Chapter 52: Dante the Fire Dragon
When Yori had activated her bracelet in the dark, her dragon had been more shadow than real, a flash of red and black that roared fire into the darkness and banished the monster grappling for her mind.
Standing on the beach, he was as real as she was.
"Hi, Dante." She could hardly manage the words, her throat was so tight. When she raised her hand, he pressed his scaly forehead to it and closed his eyes.
Shada, I still have so many questions.
But he was gone. She would have to figure the rest out on her own.
The heat of the bracelet faded, and Dante faded along with it. Though Yori would have loved to keep her dragon companion constantly, she knew better than to trust the shadows—there would be a cost for that kind of magic. Maybe with overuse, she would lose herself the way Marik had. For now, it was enough that Dante had led her out of the dark.
There was a black dome on the beach, an overturned bowl of swirling shadows that darkened the otherwise beautiful day. Yami's shadow game against Marik. Yori approached it with a heavy heart, and as she came close, someone turned and gave a gasp.
"Yori!" Anzu cried.
Before Yori knew it, the other girl was smothering her in a hug. Odion and Ishizu stood by as well, though both of them refrained from hugging, which was wise for all their sakes.
"I'm fine," Yori said. "Really."
"We were all so worried!"
Speaking of worried. Once Anzu stepped aside, Yori noticed a fourth person present. Off to the side a ways, Ryou lay on the sand, and it was not the place for napping, so she could only assume he was unconscious. Again.
"What happened?" she asked.
"I asked him to help Marik." Anzu bit her lip. "He used the ring, and then he just collapsed."
Never a dull moment with the items.
"To help Marik?" Yori repeated. The déjà vu was so thick, it was in the air like the salt from the ocean. It felt like an eternity since the last time she'd been keeping vigil beside an unconscious Ryou and heard Anzu tell her all the reasons Marik's scheming was a misunderstanding.
"Before you explode"—Anzu's voice was gentle but firm—"let me say something."
Yori crossed her arms and waited.
"I'm sorry about Haku."
A shiver ran down Yori's spine. She tightened her arms, pinning in the feeling of being exposed.
"During your duel with Marik," Anzu said quietly, "there was a bunch of . . . memory stuff. None of us meant to see it, but—"
"Marik told me everyone could see." Yori's voice was as tight as her arms. "Tell me again how you want to help the guy who humiliated me in front of everyone. Stabbed me. Tried to kill me. You know."
"I'm sorry about all of that. I can't imagine how it felt." Anzu's gaze remained steady. "And I know when I told you about Marik the first time, you were warning me because of Haku. You were looking out for me. But they're not the same. The Marik who's been doing all of that stuff—the one who dueled you—isn't the real Marik at all."
Yori wanted to say it didn't matter. If Marik could just be the enemy, clear-cut and callous, it made fighting easy. But she remembered that duel all too well. She remembered the sneaking suspicion that something was deeply wrong with her opponent, something beyond motivations or manipulations. She remembered reaching out with her bracelet to test his spirit. And she remembered his leering response.
I'm afraid you'll find no "spirit of the rod" as you would in quainter items. I am legion, for I am many. A big slice of Marik Ishtar, yes. And even a pinch of Seto Kaiba.
There was something else, too. When she'd made her deal with the shadows, the rush of power had come with a rush of faded memories—the memories of a slave who loved the Nile. Yaara was awake now, and she remembered a priest by the name of Seth, who carried the rod. She remembered how sometimes, when he used it to condemn the criminals of Egypt, his eyes grew wild, as if they belonged to another person. She remembered how even the other priests stepped carefully in his presence.
"Whoever he is," she said at last, "I won't ever hope he wins against Yami."
She looked up at the dome. Somehow, Yami had reached her during his shadow game. It had been his power, not hers, because when she reached out with the bracelet now, all she met was an impenetrable wall of shadows.
She'd told him she had to manage things on her own, and now she had to trust he could do the same. It was always that way between them.
