Duel Legend
Battle 3 - Help from Beyond
By theria
The last bell rang, signaling the end of another school day. In another country perhaps, students wouldn't even be in school right now during the murky and hot weather of July. Unfortunately, Japanese students, in addition to the torture of being indoors in an non air-conditioned room for about eight hours, also had the semester examinations coming up at the end of the month. Naturally, these weren't as bad as the year end examinations that decided whether you moved on to the next grade but it was their first year of high school and hence, their first semester examination at this level. If the midterm assessment exams were any indication, a lot of students had lot of studying to do really fast.
Yugi let out a heavy sigh. He was really worried about the upcoming test. If he fell in the ranks and was dropped out of the English Track, his mother had threatened to lock up all of his games. That might not be too bad, dropping out of the English Track that is, not having all of his games taken away.
Domino High School was a public school but to be current with the times, it had long since instituted the so-called English Track curriculum that private schools had been offering alongside the 'normal' curriculum for what seemed like ages. The normal curriculum was simply that, the set of mandatory and elective classes put down by the country's Board of Education. The English Track had been created to offer students wishing more or future international, namely English, exposure to gain the proficiency in English to study and work abroad. Obviously, a number of international English-speaking students who came to Japan enrolled in this curriculum if not in an international school.
Back in middle school, when Anzu's dream of becoming a dancer was still far off, she had decided to try for Domino's English Track to better prepare her for the future. Yugi, not wanting to be left behind or alone, had studied harder than he ever had to qualify alongside her. It was right after the exam results were released when Anzu suddenly announced she was not waiting until the end of high school but was going to leave for America right now. He had been devastated to put it mildly.
So when school started he really hadn't been that attached to remaining in the course track, which was obviously harder than the normal one. Of course, on that same day he met and eventually became friends with Kyoko who was one of those previously mentioned returning students who opted for this course track. She was a lot of help when it came to studying, even if half the time all she really did was actually make him study. Was it his fault the things taught at school really didn't hold that much interest for him? Too bad grades weren't determined on how well you played games.
"Hey, Yugi. All packed up?" Kyoko asked, leaning against her desk. Though they usually walked home together, today they had another engagement to go to and so were more in a rush.
"Almost." He dumped the rest of his stuff into his bag, taking more care of his Game Advance video handheld than his notebooks. On their way out, he noticed several groups of students taking breaks by playing cards. When some of them asked him to join, he shook his head, claiming he was busy. "Duel Monsters certainly is getting popular."
"Yeah. That Duel Ring technology attracts a lot more people because it makes the game more exciting." Kyoko fell silent afterwards and Yugi himself grew depressed, remembering.
In a couple more days, it would be a full month since that fateful duel with Kaiba. Both Kyoko and Yugi had come out with nothing more than bruises, the bodyguards had only fainted. But Kaiba had become a vegetable because of whatever the angered Pharaoh had done.
"Where...going?" The Pharaoh, as always, was floating around Yugi as the three of them crossed the busy city. He had been working hard on learning the language so he could communicate with the two. The box with moving pictures and sound called a TV had been most helpful. And even though he didn't really understand everything those people that Yugi had to listen to in that building called school said, he was listening and memorizing those lessons as well. People in this world certainly had to spend a lot of time learning.
For that matter, they also wore a lot of different clothes though no one dressed like himself except for in those pictures that Yugi showed him in a book. Yugi and Kyoko had switched to their summer uniforms, short sleeved dress shirts without jackets but they were still sweating in the heat. Naturally, the Pharaoh wasn't affected by the weather at all. He could be dressed the way he was in the South Pole and not be bothered.
"We're going to visit Kaiba-kun." Yugi refrained from adding the word 'again'. He ignored the spirit's grumbling in Ancient Egyptian, which was what they assumed it had to be. "Are you sure you can't...help him or something?"
"He'll...fix...self, find...self." That was the only reply they ever got out of the ghost regarding what happened to Kaiba. Obviously, they had been unable to tell the emergency response team exactly what had happened to Kaiba and his bodyguards. They had thought it might be temporary, the bodyguards recovered shortly afterwards, but Kaiba had remained the way he was.
"But what did you do to him, Pharaoh?" Kyoko tried again to pry an answer out of the ghost. They weren't sure whether it was because he didn't want to tell, didn't know how to tell, or didn't know himself what had happened, much like the incident with the Black Magician which had never happened again. "I can't sense anything from Kaiba at all. It's like he's not even there."
The Pharaoh refused to say anything else on the matter, only voicing his wish that they hurry up and return home. His favorite learning show with the hamster was due to start in about half an hour.
"Konnichiwa, we're here to see-" Kyoko was cut off with a wave by the nurse who was on the phone, gesturing for them to go right ahead. With a shrug from Yugi, she just left it at that and they went down the hallway to Kaiba's private room. One of the benefits of being rich was having a private room in a private hospital.
To their surprise, there was actually someone already in there, a young boy sitting beside the bedridden, unresponsive Kaiba. It was Mokuba, whom they had learned by overhearing the nurses was Kaiba's younger brother. Other than themselves, he was Kaiba's only other consistent visitor.
"Ah, hello, Mokuba-kun. Are we intruding?" Yugi smiled at the younger boy, hoping to put him at ease. He wasn't sure if Mokuba remembered him or even knew about him.
"...it hasn't stopped you before, or so I've heard from the nurses." Mokuba only looked them over briefly before returning to look at his brother. On the bed's movable tray was an open notebook PC. "They say that you come by to visit Nii-sama twice a week. That you must be really good friends of Nii-sama's."
The two 'friends' winced. Well, yes they were concerned for him but there was also a healthy dose of guilt in it, knowing as they did that the Pharaoh was responsible. Neither of them was going to say that Kaiba deserved his fate even after what he tried to do.
"I don't know what happened that night and the bodyguards won't say specifically either." Mokuba snapped down the laptop, glaring at them in a manner not too unlike his older brother's. "But I do know that you two were there and that you know more than what you're telling. Nii-sama's friends?" he snorted. "It's your fault Nii-sama is like this! I don't know what you want but I don't want you ever coming here again. Now go before I call security."
"Chotto, Mokuba, we-"
Mokuba's finger hovered over the Call Nurse button.
Yugi pulled on Kyoko's arm. If Mokuba was anything like his older brother, he wouldn't be bluffing about getting security on them and Yugi didn't want a repeat episode with the Pharaoh. "Let's go, Kyoko. Before there's trouble."
She swallowed her protest. Mokuba had the same arrogance and bone-headedness as his older brother. Honestly, well excuse her for caring! Instead of worrying about Kaiba, she should have been focusing her concerns on the upcoming exams or even that young ghost boy who had been popping up frequently. Even if he had a big chip on his shoulder for his age, at least he wasn't utterly unreasonable unlike a certain pair of brothers she knew!!
Mokuba kept his finger over the call button until the two high school students' footsteps faded away in the hall outside. Then he slumped over the closed laptop, gazing sadly at his older brother, clutching a rectangular pendant in one hand. There was a similar one around his brother's neck, hidden though underneath his shirt. Though there had been some initial protest from the doctor and nurses, a little...bonus convinced them to overlook it. Really, money did make the world go around and if there was something the Kaiba family was not short of, it was money.
"Nii-sama, don't worry. I'll take care of everything." There was tremor of trembling in his voice, one matching the shaking in his hand as he reached out to grab tightly to Kaiba's hand. "I'll protect our Kaiba Corporation and your dream. I'll take care of everything, Nii-sama. Just...come back to me."
"...please."
The sun had painted the sky a mix of pink and red by the time Kyoko said good-bye to Yugi. She had spent the entire afternoon tutoring him; with the Pharaoh being of no help whatsoever as he watched TV the entire time. Of course, he wanted to try playing some of Yugi's video games as well, having finally learned how to make himself solid enough to affect normal things, but Kyoko had put her foot down about that idea. Yugi would never have been able to concentrate then and she pointed out that they would probably be playing the games late into the night anyway once she left.
. . .which she could already hear down at street level from the open window to Yugi's bedroom. At this rate, the boy was going to be deaf by the time he graduated from high school.
Shaking her head, she started to walk home, no wait, she needed to do some grocery shopping first. The joy and responsibility of living on your own, it wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
"Excuse me, Miss."
Kyoko paused, looking around to who called her seeing as there were few people still outside at early dusk in this quiet neighborhood. A teenager, whose class pin on his uniform collar marked him as being her age, was waving to her from the entrance of the closed game store. His white hair, an extremely out of place shade for someone of his age, marked him as being either someone not very ordinary or the product of a recessive gene pairing.
"I'm sorry for bothering you but since I saw you leaving the building I thought you might know something about the store there," he smiled self-consciously. "Though that is a bit forward of me since I don't even know if you live here."
Like she was going to tell that to a complete stranger. Sure, he looked harmless but so was a wolf in sheep's wool. "The game store only opens on the weekends and by appointment," Kyoko informed him. Obviously, with pretty much only herself and Yugi taking care of it and Akane reluctantly agreeing to take the position as the legal age adult, they couldn't keep the store hours that Sugoroku had, especially not with exams right around the corner. "There is also the store's website if you wish to browse what we carry."
He raised an eyebrow. "You work here?"
Slip of the tongue, it was too late to take it back now and rather pointless if he did show up at the store later. "Yes, I do. Was there anything in particular you were looking for?" Kyoko gave herself a mental kick for going into salesperson mode. She really didn't have time for this.
"Do you carry Tabletop Role Playing Game (TRPG) material? I noticed there was a standing figure of the Dark Master Zork but..."
"Oh that? Yes, actually we do have a few books and scenarios of the Monster World setting. It only came out recently in America."
"I've been looking forward to getting it." His brown eyes grew briefly unfocused, his left hand twitching as if from some nervous spasm. But then it was gone, and he was only smiling mildly at her. Weird. "You said the store would be open this weekend? Well, I'll be sure to drop by."
He walked away, all the while clutching tightly his twitching hand and muttering to himself. Kyoko wondered if there was something wrong with him, but then, who was she to talk? Her best friend was living with a ghost from Ancient Egypt and she could see ghosts. Speaking of which...
The park was empty though it wasn't quite dark yet. But all children would have been picked up by their mothers and fathers by now to be taken back to their nice, warm home. All but one child that is, one that sat on the low railing that surrounded the swing set, sat there looking at the empty swing before him.
"What are you thinking about?"
He didn't even look up at the person speaking to him. "It doesn't concern you."
Kyoko only smiled, he always said that. This was that young boy spirit she had been thinking about earlier. He only appeared to be about ten, had brown hair and blue eyes, and was dressed in jeans, a yellow dress shirt, and a blue sleeveless cardigan. Which was to say he looked like a normal boy if anyone other than herself could see him.
She sat down on the railing next to him. He didn't appear to notice, which was something in itself. In the beginning, he would always stay away from her, running away even. Kyoko supposed that it was only understandable that he would react that way. When she had first met him, he had been curled up on the ground, beaten and kicked by other not so friendly ghosts. He had an attitude, which annoyed pretty much every other ghost he's met, but he was also a relatively new ghost, having few memories of anything earlier.
"How was your search today?"
Again, he didn't answer though his hand clenched tightly to the pieces in his pocket. They were puzzle pieces, of that he was certain, but of what and for what he had no idea. He only knew that he wanted to, he had to put them together and in order to do that he had to find all of them. It was for these puzzle pieces that the other ghosts would gang up on him, only knowing that if they were worth something to one of them, it was probably worth more to someone else. Idiots.
