S: Ugh… I know I said I would get this up quickly, but the past few months have absolutely sucked ass, if you'll forgive my language. My aunt passed away from uterine cancer, I was involved in a car crash that completely totaled my beloved GMC Jimmy, my mother underwent surgery, and like an idiot, I managed to sprain my ankle falling off my back steps after a night of freezing rain, and then came down with the flu, which kept me out of work and anything resembling coherency for four days. I beg, again, as usual, your forgiveness for my tardiness. At least this time I have valid excuses. (sighs)

Onyx: (silent for once)

S: (looks at her, expectant)

Onyx: (shrugs) You've suffered enough on your own, you don't need my help!

S: Right. Ahh… DISCLAIMER, see chapter one, WARNINGS include language, shonen ai and yaoi, and references/SPOILERS to the end of the Millenium World manga arc, as per usual.

A/N: I've given up on keeping this at ten chapters. The final total will now be thirteen – twelve main chapters and an epilogue. Not exactly what I'd initially planned on, but thirteen is one of my lucky numbers, so… ah, well. On with it!

A/N 2: If any of Yami's comments fail to make sense – once I have (finally) gotten this completed, I will be going back and editing it to fit into a post-canon line, instead of the fangirl–on–a–caffeine-bender line it started out as. Therefore, Yami did leave, but returned, all memories restored, in a separate body. I'll post that as a separate story, later.

CHAPTER 11

CLARIFICATIONS

Yami couldn't help but stare for a moment. The Duel Disks… ready. The monsters would be going home. Somehow, the blow came harder than he had expected, and he felt it like a punch in the gut. Mutely, he motioned the taller duelist in.

"Gaia and Mysti aren't here," he managed after a moment of blank incomprehension, startled as much by his own emotions as the functional Duel Disks.

"That's all right," Seto replied tersely, and for a moment Yami feared that he would say 'I can send them back without them being here.' However, Kaiba bent to remove his shoes, an astonishingly polite gesture to Yami's mind, and finished calmly "I need to speak to Damus for a moment anyway."

"He's upstairs with Celtos," Yami answered in confusion, "although they might be busy…"

Seto grunted an acknowledgement and stepped around Yami into the living room. "Taking them off?" Kaiba's voice drifted back a moment later. "He looked better with them, Cayenne."

There was a snicker from the mage and an outraged exclamation from Joey, and Yami peered around the doorframe to see Joey now de-tailed and sporting a fully human pair of ears. Kaiba neatly sidestepped the blond's badly aimed punch and strode calmly up the staircase, leaving Joey behind to seethe.

Yami sighed in weary amusement, waved to catch Joey's eye, and gestured towards the front door. Frowning, the blond nodded his understanding, then turned his frustration on Cayenne, who was laughing hard enough that he probably couldn't hear it anyway.

Shaking his head slightly, Yami grabbed his jacket and slipped out the door, heading for the park. He could have simply mind-called to his Light, asked him to bring the two monsters back, but he was in a mood to walk. Perhaps the chill air would help him to wake up… After all, he didn't want to be half-asleep when he said his goodbyes.

(scene break)

A short rap on the door brought both Damus and Celtos' heads up. They were sitting on the bead, both wearing pants (though nothing else), faces flushed and hair in disarray. Celtos, sitting behind Damus, was carefully working his powerful hands across Damus' slim shoulders, making sure that any tension that had survived their earlier activities was banished.

"Come in," Damus called, laughing and squirming slightly as Celtos' thumb caught a ticklish spot near his shoulder blade. Seto opened the door carefully, not quite sure what to expect.

"Ah, Dragon Master. How can we be of a- aah! Celtos! - assistance?" Damus asked, playfully batting the Elf's broad hands away from his shoulders. Celtos retaliated by running a finger down the side of Damus' sensitive neck, and Damus fell sideways onto the mattress trying to dodge the ticklish sensation.

"I came by to tell you," Kaiba raised his arm, as he had for Yami, "the Duel Disks are ready."