"The sky," said Odion quietly.
It took Yori a moment to process it, and then she looked up. She lifted her hand to shield against the sun, watching as something swooped toward the tower at the center of the island.
"Is that a . . . bird?" Anzu asked.
It was too big, too misshapen. And Yori had just spent time with her own dragon. Unbelievable as it was, she recognized what she saw as a monster.
"Who's up there?" she asked.
Anzu said, "Everyone, basically. Joey's dueling Kaiba for the championship. Do you think—"
Yori ran for the tower.
Seto used the radio in his collar to tell Roland to evacuate everyone from the tower. It was the best he could come up with, which was insulting to every great achievement of his life.
Roland's response came immediately, two simple words: "I can't."
Seto's heart plummeted.
The elevator doors slid open, and Wheeler rushed out only to stop in his tracks.
The center of the tower had been dedicated to the Qualifier, even on the bottom floor. They were in the curved hallway around its edge, and all the undecorated gray metal and empty space made it easy to see at a glance what was ahead. Glass doors to the outside, just beyond metal doors to the large main elevator that navigated the entire tower. And in between the two sets of doors, everyone who'd been on the roof, frozen in place.
Because the gargoyle stood pressed up against the glass doors, watching with hollow, black eye sockets.
"I'm sorry, Seto," said Roland.
He said it with a funeral tone, like it was the last thing he would ever say.
"I'm outta shoes," said Wheeler. He looked at Seto for answers. They all did. Everyone always did.
Seto was paralyzed.
Then—
Like an ocean wave coming in to crash against rocks, a wall of fire blasted against the glass doors. Seto leapt in front of Mokuba, thinking it was the gargoyle's attack, but the beast shrieked under the assault. It writhed against the ground, then rose as the flames receded and threw itself at an opponent out of view.
"Seto?" Mokuba rasped. "What's happening?"
Seto waited. There was another flash of fire. Then nothing.
The seconds passed painfully.
When a figure finally emerged, Seto tensed, only to gape—it was no monster of any kind that came up to the doors.
It was Yori.
Sunlight flashed from her bracelet as she rapped her knuckles against the glass. Her crooked smile was warm, and she didn't seem to care about the embers still smoldering on either side of the path.
"Yori!" Mokuba shouted, already bounding toward the exit. Roland must have hit the release button, because the doors slid open, and the boy threw himself into her arms. She tousled his hair.
The hallway erupted into chaos as everyone rushed forward, speaking at once. Seto would have loved to enjoy the moment, but he was all too aware of the enemy still behind him. He glanced back at the elevator. Their window was slim.
"Get everyone to the blimp," he told Roland.
Fuguta raised his voice to be heard over the rabble, ordering everyone to proceed in an orderly fashion. Yori broke through and made her way toward Seto. As she approached, Seto fought hard to keep his vision from going double. In one person, he saw both the girl who'd saved Seto Kaiba's life and the slave High Priest Seth had cast from the palace.
"Hey, stranger," she said. "Did you win?"
For a moment, he didn't even know what she meant.
"No," he said at last.
"Sorry I wasn't here to cheer for you. Not that you needed me."
"Actually," he managed, "it seems you came at the perfect moment."
Neither Seto nor Seth was accustomed to the feeling of needing an ally. But he certainly did. If she was willing to fill the role.
Her smile said she was.
The security elevator opened.
"Alister," Seto said. "The gargoyle owner."
Yori cast a glance at the enemy, and she jerked her head toward the exit. She and Seto made up the tail of the group spilling onto the wreckage-strewn beach. To one side of the path lay the smoking remains of the gargoyle, but there was no sign of what had defeated it, only streaks of ash and ember in the sand.
"You can't run, Kaiba!" Alister shouted.
In a flash of green, two new monsters appeared—ten-foot cyborgs that looked at home in the wreckage because their metal limbs and weapons systems could have been made from it. One of them shot an artillery round overhead. It exploded the path in front of the retreating group. Wheeler squawked, and some of the others gave their own panicked shouts.
