A/N: I feel I should warn y'all. There is death and torture and feels in this chapter. This is not the end of the fic by any means, but all things must get worse before they get better. Just fair warning. There will be a happy ending to this story, I promise. There has to be for the third installment to happen. ^_~

Chapter summary: In which the first light of hope sputters to life, maybe.

46: The First Light of Hope

The world they crashed into was literally crumbling around them, but not due to unmaking. This was caused by something else, something more deliberate and calculated. Yugi recognized the familiar roar fill the air, shaking him to the core. The accompanying scream from his Regent cemented what he knew in his heart to be true. The Blue Eyes White Dragon was attacking under another's command.

The Balance shifted when Kaiba dragged every ounce of power available to him as it returned to him courtesy of the golden apple and ran ahead. Yugi followed close behind, stumbling only when his sight blurred and he suddenly felt top-heavy and dizzy. He fell on all fours gasping and struggling to regain his sense of direction. He felt Yami fall to his knees next to him from the same disorientation.

He could barely make out Jounouchi's voice over the hubbub. It had an unusual, echo-like quality to it as if it came from a tunnel. He could feel a power that was and was not the Shadows yank on his Light just as a blast of energy blinded him. Screams from people filled his ears as he staggered back to his feet only to be overwhelmed by a crowd of terrified people and swept away. It was either that or have his legs give out on him and be crushed under the people's feet when he fell.

He opened his eyes and realized he couldn't see Jounouchi or Kaiba. Instead, his gaze was filled with a darkening shadow stretching across the ground overhead. He looked up and saw the source of the destruction: dragons. Great dragons he knew to be Shadow Monsters dove through the air firing bursts of energy at buildings and the humans below. Why? Why were they doing this?

"Stop!" he screamed, trying desperately to be heard over the noise. "Stop this please! Why are you doing this?"

A flash of blazing blue tinted white caught the sunlight and Yugi felt his heart drop. The Blue Eyes White Dragon, Kaiba's beloved Blue Eyes White Dragon, opened her mouth and a stream of white destruction obliterated his sight before he could cry out in terror.

Kaiba immediately lifted his eyes to the skies when the Shadows released him and gasped. Kisara was there in all her terrible beauty, but she was not under his control. He could feel her terror and despair as she was forced to fire streams of blazing energy at anything and everything that moved. Humans fell before her power, buildings crumbled under her claws, windows shattered at her scream. She was wild, she was power, and she was a prisoner on a chain of a master she hated.

Her panic flooded his senses until he could no longer tell where her thoughts ended and his began. He was drowning. Seth floundered under the onslaught in Kaiba's mind, grasping at his Ka's consciousness and attempting to wrest it back into control. Both Kaiba and Seth were spiraling into Kisara like a small boat captured in a maelstrom. There was nothing they could do. Nothing.

"Grandpa!"

King!

They tore their eyes from their enslaved lover and saw a very distinct haircut flailing in a horde of panicked humans. A flash of silver in the corner of their eye drew their attention follow by a surge of emotions which roiled within them when they identified the source. Maximillion Pegasus.

Darkness blocked out the sunlight and they looked up, horror dawning when they saw the side of a building falling to the ground. There was no time to save themselves, Yugi, and Pegasus. They could only save one. They had to choose. There was no choice.

"Yugi!" they cried racing towards their King.

Violet eyes turned to theirs, widening in recognition. Yugi stretched out his hand, pleading for help. They didn't stop to grab it. There was no time. Instead, they ran, crashing full force into their young king, braced, and pushed little Yugi back out of the crowd and out of reach of the falling building.

"Swords of Revealing Light!" they shouted, hoping the Spell would activate before the building crushed the young King.

Only when they finally saw the unholy gleam of the completed Millennium Puzzle dangling from this Yugi's neck as the boy flew back from the force of their impact, did they realize their mistake. This wasn't their King. This wasn't their Yugi. They had spent precious breath and energy saving the wrong person. They had just enough time to feel shock followed by the painful simultaneous loss of the Light and Dark before pain!

Then nothing.

Jounouchi fell to his knees and cried out in dismay when the Light vanished leaving him behind, lost, alone, and terrified. Yugi was dead. He was there -right there!- then gone the very next instant. If Yugi was gone, so was the Pharaoh which meant the Dark was gone too. The Balance should offer some sort of anchor, but it too vanished mere moments after the Dark and the Light. That could only mean Kaiba was dead as well.

