INCONCIEVABLE

Number II

One Soul Room Short

"Partner...Partner..."

It was quiet, too quiet. Yami's eyes opened, finding himself sprawled on the floor of his soul room. He hurt all over, though at first he did not understand why; his memory of what happened was blurry, going back only to the moment he was about to mind crush his opponents-

Then he saw the door to his soul room swing open, and saw the blackness outside. Nothing, nothing but a howling void where Yugi's room had been

"Partner!?"

He tried to get up, but found he could not. Calling out to his partner, he started to crawl, holding his hand out towards the door. Yugi had to hear him. The blackness couldn't be what he thought it was...he couldn't be-

When the spirit's hand was a mere inch from the door, it suddenly slam shut, almost taking Yami's hand with it. With a cry he fell forward, only to land on a patch of thorny vines.

"AUUUUGH!"

As he screamed, a bright light suddenly descended from the unreachable top of the ancient labyrinth. The eye of Wadjet flashed inside the light, it's pupil glowing red.

"Pharoah..." A soft, feminine voice echoed through the soul room, letting out a breathy chuckle as the ground began to shake. "Phaaaaaroah...."

"Who are you!?" Yami struggled for freedom, to no avail. "Wh-where is he!? What-"

"...I'm going to get..." the voice whispered as the stairways began to collapse. "...the Nobel Prize...!"

"WHAT? NO-"

The pharoah tried to shout, but the wind was suddenly knocked out of him by a brick that fell on his back; the impact caused the ground to give way. He began to fall, fall with the debris into the blackness that now marked where Yugi once lived, but lived no more, all because of-

"PARTNER!!" Underneath him, the faint red silhouette of a door began to form. "PARTNER!!! PA-uwaa-!!"

Yami's eyes bolted open, his heart beating furiously. The soul room was gone, its crumbling foundations replaced by a hospital bed and sterile lights. No eye illuminated over the Domino skyline, no voices mocked him. Next to him, a mechanical IV drip beeped as it administered more morphine into the vein in his hand. His battered school clothing hung over a chair in the corner.

Where... He shut his eyes, trying to adjust to the light in the room. Am I...?

"...in this...!! Stop-"

"Yugi!!"

Yami's heart, still beating furiously, almost stopped when the door to his room was flung open, smashing into the wall next to it. In ran a blonde boy, gasping for air as he skidded to a halt.

"Young man!" At this, a nurse stomped into the room. "I told you, no running! Any more horseplay and I'll have you thrown out!"

"Whatever. Yugi!" Katsuya Jounouchi, still out of breath, blew the nurse off and looked at the bedridden boy, an expression of relief on his face. "You're ok! Thank good...ness...?"

The relief was almost immediately tempered by surprise, followed by confusion, then realization; it only flickered momentarily in Jounouchi's eyes, but Yami could instantly tell what Jounouchi was thinking. What he knew upon looking at Yami.

"Oh..." Jounouchi's shoulders slumped. "Right..."

"Hmph!" With that, the nurse stormed out. "And people wonder why I'm so rude...!"

The door slammed behind the nurse, almost causing a picture to fall off the wall. Jounouchi jumped up at the sound, landing with a sheepish bite of his lower lip.

"Uh...yeah, she's probably having her period or something..." Jounouchi waited until the nurse's voice was out of hearing, whereupon he immediately took a stool and rolled over to the injured party's side. "...Pharoah?"

"Jounouchi." Yami winced. "It's good to see you too."

"What happened to you?" Jounouchi blinked. "I mean, it doesn't look as bad as the cops said, but...how'd you get so roughed up?"

"...Some random thugs." There was a pause. "I wasn't as careful as I thought I was."

"Er, yeah," Jounouchi frowned. "Usually provoking them isn't a good idea."

"I didn't provoke them," Yami huffed. "They were going to attack me whether or not I attacked them. They were after the god cards."

"The...god cards, huh."

At this, Jounouchi's tone changed subtly. Something had Jounouchi upset, Yami could tell. He was unsure as to what Jounouchi was suddenly on edge for, aside from the god cards, so he tried to alleviate his friend's worries with a small smile.

"...It's all right. They didn't get them, Jounouchi."

"Oh..." Jounouchi shifted his feet uncomfortably. "No, I know. You weren't carrying them. I remember."

"Then why..."

"Um..." Jounouchi instantly grinned - it was fake, another sign of something wrong. "So, the doctor said you're going to be discharged tomorrow."

"...Is that so?" The pharoah was instantly suspicious. "That's a bit quick, isn't it?"

"Well, you have some bruised muscles and jaw and stuff. And you've got a black eye," Jounouchi's eyes shifted left and right. "But other than that, you're all right!"

"...You're an extremely bad liar, you know that?"

Jounouchi looked back over at the other Yugi to find him with an extremely displeased look on his face. The blond bit his lip again, this time harder; he never could lie very well to either of the Yugis. It just wasn't in him, especially when the news could be so potentially devastating.

