S: Eh heh… this was supposed to be the last chapter, wasn't it? Due to time constraints (I'm going on a short vacation for my birthday), I am posting this in two sections, 10 A and 10 B. And the epilogue, of course… So those of you who were worried about it ending too soon can stop fretting for the time being.
Onyx: And those of us who have to work on this can fret about our jobs being extended…
S: Shut up, Onyx. If it wasn't this, it would be something else.
DISCLAIMER: See chapter one.
DEDICATION: To MagicianOfTheShadows, for PM-ing with me over the past week with encouragement, and ideas, and Kissed By A Prince, for reviewing a second time just to nag me. (grins) Thank you both so much!
WARNINGS: The usual, yaoi, weird and perverse humor, this chapter has SPOILERS for the end of the Millennium World manga arc, and OOCness, I think. Also, it's a rushed type job, please excuse any errors that result.
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"My Lord?"
Prince Seto, now ruling Pharaoh of Egypt, lifted his head slowly, one hand still clenching wildly around the chain of the Puzzle. Pharaoh Atemu's Puzzle… his Puzzle, now. Prince Seto, Pharaoh of Egypt. Somehow, the words sounded hollow. He had lost count of how many hours he had stood here, staring across the broken, dusty landscape.
"My Lord?"
This time, he looked around. Bright, honey-amber eyes regarded him from beneath unruly bangs, the hair that rare, rare shade of polished gold.
"Ounosu… are you… well?"
The golden-haired man was liberally coated in dust, there was a bruise running down the side of his bare chest and blood on his cheek, but he was, at least, alive.
"I am fine, Lord Seto. And I am… sorry, for you. I heard what happened to Kissara." The pain in Ounosu's voice was obvious, and Seto flinched in surprise. True, he had bedded the other man many times, but he had never considered that it was anything beyond the physical for Ounosu… how blind he had been.
"Ounosu…" A shaken whisper called the blond's attention. "Please…" A thin, shaking hand clenched around the chain of the Puzzle. "Please, don't leave me."
"Never, Ounosu swore, unhesitating. "I am yours, Lord Seto, forever."
And Seto, Devine Pharaoh of Egypt, once High Priest to the Gods, fell into his lover's arms and surrendered to his kiss.
I am a scene break. Look at me, I am a scene break!
Seto Kaiba sat up in bed with a cry, knocking the blankets away from his body as he drew in a shaking breath. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees and fought to get his breathing under control.
"This is ridiculous… I don't believe it. I don't believe ANY OF IT!" he shouted, tangling his fingers in his hair in frustration. "None of it is real!"
Saggi the Clown, who had been assigned the bedroom next to Kaiba's, banged on the wall in protest. Seto thumped his fist against the wall once in response, irritated, and slowly settled back into his bed.
"I don't believe," he whispered, fiercely, closing his eyes and fighting not to see Ancient Egypt dancing through his dreams. "None of it is real…"
At the other end of town, Joey Wheeler lay silent, hands folded behind his head, eyes open and staring blankly at the ceiling. He blinked slowly once, twice, and a single tear made it's way down the side of his face. Into the blank darkness, he whispered a broken plea. "Seto… we promised… forever."
Here is another scene break!
"Remember, confidence is going to be key," Damus lectured the next afternoon, hands moving animatedly and a smile on his face. Celtos, sitting on the floor in front of the couch, leaned back slightly, his back resting comfortably against Damus' leg and an amused smile playing across his lips. Damus, leaning back against the arm of the sofa, had been chattering amiably at Joey for almost a half an hour, giving him tips on how to 'seduce' Seto Kaiba. Joey, although listening intently, was beginning to acquire the slightly glazed look that came with information overload.
The only other person in the room with them was Mirai, who was draped over Yuugi's beanbag chair, engrossed in the volume of Aesop's fables that she had borrowed from the Kaibas. She'd spent most of the afternoon there, save a short trip to the kitchen to hijack a jar of peanut butter, which now lay open on the floor beside her. At random intervals, she would scoop some of the peanut butter out with her fingers, pop the whole mess in her mouth, and suck casually as she read. The noise in itself was distracting; had she been anyone else's sister, the actions would have been fairly distracting, too, but nobody (save perhaps Joey's Flame Swordsman) was willing to cross Damus by having designs on his sister.
"People like Kaiba are attracted to power; that is why he pays so much attention to Master Yami. It is the aura of confidence and strength that calls to him, so it is imperative that you project the same emotions."
