind is perhaps not quite in the same place as the rest of him.

'W-what's happening?' Serenity whispers.

'If I knew I'd tell ya, 'Ren—'

'I said shut up, mortal.' Bakura snaps again. I'm trying to take a message here.'

'...A message.' Duke gives Serenity an uneasy smile. 'From who, exactly?'

Bakura doesn't answer. Not even to shout an explicit. He just keeps staring, as if looking into something deep, dark, and endless. Serenity stays quiet, trembling in the seat behind them. The silence seems to go on for as long as it takes the grey storm clouds overhead to cross the sky and vanish into the horizon. The visitors to the airport sweep past them thoughtlessly.

Then Bakura looks up, blinks ad twists his neck in the manner of someone sorting out a cramp. He looks at Duke. 'Alright, speck. My little host body has a message for you here. And like it or not, you're going to listen to it.'

Vienna International Airport, the "Travelling Man Arcade". 4:51 am

Six minutes.

It had been exactly six minutes since the monsters first entered the arcade, seeking desperately for the source of warmth and light that was Mokuba's body. It had also, Mokuba thinks, probably been the longest six minutes of his life. He glimpses upwards to see Marcus; deprived of the chair he'd been using to defend his master from the onslaught of monsters, he had been using his bare hands to keep them from going any further. That he'd kept it up as long as he had is a minor miracle.

No longer.

Mokuba hisses as electricity burns his palms; sparking from the haphazard system of wires and controls he had desperately hotwiring together. It's ridiculously unsafe, but still better than having those monsters claws around his throat. The second the lights in the arcade went up, the creatures had screamed and scattered, and Mokuba saw exactly what Yugi had meant about their being moths to a flame. Drawn into their own destruction, they kept batting and shrieking as they clawed at the activated machinery all around them. Arcade games, motorcycle machines, shrieking dance mats, glittering, flickering toy booths, and the constant, screaming noises that to any normal human being would be nothing more than irritating. To these monsters the pain is terrible and intoxicating. Mokuba winces as the creatures scatter, shrieking in pain. It's hard to think of them as once being human, with their twisted, deformed bodies and angry, confused eyes, and yet somehow, Mokuba felt sorry for them.

This sympathy only deepened as he reached out and flicked the final switch controlling the arcade's power grid. There was a spasm of light and electricity, and then the building was bathed in light.

Mokuba sits on the floor for a second, gathering his breath in the suddenly noisy arcade. The machines came alive when he reactivated the power. Both this room, and a couple of adjacent stores, are glowing with a thousand coloured lights. The sound of an old pop song is trembling in the speakers.

He did this, Mokuba realises, all with just a few emergency batteries and his guardian's radio. It's hardly the most technically accomplished of his achievements, but he couldn't feel more pleased with himself if he tried. Maybe that's just the adrenaline talking. Seto will be proud of him.

Mokuba snaps his head up suddenly realising he had forgotten about Marcus. He gets to his feet, staggering slightly, realising that the monsters had been clawing at his skin even as he worked furiously on the control panel. He finds Marcus within seconds, lying behind a bank of computers. There is too much blood on the floor – dark red and human, and patches of white skin, and...

'Oh.'

The word emerges from his mouth quietly, but it seems louder than anything else. Even louder than the jaunty music coming from the speakers.

The adrenaline dies away as quickly as it came. He's dead. Mokuba knows without having to check, but he does anyway, a numb sensation crawling over his bones as he reaches out a hand to his guardian's body, searching for a pulse, knowing he won't find one. Knowing there is no real sense in looking, but feeling the need to anyway because that, he tells himself, is just what his brother would do. To a Kaiba there is no such thing as surrender, not even when things seem more hopeless than they ever have before.

Marcus is dead, and the last thing he did was pray that Mokuba knew what he was doing. Until this very moment, Mokuba would've promised him that he did. But now...

Now Mokuba Kaiba is fifteen years old, and he is alone in an empty city. In a brilliantly bright arcade, with monsters outside, a body inside, and his brother seems so far away that he might as well be back in Tokyo.

Mokuba sucks in a breath, and somehow, using every ounce of willpower his brother ever taught him, keeps it from becoming a sob when he lets it out again.

Kaiba's do not surrender to something as silly as their petty emotions.