"The sun's almost gone. We'd better go before the other ghosts come out." Not all ghosts were tied to the cycle of day and night though generally the meaner ones only came out at night. Hence it was a good idea to be inside, especially for him, before that happened.
"Why do you come here?" he finally asked albeit grudgingly. He didn't need anyone, not the other ghosts and certainly not a living person.
"Why are you always here?" she returned flippantly. From what she had seen, he wasn't tied to any one place or object like most ghosts. He was free wandering, an odd ability for a spirit, but she could always find him here, at sunset, in this park. "If you didn't want me to find you, you could simply not be here."
He could, that was true. Though there was something that always drew him here, he had yet to find out what it was. But always, he felt the urge to come to this park near the end of the day, watching the smiling children leave with their parents and looking at this particular swing that always seemed so lonely, waiting for someone. However, to avoid this meddlesome person he could just as easily not come.
"I go where I want," he answered with all the arrogance of his years and then some. "That has no connection to you."
"I guess. But then I also go where I want, do what I want."
"Humph." He didn't particularly like his words being thrown back at him. "And if I wasn't here? What would you do then?" The words spilled out of him without warning, too fast for him to retract them. That had been what he was thinking but he'd never say it out loud. Because it sounded like he cared.
If Kyoko thought his question out of character, or noticed how he closed up immediately afterwards, she pretended she hadn't. "Probably sit out here for a couple hours, run around looking for other places you might be, get worried that something had happened to you..." she smiled down at him. Kyoko couldn't help being worried about children. Perhaps it was lingering guilt about not being there for her own younger brothers, far in the past as it was? "I'm certain you can take care of yourself so the only thing that would be running through my mind if I couldn't find you is that something really bad must have happened."
"You don't even know who I am," he pointed out, glossing over that omission in himself though he was getting some memories the more puzzle pieces he found. Some even fit together. "Why do you concern yourself with a complete stranger with no obvious benefit to yourself?"
"You think people have relationships with each other solely for the purpose of personal benefit or desires? I suppose that's true in a way. Even the most charitable person is selfish, imposing their desire to 'do good' on people who may or may not appreciate the gesture. And of course, I'm imposing myself on you, concerning myself with you when I suppose there really isn't any reason to."
He flinched at her words but said nothing. It was after all what he had expected she would say. All older people were like that but at least Kyoko didn't bother to hide behind fancy words and false gestures. That was something he really hated. He supposed that the fact that she didn't do it was something he liked about her and was the only reason he bothered being here everyday. After all, it would only take one day of her not showing up and all of his beliefs about older people would be justified.
"Well, shall we go? I bought more of your favorite ice cream."
He snorted. It was an excuse for him to come and they both knew it. He just waited a little while before jumping off the railing, to show that he was going only reluctantly. His first several nights out alone were still vivid in his early ghostly memory and they had not been pleasant ones. Sure he could have hidden in other buildings but...it was tiresome to be alone where no one saw you, heard you, or noticed you. It was preferable to stay at Kyoko's apartment since she at least could see and hear him and didn't treat him like he didn't exist.
Funny that one of the things he first remembered was his favorite ice cream flavor. He didn't need to eat, never felt hunger, but for some reason he could eat food if he felt like it. Kyoko had commented about how he was a weird ghost. He thought she was weird to even be friends with a ghost and had said as much at time. She only grinned and said that the dead should stick together.
"Something wrong?" Kyoko asked, looking back at the ghost boy who stopped several paces behind.
"...no, nothing."
"If you say so..." Her tone obviously implied that she didn't believe him but she wasn't going to push the issue. "You know, we really have to get you a name. I can't always be calling you 'you' or 'ghost boy'."
"What would be the point once I remember my name and it turns out to be different." He rolled his eyes. Why did girls always have to think of the silly things? He certainly didn't feel inconvenienced by not having a name.
"Have you remembered your name yet?"
"No."
"Well then," she said with an air of finality as if the question had been answered. "How about...Ky?"
"Ky...?" It sounded vaguely familiar to him. "Where did you come up with that?"
"You remind me of someone...with that name."
"...someone you like?"
"Wha-?! Where did you get that idea??" Kyoko sputtered, glaring at the boy, er Ky as he walked coolly passed her. "No, for your information Ky is the name of a video game character. You happen to look a bit like him, I guess, if you switch the color pattern. And grow another foot or so."
The ghost boy now dubbed 'Ky' rolled his eyes. Leave it up to a girl to pick a name for that reason though he supposed he had to give her some credit for choosing it from a video game and not some cheesy girl manga.
Yugi looked at the letters stuffed into the mailbox. His mother had told him it was his responsibility now to check it every morning. So he had forgotten for a... few days. Akane had been too busy to notice. Well, he'd be sure to clean it out when he came back after school. Just to make sure there wasn't anything urgent and to re-stack them so they wouldn't spill out anymore, he flipped through them.
Oh, here was an international letter. Yugi looked to the return address, wondering from which of his grandfather's friends it had come from.
"ANZU?!?"
The Pharaoh blinked and leaned over Yugi's shoulder to see what had excited the boy enough to rip open the envelope and figuratively devour its contents. He hadn't understood what Yugi had yelled about either. And of course, he couldn't read a word of Japanese which was what the letter was entirely written in.
"What...say?"
Yugi didn't appear to hear him though his eyes were as wide as saucers.
"Yugi...?"
"SHE'S COMING BACK!!!" he shrieked with joy. The Pharaoh had to clap his hands over his deafened ears. "She'll be back for the entire month of August! I wonder if mom will let me meet her at the airport? Do you think she's changed? Have I? I can't wait to see her again! Oh, I hope she hasn't found a boyfriend or something over there..."
Yugi rambled on and on, the rest of the mail forgotten. But that wasn't the only thing he had forgotten.
The Pharaoh waved his hand in front of Yugi's face, trying to get his attention. "Yugi...time."
The teenager blinked and looked at his watch. "AAH! I'm going to be late! Why didn't you tell me earlier, Pharaoh!?"
Pharaoh only sighed and shook his head, he had tried. What was so important about this Anzu person that had Yugi all worked up? He had a vague recollection of hearing Kyoko also mention the name and then Yugi turning red as if he had a fever. But idle speculation could come later, at school. Right now he had to run to keep up with the boy and moving Puzzle. It was going to be one of those days.
"You stayed up late last night playing video games didn't you?" Kyoko fixed an eye on Yugi during the ten minute passing period between classes. Yugi had of course arrived late and would be washing the chemistry test tubes and flasks after school today as punishment.
Yugi only laughed weakly. He had been playing video games, with the Pharaoh who caught on rather quickly though he sometimes lost his concentration and his tangibility. But that wasn't the real reason he was late and he certainly wasn't going to tell Kyoko about Anzu's letter.
It wasn't that he thought Kyoko might get jealous or something or vice versa. The two had never met but both knew about the other. What Yugi was afraid of was that Kyoko's ribbing was going to exponentially increase. But he wasn't going to keep Anzu's visit completely secret. He'd introduce his old friend to his new friend after he had some private time with Anzu. The Pharaoh had yet to make any comments about what happened this morning and Yugi made a mental note to talk with the ghost later and make sure he kept quiet.
For that matter, he wasn't sure he wanted the ancient spirit hanging around then either. Anzu probably wouldn't be able to see him but it would be like having... nosy friends spying you on a date or something. Was he going to ask Anzu out on a date? She might just think it was an old get-together of friends. What was he going to wear? But he'd probably have to leave the Puzzle behind, at least whenever he wanted to be alone with her.
"Argh! When did things get this complicated?" Yugi moaned, hitting his head against his desk.
Kyoko blinked, obviously not understanding what her friend was referring to. "Are you talking about the video games or the test?"
"Test?" His violet eyes lacked recognition for a moment. "The tests are right before vacation!!" He would have to suffer through them first before getting to see Anzu again. The powers that be were too, too cruel to him. Yugi let his head fall back down on the desk again.
"Are you getting enough iron in your diet?" Kyoko poked him to see if he was still alive. "Or calcium? Maybe all that junk food you eat has weakened your bones to the point they can no longer hold up your head."
"Like that would happen!" Yugi retorted, the impact blunted by the fact that his head was still on the desk. An energy bar appeared in front of his eyes. "Huh?"
"Have this. Sometimes I feel like I can't do anything either and eating this helps."
Yugi and Kyoko looked up at the speaker.
"Who are you?" Yugi had never seen this student before and certainly not in his class. He had soft brown eyes, normal enough, but his long hair was a shocking white.
"Ah, that's right. You weren't here for my introduction. Bakura Ryou desu(1). I transferred into your class today. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu, Muto-kun(2)." Ryou smiled, eyes closed. Then he turned to Kyoko. "I would never have imagined we would be in the same class, Suomi-kun."
"Likewise." She had recognized him in the beginning of class. Talk about coincidences if you didn't believe in fate or destiny. There were certainly a number of supernatural things occurring around her lately. Or maybe it was because of Yugi's Puzzle. No, she was probably just thinking too hard. This Bakura Ryou was only being friendly. "But you certainly didn't pick a good time to come, not with the tests at the end of this month."
Ryou scratched his head in embarrassment. "Yes well, one generally doesn't really have a choice when it comes to transferring though I do hope that passing the entrance examination is an indication of my ability. This may seem forward of me but would it be alright if you two could assist me in catching up with this class? I was in the English Track at my previous school but I'm not sure how similar the teachings are."
"I think that would be great, we could have our own study group." Yugi grinned, obviously the offered energy bar having already put good marks for Ryou in his book. It was very lonely to enter a class where you don't know anyone. Yugi should know since he had been in Ryou's shoes once. Kyoko had held out a hand to him then so he was going to hold out his hand to Ryou. "Don't you think Kyoko? We could meet in the library or somewhere."
"Study group?" the Pharaoh asked Kyoko for an explanation of the unfamiliar term. It was safe for him to talk at school since no one else had been able to see or hear him.
"A study group is when several students get together to study together. It's very helpful not only for the weaker students get help but for the stronger students to also review by teaching," Ryou answered. "That would be a great idea, Muto-kun. A group of four isn't too big or too small."
The three of them stared slack-jawed at Ryou. He only smiled.
"EH?!?!?" screamed three voices at once.
"The teacher is coming!" yelled a student in the hallway and their classmates scrambled to get into their seats before the instructor arrived. Ryou only nodded to them before returning to his seat.
"...he...heard...?" muttered the ghost, looking after the mysterious new student. Kyoko and Yugi exchanged bewildered and helpless glances. Neither of them had said anything. It certainly looked like Ryou had been answering the Pharaoh's question, which meant he had to have heard him but... was it all just a fluke?
"Yes. I did," came the answer from one white-haired student. He continued in a low voice as the teacher entered. "Perhaps we can talk more later?"
There was nothing more they could say as the teacher called the class to order. Today was going to be a messy biology dissection. Yugi closed his eyes and groaned silently.
Later turned out to be much later, considering that Ryou was called to the teachers' office during lunch and neither Kyoko nor Yugi wanted to start up a conversation about ghosts in the presence of the other students. It came down to after school ended and Yugi was fulfilling his punishment for his tardiness.