Seto still hated asking for help, but he said, "If you've got your knife—"
"I've got something better," Yori said.
She clenched her fists. The Eye of Horus glowed to life on her forehead, and her bracelet flashed gold.
A shadow blocked out the sun.
Seto looked up to see the red-patterned dragon just as it unleashed fire on his enemy.
Yori was still new at the Ka game, and although she had no qualms about roasting monsters, a human being was a different matter. Luckily, even without a word to communicate it, Dante obeyed her hesitation, and his fire blast was nowhere near as powerful as the ones he'd used against the gargoyle. These were short bursts, one after the other, each targeting a cyborg.
For a moment, Alister's eyes landed with hatred on hers, laced with a sickly green, and then he fled, skirting his monsters and moving toward the beach.
Oh no, you don't, she thought.
Piles of wreckage blocked her direct path, but Yori had conducted many a street chase, and she was nimble even across shifting ground. There was no way she was letting the punk escape. Not when she'd seen his necklace. Not when she'd seen the unicursal hexagram that flashed across his cards when he brought them to life.
She didn't know what Haku's game was, but she recognized it as his all the same.
Alister's necklace flashed again. He threw a card at Yori, and she dove to the ground just as a three-headed chimera crashed into the beach where she'd been, spraying her with sand. She cut her arm on a twisted plate of metal. She let out a hiss. It wasn't deep, just long, a thin line of blood. She pushed herself to her feet.
She was too close. If Dante breathed fire, he'd catch her, too.
But Dante solved that problem. He thrust his wings down powerfully, almost tipping Yori over under the force of the wind. The chimera hunkered beneath it, low to the sand, halted in its next leap that would have taken Yori down. The creature's goat head bellowed while its lion head snarled. Its cobra tail ducked beneath its legs.
Dante dropped from the sky. He blurred into a shadowy mass, like a pillar of smoke, and when he hit the ground, the smoke billowed out to leave behind a human form. Black hair. A black-and-red uniform with sleeves rolled back to his elbows. A black staff topped with a flaming garnet.
Yori had grown used to seeing her dragon's spellcaster form as a hologram, and it had been realistic enough to make her stare. Now here he was for real.
She could hardly breathe.
Dante's tattoos swirled orange and yellow across his wrists and shaved temple, like flames burning just beneath his skin. His crimson eyes had the narrow pupils of a dragon.
The snake that made up the chimera's tail struck.
"Look out!" Yori shouted.
Just as the fangs sank into Dante's form, he dissolved into smoke. The spellcaster rose from the ground on the other side of the chimera, behind the lion's head. He swung his staff, and a ball of fire scorched across the beast's fur, leaving all three heads howling.
While Dante fought, Yori would do no good just standing. She looked for Alister.
She'd been distracted too long; he'd cornered the group.
From the moment Joey had reunited with Serenity, he'd been watching her back. And trying to watch everyone else's, too. He was in his socks on a death beach, and half of him regretted ever sacrificing his shoes to save an ungrateful Rich-boy. But Alister had blown through a wall of wired security glass like it was nothing, so range was the best option, and Joey had nothing for range except what was within reach.
Which was what he resorted to on the beach, too.
When Alister stopped Yori with a three-headed monster and then came running up with his murder-eyes fixed on Mokuba, Joey grabbed a rod of rebar and hurled it. It only grazed the creep's arm.
"Pick on someone your own size!" Joey shouted.
In answer, the freak threw out another two cyborgs. Yori only seemed to have one monster, however she had it, but this guy just pulled them out of cards like he was an upgraded version of Kaiba and holograms were no longer cool. The world did not need an upgraded version of Kaiba. One Kaiba was plenty, and the holograms were great. Monsters should always stay as holograms.