"Maybe you should be writing this down, Damus," Celtos chuckled softly, and Joey shook himself out of his daze.
"I'm not a moron, ya know!"
Celtos shrugged up at him, expression innocent. "It is a lot of information," he answered mildly. "And not all of it is easy to remember."
"'S not so much," Joey demurred. "Eye contact and body language to indicate confidence, clothing that I feel comfortable in, pay attention to details in his expression and body language, and try not to overdo it. That about cover it?"
Damus blinked, surprised. "Actually, yes. You've managed to condense everything I just told you into a single run-on sentence."
"Well, hey, I'm not as dumb as I sound."
"Of course not," Celtos muttered, "If you were, you'd sound smarter."
"Dunno how to break it to you, buddy, but that makes no sense at all."
Celtos chuckled softly, leaning back a bit to rest his head on Damus' knees. "What I'm saying is that you're deliberately dumbing yourself down. It may well be subconscious, I don't know, but you're trying to lower people's expectations of you. If you sound like an idiot, nobody is surprised if you do something foolish. It's a reasonable defense mechanism. The downside is, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because you become so accustomed to projecting an idiotic image to the world that you start to believe in the image yourself, and therefore are more likely to behave in a manner befitting an idiot."
Joey stared at him for a very long moment, trying to process the entire wad of psychobabble. "Celtos, how'd you wind up with a Psychology degree in the Shadow Realm?!"
That drew a laugh from Celtos and Damus both. "Just practical experience and common sense," the Elf demurred, but he was still smiling.
"Yeh, well, common sense isn't," Joey pointed out, but any reply Celtos might have made was lost in an obscenely loud slurp from the other side of the room.
"Mirai, what in the name of Anubis are you doing?!"
"I've got peanut butter stuck under my fingernails," came the rather 'isn't it obvious?' reply, and Mirai went back to trying to fit half her tongue into the space between nail and finger. "Hmph," she grumbled a moment later, foiled. "Never mind, I'll just - "
Hopes for a sensible solution, such as 'go use a nail brush,' were rapidly dashed when she raised her opposite hand, majik sparking across her fingertips.
"Mirai, don't!" Damus shouted, already scrambling off the couch, but it was too late. There was an absurdly loud pop and an explosion of thick pink smoke that smelled heavily of strawberries. Damus let out a very heartfelt groan. "Mirai!"
Coughing, Celtos waved a hand at the smoke, but the stuff seemed to be quite happy inhabiting Yuugi's living room, and utterly refused to move, even when Celtos picked up a couch cushion and began fanning the air with it. In desperation, he finally summoned up a tiny spark of the majik he'd received from Damus, channeling it through the pillow in hopes of dispersing the smoke. Damus, still standing a few feet away, gave an odd twitch and looked back at him, but the smoke lingered.
"What," Yami demanded from the kitchen doorway, "is the meaning of this?!"
"Uh-oh, the mighty Pharaoh voice," Joey teased, safe behind the wall of pink smoke, fanning away with a couch cushion to no avail.
Yami ignored him (as diplomatically as possible, though), and carefully navigated his way through the pink fog to open the windows at the other side of the room. Once given an escape route, the smoke did begin to drift out, but very, very slowly, giving the impression of some gaseous form of cotton candy. Even with all the windows prized open, Joey, Yami, and Yuugi fanning with couch cushions, and Damus and Celtos attempting magically-assisted ventilation, the pink cloud stubbornly refused to fully disperse.
Through the haze, the occupants of the room could make out the vague silhouettes of furniture, other people, and Mirai, still at the center of the room, although there appeared to be something very wrong with the shape of her head…
"What's she done this time?" Cayenne called down from the upstairs landing. Far from the raging state he'd been in when he first arrived, the Chaos Mage now sounded almost amused. Clearly, the mood-altering effects of the Black Luster Soldier were in full swing.
"Until the smoke is gone, it's rather difficult to tell," Damus answered pointedly, glaring in the general direction of the landing. "Would you mind?"
There was no real reply, just a faint snicker and a quick gust of wind that sent the smoke hurtling outside the windows where it hung, looking for all the world like a very lost nebula.
With the smoke gone, the full effects of Mirai's backfired spell were revealed, and there was a moment of dead silence as everyone gaped in a mixture of horror and hilarity.
The silence was broken, of course, by Cayenne, who was forced to cling to the banister to keep himself upright as his body shook with the force of his laughter.