"He doesn't seem like a bad person," Yugi commented, using a finger brush to get at a particularly stubborn solid sedimentation at the bottom of the test tube. Kyoko, who was drying the glassware, had filled him on her meeting with Ryou yesterday. "Even if his hair color is rather scary."
"..." Kyoko thought that Yugi was the last person to comment on someone else's hair color or style. "Have you been watching those Chinese horror movies again? If I recall correctly, those white-haired people can't come out during the day."
"Actually," intruded a perfectly friendly voice, "it's because of a little incident with a faded parchment scroll, a bad dictionary, and a demon."
Both Kyoko and Yugi stifled gasps of surprise and only barely retained their grips on the chemistry glass. Two pairs of reproachful eyes turned on Ryou, who was smiling unconcernedly.
"Oh good, you two are still here. I was afraid you might have already left, considering how long I was in the teacher's office." Without preamble, Ryou picked up the dried glassware and began putting it away, following Kyoko's directions. "I'm still not sure the teacher believes that my hair color is natural."
"But... you said a demon..." Yugi choked.
"He was joking," Kyoko informed her shorter friend though a side glance at Ryou's unperturbed face made her question her own observation. "You didn't tell the teacher that whole story about demons did you?"
"If ghosts exists," Ryou nodded his head toward the Pharaoh, "then why not demons? But no, you are right, Suomi-kun, I didn't tell the teacher that. I simply said it was a genetic recessive condition."
Actually, the dress code and enforcement of it at Domino High School was somewhat lax. The boys could get away with unbuttoned jackets and non-standard shirts underneath it. Of course, it may be because of that certain laxness that the teachers tended to come down hard on 'extreme' examples, like Ryou's hair. Yugi had undergone a similar experience about his hair, until his grandfather came in to meet with the teacher, and again about the Puzzle. He kept his mouth shut about how he got through that one.
"Even with that, he still insisted that I dye it and when I refused, he threatened to call my parents. And then I told him they are currently not available." A bemused smile floated on Ryou's lips as he remembered the teacher's frustration.
"But Bakura-kun, didn't you say you moved here from...?" Kyoko tried to remember where but for some reason, a name wouldn't come up. She was quite sure it had been mentioned sometime, somewhere, most likely during his self-introduction this morning. "Did you move in all by yourself?"
Ryou's eyes flickered, briefly, looking at the glassware he was arranging and not at Yugi. "I did since my...family is usually off working somewhere in the world." There was a tone of finality in his words that implied, heavily, that he did not want to say any more about that. "But that's not what we're here to talk about is it? Suomi-kun. Muto-kun."
The pair of friends stiffened, the half-dreaded, half-anticipated conversation finally coming up.
"It would probably be most convenient to meet at one set place though it might be interesting to cycle the meeting places among our respective homes. After all, the school is only opened for limited hours beyond normal school times."
If she could, Kyoko would have facefaulted, as she had seen many characters do in anime and manga. Here, she and Yugi had been worried about how to talk about the Pharaoh with Ryou and here he was going off on how they were going to set up their study group!!
"A... Ano, Bakura-kun... didn't you... weren't we going to talk about..." Yugi indiscreetly pointed at the egyptian(?) ghost, "the Pharaoh?"
"Pharaoh?" Ryou couldn't hide his astonishment, his eyes narrowing briefly, studying the three, before resuming their usual open friendliness. "Is that what you call him or is that the name he gave for himself? Not that he appears to be very talkative."
Yugi briefly recounted how he met the Pharaoh, unconsciously rubbing the Puzzle around his neck while doing so. Though he had initially left out most of the 'mystical' details, they were somehow coaxed out of him by Ryou's subtle probing. The white-haired youth appeared genuinely interested, and not at all scared, by all of this.
"So then, Suomi-kun, you have some kind of spirit sense?"
Kyoko nodded. "Don't you have it as well?" After all, if Ryou could see and hear the Pharaoh...
He shook his head, much to their surprise. "Actually, I don't though I admit I have...dabbled in the arcane arts." Neither of them was quite sure how to take that. Certainly there were many books on 'magick' but whether those were real or not... But again, if ghosts were real... "However, I think perhaps this might answer your question better."
Ryou closed his eyes, concentrating on something. Suddenly, a golden ring about the size of his hand appeared above his shirt, hanging from a string around his neck. But what caught Kyoko's and Yugi's attention more than the item's 'sudden' appearance was the emblem molded onto it, a stylized eye that matched the one on Yugi's Puzzle and puzzle box.
"I believe the reason I can see the Pharaoh is partially because of my exposure to the supernatural, but more because of this Millennium Ring." His fingers traced over the eye, reverently, causing the hanging spikes to shake and ring against each other.
"Millennium Ring?!?" the friends repeated in stereo. It was difficult to tell as to whether their bewilderment was from Ryou's revelation or from the fact that it didn't really look like a ring, not one you could wear on your finger at any rate.
"Hai. And Yugi, I believe yours would be called the Millennium... Puzzle."
"Millennium Puzzle?!?" Again in sync. This time, the name made a bit more sense.
Ryou looked amused at their reactions.
"I believe these two were part of the same set. Beyond the obvious similarities in material and design, something that could simply be attributed to being made during the same time period, there is also this." He held out the Ring and muttered a few unintelligible words. The hanging... prongs for lack of better word shook for a moment and then rose up of their own accord, pointing at Yugi, or more accurately, at the Puzzle hanging from his neck.
Three pairs of eyes stared dumbfounded at the phenomenon.
Though all three were now quite used to the thought that ghosts existed in the world, one of them being a ghost himself, and they recognized that something akin to magic could be done by the Pharaoh, seeing magic performed by someone else, someone they had just met, was enough to leave them speechless.
Kyoko found her tongue first. "Which is to say... that our meeting in front of Yugi's home was not simply coincidence."
"Well, there is obviously a range limit and I generally do have to activate the effect," Ryou acceded, apparently releasing the magick and letting the Ring rest against his chest again. "I didn't know coming to Domino City that there was a Millennium Item bearer here."
Yugi was quiet, looking at the Puzzle cradled in his hands. He hadn't considered that there might be more to the Puzzle, beyond the Pharaoh that is, or that it might actually belong to something. It had after all been his grandfather's though now that Yugi thought about it, he never even knew his grandfather had the puzzle box until it was brought out to be given to him by Sugoroku's will. Had his grandfather known something about it? Yugi knew nothing but Ryou apparently did.
"Bakura-kun, what do you know about these... Millennium... items...?"
"Bits and pieces... picked up from really obscure books," Ryou answered vaguely, his eyes not meeting Yugi's or anyone's for that matter. "There really isn't much there."
"But, you said that my Puzzle and your Ring was part of a set..."
"And unless you learned about your... Ring's tracking ability from reading, you must have used it before... to find another Millennium Item," added Kyoko. She wasn't generally suspicious or paranoid by nature but there can only be so many coincidences in the world.
"Well...it doesn't always work on command," hedged the white-haired youth. "It sometimes detects things on its own and I'm not entirely sure why it does that, perhaps in reaction to the same or similar magical energy that it uses. After all, the Ring wasn't reacting right now until I activated it. I don't think it can sense inactive items."
"Inactive items? You mean if someone was to... say, use whatever power might be in the Puzzle, your Ring would direct you to that person without being commanded to?" But Kyoko was fairly sure that Yugi's Puzzle hadn't been 'active' yesterday or at any other time, unless you count its purpose as home and leash to the Pharaoh. For that matter, what power did it have?
"It certainly isn't doing anything right now."
Yugi and Kyoko looked at the Ring, which looked just as ostentatious on Ryou as did the Puzzle on Yugi. Of course, the fact that he could hide it meant that the teachers weren't going to get on his case about it, in addition to his hair color.
"But what are they for?" Yugi insisted, his imagination and brain beginning to shift to high gear, something it never does for school. This could be just like one of his video games. "Are they like... powerful magical artifacts that the chosen characters must use to fight the encroaching darkness only to have to sacrifice them because the artifacts themselves use the same power?"
Silence.
"Ah, that sounds too corny," Yugi laughed and everyone joined in, all of them, even Yugi, rather half-heartedly. That was just too unbelievable, that something like that could happen to plain-old him.
"Sounds like the general plot for about ten video games," agreed Kyoko though she privately noted that their lives were already not a prime example of 'normal'. "Maybe you should consider a career in game design, Yugi."
The boy blushed because Kyoko knew about several of his attempts at trying to create a new game.
"That would be an interesting concept for a game..." Ryou mused, tapping a finger on his chin. "The expected saviors of the world may have actually inadvertently begun its destruction. It's quite easy to trick players into that kind of situation."
"That's right, you asked about TRPGs didn't you? I take it you play them?"
"Well, I'm usually the Game Master. Everyone loved the scenarios I would come up with so I didn't have many opportunities of being a player character."
"AAAHHHH!!"
Kyoko and Ryou turned to look at Yugi who had just screamed. There was no blood splattered all over the sink so he couldn't just cut himself on broken glass. There didn't appear to be any demons, ghosts, or unexplainable supernatural phenomenon around despite their earlier conversation and the accumulation of the supernatural and paranormal already present. So just why had Yugi screamed?
"Bakura-kun ne? You said your name was Bakura Ryou right?"
"Yes...?" Ryou raised a thin, dark eyebrow.
"But in America it would be written "Ryo Bakura" wouldn't it?"
"Yes, most Western countries have the identification custom of given name and then family name. It's part of the social emphasis on the individual rather than the Eastern emphasis on the collective."
Everything after the affirmative completely went in one ear and out the other. "Then...are you the same person who created the Monster World campaign setting?"
Silence.
"Yes."
More silence.
"EEEEHHH?!?" This time it was Kyoko.
"You didn't know? Suomi-kun. I thought that you might have made the connection."
"I don't pick up minor details like who created or authored it."
"Harsh," Yugi winced.
"You know, this is kind of sudden..."
Kyoko and Yugi looked up from where they were hunched over Yugi's math book. This was their second study session together with Ryou, just over a week after he had transferred into their class. Ryou had a pretty good grasp on literature and history whereas Kyoko was stronger in science and math. Both were overall very good students and unlikely to fall below the top 50 in the class. Yugi on the hand needed help in everything, and now with Ryou here to help as well, he was getting through his studies with less questionably affectionate whacks on the head with a pillow when his attention drifted. Ryou, in his opinion, was a lifesaver.
"There is a tie-in promotion to Monster World coming up this weekend. You remember how I told you I gave out a license to make a networked video game for the setting? Well, the local promotion and play-test is on Saturday and as the creator, I was able to get my hands on some exclusive VIP passes. Would you two like to come?"
Yugi's eyes had turned into stars.
"Of course the Pharaoh can come as well." Ryou nodded to the ghost who was currently absorbed in a driving game involving so many driving violations that he hoped the ghost was never allowed behind the wheel. "Being a ghost, he won't need a ticket."
"That means the store will have to be closed. And we should probably be studying..."
"Oh come on, Kyoko," Yugi pleaded, mercilessly turning his ultimate weapon, the hurt puppy look, onto his best friend. "We still have another weekend after that before exams week. And we can't study all the time, our brains will liquefy."
"It's a new system they're showcasing," Ryou added helpfully. "A type of full-immersion virtual reality--"
"In." Her answer was abrupt, succinct, and to the point. Yugi exchanged triumphant grins with Ryou. Kyoko loved role-playing games, the more interactive the better. And she, like anyone else, was hardly going to let a free chance like this slip by her.