When one of the monsters aimed at Mokuba, Kaiba's burly guard took it on, with Fuguta clearly trying to help but also clearly not as snazzy with wrestling metal monsters as he was with grooming facial hair.
"Joey!" shouted Tristan. He was waving his arms for something, making gestures and faces. The same kind of nonsense he'd tried a few times during their street days.
"Stop tryna make a secret code!" Joey snapped. "Your codes suck, and I ain't got the memory for it!"
"Fine! You go left!"
Tristan dove at the right side of the remaining cyborg while Joey tackled it on the left, and together, they knocked it into the sand—and knocked the wind out of themselves, too, landing on all that solid metal.
The monster lifted its gun arm, and Joey barely dodged a shot to the face. It exploded somewhere in the wreckage, spraying more shrapnel over a beach that didn't need it.
"Joey, look out!" shouted Serenity.
"Joey!" Mai added something in French.
"Everybody stop shoutin' my name!" Joey yelled back. He wrenched at the cyborg's arm and accomplished nothing. The gun parts were welded together tight, and for all the strength Joey had built up in Battle City, bare-handedly wrenching apart metal wasn't part of it.
Tristan threw himself on top of the monster and started wrestling the arm, too. After a second, Joey realized what he was doing, and instead of trying to tear the weapon off, they managed to point it up at the cyborg's own head.
The next shot did the trick.
Joey rolled away, gagging. The scent of burning metal and other stuff was hot in the air.
Just a monster, he told himself.
Right. Just a real monster. Like that wasn't no big deal.
Even with his monsters occupied, Alister had gotten what he wanted. He reached Mokuba, one arm extended to grab the kid—
Kaiba was on him in an instant like a rabid attack dog. Mokuba shouted for his brother, but Mai caught the kid's arm and pulled him away, saying something Joey couldn't hear. Kaiba and Alister grappled in the sand, and Joey felt a flash of triumph when Kaiba got a hold on the freak's necklace. But the cord didn't snap, and Kaiba reared back with a grimace, clutching his hand like he'd been burned.
He needed help. The guard was finishing off the cyborg, and he was too far anyway.
Joey leapt to his feet.
Before Kaiba could recover, Alister knocked him away. He had another card in his hand when he rose.
"Die, Kaiba," he said. All quiet self-righteousness.
Joey hit him at full speed, throwing them both into the wreckage. A flash of green shot sparks through his vision. He grabbed Alister's arm and twisted it behind his back, pinning him. He looked around wildly for the monster but couldn't see it.
"Get off me!" Alister snarled.
"Shut your trap!" Joey snapped back. "Everybody here's innocent, and I ain't lettin' you throw monsters at 'em anymore."
Alister was stronger than he looked. Though Joey had a tight hold, the guy reared up anyway. Joey lost his grip. But before Alister could get anywhere, smoky chains whipped out to fasten him to the ground.
Yori had caught up. Her magician stood beside her, the stone in his staff glowing.
With a sigh of relief, Joey fell back on his butt in the sand. His adrenaline drained, and all the aches kicked in. Whether it was the robot or the wreckage, he'd hit something harder than he'd thought. He rolled his shoulder only to realize he'd torn the fabric of his jacket clean through. And his ribs felt like they'd taken one of his dad's worst kicks.
When someone offered him a hand, he looked up expecting Tristan.
It was Kaiba.
Joey stared too long, and the offer disappeared. Kaiba stepped forward to threaten Alister with the usual if-you-ever-come-near-me-agains. Joey couldn't hear them all that clearly. His ears were ringing.
"Joey?" This time it was Serenity, with Kris hovering at her shoulder.
"Yeah, I'm good. I'm fine." Joey forced himself to his feet and slapped the sand off his pants. He knew how to shake off a beating.
Serenity gave him a hug, and she squeezed too hard. He struggled to get his breath back.
"Dude, we took down a cyborg," said Tristan.
Joey gave him a grin. He noticed Duke lurking, so he couldn't miss the opportunity to say, "Remember that the next time you try kissin' my sister."