They were all gone. The entire Inner Court was dead. Gone. Erased. The Shadows raged in dreadful fright along his senses, furious and weeping. They were lost without their monarchy. Jounouchi could hear Ra screeching in distress. It burned his Shadow sensitive nerves. He felt himself ripping apart under the power he was never meant to fully embrace. It was melting his mind. He couldn't be the Light. He was just the Knight. It was too much. Too much.

Ishizu clutched her head and shrieked. Her eyes were blind to the world around her. She could only see death and devestation and unraveling and unmaking. Cobalt blue that only Kaiba could ever fully comprehend thundered into her body and soul with the force of a thousand storms. She felt lost and weak, her soul fluttering over the abyss searching for that which was lost. The Balance was gone. Her Regent was gone. Dead.

The Shadows demanded she be their new Balance but she could not be. She was only the Priestess. She wasn't strong enough. She never could be strong enough. This power, this electrifying weight of anguish from Obelisk was killing her.

It was killing her.

Marik gasped, suddenly finding his breath hard to catch. It felt like oozing black sludge had decided to take up residence in his lungs. His blood thrummed in his veins and his skin felt simultaneously cold and hot to the touch. He felt leaden and solid like a statue of obsidian. The Shadows all but devoured him, scraping at his consciousness like fingernails on a chalkboard. It grated and possessed and swirled into an eddy of oblivion.

The Pharaoh was dead and with him went the Dark and very likely the Light. The Balance was also gone, dead. There was no more monarchy and the Shadows were terrified, lashing out at the leader de facto of every Triad hoping to find a replacement. They would find none for no one was meant to handle the sheer tidal wave of power the Shadows embodied. None but the now dead monarchy.

Definitely not the unstable Priest.

Still, Marik felt Osiris' roar shake him body and soul, the raw Darkness consuming him. At this rate, it would drive him insane. Or worse. Around him and within him was death. The Shadow Realm was dying and was taking the world of Earth with it in its final thrashing fight against unmaking.

It lost.

He knew the moment his big brother perished. The sudden loss of the reasurring presence he never realized had always been there left Mokuba feeling nothing. There was nothing to feel. All around him the world went up in ash, destroyed before it could be saved. Unwritten, never written, never lived, never had the chance to be lived. The Shadows vanished as their home, the Shadow Realm, ceased to be.

The familiar warmth of Ra-Horakhty, the Creator God of Light herself, faded with nary a whisper. There was nothing. There never had been anything. Just a void. As it was in the beginning. Mokuba never was, never had been, and never would be.

Yugi blinked awake covering in dust and very certain one or more of his ribs were at least fractured if not broken. It hurt to move, to breathe. What had happened? An earthquake?

He pushed himself up and looked around. It was eerily quiet except for the distant wailing of sirens. Muffled moans and cries wafted up through the debris of crushed building littered with shards of glass, steel beams, cement blocks, body parts...

Body parts.

Yugi's chest seized in shock, causing him to double over, clutching his side and coughing from the pain. The convention had been attacked. No one had a chance. The enemy had been dragons, Duel Monsters. He remembered seeing Kaiba's Blue Eyes and even Jounouchi's Red Eyes among other dragons that weren't familiar assaulting the defenseless attendees. He and his grandpa had tried to run away but...

Grandpa. Where was his grandpa?

"Grandpa?" he called, tentatively crawling forward through the mess.

Somehow he'd managed to land in a relatively open area in the epicenter of the devastation around him. It was as if something had formed a perfect circle around him, protecting him from the worst of the rubble. He fought past a growing headache to try to recall what had happened just before he lost consciousness.

He'd been trying to get to his grandpa but they'd been separated by the sea of bodies. Someone had called his name. But not just anyone: Kaiba Seto. Why was Kaiba here? He wasn't supposed to attend the event until the afternoon to make sure all of the temporary Duel Stages were working properly. But Yugi distinctly remembered Kaiba calling his name, running to him, pushing him, and screaming the strangest thing right before a golden light filled his vision and he struck his head on something.

"Swords of Revealing Light!"

Why would Kaiba say that? Unless...

Yugi tensed. Had Seto-disbelieving-resistant-to-magic-dismissive-of-all-that-was-mystical-Kaiba actually cast a spell?

He shook his head in disbelief and in doing so noticed something that made his heart freeze in his chest. A tattered piece of black fabric fluttered in a sickly breeze. It was his grandpa's lucky bandana.