"Then it's settled. Why don't we meet at the showcase site half an hour before it opens?" He handed over a flier describing the event for the other two see.
"So it's being held at..."
"Kaiba...Land..."
Kyoko's first thought was about how arrogant, and fitting, that an amusement park created by Kaiba Corporation would be named Kaiba Land. Then she reminded herself that the Disney in Disney Land was also someone's name so really, it wasn't all that self-serving.
"Kyoko... ohayou."
She looked to the left to see Yugi walking up with the Pharaoh. Since it wasn't a school day, Yugi was dressed in faded jeans and a black sleeveless shirt with the word "YuGiOh" emblazoned across the front. Somehow, he always looked closer to his age when out of the school uniform. Naturally, the Puzzle hung around his neck as always.
"Ohayou, Yugi, Pharaoh," she replied and resumed looking at the amusement park building laid out before them.
There was of course an archway sign proclaiming just exactly what this place was. A large courtyard lay spread out before them, dotted with statues of various Duel Monster creatures. However, the main attractions all lay within the building itself which also had its share of Duel Monster statues decorating it as could be seen through the glass walls. And of course there were children packed as far as the eye could see.
"...it was here...wasn't it." It wasn't a question but a statement. Even if it had been nighttime and empty, Yugi recognized this place as the stage for that fateful night with Kaiba.
"This must have been what he was referring to," Kyoko spoke quietly, recalling her conversation with the young corporate president when he first entered the store. Of course, Kaiba Land's grand opening had been delayed because of the accident. "Kind of hard to believe someone like him could put together something like this."
Yugi read no malice in her words but also could not help but to nod in silent agreement. True they didn't really know Kaiba Seto beyond what anyone else in school knew, perhaps they knew more than they wanted to about his ruthlessness and how far he would go to get something he wants. But here before them was another side to Kaiba Seto, one that Yugi wasn't quite sure he understood but one that made him hopeful that Kaiba wasn't all that bad as he made himself appear to be.
Which could only be wishful thinking on Yugi's part. He really didn't think ill of anyone.
"Ohayou gozaimasu, Muto-kun, Suomi-kun." Ryou waved to them from the entrance of the building, in his raised hands were what looked to be two nametags. "I have your passes."
When Ryou said he could get exclusive VIP passes, he hadn't been kidding. All of the men in dark suits and shades just took one look at the passes hanging from their necks and waved them through. And it wasn't just for the showcase promotion either, but just about every attraction that didn't require advance reservation like the popular Duel Rings. There were also rooms of various video games, indoor roller coasters, arenas for other trading games like Capsule Monster Chess, obstacle courses, shows, if you could name it, it was somewhere in the building that apparently could hold much more than its exterior appearance would indicate.
Yugi couldn't help but wonder, as they were led to a backroom of the showcase past everyone else, which one of the doors they had passed earlier led to the Duel Ring stage he had used over a month ago.
The showcase was apparently very popular if one judged only by the number of people there. Ryou had said it was supposed to be a new system of some sort but Yugi didn't know the first thing about technology much less the virtual system and all of its ins and outs. For him, it was basically if it works, he'll use it, if it doesn't, he calls the service center. Of course, Yugi knew that the Duel Rings used some kind of virtual reality technology to create the monsters on the "field". And he had been kind of expecting something similar for whatever it was they doing to Monster World.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
The three of them were shown to three reclining, cushioned seats encapsulated in some kind of pod. There were other clusters of pods, each surrounding a tower and there were monitors showing the video game display of the occupied pods. The scene kind of remind Yugi of some of those American science fiction movies he's seen though he couldn't name any particular one.
"Please be seated," gestured a Man in Black, motioning to Yugi to move along. He had just been gawking at the machine. A bit embarrassed, he slide onto the chair, more than a bit annoyed that his feet were nowhere near the bottom of the pod. He didn't like being reminded that he was the shortest boy in his class. "Please relax and keep your hands and feet within the marked compartments of the VR pod."
The glass covers descended and Yugi had to swallow his apprehension at being enclosed. What if they were trapped inside? What if they ran out of air in here? A million other "what if" scenarios ran through the boy's mind.
Pharaoh looked down worriedly at Yugi, sensing the boy's apprehension. He didn't quite understand what was going on, naturally, but Yugi, Kyoko, and that new boy Ryou had all gone into the unfamiliar tubes willingly. And it didn't look like other people who had gone into them were suffering from anything. In fact, they looked asleep. Moving to the extent of his range, he could see other two seemed to be comfortable in their closed chairs. Well, actually, Kyoko looked impatient and was exploring the interior of her chair. And Ryou...well, Ryou was glaring at his left hand, muttering something. But when he looked up and caught the Pharaoh's eye, he only smiled as usual and waved to the ghost.
"Now, if you will please relax and close your eyes..."
Yugi scrunched his eyes closed but he wasn't able to relax, especially not when he felt something approaching both of his ears. There was some kind of droning noise and then...
Nothing.
Naturally, during the past week in preparation for this event, Yugi had been studying up on TRPGs, and on Monster World in particular. He had a general idea of how things worked but Ryou had suggested they read up on character creation and come up with an idea of what they wanted to "play" as. Kyoko had not really scolded Yugi for skimping on his studies a bit to do this. She had been more obsessed than he had and he had caught her reading through books hidden behind her textbook during class.
Of course, she had refused to say what kind of character she was going to create. Yugi knew they needed a balanced party, well, as balanced as you can get with only three people. At least they weren't starting out at Level 1, since this was only a demo to get people interested and show off what the system could do. Ryou had privately passed on information that, as part of his "group", they would be starting out even higher than the other demo players.
Yugi looked at the character design windows opening up all around him as he hung suspended in some void. He picked out the specifications for his character that he had finalized last night. Kyoko and Ryou certainly weren't going to expect this of him, he thought excitedly. It was too bad the Pharaoh couldn't join them.
"Character creation complete... Compiling profile... visual grid... Complete. Player YUGI prepare for ascension."
The cool, clinical, female voice of the computer spoke from all directions and most certainly did not prepare Yugi for his sudden "landfall" into a scenery that materialized in pieces around him. It looked to be a European pre-Renaissance town, a very bizarre landscape for a native Japanese person. He was standing in a town square, right next to a water fountain. There were people in strange clothes talking and walking around, some more than others.
"Yugi?" A familiar female voice called from across the square. A person wrapped in a deep blue-black hooded mantle came running up to him, the flapping cloth revealing the lighter blue one piece sleeveless tunic and shorts ensemble underneath and white boots that went all the way up to mid-thigh. It was only when she pulled down her hood that Yugi could recognize that it was Kyoko. Though it wasn't exactly her since Yugi was fairly sure she didn't have an intricate black tattoo across her right eye. "I was wondering when you'd arrived. Is that the rogue visual grid template you're wearing?"
He nodded sheepishly. Yes, he had chosen the rogue class, jack of all trades. None of the other classes had really seemed suitable and yes Yugi did like the images of the rogues in grayish-blue leather in the actual hardback Monster World campaign book. Heck, he could even pick a lock or two... thanks to those lock-and-key puzzles of course, not because he was specifically learning how to pick locks. Not that he would need to use real skills in this virtual role playing game, everything here was decided by how many ranks he had put into his skills and the random, computer generated, die roll.
"With your hair, it was easy to pick you out," Kyoko grinned, patting said multi-colored and somewhat geometric hair. "Though I thought you would have added some centimeters to your character."
Both of them were still at their real heights and their visual grids were based on their actual appearance. Of course, the idea behind role-playing was that you don't necessarily play as yourself. Certainly there were probably not people in the world who, naturally, had green or pink hair as some of the people wandering around town sported. For that matter, Yugi wondered, how many characters were actually the same gender as their players?
"Ah, Suomi-kun, Muto-kun. Good, you're together. I was afraid we might not be able to find each other." Ryou, despite his words, didn't look all that worried. In fact, he seemed to be right at home among these old wooden and stone buildings, his white hair and flowing white robes lending an air of authority and experience to his young face. Well, he had designed the campaign setting. "The White Sage RYOU at your service."
Kyoko raised a tattooed eyebrow. "White Sage?"
"Well, I did ask if I could use my NPC persona in this demonstration." Ryou failed to look suitably humble, probably because of the playful half-smile tugging at his lips. "But you've outdone your character, Suomi-kun. A Rank 3 ESPer..." His eyes fixed on her tattoo, the intricacy and pattern marking her a master of the three disciplines, and then trailing down her "costume", the garb of an elite warrior division of the general ESPer class.
Yugi's violet eyes grew big. No wonder Kyoko hadn't told him what she was going to be. An ESPer was an optional class category for the Monster World setting, not everyone considered psionics, powers of the mind, to be suitable for a fantasy story. Bakura-kun didn't seem surprised but he might have already known what she had chosen. There was no other way Yugi could explain it since he couldn't have figured out what Kyoko was based only on her visual grid.
Speaking of visual grids, Bakura-kun sure seemed to fit his well. Yugi resisted the urge to look into the water fountain to see how he "looked" in his leathers. Hopefully, not like a kid trying to look like a punk or something. Just when was his growth spurt going to hit? He didn't want to remain 153 cm (five feet) for the rest of his life!
"Not one word about the costume," Kyoko remarked sharply, drawing Yugi out of his thoughts even though she was looking pointedly at Ryou who just couldn't seem to wipe that smile off of his face. "I'm going to have a word with the designers about that. Exactly who can go around adventuring in shorts??"
"Well, it isn't as if this was real." Ryou sounded almost wistful as he looked around at the bustling town, his grip on his white oak staff tightening briefly. "Well, shall we tour the town? I'm rather curious as to how the designers and programmers implemented this," he said as he led the other two away from the starting point.
"You don't know? Bakura-kun," asked Yugi as he walked alongside his friend, amazed at how realistic the flow of Ryou's robes, rippling with the spellcaster's movement. "But isn't this...?"
"They consulted me and I did have a hand in writing out the game scenario and such. But obviously they didn't ask me to lay down every little detail and I like seeing my creation through other people's eyes. It puts things in perspective."
"So beyond creating our own character and interacting with this town, what else can we do with this demo?" Kyoko was keenly aware of the various throwing daggers secreted all over her body as well as displayed openly on her second belt. This virtual reality system was absolutely amazing, she could almost believe she really was in another world.
Ryou thought for a moment. "Well, the actual game world will be much larger than what we will be experiencing here. This is supposed to only be a demonstration after all. Hmmm. I believe we can also explore the wilderness around this town and there should be a sample dungeon out there. Random monster encounters and all, nothing too strong but enough to give players a challenge. Well, to give other players a challenge," he amended, looking like the proverbial smug cat.
Kyoko and Yugi both looked at him for more explanation.
"As Kyoko recognized, my character, the White Sage, is a very powerful NPC of the Monster World setting. Naturally, my 'level' will be much higher than of those player characters that might come across me."
"How much higher?"
The white-haired youth examined his nails. "Oh...about twelve levels at the very least."
Twelve?!?
"Besides, considering how much of an icon character the White Sage is to the world, it would only be fitting that he appear in the play demo." Ryou was all smiles toward his two friends.
"...and that would make us...?" Yugi ventured to ask.
"My henchmen," Ryou answered promptly, perhaps a bit too promptly. "Or would you prefer the term followers?"