"Oh, little sister," Damus groaned, "what am I going to do with you?"
There was a renewed peal of laughter from Cayenne, followed, rather breathlessly, by a single, wheezed word; "Jelly?"
Standing in the center of the room, arms akimbo, one toe tapping impatiently, Mirai glared up at her cousin. Or at least, attempted to glare. Glaring, however, was made far more difficult by the fact that she had turned her head into a giant peanut, complete with shell.
Joey snorted. Yuugi giggled. Yami snickered. A moment later, Celtos began to laugh, and the ringing sound of it echoed through the house, contagious, bringing everyone else in the room to new heights of hilarity, until even Damus was bent double at the waist, clutching his stomach.
They had begun to calm down slightly when Gaia, come to investigate the source of the noise, took one look at the scene and said dryly, "Well, I always knew she was a little nutty," which only served to set everyone off again.
When the hilarity had finally boiled down – it took some time, as a single noise from one person was all it took to set the entire group off again – Cayenne ordered the girl upstairs, so that he could repair her rather spectacular SNAFU in relative peace.
As Mirai navigated the upstairs hallway, though, Joey couldn't resist one final parting shot; "Hey, Cayenne, try not to butter her up!"
An hour later, Joey still argued that it wasn't his fault the Chaos Mage had fallen down the stairs laughing, and would someone please convince the monster to remove the puppy ears and tail that he'd seen fit to hex Joey with?
Hey, here's another scene break!
"…and so the penguin says, 'No, that's just ice cream.' "
A roar of laughter rose up, and Cayenne preened slightly, looking smug. Gaia nearly spilled his soda before he could set it out of danger on the table; Joey shook his head, tears of hilarity welling in his eyes.
"That's disgustin', Cayenne, really," the blond choked out, although it didn't seem to deter him much. Mirai's earlier nuttiness had inspired an impromptu comedy hour, and Cayenne, of course, put himself front and center with a series of crude, though amusing, jokes.
"I don't… oh. Seal. Penguin. Joey's right, that is disgusting," Yuugi muttered, curling a little closer to Yami. The pair was once again settled in Yuugi's favorite beanbag, close enough to the table to reach their drinks. Damus, Celtos, and Joey (still with his dog ears and tail) had taken possession of the sofa, Gaia, amazingly, was still in the loveseat with Mysti, and Cayenne, Lustire, and Mirai had resigned themselves to the floor.
"I still remember the day I achieved Master-Knight status. I was seventeen," Gaia began, "but I looked closer to fourteen, and of course, on the day of the Championship ceremony, I woke up late. When I finally got to the arena, the guard at the gate refused to let me through, and I even remember what he said to me; 'You have not the position to enter this ground, boy!' And of course, at that precise moment, my squire came racing up, wearing my colors, with the gold braid on his shoulder to signify belonging to a ranking Knight, crying out 'Master, Master! The ceremony cannot begin without your presence!' I thought the guard was going to be sick," Gaia added, snickering. "I took my tunic from my squire, looked the guard in the eye, and said 'Position is everything in life.' "
"Funny," Damus mused from the couch, "how position is only everything in life when you're on the bottom."
"And how would you know?" Celtos grumbled from beside him. "You're never on the bottom!" A moment later, exactly what he had said sank in, and Celtos gave a faint squeak and hid his head behind a throw pillow. Several of the others laughed; Damus, however, looked at him with concern.
"You've never said anything. Do you want me to be on the bottom?"
"No," came the muffled response, then, "I mean, yes. Maybe. I don't know!" A single bright-amber eye and a crimson-blushing cheek appeared around the edge of the pillow. "Can we not discuss this in public?"
"What public?" Damus retorted, gesturing around. Amystria was politely pretending to meditate; Yuugi and Yami were too busy snuggling on the beanbag to pay much attention to anything, Joey (sitting right next to them) was watching only from the corner of his eye, and Cayenne, Mirai, and Lustire… were all staring straight at them. Bizarre, Damus decided, flicking his eyes towards Gaia. The Knight's face had acquired a slightly greenish hue, which, with his grey skin, gave him the odd appearance of a lichen-encrusted rock.
"Never mind them. Just give me a kiss and we'll talk about it later?" Damus baited. Getting the Elf to initiate a public display of affection was next to impossible, but with the right incentive…
Celtos sighed faintly, scooting the pillow off his face and rolling forward onto his knees, his heels bumping against Joey's thigh, so that he leaned over Damus, their lips meeting in just a feather-light touch –
It was as though a firecracker went off. The explosion of sensation, of power, swept over Damus, and he gasped into the kiss, recognizing the taste of the power – 'That's my majik!' – and suddenly they were separated again, and Celtos was staring at him, bewildered and out of breath.