"No," he breathed, crawling across the debris, heedless of his injury, and picked up the scrap of cloth. It was his indeed grandpa's. Yugi lifted his eyes and beheld the wreckage before him where he'd found the bandana. All that was left of a great steel and glass office building was a pile of stone, twisted metal, and broken glass. His grandpa was under there somewhere.

Tears pooled in his eyes. "Grandpa?" he called softly, the faintest hope withering away in his soul.

He felt his other self reach out to his mind from his Puzzle, and clung to it, needing to small comfort it offered. "Grandpa?" he called again, louder this time.

He slowly got to his feet, swaying unsteadily. Eventually, he grabbed a metal pipe sticking out of the ground to keep himself balanced and clutched his aching side, squeezing his eyes shut until he'd caught his breath. Easing his eyes open, he wished he would never see ever again. There, lying on his stomach and staring out at Yugi's feet through the dust, his back impaled by a metal beam and his legs crushed by cement, was Kaiba Seto.

"Kaiba?" Yugi gasped.

:Aibou?: he heard Yami whisper in his mind, the spirit groggily waking up as well. Yami rose to share Yugi's eyes, unsure of what to expect.

Yugi felt the spirit recoil, stunned by the death of his greatest rival, and weep from the death of the man who was his grandpa in every sense that mattered. Yugi, moved by his own emotions, the sights he never wished to see ever again, and the freely expressed sadness of Yami, gave a cry that sounded less like something a human could ever utter yet carried so many human emotions in it as to be disturbing to anyone who might have heard.

Anyone, that is, except for whoever was laughing. Startled by the sound that most certainly did not fit the situation at hand, Yugi lifted his tear-filled gaze to the top of one of the nearest piles of rubble. Standing tall and proud was a man with long blonde hair and wearing clothes that were outlandish in style. However, the mask worn over the person's face was what seared into the young duelist's memory forever. It was white and purple in a geometric design. Thin mesh covered the eye slits allowed the wearer to see through but no one to see in.

"At last," the person said, his proud voice carrying victoriously on the weak breeze. "I did it. It took some doing but Duel Monsters is finally no more and the Shadow Realm is destroyed. It's finally over."

"You?" Yugi murmured, staring at the strange person in dawning horror. "You did this?"

Dust from the remains, both human and otherwise, choked off his throat sending him into a coughing fit that irritated his badly aching ribs. He must have attracted the stranger's attention because before he could recover his control, calloused fingers gripped his chin and jerked his head up. All he could see was the purple and white geometric print of the terrorist's mask. He instinctively gasped as if to scream only to collapse back into a fit of coughing once more.

"Impossible," the terrorist muttered, disbelief coloring his distorted words. "I killed you. I shot you myself. You should be dead!"

He jerked his hand effectively tossing Yugi to the ground. The boy landed on his stomach in just the right position for the Millennium Puzzle to dig into his side, thankfully not his already injured side. The jab did however make his diaphragm instinctively seize causing Yugi to gasp. His body trembled as it attempted to come to terms with the trauma it was suffering.

:Aibou!: Yami cried, his ghostly form materializing next to Yugi, arms hovering protectively over his dearest friend and partner. :Aibou let me take control,: he pleaded. :Please. Let me help.:

"No," Yugi coughed, cradling his Puzzle in his hands. "You're all I have left." Another tear slipped down his face as he squeezed his eyes closed, shutting out the calamity surrounding him. :I can't lose you too,: he said, his mental voice trembling with fear and loss.

:Aibou,: Yami whispered, his heart breaking. He was at a loss of what to do.

"I shot you!" the terrorist raged. He stalked forward and kicked Yugi over so the boy lay sprawled on his back. "I watched you fall to the ground with my bullet in your chest. I killed you! You can't be here. How are you here?!" He knelt, took a fistful of Yugi's shirt in his left hand, and furiously yanked the boy up. "I did my research," he hissed. "I know you're the King. I know about the Pharaoh-"

Both Yami and Yugi gasped.

"-and your Regent," the terrorist continued, oblivious of Yami and Yugi's discomfiture.

:Regent?: Yugi wondered amidst his fear.

"I know you rule the Shadow Realm," the terrorist continued. "I knew if I killed you, then those accursed things would be destroyed. I even made sure the bastard creator of this ridiculous madness died as well. So why are you still alive?!"

The Millennium Puzzle clinked when it slipped from its wearer's chest to the ground below when the terrorist shook Yugi violently. The sound caught the terrorist's attention and he stilled. Yugi felt the gaze he could not see through the mask studying the reversed Egyptian pyramid he wore around his neck and wanted badly to hold it in his own two hands to protect it from something so evil.