The humor vanished instantly from both monsters' faces. Sitting back up, Damus carefully gathered maneuvered himself to sit cross-legged against the headboard, pinning Kaiba with his icy gaze. "You've tested it already?"

Seto nodded, uneasily. "Yes. Saggi and that… horse… were returned over an hour ago."

Damus closed his eyes for a moment, raising one hand and resting his fingertips against his forehead. A gentle pulse of blue light was the only thing to betray the spell. After only a few seconds, he opened his eyes again, nodding slightly.

"They're fine," he said, answering the unasked question. "Or Zephyr is, at least. He arrived back in the Deck with no problems." As he spoke, Damus kept his eyes on Kaiba, observing the duelist's body language. The lines of his jaw and shoulders were tight, and the young man was carrying himself as though he expected something to explode at any moment.

"Were you expecting something to go wrong?" Celtos prompted softly, and Kaiba shook his head, frowning, his eyes never leaving Damus. Celtos surveyed them both for a moment, then rolled out of bed with catlike grace, keeping his back to the wall and snatching up his discarded shirt before his feet even touched the floor.

"I'll go get us some tea, shall I? You sit and talk to Damus." After a seconds thought, Celtos bent over the bed, carelessly exposing his scarred back to Kaiba, and brushed a light kiss across Damus' lips. Immediately, instinctively, the mage curled one hand into Celtos' golden hair, returning the kiss with a desperate hunger, feeling the rush and heat of the majik that flowed between them…

Pulling away from Damus, both of them flushed and out of breath, Celtos flashed a grin and a wink at his lover, slipped his shirt on, and had whisked away out the door of the bedroom before either of the others could react.

Damus took a moment to recover his faculties and his breath before fixing Kaiba with a piercing look. "What's wrong?"

Kaiba exhaled roughly, shook his head, and walked over to sit on the foot of the bed. "Does the name Kissara sound familiar?"

Damus blinked, startled, and regarded Seto with a scrutinizing gaze. "It does, actually. It was the name of the woman who bore the original spirit of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon in Ancient - "

Seto's furious curse cut him off. "I do NOT want to hear any more of this crap about Ancient Egypt! I am myself! ME! Seto Kaiba! Not High Priest Seto, not Lord Seto, not Seto Ice-Blooded, and the mutt's name is Joey, not Ounosu, and we're not - we don't - " White-faced and out of breath, Seto lapsed into silence, his entire body vibrating with tension. "It doesn't exist," he whispered, staring down at his clasped hands.

Damus weighed his options carefully for a moment, then carefully, carefully replied in the ancient tongue he had never lost mastery of. "A week ago, wouldn't you have said it was impossible for Duel Monsters to exist as real beings? Five years ago, wouldn't you have said that Master Yami didn't truly exist? Eight years ago, wouldn't you have said that the Millennium Items were nothing more than tacky jewelry?"

"The Millennium Items were nothing more than tacky jewelry," Seto snapped back, and Damus chuckled softly to himself.

"And Master Yami?"

"There's no guarantee that he's not some long-lost relative of Yuugi's with an overblown family resemblance and a taste for incest," Seto countered, glowering at the mage.

"And me?"

"It's entirely possible that I was electrocuted while working on the Duel Disks, or fell and hit my head, and I'm lying in a coma in Domino General, hallucinating all this."

"And the fact that you've been speaking Ancient Egyptian since my question about the Millennium Items?"

"I've been what?!"

Patiently, Damus repeated himself, switching back to Japanese to enforce his point.

Kaiba's face went red, then white. "Oh, hell."

(scene break)

On his way into the kitchen, Celtos stopped beside the sofa that Cayenne and Joey were occupying, the latter still sulking, and the former pretending to read a Dueling magazine. Pretending, because he was trying to 'read' the American player stats, and hadn't the faintest grasp of the English written language.

Celtos folded his arms across his chest and stared silently down at the top of Cayenne's head until the mage began squirming.