"[Te'sunai maasyoa naä?!" The Elf demanded. What just happened?!
Damus shook his head and shrugged slightly, wondering just how strongly Celtos had felt that explosion to be shocked back into his native Elvish tongue.
"Uh, guys, what just happened?" Joey echoed Celtos' question from the floor – when had he fallen off the couch? – and Damus shook his head slowly.
"Don't… know," Celtos answered, sounding as though he was struggling to find words in the Japanese he had been using so easily moments before.
"Celtos, when you kissed me, I felt… my majik," Damus said softly, and the Elf turned to stare at him.
"[Naä?" What?
"Celtos, kiss me again," Damus whispered, and the Elf complied, more forcefully this time, pressing his weight against the mage, and the power was so intense that Damus reached out, clinging to the first solid thing his hand encountered, and it wasn't until several shouts erupted near him that he came out of his daze long enough to realize Gaia was passed out on the floor, and he'd just set fire to the coffee table.
Stammering bewildered apologies, he automatically reached out with his majik to extinguish the dancing purple-blue flames, and was somehow less surprised than he should have been when they doused immediately.
"I have my majik again…" A moment's thought, and he extended his hand again, intending to repair the damage to the table, but received only a few sullen puffs of smoke in response. "Not very much of it, though," he added, feeling slightly disappointed through his lightheadedness. He could only look on in surprise when Celtos' broad hand reached out next to his own and the table began to repair itself. Within seconds, even the slightest scorch-mark had faded to nothing, and the table gleamed back at them both.
"I can control it now," Celtos murmured, shocked, and Damus wasn't even sure what language he was speaking anymore, there was too much to take in…
Clap.
Yami's head whipped around. Cayenne, Lustire, and Mirai all promptly hid their hands behind their backs, smiling and pretending they hadn't just been high-fiving each other seconds before. Mirai looked away and started whistling; Cayenne, being Cayenne, went so far as to make a gleaming halo appear, hovering over his glossy obsidian hair.
Yami's eyes narrowed in sudden understanding.
Hey! Here's another scene break.
"Who's idea was it?"
Cayenne and Mirai exchanged looks. Lustire, teacup in hand, just propped his chin up on his palm and gazed at the cabinets on the opposite wall.
"Mine," Cayenne answered finally, sounding exasperated. "It was my idea, but Mirai had to be the one to pull it off. After all, nobody's going to believe me screwing up a spell. As for Miss Nuts-for-Brains, though…"
Mirai did have the grace to look (slightly) embarrassed.
Yami nodded slightly. About an hour had passed since Damus and Celtos' kiss, and the pair in question had retreated to their room to do some 'research' on the bizarre properties of the majik affecting them. Yuugi had taken it upon himself to remove Gaia from the house, the monster having suffered some sort of homophobia-induced meltdown after witnessing the pair being quite so… bold. Yuugi had gotten the duty of escorting Gaia and Amystria to the park, and Yami had seized the opportunity to round up the trio of conspirators and corral them in the kitchen.
After all, what better place to grill someone?
"It's a very old spell," Cayenne continued, "one that's been used for centuries for couples with a single mage partner. It's only effective if the relationship is unequal, and the mage is dominant. As you know, it siphons majik into the sub and increases it, causing the submissive partner to become more powerful."
Yami nodded, once; they knew that already. "And why can't Damus find a counterspell?"
"Ah," Cayenne grimaced, "you see, the full effects of this spell are known only to certain members of the family, you see, and Damus isn't one of them. As for the counterspell…"
"There isn't one."
Yami and Mirai both jumped. Lustire spoke so rarely that the deep bass of his voice proved quite startling.
"What do you mean, 'there isn't one'?" Yami demanded, his irritation rising.
"Just what he said; there is no counterspell. This is an ancient and binding majik," Cayenne answered sharply.
"It's called the Balancing Spell," Mirai interjected, her resilient cheer breaking through Yami's ire, "and even though there's no counterspell, it's easy to fix."
"And how's that?"
"Simple," Cayenne answered, his broad smirk flashing the tips of his fangs. "The screw-er becomes the screw-ee, and the screw-ee - "
"Cayenne!"