"Oh, I see," the terrorist purred.

Yugi shuddered, hearing the voice caress him like a silk scarf sliding around his neck just seconds before snapping it. Yami embraced his partner's consciousness with his own, hoping his presence would give Yugi the comfort he desperately needed. Yami refused to take over Yugi's mind unless he had absolutely no other choice. He had no desire to revert back to those days when he almost killed Kaiba in a duel in Duelist Kingdom.

"You're not the King," the terrorist said. He was definitely smiling behind that hateful mask, Yami could feel it. "You're this world's Yugi Motou." Laughter was returning to the terrorist's voice striking renewed fear in Yugi's heart. "The little boy-King of Games."

Yugi thudded to the ground with a broken cry when the hand holding him up let go abruptly. The terrorist threw his head back, cackling madly.

"Oh what luck the universe has given me this day," he crowed victoriously. "I killed you once from a distance, but now I can kill you again with my own two hands and there's nothing your little pet spirit can do to save you."

"You're mad!" Yami snapped, taking control when Yugi was too distracted by his pain to defend himself. He pulled his borrowed body back across the ground away from his assailant, wanting to put as much distance between himself and this crazed individual as possible. Unfortunately, the stinging pain from Yugi's ribs warned him not to do that again. The strain was too much for them to take right now.

"Well, well, if it isn't the infamous Pharaoh himself come to greet me in person," the terrorist said gleefully. He bent over in a mocking bow. "Greetings oh long dead monster," he said. "Come out to watch as I murder your little puppet body?"

"As if I'd let you hurt Yugi," Yami hissed. If this madman knew he was separate from Yugi, then he had no reason to pretend otherwise. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because you destroyed my future," the terrorist barked hatefully. "I thought it only fitting I destroy yours, especially if it saves mine."

"What are you talking about? We've done nothing to you. We don't even know you," Yami argued. Yugi blinked back to awareness and Yami shared his vision and hearing with his dearest partner.

"Of course you don't," the terrorist said, waving his hand dismissively. "You're not important. I killed the version of you that was important. Although," he paused and turned his masked gaze to the rubble where Kaiba's dead body still lay half buried and covered in blood and dust, "it took some doing to kill him, I must admit. Damn rascal kept evading me. Did you know he can cast illusions of himself?"

"You mean holograms?" Yami asked, sensing Yugi's curiosity joining his own.

The masked terrorist snorted. "Don't be stupid," he spat. "The Regent has enough power to destroy the world if he wanted to. Why else do you think I had to kill him? He is Chaos, just as the version of you that actually mattered was Unmaking and the version of your pretty puppet-boy was Creation. Naturally you had to be obliterated as well, but I think I succeeded in doing that when I murdered you precious Yugi." He laughed at Yami's snarl of fury. "Calm down, little spirit," the terrorist said, placing a foot firmly on Yami's chest and pinning him to the ground. The pressure applied exactly over his fractured ribs was just enough to wrench a tormented scream from both Yami and Yugi. "You and this world's Yugi will be joining your dead alternates," the terrorist said. "Just to be sure, of course."

Yugi could just imagine the euphoric grin that must be plastered on the madman's face under that damnable mask.

"No hard feelings," the terrorist chirped happily, steadily increasing the pressure on Yugi's injury.

Just before Yami was sure his precious partner's ribs would give way, crushing a lung or worse, a roar that resembled a song deafened him and a burst of crimson blinded him. He felt his partner's body be enveloped in a burning crimson and together he and Yugi were swept away in a sea of color only to be tossed unceremoniously to the ground in bright sunlight. Yugi's terror catapulted him back to the forefront of his mind just as his body slammed against a metal railing. He shrieked when his ribs finally gave in under the continued abuse and cracked in two.

Yugi grabbed one of the metal rods of the railing within reach and did his best to gingerly haul himself up to a more stable position. The stabbing throb in his side causing his lungs to hitch and his eyes to clench shut. He grit his teeth and carefully moved his body so his knees were securely under him. It took a good few seconds for the tension to release enough for his breathing to ease. Sweat dripped from his brow as he leaned against the railing. Finally, he opened his pain glazed eyes, only to loose what breath he had left.

He was on a rooftop overlooking a square filled with a stage, small duel platforms, speakers, cosplayers, and duelists. There was no destruction, no dragons in the sky, no dead bodies, and no crazy person taking credit for the disaster.

Yugi's mouth fell open on shock. "What the..."

:Hell?: Yami finished in Yugi's mind, just as stunned as his Aibou.