"...Yeah." Jounouchi looked down at this. "I know. I'm just...trying to soften the blow."

"The...blow?" Yami looked concerned at this. "W-what do you mean? What happened?"

"It's..." Jounouchi looked up. "Promise not to freak out?"

"Freak o..." He stopped. "I'm dying."

"...No..." Under normal circumstances, the suggestion would have been funny. "It's...it's Yugi."

"Yugi!? I-"

Yami quickly went to his chest to grab the Puzzle, to check the spirit on his host, to make sure he was okay. He did so only to find himself grasping empty air and his hospital gown. He gave a gasp, and started to sit up in order to get out of the bed, hoping the Puzzle was somewhere else in the room, that the dream he had - that blackness - was not what he was beginning to think it was.

Unfortunately, the pain was not completely dulled by the morphine, and he found himself struggling.

"Jounouchi...!" Yami gasped. "Where is he!? I have to talk to him-"

"They didn't steal the god cards."

He stopped, and his head slowly turned at this, his eyes wide. In response, Jounouchi looked up, his expression full of pity. He had done his best to try and prepare the pharoah for the news, wanted to, but somehow it never worked out like that. Somehow bad news always came out in the worst possible way.

There was no stopping him from finding out.

"...They...they stole the Puzzle..." Each word felt like a piece of Yami's heart was being carved out. "...They took Yugi."

-----------

Partner.

It was hard for him to function for the next few days after that, knowing what he knew. They took the Puzzle, they took him, all because of his foolish mistake, all because of...

He didn't know how he even made it through the police questioning the next morning. He was too stunned to answer properly. He could only stare up at the ceiling as they took notes.

"And so that's what happened." The officer who took his report was nice enough. "You were attacked by five guys, college-age, and they attacked you. The description you gave is a bit vague; is there any way you can refine it for me?"

"...No." Yami's throat was dry as he spoke. "It was in a dark...place...I couldn't see very well..."

"Mmmhmm." The policeman checked his other notes, nodded as they coraborated the pharoah's response. "And they took a...puzzle?"

"From...around my neck." Partner. This is all my fault. "It was gold...but it was of far more...sentimental importance to me."

"Can you describe it?" The policeman's hand went down the paper fast. "I'll need a detailed description in case we find it."

"It's...an upside down...pyramid. Attached to a chain." Yami's voice was empty as he described it. "There's an eye relief on it. It can be unassembled..."

Then the police left, with the promise that they would find the ones responsible for the crime. The pharoah, of course, doubted it. Such an artifact would not be so easily recovered, especially in the hands of those who were unaware what - and who - was contained inside.

It made him feel extremely miserable, though his - more Yugi's but still - friends did their best to make him feel better about it as he was brought home the next day.

"I don't think you've ever actually been to Yugi's school, right?" Anzu Mazaki, the only girl of the bunch, gave Yami a reassuring smile as they sat on the bus. "Don't worry, though, we always stay in one classroom, except for lunch and gym, of course. So you don't have to worry about getting lost."

"We can help on homework and stuff if you get stuck on it too," Jounouchi scratched his head. "Though, I don't know if you and Yugi shared duty on that, but if you didn't...? And, well, I'm not all that great at it...?"

"And," The semi-mohawked Hiroto Honda spoke up, beating his fists together. "I'll teach you self-defense! Yugi still tends to get picked on when we're not looking, so I can show you how to stop an attack using a bento box and your English book!"

"...Honda."

The other two gave the boy a look at his suggestion. Honda, though a fiercely loyal friend to both Yugis - as they all were - was not the best person to give a pep talk to anyone, much less a depressed pharoah.

"...I still wish I could go and find him." Yami was sitting up by this time, his head down. "I could use the Tauk to find the people who did this. See what they look like clearly. Then searching them out wouldn't be so difficult. On the other hand..."

"Yeah." The brief moment of hope was deflated by one single detail. "Your grandfather."

Yugi's grandfather, Sugoroku, had been unhappy about what happened, to put it lightly. Unhappy enough to restrict Yami from looking for his own grandson once he was out of the hospital, for fear of the attraction something like that would bring on him, particularly if the thieves happened to be well-connected. He

The pharoah, of course, didn't agree with the idea of simply abandoning the search for Yugi, but knew that he had to at least respect Sugoroku's decision. He wasn't the old man's true grandson, but for all intents and purposes he had to make others i think /i he was. And Yugi had always respected his grandfather's restrictions without complaint, which in the past had been few.

"Well, you just have to do what you have to do!" Honda nodded. "And what you have to do is...be Yugi for a little while until the Puzzle gets found! It shouldn't be that hard, right?"

"...Right," Yami mumbled as he looked at all three schoolmates. "Easy as pie."

The thought of having to pretend to be Yugi indefinitely - with no Yugi to help him - gave him a headache.

--------

"I really i do /i wish we could go and find the Puzzle for him."