The Chaos Mage grinned at Lustire, quite unapologetic. "The majik won't all go back to Damus. It turns into a shared resource, the same way that you and Master Yuugi share a bond of life-energy and emotion. It brings the two partners closer than they have ever dreamed possible."
A light bulb went off, neatly balanced on the uppermost point of Yami's hair. "You and Lustire - "
Twin nods. "Almost three years ago, now," Cayenne answered proudly. A second later, he added, almost sheepishly, "Gramps decided I was becoming too much of an ass, so he slapped that spell on me and I lost every ounce of my majik until I let Lustire bugger me… And if I'd had one iota of it when I found out what he'd done, I'd have singed his beard off all the way up to his eyebrows!"
Yami rubbed his eyes, trying to ward off the headache he knew would be attacking him shortly. To think that Cayenne, who pretended to hate everything, and Mirai, who was – intentionally or otherwise – a walking disaster, had managed to execute that kind of plan without anybody noticing until now… it was mind-boggling to say the least.
"Anything else?"
This time, Mirai and Lustire both turned to look at Cayenne. The mage hesitated for a second, then shook his head, much too rapidly. It didn't take a genius to figure out he was hiding something, but Yami let it go. Right now, he didn't want any more brain-scrambling explanations; just a couple of aspirin… and maybe a cup of coffee.
And here goes another scene break… Aren't they fun?
A knock at the door woke Yami from his doze. The spirit was resting on the living room couch, given that his upstairs bedroom – being right next to the one Damus and Celtos were currently occupying – was a little too loud to be precisely restful at the moment.
"I'll get it, Yami," Joey volunteered, hopping off of the loveseat and remoting the television off. Yuugi still hadn't returned from the park with Gaia and Mysti, and the three co-conspirators had retreated upstairs to plot further schemes to disrupt Yami's mental stability. Or perhaps they were just meditating. Either way, he wasn't quite sure he wanted to find out.
Watching Joey disappear through the kitchen door, something tickled at the back of Yami's mind. Something about Joey not being seen in public…
"Oh, damn," Yami said, suddenly feeling quite wide awake, and vaulted off the sofa just as he heard the door open. "Joey, wait!"
He stopped at the kitchen door, grimacing as he realized who Joey had just opened the door to. 'Perfect. He's going to have a field day with this.'
Seto Kaiba cast a long, speculative gaze up and down the boy in front of him, lingering most at the top of Joey's head and the profile of Joey's backside. "Very nice, pup," he said after a long moment. "Did you put those on just for me?"
"Put wha – aw, crap! Cayenne!!" Tail bristling, dog-ears pinned back, Joey turned (tail) and stomped out of the room, cursing only half under his breath.
Yami covered a yawn with his closed fist and wearily motioned Kaiba in.
"What did I miss?" Kaiba's voice was coolly disinterested, but there was a spark of something in his eyes that just might have been humor. Yami sighed faintly, relating the tale as directly as he could – being direct was difficult when Mirai was involved – and was quite sure that Kaiba was trying not to laugh at the end.
"I'll have to thank Cayenne," he remarked mildly, and Yami could have sworn he saw the corner's of his mouth twitch upwards.
"Of course," Yami answered, stifling another yawn and glaring at the coffeepot. Of all days for that Ra-accursed piece of technology to fail him… "Were you here for something in particular, Kaiba?"
The CEO paused a moment before raising his right arm from behind the flare of his coat and into Yami's line of sight. The Duel Disk strapped to his wrist glinted faintly with the movement.
"It's ready."
This is the last line break for this half of the chapter… read the notes!
S: Whew! I'm glad I decided to split this… Just over ten pages! I'm posting it in a rush because I'm leaving for Washington, D.C. tomorrow morning, special vacation trip for my BIRTHDAY!! Happy birthday to me! A fantastic present would be to come home to lots of nice reviews for this chapter… or piece of a chapter, whatever. Not-so-subtle hint, folks.
If you'd like to deliver birthday wishes to me in person, I plan to be at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History on the 16th, and I'm spending my birthday, the 17th, at the National Zoo.
I've got plenty more stories that I'm getting ready to go, and I'm almost done with the second half of this chapter, so you shouldn't have too much of a wait this time. Thanks for all your patience!
Note on the Elvish: I have absolutely no idea. It's not Tolkien's Elvish, in fact, it's not anything-Elvish, I just randomly pulled that out of my ear. So don't ask me to translate anything, 'kay? Love you all!!!