"Anything else you would like to confess to, Cayenne?" Celtos had tracked down Mirai in the guest bedroom and gotten a rather garbled, but at least somewhat intelligible, explanation from her on the way down.

"No?"

Sighing, Celtos smacked the mage on the head and went to put on water for tea.

"Cayenne…"

Half-sighing and half-growling, the mage glared at the back of Lustire's head. Lustire, sitting by the window, turned enough to regard his lover out of one dark eye and raised a single, eloquent brow.

"Oh, so I lied. It's not like you're going to hold out on me for it," Cayenne hissed at him.

"Cayenne - " Celtos' exasperated voice rang from the kitchen, and Cayenne winced.

"Damn Elves and their damn ears. Worse than dogs…"

"Cayenne!!!"

"Oh, screw off!" the mage in question snapped back. "I don't have to answer to you, dog-boy!"

"Oy!" Joey poked the mage sharply in the back of the head. "First off, that's MY lousy nickname. Second, since you've been such an ass, I think y' owe us an explanation. What'd you do? I suppose it's your fault you guys are here in the first place or somethin'?"

There was an exceptionally long silence, which was punctuated by Cayenne's cheeks acquiring a faint navy hue.

Celtos stuck his head out of the kitchen doorway, steaming kettle in hand and exasperation written on every line of his face. "Cayenne…"

"You do know that's the third time in two minutes you've said Cayenne's name?" Joey remarked offhandedly, before turning towards the mage. "So, spill. How'd you do it?"

"Cayenne," Celtos growled, plunking the kettle back on the stove ("Four times," Joey noted), "if you're the one that brought us here in the first place, why in the name of all the Spirits haven't you just sent us back?!"

The navy hue intensified, and Joey suppressed the urge to laugh. He'd never seen the Chaos Mage so discomfited.

Celtos, however, was staring at the blue-skinned magician with murder in his amber eyes. When Cayenne still didn't respond, save to blush to an almost midnight blue, the murderous fury slowly dimmed to be replaced by a faint spark. A glance to and a nod from Lustire was all that was needed, and the spark burned higher and higher until Celtos exploded –

With laughter. "Finally," the Elf gasped out, "all of your grand schemes! Backfired!" Clutching his stomach with one hand, Celtos staggered around the sofa to collapse, still laughing hysterically, into the loveseat. "By all means, Cayenne," ("Five times,"), "please, explain."

"All right, all right!" the mage growled back, irritable expression back full-force. "It goes like this. When the Dragon-Master created the latest Duel Disks, he tried to infuse our individual personalities into the characters on the Dueling field. What he didn't realize is that in his attempt to make the characters 'real', he opened up a breach into our Realm, allowing him to access monsters that were very real indeed." Placing the palms of his hands together, fingers pointing upward, Cayenne exhaled slightly, then whipped his hands apart to reveal a white silk handkerchief.

"There's not a dagger under that, is there?" Joey asked warily.

"Of course not. Now, this breach - " in lieu of more magic, Cayenne lifted the handkerchief to his mouth and used one of his delicate fangs to rip a neat, straight hole in the fabric. "…is a little like this." Holding up the handkerchief, he frowned as he realized he lacked an adequate number of hands to finish his explanation correctly, and flicked one hand to make the handkerchief float in midair between his palms.

"If this handkerchief is the barrier between our realms, then the hole is the effects of Kaiba's technology. I was a bit bored when I found the hole, so I… put my proverbial majik foot in it," he explained, looking rather sheepish as he poked a finger through the rip to simulate the action. "And then, with the hole propped open, when the Dragon-Master played the cards for my cousins, half-sister and you," here he nodded to Celtos, "instead of just their personalities being accessed to affect the characters, they were actually pulled through the hole. Kuriboh and Zephyr wandered through on their own, and Lustire went through looking for me, because he knew I'd been involved with the hole, but incorrectly guessed which side of it I was on."

Joey shook his head in disbelief. "Cayenne, you… you're… IMPOSSIBLE!"

Cayenne and Celtos both rolled their eyes. Lustire just snickered.