"How about we compromise at companions before we find out exactly how well I can 'play' at being this psychic warrior I'm supposed to be?" grinned Kyoko, flames gathering around her and yet not burning anything. Several of the people walking by suddenly decided that keeping a good distance away from her was a good idea.
"Do I sense a challenge?" Ryou tapped his staff on the street and then leaned against it indolently as his robes began to flutter because of the energy building around the staff.
Yugi sighed in resignation and exasperation at his friends' antics. He certainly hoped they weren't going to start a full-fledged fight in the middle of the street. (Bar brawls however were an entirely different matter.)
"It looks like they're having fun, huh? Pharaoh."
There was no reply in broken Japanese, no feeling of amusement or confusion or anything.
"Pharaoh?"
The boy looked around, realizing for the first time in the past month or so that the ghost was nowhere around him. He shook his head. Well of course the Pharaoh couldn't be here, how could he? He was a ghost and Yugi doubted however this game system worked, the Pharaoh wouldn't be able to simply pop in like he did in the real world. Well, that was one thing to remember.
The familiar weight of the puzzle was also gone. Yugi had pretty much worn it all the time while he was awake and was used to the pressure of the clunky metal thing now. Naturally he didn't wear it when he slept, that would be highly uncomfortable not to mention potentially hazardous to his health, especially if he rolled over it or something. The visual grid of the game wouldn't allow for the Puzzle to appear on his character though Yugi wondered if he could have it on in this video game, would the Pharaoh be able to appear?
"Oi, Yugi!"
"...hm?" Yugi blinked at the two pairs of eyes, both brown, looking at him. Then he looked around at the street and its buildings, both of which appeared intact and unharmed.
"What are you spacing out for?"
"...weren't you two going to fight or something?"
Kyoko rolled her eyes. "No, we decided on a better way to test out this game." The smile on her lips was positively devilish as she latched onto one of Yugi's arms.
A pit of unease was forming in Yugi's stomach as Ryou grabbed onto his other arm and the two proceeded to frog-march him in the direction leading out of town.
"And this 'better way' you mentioned...?"
"We're going to do a little monster extermination," Ryou said blandly as if he was announcing he was stepping outside to check the mail. "And then we'll go dungeon delving. That will be a perfect opportunity to put your skills to use, Muto-kun. That is, you are the stereotypical lock-picking, back-stabbing, trap-detecting and -disarming type of rogue aren't you?"
"Well... yes..." He wasn't quite sure how or what Kyoko and Ryou thought of his choice of character. The way Ryou put it, it made him sound like a thief. "Hey, I'm not a back-stabber!"
"We certainly hope not," his two friends chirped in stereo without missing a step.
Scary.
"Mokuba-sama, this way please."
Kaiba Mokuba followed Kuroda, director in charge of this promotion demonstration of one of Kaiba Corporation's many projects that had been set up by his older brother. If there was any justice in the world, it should have been him here now, not Mokuba. Not that Mokuba wouldn't have loved to be with his brother or be able to assist him in any way possible, but here life was going on as normal while Kaiba Seto lay comatose in his solitary hospital room. Mokuba did not like this very clear reminder of how insignificant a person can be.
Even though in name he was the vice president of the corporation, Mokuba still was only in fifth grade. He doubted his older brother would let him take on the full duties and responsibilities of the position until Mokuba had graduated college or whatever postgraduate studies he chose to take. Not that Mokuba was feeling slighted, he knew he was neither ready nor prepared. Their foster father, beyond using Mokuba as a convenient and effective 'incentive' for Seto's compliance, had ignored the younger boy. So Mokuba had grown up as a normal boy, well as normal of a boy one can be when rich beyond most people's dreams and with a heavy brother adoration complex, but a normal boy nonetheless.
Taking a seat in the monitoring station that had the same game displays as the showcase room below, he began scanning the progress of the various players, pleased with how well the system was able to translate the virtual world and its interactive characters to the standard 2-D screen. Of course, he didn't know how this all worked exactly but it was his brother's work which had converted this relic of their foster's father defense industry empire into a cutting edge piece of gaming technology. That was of course the reason why there was such a large gap between this immersion VR system and the Duel Ring technology used for Duel Monsters. The latter was entirely of Kaiba's design but in order to quickly and firmly establish Kaiba Corporation in the amusement industry, Kaiba was going to use any means available to him.
"Hey!!"
All of the technicians nearly jumped out of their seats at Mokuba's yell and the accompanying slamming of both hands on the control panel. More than a few were inclined to only think of him as a kid but the black suit special police that were always around him convinced them that respect and deference were the better attitude.
"What is he doing here?!" Mokuba's finger jammed itself onto the monitor screen, selecting one of the many video feeds to maximize itself within the monitor's resolution constraints. A youth dressed in banded leather of blue-gray was furiously manipulating a wall mural as his two companions held back several orcs with spell and blade.
"Ah, Mokuba-sama... that's one of the guests of Bakura-sensei," Kuroda informed his petite superior, perspiration appearing on his brow. "After all of the assistance he had given us, we didn't think it was out of line to agree with his request to bring along some guests to the showcase..."
The man's hesitant and deferential manner told Mokuba that Kuroda had had previous encounters with his older brother when Seto was angry. Though the elder Kaiba had the presence of mind not to act immaturely or capriciously, especially with regards to the well-being of the corporation, it was not far off the mark to also say that Kaiba Seto was used to getting his way... or making things go his way. Mokuba was sure Seto had never fired anyone simply because they made him angry... it was more because of whatever they did to make him angry.
"Forget it." The fifth grader dismissed the man with a wave, dropping back into his chair to glare at the video feed. There was no need to take out his anger on that man who was only doing his job to the best of his ability, especially not when the object of Mokuba's anger was right there in front of him, technically speaking. "Muto Yugi..."
"Alright, so that makes...," Kyoko looked up at the ceiling of the underground corridor, ignoring some programmer's hard work in creating an eroded stone mural of some ancient battle. "Ten for me?"
"No, dear," Ryou returned in a paternal condescending tone that would be used to placate headstrong and misguided young children. "It's nine since I really don't think that orc shaman counts as one of your kills."
She raised an eyebrow at her placid friend. "I did land the killing blow." One of her punching daggers still held in hand was waved as if to emphasize the point.
"Ah, but only because my magics had injured him enough for you to get through his defenses," chided the white robed spellcaster, letting his oak staff roll in his hands, the runes running down its length catching the rather strong torchlight.
"A little more noise if you please?" interrupted a fairly annoyed voice with a hint of exasperation. Yugi caught both of their innocent looks "Who me?" and returned them with a "Yes you" glare. "I am trying, with an emphasis on trying, to disarm and unlock this treasure chest and it's so very helpful to have so much noise around to distract me while I'm doing it."
Yugi wasn't a sarcastic person by nature, having been very much the meek, submissive type that gets picked on a lot, and even when he was sarcastic now it was generally a mild thing. Not the marinated in sauce, cooked, and then dipped in sauce again sarcasm which what was dripping from his words right now.
It was perfectly understandable once a person understood exactly what the boy had been going through for the past, what, hour or so? Was it longer? Yugi couldn't tell, he wasn't sure the flow of time in the game was really the same as that of outside.
But anyway, he had been dragged against his will out of town, through three random monster encounters (which he didn't consider entirely random seeing how Kyoko and Ryou had purposely been wandering around looking to be ambushed), and then down into a dark dank underground ruin that was the local dungeon adventure site. After several more ambushes and deathtraps, they had just gotten through a rousing fight with a patrol of orcs that had chased them into what appeared to be a dead end until Yugi had solved the mural riddle which revealed another passage way.
And more orcs.
He was getting sick of orcs.
Not that Yugi wasn't having fun, really he was enjoying himself once he got into it, and the tension and adrenaline were definitely quite real. He had never felt this alive as when he was nearly scared out of his mind about whether he was still going to be alive after the next step he took. Plus he didn't have to do too much fighting than self-defense, not with Ryou and Kyoko around.
It takes quite a bit of patience and perseverance to keep up with his friends though. While Ryou, quite literally the creator of the world, didn't know everything about this game world but he was probably the closest to the claims of being omniscient. His attitude toward everything was quite laidback and nonchalant. Yugi wasn't sure if he was playing in character or not. Then there was Kyoko whom Yugi couldn't help but wonder if she was getting too much into the game. Though she sometimes became overly paranoid, she was wearing her "player character" like a second skin, as if she had powers like the ones her character had all her life.
Of course, Ryou was the same way but he had an excuse.
Well, Yugi was getting used to 'activating' his character's abilities, which was really nothing more than thinking and doing. The only difference with doing that in the game was that the outcome was in the end determined by his defined characteristics and the die roll.
At least he didn't think the real world operated on the concept of dice rolls.
The satisfying sound of the chest's tumblers falling into place, without the accompanying ominous sound of gears or a burning fuse, restored Yugi's good mood. It had been a very challenging trap and lock. Though if his character's level and skill were above that of the general player population in this game, exactly how were the programmers expecting the run-of-the-mill players to actually open this thing?
"Well, there is always a chance of getting a lucky roll," Ryou commented, looking over Yugi's shoulder and nearly giving the boy a heart attack. Yugi had not realized he had been speaking out loud. "However, as a game master myself, I do admit it does seem rather odd that these encounters so far have been far above par than what I was expecting. The normal players must certainly be having a harder time at this than we are."
"If there are even any down here. I don't think we've run into anyone else since we entered this dungeon." Kyoko chewed on her lip and thought back. "Is everyone else just staying above ground, or heavens forbid, just fighting each other?"
"Hmmm. It's counterproductive and not something I particularly expected from Japanese players. We tend to be more cooperative than American ones, have you ever seen one of their online world games? They have those what were they called again?"
"PKers?" Yugi suggested to Ryou.
"Yes, PKers, Player Killers. A most unproductive attitude. How can you develop friendship and trust when you always have to worry about whether someone is going to drop in and kill you were you stand?"
"He...help..."
"What was that Muto-kun?"
Yugi shook his head. "That wasn't me."
Ryou looked at Kyoko but then quickly dismissed her. Faint as it had been, he was sure it was a male voice. Something scraped hard against the wall behind them.
"Whose there?!" demanded the White Sage, commanding his staff's capped crystal stone to erupt into enough light equivalent to daylight. The extended illumination revealed a fallen person, the sound earlier apparently having come from when his armor had struck against the wall as he fell.
"Please... help...," gasped the bulky man, looking frightfully pale under his tanned skin criss-crossed with lighter scars. Perhaps it was the light but he didn't really seem all that there, as if the edges of his body were blurring. "Something... killing... too strong..."
Without making much more sense, the man finally collapsed into silence. Before the confused trio's eyes, his visual grid disassembled into pixels and vanished, leaving nothing behind.
"...so that's how they configured death."
Kyoko and Yugi gave Ryou incredulous looks at his cavalier attitude. Someone, a PC, had just died in front of them. Of course, being a game, this wasn't real death but Ryou's comment just seemed so... uncaring?
"Did he... manage to get all the way down here just to tell us that?" Yugi ventured to ask. They were rather deep into the dungeon and if that player had already been running away from whatever it was that had fatally wounded him... But they had run into so many monsters on the way down!
"Is this part of the game scenario? He didn't look like he was in any condition to just waltz down into this level of the dungeon and it looks like he was alone," Kyoko added, apparently sharing Yugi's train of thought, as she looked back down the empty corridor that the dead player must have come through.