"I'll admit I was impressed," Duke said. He side-eyed Alister. "And, frankly, terrified."
"Monsieur Kaiba seemed impressed as well," Mai said meaningfully.
Joey saw right through her. Just because he didn't want to watch Rich-boy die didn't mean he was about to forgive the whole awful history. "Well, he better be! I saved his life twice. And that's after he shoved me off a tower. So. I'm officially the bigger man."
"Joey, you can't say it." Serenity smiled. "That cancels it out."
"What, I can't tell the truth?"
"I'll say it," said Tristan. "Joey Wheeler, King of Games and king of—"
A green flash cut him off. Joey whipped around—his ribs protesting—expecting another fiery gargoyle or hothead cyborg. Instead, he saw the ground turning green under Alister's feet. Kaiba and Yori backed up. Lines traced the sand, cutting right through the wreckage wherever it touched like a knife through sushi, forming the same weird star that showed up on Alister's cards when he brought them to life.
Joey would have thought it was some big summoning ritual except Alister's eyes went wide, and he strained at the smoky chains holding him.
"What is this?" he demanded, like any of them would have an answer for him. His necklace glowed, and his skin under it turned red and blistered. Alister cried out. When the green lines met in the final point of the star, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed.
It was like a ghost story. If Joey had felt up to it, he would have shrieked. As it was, his stomach tilted, and he gritted his teeth.
No one moved until Yori finally stepped forward and checked for pulse and breathing.
"He's alive," she said.
"Hooray," Kaiba deadpanned. To Fuguta, he said, "Get the medical team out here. If he wakes up, they can put him back under until we hand him over to the police in Domino."
Fuguta did all his radio stuff, and Yori's magician disappeared, taking his magic with him.
What a day.
"Hey," Joey said. "So you can summon monsters now. Care to tell that story?"
"It's a long one." Yori's smirk was way too self-satisfied. She displayed her bracelet. "Item stuff. You know how it goes. I hear you've got news of your own. King of Games, was it?"
Hearing it still did something to his insides. Even magic and monsters couldn't take that away.
"Yeah," Joey said. "I beat the pants off the pharaoh—meaning he surrendered and went to fight Marik. And then I beat the pants off Kaiba—meaning he surrendered and went to fight Alister. I'm feelin' a little abandoned. A little second-choice."
"Oh, shut up." She gave him a light punch in the arm that hurt more than it should have. "You're loving this."
"Hell yeah, you kiddin' me?" Joey grinned. "I killed myself to get here. I beat Haga, the former national champ. I beat a fake-psychic cheater, and then I beat a woman who actually could see the future. I even beat the guy who built the Duel Disk. I deserve to be champ of all time."
As Yori gave her congratulations, he willed all of himself to believe what he'd said. He did deserve it. No matter how his dad scoffed in his memory. That tune would change once Joey got home. It would.
"Hey, Kaiba," he called out, since the guy was walking away. "You got insurance, right? I want condensation for the whole throwin'-me-off-a-tower thing."
"Compensation," said Yori quietly.
"That's what I said."
Kaiba didn't even look back. "Wheeler, you just won Battle City. Your compensation is me not declaring bankruptcy to spite you out of the prize."
Joey's heart stopped.
How could he have forgotten the cash prize? 50,000 dollars. That changed everything. That changed his whole life. He could pay rent through graduation. Maybe he could even get himself into college. College.
He drew in a deep breath, and he didn't mean for it to, but it shook. Every part of him shook.
Serenity gave him another hug without saying a thing. Tristan slapped him on the shoulder.
Joey Wheeler, Battle City champion.
And his future had never been brighter.
Note: Alright, everyone, we only have THREE CHAPTERS LEFT. Can you believe that? If you want to ask me any questions for the Q&A section in the special post-story chapter, I'd love to answer them. You can either ask in a review or in a PM. Thanks!