"And Saggi?" Celtos wanted to know. "How did he get through?"

"Not a freakin' clue."

"Highly reassuring," Celtos answered dryly. "My abilities at summoning? Since I can safely assume those are your fault, too?"

"Well, yes, for the most part. Because you'd acquired the majik of my cousin, the Deck Leader, you were immediately bound to all the monsters in the Deck." Holding up his hands to either side of the handkerchief, Cayenne flicked his right index finger. Five slender golden threads shot from the tip of that finger, spinning through the hole in the handkerchief to attach themselves to the tips of his left fingers.

"When you began absorbing Damus' powers, it strengthened the ties binding you to the rest of the Deck. Your power became strong enough for you to pull other members of the Deck – like Gaia, Silvis, and me- through the hole by only speaking their names, as you discovered. It's a variant on the Summonings that were used to call us out of our slabs back in the old days."

By 'old days,' he meant Ancient Egypt. Celtos shook his head in disbelief. "Cayenne," ("Six times,") "you realize you've turned me into one of the Pharaoh's High Priests?!"

"Eh, not quite. You haven't got a tacky piece of jewelry."

"Wait a minute," Joey interrupted. "You've still got your proverbowhatsit foot in that hole, right?"

"Yes…"

"So why haven't you just sent yourself back?"

The navy hue made a triumphant return on Cayenne's cheeks. "Funny thing about pulling on something is that you both have to be opposite it, and have something to pull on, to be effective."

Joey puzzled over that one for a moment before his eyes widened in astonished hilarity. "You… got yourself stuck here when Celtos summoned you?"

Cayenne didn't have a response for that other than to prove he looked quite fetching in navy.

"I can't pull myself back to our Realm without having something to grab onto," the mage grumbled after a moment. "And Celtos and Damus are here, not there, so I can't grab the connection-force and have those two idiots pull me back!"

"Call Damus an idiot again, and you'll wind up with a cup of scalding tea dumped in your lap," Celtos warned, but his voice was distracted. Cayenne flipped him off, but Celtos merely rolled his eyes.

"You're getting predictable, Cayenne," Celtos grumbled, pushing himself out of his seat and going to collect the tea he'd come down for in the first place.

"Predictable?!" Cayenne squawked in outrage, while soft clinks and clatters indicted Celtos was setting up the tea tray. "I am NOT predictable!"

" "Yes, you are!" " Celtos and Joey chorused, leaving the mage open-mouthed with indignant fury.

Snickering softly, Celtos lifted the neatly-assembled tea tray and headed for the staircase, his long, easy strides ensuring that not a drop of tea would be spilled. Smirking slightly, Cayenne waited until the Elf stepped onto the staircase. Then, in one lightening-fast movement, Cayenne lifted his hand, cocked his finger and thumb, and –

- promptly wound up with a face full of his own spark. Coughing, he wiped a bit of soot off his face. "What the hell?!"

Smirking, Celtos held up his right hand. The dagger there, which usually resided in his boot-holster, flashed slightly as he wiped the soot off it on the thigh of his pants.

"Like we said, Cayenne," the Elf smirked, bending to reholster the knife. "Predictable." And he continued up the stairs, down the hall, and back into the bedroom without further comment from anyone.

Only when he was safely behind the closed door did Cayenne speak. "I don't BELIEVE this! He's channeling majik through those damn knife-blades! My spark wouldn't have deflected otherwise!"

"Blame yourself," Lustire replied from the window, making Joey jump. "It was your idea."

"I know that," Cayenne snapped back, wiping the last of the soot off and absently healing the tiny singe-mark on his cheek. "And you've just used up your quota of words for the week, Luse."

The Soldier merely chuckled and turned back to the window.

S: For those of you begging for more YYxY scenes (Nikki!), those will be in the next chapter. Again, my repeated and sincere apologies for the obscene number of delays. Hope you enjoyed. And folks, reviews really do make me write faster! My love to everyone, hope you all had a great Christmas (or whatever your midwinter holiday is) and New Years, and I'll see you next chapter!