Ryou, if he had even heard what the two had said, had his lips pursed, apparently deep in thought as he looked at his left hand. It had been acting up a lot these past several weeks and he didn't think for a minute it was because the local climate didn't suit it. Though he hadn't thought it necessary, just before they entered the game, Ryou had muttered some old phrases taught to him by his mother long ago, phrases that were believed to be effective against warding evil. People used to believe that demons and such were the reason behind pains and ills. His left hand had been perfectly fine in the game so far.
And perhaps that was reason to worry.
"Let's go up top, shall we?" With a flourish of robes and staff, Ryou gave his companions precious little warning as his spell enveloped the trio and transported them out of the dark dungeon that had been longer, deeper, and harder than he had expected. Someone, or something, had wanted to keep them occupied. The dead player who appeared before them was only a messenger that the preparations were done.
Like any other kid in the Domino City, Ky was wandering through Kaiba Land, which was considered the place to be to have fun. Of course, unlike other kids, he hadn't need to pay for admission into any of the attractions being a ghost and invisible to normal eyes. Also unlike other kids, he wasn't here to have fun. He was here on business.
Ky was here looking for his puzzle pieces. He was certain there was a logical reason behind where he found them, unfortunately that reasoning was beyond him and probably tied to either whatever the puzzle was supposed to be or represent or his missing memories. Several nights had been spent trying to put the puzzle pieces together, rebuffing any offer of help from Kyoko, but it had only led Ky to the conclusion that he would need most if not all of the pieces before he could make any headway.
It didn't look like he was going to find any more pieces here but it was still only mid-afternoon despite the dark clouds that had only recently gathered outside. The weatherman had predicted sunny weather all day today. Meteorology was never an exact science anyway.
Even if he wanted to, he couldn't really enjoy the games and rides here, the former requiring that he actually be able to touch them and the latter requiring that he find an empty seat to avoid the uncomfortable sensation of "sharing" one.
Maybe he'll just go check out what that crowd of kids over there were doing. There was a lot of yelling and complaining but the poker face man in a black suit and shades, looking every inch foreboding, refused to budge and let any one into the doorway behind him. That wasn't a problem for Ky who just slipped by and after a moment's hesitation, walked through the closed door.
To find himself amidst chaos.
"Just what the hell is going on??" Mokuba yelled at the scrambling technical staff as the individual video feeds from the various VR pods were blipping and turning black. Under normal circumstances, that meant the player's session was terminated, generally by death or by time-out, and the player's consciousness would return. However, all of the blacked-out pods remained closed, their occupants still lost on the other side of... wherever. Vital sign readings placed the players in the same state as when they were immersed in the game.
"I'm sorry, Mokuba-sama," apologized Kuroda, alternating between wringing his hands and pushing up his constantly falling glasses. "We're getting signal loss from the players. They die but somehow they aren't returning. This never happened during testing!"
The young boy gritted his teeth and turned back to glare at the checkerboard monitor now mostly covered with black squares, letting Kuroda get back to work on resolving this mess with his staff. Technicians were running diagnostics on the software and hardware, checking for anything that might explain what was happening. It kind of looked like a lot of white lab rats running around in the showcase maze of pods below.
He only looked at the vital sign readings briefly, a safety measure included in all of the pods to monitor the players and if necessary force their ejection from the game should something unusual in their physiology arise. Mokuba knew next to nothing about how to read them except that the current readings were disturbing similar to that of his brother's in the hospital.
Even though Kaiba Seto was in a coma, it wasn't like any other coma that the doctors could make any sense out of. There was no need for life support and his body was in a perfect state of health. As some of the medical students noted when they thought Mokuba wasn't listening, it was like the lights were on but nobody was home.
And the ones responsible for his brother's current condition... If Mokuba's glare actually had any force behind it, it might have cracked the monitor in front him. Even as other VR pods lost their signals and blacked out, the three belonging to Muto Yugi and his two friends were still alive.
The Pharaoh was, to put it simply, bored out of his mind. If he wasn't already dead, he'd be bored to death. But being a ghost, one tethered to a host, he didn't have many options of what to do or where to do it. He also didn't have a firm grasp of time, being as they were inside a building, but it felt like an eternity since Yugi and Kyoko had 'fallen asleep'.
Though, he had to admit things were looking a bit more lively now as all these people in white coats were running around looking at those ovoid things with the people inside. They looked very worried, shouting at each other about things the Pharaoh didn't quite understand. The people wearing black had stationed themselves at all of the doorways and no new people were being admitted in.
Except for that brown-haired boy whom no one seemed to notice was wandering around, looking at this and that, frowning at whatever the white-coat people were saying.
"Oi."
The boy didn't seem to hear him. Not that most people could, the Pharaoh noted. But he expected the boy could, and just hadn't realized he was being spoken to.
"Hey, boy."
Ky blinked and looked around before he caught himself. That was silly of him, why would anyone be calling to him? No one could see him except Kyoko and that had most definitely not sounded like her. He was about to move on when the voice called to him again.
"Do you... know what is...happening?"
The Japanese sounded strange, stilted, as if spoken by someone not very familiar with it. Ky looked around again, this time just to convince himself that no one was talking to him. Unfortunately, he found himself to be quite wrong as he locked eyes with what looked to be some runaway from an Ancient Egyptian history book...or exhibit.
The young ghost processed this immediately. There was another ghost here. His past experiences with other ghosts were generally not good and his first instinct was to run. Looking for possible escape routes, he finally looked past the foreign ghost to the pods behind it, and their occupants.
"Kyoko??" She had said she was going to Kaiba Land for some kind of play test but Ky hadn't really been paying attention to her at the time. This must have been it then. With more alarm than he would willingly admit to himself, Ky looked up at the monitor screen above her pod and was relieved to see it still active. She hadn't been hit yet with whatever was screwing up the system on the other pods.
"You know...Kyoko?" The Pharaoh looked down at the boy ghost, eyes narrowed as he observed the curt nod. Well, he supposed that shouldn't surprise him but the form of the boy before him was surprising. This wasn't what he had been expecting, based on his vague recollection of what had happened. "What then... is happening?" He waved an arm to gesture to the rest of the showcase room.
Ky felt a sharp dislike for this other ghost, for reasons he could neither explain nor remember, but since he hadn't made any hostile moves toward him yet, Ky wasn't going to lose his ground. He had barely repressed an involuntary shudder when the egyptian ghost had raised his hand but it had immediately moved away from him. Now why had he reacted like that?
"There apparently is a bug in the algorithm that manages the awareness transference between reality and the digital signals that makes up the so-called 'virtual reality' of the game. Of course, with all of the variables that must be handled including buffering of the sensory network to prevent a psychosomatic feedback backlash..." Ky trailed off as he saw he was losing the other ghost in his explanation. But he was also growing uncomfortable. Exactly how did he know all of this? This was the first time he's ever seen any of this.
"Hey, check out the screen!"
Any further discussion was cut off as one of the technicians pointed to the still active, or rather the only set of active screens on the entire floor. All eyes, some with curiosity, some with alarm, and one with veiled anticipation, turned.
"What the hell is going on??" Kyoko exclaimed, unknowingly repeating the exact same words said by Mokuba on the other side of reality. Unfortunately, the people around her were equally at a loss in regards to an answer.
Ryou's spell had brought them not just out of the dungeon but right back in the town square where Yugi had first appeared. However, no longer were the streets crowded with wandering players and computer generated non-player characters. The fountain was broken, water trickling down the exposed tubing. There was not a soul in the empty, forlorn streets, the dark sky above an ominous backdrop to the now battered and broken town.
There was one new feature though. In place of the town's only temple, formerly a pristine white chapel with elegant stained glass windows, there was now a twisted thorny collection of dark towers covered with grotesque and erotic carvings of stone.
"...is there anyone else here?" Yugi asked in a hushed voice. The darkness and sense of despair were oppressive, if that was even possible. This was just a game right?
"Yes. There is." The White Druid's answer was short, crisp, and to the point. Keeping one hand on his staff, Ryou took up a flanged mace from beneath his robes and held it up. His face still had a smile but not the friendly kind. " Reve-- "
"No need."
The voice roared like thunder and fire rolled into one, causing both Kyoko and Yugi to feel a shiver deep down in their bones. There was an urge to run but both held their ground. Ryou didn't appear affected at all, looking coolly at the open street before him.
If darkness could unfurl itself, it did so before them. The street shook as something heavy stepped down, tongues of flames lapping toward the sky above. Drawing itself up twice the height of any of the three humans, the blackness around itself pulled back to reveal itself actually as large bat wings that had hidden the grotesque body of red scales underneath. Its large fangs were pulled back into a sick parody of a grin.
"Long time no see," Ryou greeted pleasantly. "Dark Master Zork."
"How the hell did that module get into the game?!?" was what harried staff members were thinking if not screaming as every single screen in the showcase room displayed all twelve feet of the gargoyle creature of evil and flame looming before the only three active players in the game. What they didn't know was that this phenomenon was spread throughout the entire building, interrupting whatever looping video of advertisement and music videos were streaming everywhere else in the amusement park building.
Mokuba put his fingers into his mouth and blew a glass-shattering, or at the very least deafeningly, whistle. It was loud enough to get everyone's attention which was what he had been aiming for anyway.
"What is going on now?" He stressed that last word ever so slightly.
Again, it was Kuroda who answered. "Well, Mokuba-sama," the man stammered licking his lips nervously. His eyes were on the glazed side, an expected reaction from someone who was expecting to get sacked any moment now. "That... creature there is the Dark Master Zork, an iconic character, or villain rather, of the game."
"And why wasn't he supposed to be in the game? Or rather, this game?" It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what had gotten everyone into a frenzy, well, more of a frenzy than earlier.
"Well, we weren't going to have him appear in this demonstration play and were perhaps going to include him in a later add-on module to the game, seeing as how powerful he's supposed to be. Beginning players wouldn't stand a chance against him." If Kuroda could get any paler, he would probably faint.
"It appears to me that he is quite obviously in the game. Are you suggesting that someone breached the security around Kaiba Corporation and around Kaiba Land in order to transplant that specific part of the game into the demonstration?" Mokuba was a far cry from his brother's height by about half a meter but standing on a chair, he could still project a pale imitation of his brother's intimidation aura.
"N-No...Mokuba-sama..." Kuroda pulled at the collar of his shirt. Was it hot in here or was it just him? "I...I think...maybe a module might have...been left in the demo... not that it should have been active... someone might have been able to break into this system..."
The fifth grader glowered. He wasn't blinded to the fact that nothing was perfect, though his brother was probably the closest thing to it, and so the idea that someone might have hacked into the game system and screwed around with it was a remote possibility. His brother didn't let unsafe devices out of the corporation. Mokuba steered away from the thought that if it was something his brother had missed, it had to be very bad.
There were some people already thinking that it couldn't get any worse than this. And they weren't even in the same realm of reality.
Yugi was sincerely questioning his current level of sanity as he tried to process what was going on now. Here he was in close-fitting leathers with a belt of daggers and lock picks, a quiver of quarrels bound to his left thigh and a polished black hand crossbow bearing silver runes in his right hand, standing beside his two friends who were equally outlandishly dressed and armed while one of said friends was discussing the weather with the larger-than-life and certainly not a cardboard cut-out Dark Master Zork, the overall ends-all be-all villain for the Monster World game, before them.
Did he forget to mention that they were all in a video game right now?