The three heaved a collective sigh as they sat down at a bus bench outside of the game shop. Immediately after Yami's homecoming he had been sent to his room and ordered to rest; it was on the doctor's orders, as he still had a considerable way to to go before he could fully recover. As it was, he was not going to be going back to school until the end of the week and Sugoroku thought it best that Yugi's friends leave the pharoah be for the day - to give him space.

"I'd kick the asses of those creeps who stole the Puzzle!" Jounouchi growled. "They have no idea who they messed with!"

"It's too just bad Yugi's grandpa won't even let us touch the remaining Millennium Items," Honda looked up, slightly annoyed. "We'd find them in no time and then reprogram the thugs into thinking they were sea monkeys or something while we were at it."

"...You and monkeys..."

"Hmm?"

"Maybe...maybe we can search on Ebay or something," Anzu looked up thoughtfully. "It may not be the best idea, but it's better than simply doing nothing. In the meantime, though, we'll have to help Yami adjust. No one can be suspicious. Especially not..."

"What's his face?"

"...Bakura," Jounouchi mumbled as he gave Honda a slight look of where-have-you-been. "If he figures it out, we're in big trouble."

"...I don't know how we'll do it..." Anzu gave the others a hardened look. "But for this Yugi's sake, I'm willing to do my best!"

"Me too."

"Me three!"

There was a silence at this.

"...You know what this means, right?"

"...What, Jounouchi?"

"It means," Jounouchi grinned at Honda. "That now we have no excuse not to do our homework. You know Pharoah's going to make sure we do it, right?"

At this, Honda gave a groan.

---------

The boys' homework aside, the headache of being Yugi didn't go away very easily for Yami when push came to shove. Pretending to be as demure and as polite as his counterpart was a challenge of unknown proportions. Walking and talking was extremely frustrating for the first week; he kept stumbling through the wrong honorifics (which meant nearly everyone got their names wrong), eating with the wrong utensils (Yugi almost exclusively used chopsticks with his lunch, Yami learned to his chagrin) and had to be shown by Jounouchi how to watch with a slouched back (which was extremely painful for the excellently-postured pharoah). He even went out of his way to be nice to remaining members of Ushio's old bodyguard clique, as Yugi did, despite the fact that Yami wanted nothing more than to put them all into comas for what they had done to Yugi, Jounouchi and Honda on the fateful day he was revived.

Despite this, Yami managed to adjust somewhat to the awkwardness of those moments, the excuse of his un-Yugi-like lapses being that the beating at the hands of the thugs had been so traumatizing that it took him some time to not be afraid of everyone and get back into his normal routine. It was perhaps the worst excuse he'd ever had to come up with, but amazingly, most people accepted it without question.

No one asked after the whereabouts of the Puzzle, except, of course, the one person that Yami had expected to ask.

"Good morning, Yugi!" Yami's heart froze when he saw Ryou Bakura stroll up next to him on the way to school, his second day back. "Hey, you're not wearing the Puzzle. What happened?"

"Err..." Yami hoped his answer would not arouse suspiscion. "I...decided not to wear it for awhile, Bakura..."

"...Oh! Of course!" Bakura grinned. "Understood. The Millennium Items can be such a burden sometimes. You know, I should really wear mine less often myself..."

"...Of course."

Yami, of course, quickly excused himself and ran on ahead to school. He didn't want Bakura to figure out he was not actually Yugi, if he did not know yet - or rather, he didn't want the other Bakura to find out.

After that incident, Bakura didn't bring the Puzzle up again, though the time the Puzzle was gone began to stretch into weeks. Even he was seemingly satisfied by the information given to him.

Eventually, Yami managed to take full charge of Yugi's life, and with the help of Jounouchi, Anzu and Honda he was able to mostly pick up where Yugi left off in his studies and his activities. He even managed to improve Yugi's math score a little, which impressed his math sensei to no end - it meant he was starting to pay attention in class. He also managed to change the body's bedtime to ten, as going to bed at midnight started to quickly wear down the pharoah, which helped with his concentration. It was, at least to the outside world, as if the attack on Yugi had hardly done any long-term damage to the boy's self-esteem and had, in fact, increased it just a tiny bit.

Nor were the physical marks going to last forever - within two weeks the black eye was a faint purple and his jaw was healed; all that was left was the bruising on his stomach and the strange little stomach scab that had been belatedly discovered by the doctors during their final exam of Yami. Judging by the size, they concluded it was the result of an ingrown hair and advised the boy to leave it be, as it would eventually go on it's own. It was, albeit slowly, leaving a faint reddish mark just below his navel.

I guess...it's not too bad, Yami thought one day, about two weeks after slipping into the role of his lost partner, as he walked down the school hall to his classroom, alone. Being like this, experiencing his life like this...I miss him, still, everyone knows, but...still. The pain of losing him...isn't like it was before. I think...now that everything's under control...it's getting better. His grandfather will allow me use of the Millennium Items soon to track him down, I'm sure. And he'll be brought back to us.

It will get better. It has to...

It would probably have gone as Yami predicted, if all the odd things hadn't started happening.