"It does look like it is going to rain, at the very least," Ryou remarked unperturbed by the heavy stench of sulfur all around them. "Not the most pleasant of backdrops for a get-together though if I had known this was going to happen, I would have much preferred to spend the day studying."
Zork's hot breath turned to steam as it snorted. "I have been waiting a long time to get revenge on you for entrapping me, White Druid. There will be no escape from my wrath."
"Now that sounds like stock dialogue." Yugi bit back a giggle hearing Kyoko's muttering. "They even got Ryou's name wrong. It's supposed to be Sage, not Druid. We must report this to the quality assurance team."
"Hah, so your new cohorts do not even know who you really are! White Druid! In thanks for providing me my freedom, I will only stretch out your torture and humiliation for a several millennia, instead of for eternity as I had originally planned."
There wasn't much of a difference between those two in the three humans' opinion.
"How thoughtful. However, I think you are sincerely befuddled if you can think that you are 'free' now. This is only a video game, a false world so to speak." Ryou's eyes turned hard, piercing the demon with the weight of his words. "And you, are only supposed to be a program, a figment of shadow, not even an illusion."
"I am real here, foolish mortal." Zork emphasized his point with the fiery eruption of the scenery around them. The flying embers burned hot on their clothes and skin, scalding the air they breathed. "And thanks to the souls I have collected here, I can break your prison and start my reign of darkness and death over the world."
Well, that certainly would explain the obvious lack of characters running around if Zork, or his minions, had been killing them off. Now looking at the contradicting fact that Ryou knew that Zork was not supposed to be implemented yet in the game, much less this demo, and yet here he was right in front of him and Ryou's left hand was not twitching. So perhaps there was some truth that Zork may have escaped his prison, or more accurately, one layer of his prison.
"You may have found your way out of a cell, but you are by no means free. Nor are you whole, Dark Master Zork. You will never be as you were, not as long as you are Zork."
Yugi didn't really understand what Ryou was going on about, which was lovely game dialogue by the way, but he could clearly see that Zork did not like it. In fact, it seemed to be getting angrier each time Ryou said its name. He hoped Ryou had a plan and a reason to be riling up a creature capable of turning the entire landscape into a sea of fire with a snap of its fingers.
"I AM--!!" Zork roared, its maw moving as it tried to say something but inevitably failed. Instead, it leaped into the air, arms outstretched and wreathed in pillars of flame. "Perish, White Druid! And all those foolish enough to stand against me!!"
Everything turned into flame.
It was a truly spectacular battle of good versus evil, demonic flame versus holy light and blades of power, just like out of a movie. And to think that was being accomplished all in a video game, even one using the newest cutting edge technology, was enough to make gamers start camping out in front of the game outlets before a release date had even been announced.
How unfortunate, Mokuba noted in a distant part of his mind, that what the people outside saw as the ultimate promotion video was actually an out of control program that the creators were trying frantically and futilely to halt.
As much satisfaction he could get out of seeing Muto Yugi being burned, knocked into walls, tossed around by a whip of fire, and just overall getting his butt handed to him, Mokuba couldn't help feel a twinge of concern for what was occurring. He didn't have much love for the girl either but she wasn't getting it as badly as the boy. And the white guy, Bakura-sensei, seemed to be handling himself well all things given. With his protective and healing spells, he was the main reason that the other two, particularly in Yugi's case, hadn't already been killed.
Kuroda had looked extremely nervous when Mokuba asked him the likelihood that Bakura-sensei's character would be able to defeat the rogue module and stammered something that it was possible but not likely if he was occupied with helping his friends. From what Mokuba gathered from the other staff, Bakura-sensei's character was more powerful than the standard demo player characters as were his friends' characters but the Zork module had been designed not only for advanced players but experienced ones as well, with higher numbers and at least specialized equipment. In those terms, the players were at a severe disadvantage.
They still hadn't figured out the reason behind the signal loss either.
It was possible, since no one could rule it out, that if all of the players died then perhaps the game would terminate and their consciousness would return. Or not.
What a fiasco to occur when his brother wasn't here. Mokuba was sure that if Seto was here, he would have been able to handle this.
His thoughts were interrupted by an argument among the frenzied workers.
"If we can get inside with a debugger access, we may be able to find out what is going on--"
"Get in how? All of the pods are occupied! And there is no telling what may happen if we remove a player from a pod before they've regained consciousness. Besides, if you die in there, you just might end up the same way You think you can stand up against the Zork module?!"
"What other options do we have? We can't direct a computer character to do the checking. Granting debugger access to an AI will just create another rogue module."
"Then we'll just have to rely on the players who are still inside."
"Perhaps you haven't noticed but they are a bit busy staying alive while a demon is trying to kill them!"
Mokuba bit his lip. As much as he would love to see Yugi's character bite the proverbial dust, the staff were correct. They could not shut down the computer and restart the programming without knowing the status of the players' consciousness and this rogue Zork module was wrecking havoc with their control over the game.
"Kuroda! Take who you need and keep searching for that hacker! You there, give me communication access to the active players! We can at least get that can't we! Everyone else, find a way to get into the system and hack those characters some support. Magic items, magic spells, I don't care what!"
Pharaoh was pacing in circles above Yugi, occasionally looking at the screen displaying his three friends fighting for their lives against a monster of fire. He wasn't entirely sure how this all worked but he distinctly sensed that they were all in very real danger. His fist pounded on the casing of Yugi's pod.
Ky gave the other ghost an irritated look for his disrespect toward the delicate machinery. Okay, perhaps not that delicate but such behavior certainly wasn't helping matters. With all of the chaos, and all of the staff retreating to the control room, there was no one around to notice that one of the stations attached to a pod terminal was being manipulated. Not that they could see who was doing the manipulating.
Drawing up knowledge that came from who knows where, Ky was rapidly skimming over the game's programming code. He had yet to come up with anything that appeared out of place or wrong and worse yet he could not find any irregularities with the module that was causing all of this trouble to begin with. It was fully formed and complete, ready to be implemented at any time. However, why was that so? If it was never intended to be in this demonstration and slated for later development. It wasn't even supposed to be done yet.
Ky wasn't sure how he knew this but decided he might was well trust it. There was precious little else to rely upon.
This meant that someone meant to have this module run now, at this event. Given how the White Sage character had been talking with Zork, there was quite a history between the two and most likely the White Sage was the target. This was not simply some surprise to show off the game.
"Someone is trying to set something up… but what?" Ky turned his blue eyes to the game monitor again where the three surviving players were preparing for another round of fiery rain from their opponent. "…what would be the purpose of trying to kill characters inside a game?"
Pharaoh had had enough of all this. Sure none of the other people in these pod things had woken up yet, no matter how much noise the people in black or white pounded on them, but as a ghost Pharaoh had some things to try that only he could do. Namely, slip inside the pod covering and enter Yugi's body.
It was something he had done accidentally once before, when they had stayed up too late playing games and Yugi had fallen asleep on the floor. Pharaoh tried to manifest himself enough to pull the boy to bed but it had been too much at the time and instead found himself falling inside Yugi. That woken the boy in an instant and neither wanted to repeat the very disturbing and disorientating experience. But if that would wake Yugi up now, Pharaoh was quite willing to stomach some brief nausea.
Ignoring the other ghost's exclamation of surprise, Pharaoh dove into the pod and into Yugi, bracing himself for that stifling crushing sensation of being inside something else.
Except that it never came.
Pharaoh hesitantly opened one eye that had been scrunched close to see lots of fire, a big red ugly thing with black wings, and Ryou's back as he raised his staff to shield those behind him from the monster's attack. At the ghost's feet were kneeling Yugi and Kyoko, the former hugging his ribs as if they pained him and the latter sporting a nasty burn that coiled around her left arm.
"So this really isn't part of the demonstration."
"No, it is not. The staff is currently trying to download some upgraded equipment into the game and then transfer it into your inventories however they are encountering 'trouble'." The young disembodied voice that was speaking to Kyoko and Yugi came from a small floating square that was labeled 'Live Chat - Administrator', which of course the Pharaoh didn't know not being able to read. From the speaker's tone, he either didn't have great trust in the ability of his staff or didn't believe their difficulties. "Apparently, since these were not supposed to be in the demo, they have to go find the data from the development team. Any way, some of the standard available healing potions should be available to you now. They're being kept on unlimited use, or at least should be."
"There is, I take it, no word on halting this rogue program then."
"No, sensei, they are still working on it. Right now, the best options appears to be defeating it."
"For our continued livelihood, that would be a given. The game parameters should also release the other players as well. By the way, some mana potions would also be greatly appreciated."
"Hey! Mana potions for the white guy!! Oh, and whatever the girl's character needs to recover!"
"Power crystals," Ryou murmured. "By the way, I don't suppose anyone noticed where Zork has skipped off to?"
The very obvious presence of the demon monster was gone though the flames ranged around them still. All around them was the silence of crackling fire. Or rather, it wasn't only the fire that was crackling.
"Aren't we the only ones here?" Yugi asked in a hushed voice, apparently having made a successful check to listen for sounds. There were footsteps approaching them, many footsteps, but there was something off about them that he couldn't quite place.
"All other players are out," confirmed the administrator. "Cold that is. There shouldn't be any active monster modules either."
"You may want to double check that." Kyoko said matter-of-factly, standing up as she absorbed several of the new power crystals to replenish her psychic power point supply. "We appear to be having guests, a lot of them."
Walking out of the ring of fire around them was a circle of shambling skeletons. No wonder Yugi had thought the footsteps had sounded weird. There was an eerie green flame inside their ribcages and in their eye sockets that ran down their arms to the greatswords they carried.
"So Zork has decided to wear us down since we are apparently more than he can chew. Do try to stay alive, Muto-kun, Suomi-kun." Yugi and Kyoko gave Ryou disbelieving looks at his casual attitude. Didn't he think that Zork may be planning something, like breaking out however he planned to accomplish that, right now while they were distracted by walking bones? "Zork cannot get free yet, regardless of his claims. I would venture that he needs at least your two souls, or what passes for them, for his little parlor trick and he certainly cannot break out of his prison while I am alive and well."
"Such refreshingly good news," Kyoko bit out sarcastically. "How are you hanging in there, Yugi?"
Yugi actually was not hanging in there all that well. He would like his previous statement of feeling more alive than he's ever felt before while on the surge of adrenaline retracted and forever stricken from the records, whatever and wherever they may be. This was supposed to be a game, why did he have to feel like he had gotten beat up by every bully from elementary school to middle school? He was tired, sore, hurting…
"Did you drink that healing potion yet?"
Oh yeah, he had forgotten about that. Yugi unhooked a vial of glowing blue liquid from his bandolier and downed it in one gulp.
"Okay, I'm ready to go. How are we splitting this up?" Yugi would like his previous statement retracted and the previously retracted one reinstated. Amazing what the difference of full hit points could do to one's frame of mind. He wondered if he could get these in the real world for P.E.?
"Yugi… alright…?"
"Yes, Pharaoh, I'm fine now. You're not my mother. Pharaoh?!?"
Everyone did a double take, not entirely believing their eyes that their ghost friend was suddenly here with them when he hadn't been there a moment before. That and his clothes were now entirely different, completely white and emblazoned prominently with the symbol of a golden sunburst. For his part, he looked surprised as well, especially since up until right now, he had not been able to get any of his friends to hear, or apparently see, him at all.
"Well, it appears we now have a cleric." Leave it to Ryou to remain the most undisturbed by this sudden change of events.
"Are you sure you don't know anything about this?" Kyoko asked accusingly.
"I plead the fifth."
"The fifth what?" Yugi and the Pharaoh shared identical confused looks.
"Anyway, Pharaoh can take care of our little problem right now." The Pharaoh looked at Ryou's confident smile with some puzzlement and more wariness. Ryou looked very much like a smug cat. "Please imagine, oh say the sun, is burning away all of these skeletons. The bone things," the White Sage gestured widely to the monsters hovering just outside of the protective barrier he had erected at who knows what time.
Kyoko's eyes opened in understanding and nodded at the Pharaoh when he looked at her for explanation. Sighing, he did as he was told, not for the first time wishing he understood more of their language so he could get a better explanation of things. But then, since Yugi didn't look like he understood, perhaps simply being fluent wasn't enough.
Cupping his hands together before him, Pharaoh imagined the sun, the burning pounding oppressive heat that bore down on him day after day, never relenting, never yielding, the sign of eternity and the rulership of the king over all that felt the sun's ray. In his hands, he could feel the power gathering, unfamiliar and frightening as if something deep within him rejected this with all of its might. Eager to be rid of it, Pharaoh thrust it up into the air above them and was greeted with unearthly wails as holy bolts of white flame rained down on the skeletons around them, incinerating them to dust.
"Wow." Yugi summed it all up after the fires, all of them, died down. "What level is Pharaoh?"
"Better question, how did you get in here? Not that I expect you can answer that question," sighed Kyoko, looking at the Pharaoh who was looking from his hand to the dust of bones all around them.
"You would think," Ryou said conversationally to his staff, "that they would be more concerned that there is still an evil final villain set on killing them."
"You think… correctly."
Zork's rumbling guttery voice came from behind him and Ryou immediately shunted himself several yards to the left, barely being missed by a ball of fire the size of himself crashing through where he had been standing. He could see several others flying thru where their group had been and his friends jumping and tumbling out of the way. Even though his spells granted them some protection from fire, it would still burn to be hit by one of those.
Ryou suddenly felt something behind him and leaped up high and fast, over another fireball that even as he watched, swerved to fly right back toward him. How quaint, homing fireballs. These little beauties will not stop following their target until they detonate, one way or another.
Landing on the ground, Ryou stabbed his staff into the ground, driving its power into the earth beneath the burnt cobblestones.
" WALL "
A thick mass of dirt and stone erupted from the ground before him and Ryou could hear the explosion and the shaking impact as the giant sphere of flame slammed into it. Shielding himself from the falling earth, Ryou could see Pharaoh summoning up his own shield of flame and the resultant blast knocked Yugi, who was behind the ghost, to the ground.
Though, since the Pharaoh did appear solid here, could he still be considered a ghost now, Ryou mused.
"Ah, Kyoko!" Yugi yelled in warning, looking up to his friend running along some of the surviving rooftops with a fireball behind her and another coming in right in front of her. At the very last possible moment, she did a ninety-degree turn and jumped out off the way between the two incoming spheres. His sigh of relief at her escape was cut off sharply as a spiked tail suddenly burst out of the building she had jumped off. Unbalanced from the explosion blast, Kyoko wasn't able to avoid it as it slammed into her and soon found herself constricted by Zork's long tail as the Dark Master emerged from his hiding place.
"That's not fair!!"
"Yugi-kun, I really don't think it is an issue of fairness…"
"Let her go!!" This time Yugi punctuated with a quarrel from his crossbow. Not that he expected it to do much since earlier Zork had shrugged them off like nothing. So it was as much of a surprise to him, as it was to Zork and pretty much anyone else, when the demon screeched in pain and clawed at the silver crossbow bolt embedded in its shoulder.
"Eh?"
"They got them through!!" The administrator was yelling thru the Live Chat window. "Change your equipped items now! And I don't know how those other two got in but they seem to be helping you so get rid of that Bork thing!!"
"That's Zork," Ryou corrected helpfully, various items suddenly appearing on his visual grid as he equipped the extra gear the technician staff had finally managed to download into their inventories.
"Whatever!"
"Pharaoh, er, just put on whatever is…" Yugi stumbled over how to explain this to the ghost even as he re-directed and replaced his gear, trying to remember what does what now. "Wait, didn't the admin say two…?"
There was another howl, of pain and anger, as Zork spun around to strike at something that was no longer there. His tail was no more than a bleeding stump now and Yugi almost jumped two feet into the air when something dark suddenly landed next to him.
The dark thing stood up, revealing itself to be a full armored knight in black and one arm was holding the still entangled Kyoko. It said nothing as it deposited her on her feet and turned back around, black and gold long sword in hand, to face the final boss.
"Are you alright, Kyoko?"
Kyoko grimaced as Yugi helped her pull Zork's tail off of her and quickly finished off a healing potion to remove the feeling of cracked ribs. His friend still didn't reply as she proceeded to equip her new gear which made look like she was some kind of energy battery with all of the floating crystals around her. But Yugi could tell what kind of mood she was in. Kyoko was so going to pay back that monster in spades.
"Well then, if everyone is ready, I think it is time for the Dark Master Zork to exit the stage," announced the White Sage.
The control room for the Monster World simulation game was as ever in chaos. There was only a slight breather after they finally managed to get the enhanced gear to the three players so they could stand a better chance of putting a stop to the rogue program. However, the culprit was still at large.
Mokuba could see Kuroda harassing his team. It was very likely that once the Zork module was defeated, they may lose any chance of catching the hacker. However, priority was on retrieving the lost consciousness of the other players.
There was also another anomaly, as there now appeared to be another hacker, maybe two, somewhere. Those two new players that suddenly appeared to help out, the cleric who bore a striking resemblance to Muto Yugi, aside from being taller and tanned, and the tall dark knight character that had saved Suomi Kyoko.
Mokuba had ordered that news of none of this was to be leaked outside. The effect on Kaiba Corporation stocks, to say nothing of his brother's position, would be devastating even if they could resolve the problem. The project itself had been top secret, due in no small part to its previous military nature, so for three hackers to break into this, into his brother's system, was nigh impossible.
This would point to an inside job. But there was another concern.
The only way to be a character in this game required the use of the immersion pods and not only were those all occupied, the records could confirm that none of the current players had even created the two new characters they were seeing it. To make things even more confusing, one of the engineers was currently re-checking the entire identification routing subroutines because of the entry point of the two new characters. The cleric was identified as coming through the pod signal on Muto Yugi's and the dark knight through Suomi Kyoko's.
That was not possible.
Mokuba himself was running through the system trying to pinpoint the origin of these two new characters that had snuck in literally under their noses. In particular, there was something familiar about the dark knight character but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
"Zork is dead!!" whooped a technician, drawing all eyes to the monitors that were showing the White Sage standing amidst the fading body of the fallen Dark Master. As if on cue, the various pod monitors blipped to life and the life monitor signals began to jump.
"We're getting the players back."
"You're not paid to be standing around like statues! Bring everyone out! And not a word to any of them!!" ordered the vice president, kicking the stunned staff back to work. As soon as he was certain no one was looking at him anymore, Mokuba turned back to his station monitor to glare long and hard at the program file for the Black Knight that he had finally pulled up when Zork was defeated.
The avatar was named KAI.
And its debug access code belonged to his brother.
Kuroda had not had a good day at work. There had been that fiasco with the Monster World simulation game that had all been hushed up. In the end, It wasn't that hard to do since none of the players, well the ones that had died during the playtest, remembered anything while they were 'lost', not even the passage of time. Their publicity team had been called in right away to work on the unintentional promotion the battle with the rogue module had caused, since it had been broadcasted all over Kaiba Land.
Which was yet another thing the vice president, scrawny brat of a kid that he is, demanded that Kuroda find out how it happened, why it happened, and to make sure it never happened again.
Of course, Kuroda's late night tonight was not entirely because of the follow-up for all that work. He already knew how and why the Zork module activated and why the players whose characters died did not regain consciousness. Kuroda did not know where or how those two extra characters that assisted the White Druid had come from but it was simply two more people that had to be gotten rid of.
Just like the White Druid.
"For Zork Necrophidas-sama…" he swore, clutching something beneath his shirt.
"…I thought as much."
Kuroda started, whipping around to face the speaker but could say not a word as blood gurgled in his throat. Or rather, out of his throat, from the nasty gash across his wind pipe. Grasping for air, or perhaps his blood, the man crumpled to the ground, his darkening vision taking in the moonlight reflected on the pale hair of his assailant.
"You Dark Disciples never give up. Well, guess what, neither will I. Your lord is never going to set foot into this world again. Not if I have anything to say about it."
He stood there, watching Kuroda's dying twitches. "A swift death is more than you deserve."
Ryou cracked a huge yawn, one that Kyoko usually expected to see from Yugi after a late night of game play. They now met up to walk to school together, something that Yugi and Kyoko had done previously.
"Late night?" She teased. "Or did Zork keep you up like Yugi."
"I was not up all night because of Zork!" Yugi protested. He did not see the Pharaoh shaking his head behind him, belying the truth of Yugi's statement.
When they had finally returned to the real world, they had been quickly ushered to a private meeting with Kaiba Mokuba who did not spare any words in swearing them to silence on the entire matter.
Or else.
Kaiba Corporation was claiming the entire deal was a surprise demonstration of the world and game system with the cooperation of the creator. There were no reports regarding the unexplainable temporary player 'loss' nor how the Zork module was never meant to be there in the first place.
Of course, they didn't receive any explanations about what happened either.
"No, I was up all night writing a new Monster World scenario," Ryou said rubbing the black smudges beneath his eyes. "What we went through gave me a really interesting idea. After all, real life experiences are always the best model to draw from."
"Real? You're saying that Zork was real?"
Ryou just smiled as he threw his arms over the shoulders of his two friends. "The White Druid could not have held back the Dark Master Zork this time if it wasn't for his two trusty henchmen. However, if we don't hurry, we're going to be late for school."
"Companions!"
"What about the Pharaoh? He helped too."
"Alright, three henchment."
"And that dark knight also helped. And that's companions, Ryou."
"Actually, he's Black Knight. And it's henchmen."
Kyoko was going to protest again but the sound of the school bell cut her off.
"We're going to be late!" she said instead, grabbing a friend in each hand and proceeding to drag them with her as she ran. The Pharaoh kept up as best as he could, though he couldn't help notice a news report on a TV they passed by about a man found murdered last night. He wouldn't have paid any attention normally but he was certain he had seen this man at that pod building the other day looking very intently at Ryou's pod from the back room.
Well, it probably wasn't anything important. Right now, his friends had those 'examinations' to be worried about.
(1) Bakura Ryou desu I am Ryou Bakura.
(2) Yoroshiki onegaishimasu, Muto-kun Nice to meet you, Muto-kun. Since Ryou doesn't really know Yugi or Kyoko, he refers to them by their family name and with the suffix '-kun'.
(3) Yes, it is offical, Yugi is 5' tall. It says in the official character guide. Jounouchi is 5'10", Honda 5'11", Anzu 5'5", and Kaiba Seto is 6'2". These numbers were derived from the centimeter measurements and collaborated from several different web reviews of the book.
(4) The KC employer referred to Ryou with the suffix '-sensei' because he was the creator of Monster World. This follows the line of thought that also has people call published mangaka "XXXX-sensei". I think I'm using it correctly.