SC: Hello again, y'all. I want to apologize again for causing trouble with the last chapter… for such superficial reasons… But hey. I promise to make up for it. (thumbs-up sign)

And for all you pairing fans, heads up.

Refugees

Emperor Haysheen has been erased, and the Empire is now in Scott's hands. Scott's army, which appeared out of nowhere, inflicted heavy damage on the resistance, forcing them to retreat. Scott continued to give chase, inflicting still more damage on Yugi and his army as they fled. During their retreat, they learn that a group of refugees is being chased by Imperial forces in Uruvie Canyon. They also learn that Téa is the one trying to protect the refugees against overwhelming odds. The resistance rushes to the aid of Téa, only to end up surrounded by the Imperial units chasing them.

With darkness at their heels, the resistance flew at top speed. Atop Red-Eyes Joey led them towards Uruvie Canyon where the resistance could hide and hopefully lose their pursuers. The resistance dragons were no doubt getting worn out by traveling at top speed for so long, yet they had no choice but to press onward. To stop and rest meant to be caught. To be caught meant destruction.

After a painfully long amount of time had passed, the spell plaguing Yugi and Ryou finally wore off. They came out of it gradually, their shivers slowing to a halt and breath returning to them at its normal pace. Joey was the first to notice this as Yugi had been leaning against him the whole time. When he saw that Yugi looked more like normal he asked testily, "Yug'? Hey man, can you hear me now?"

"Barely." Yugi's answer shocked Joey, as he hadn't truly thought him capable of replying. "My ears have decided to start ringing with as much volume as possible."

"Are you all right?"

"Sore and tired, but fine."

"Are you sure? The way that looked it could have killed you–" Joey cut off quickly when he remembered that the spell had in fact been used for killing. He wasn't sure he wanted to remind Yugi of what he just finished feeling.

"Trust me, I'll live. Although, I've decided that I never, ever want to die by being eaten alive." The tone of his voice was almost humorous. Joey was amazed that Yugi could recover from something so racking as that so quickly, even make jokes about it! Yugi straightened up, no longer leaning against Joey for support, and the blonde could see that his eyes were returning to normal. However, a white mist still clouded his irises, making them appear blurry. Yugi let his gaze wander to the landscape whizzing past. "Where are we?"

"North of Enno, heading for Uruvie Canyon. Why?" Joey glanced critically at Yugi's enshrouded eyes. "Can you see with your eyes like that?"

"If one giant blur constitutes 'seeing,' then yes." He then leaned back to peer over Joey's shoulder. "Are the demons still behind us?"

"Yes – wait, how do you know about them? You were still paralyzed by the spell."

Yugi chuckled lightly. "Paralyzed, yes, but not deaf. I could still hear what was going on. I just couldn't answer because my mouth wouldn't move."

"So then… you know about Scott?" Joey asked. Yugi's eyes narrowed swiftly.

"Yes, I do." An aura of heated anger radiated from him, strong enough that Joey could feel it like a stifling wall of stagnant air. He recognized it as the same loathing Yugi had shown for Pegasus and Malik in the real world before.

"Lord Yugi!" Shimon appeared beside them. "You have finally recovered!"

"Mostly."

"As I'm sure Joey has told you, we are currently running to a hideaway in Uruvie Canyon. However, I have knowledge of a small band of rebels hidden there as well. They have only one marshal and lack enough force to defend themselves from an assault by these creatures." At these words Yugi's eyes widened.

"So we're leading the enemy straight to them? They'll be killed!"

"A loss we cannot help, Lord Yugi."

"We have to do something! Warn them, bring them with us at least into hiding – we cannot simply leave them to die!"

"Lord Yugi, we are running for our lives as it is. To stop and help these people would be like lying down in front of the enemy's path. We'd be subject to their full assault." Even as he spoke the voice of reason Shimon could sense that his words would not scratch Yugi's already set mind.

"A full assault that they are already subject to. If we do not help them, they will die. If we do, they still might be killed, and we run the risk of dying with them, but they will at least be given a chance to survive, however small. That chance is worth any amount of risk we put ourselves into."

"But Lord Yugi–"

"No." Joey thrust out the word forcibly, deliberately. "I'm with Yug'. One chance is all we need. Besides, if Yugi's the head of this army, I don't see why you're questioning him." After that Shimon fell into a flustered silence.

Yugi picked up Joey's lead. "Tell the others of the plan. We'll need them aware so we can move as quickly as possible." Not wanting to face more of Joey's castigating words, Shimon steered Kaiser Dragon away. With a sigh Yugi turned back to face Joey.

"Always a gambler, eh? Taking chances with Fate, never wasting a thought on the consequences?"

Joey grinned. "Hey, you know me. As long as there's dice, I'll bet my life on 'em. Plus, with you here, I'd say the odds are at their greatest. When have you – or even Lady Luck – ever let me down before? You're almost something like Fate yourself, Yugi."

Up until this point Yugi had been grinning along with the conversation, but now that expression vanished. "Fate… itself?"

"Yeah. I mean, whatever side you're on is always victorious. Think about it: you against Pegasus, against Malik, and now against the Empire. We may be on the run, but we still haven't technically lost a battle yet. You've been the deciding factor in almost every move we've made, either though battle itself or through strategy…"

Yugi wasn't listening at this point. A dense, icy liquid churned in his stomach. Fate… It was a topic he had already pondered. So fickle a creature, to grant glory and cruelty, wealth and poverty, life… and death. Everyone fell to this deity's decisions. Could he, Yugi, really control such forces? He immediately knew the answer to be no, but something inside him squirmed with apprehension. So many times had he narrowly escaped death and disaster; with such successes under his belt, his contract with Fate did seem unnaturally unbalanced. The fact that Joey was so confident in his abilities to survive and be able to change an event's outcome unsettled Yugi. If he had any sort of connection at all with Fate, then it was telling him that maybe all of this confidence in his "contract" was futile. Maybe, in a time soon proclaimed, the divine forces so keen on helping him would tilt the scale away, and he would fail.

Maybe… Fate's golden-spun gaze would look upon him daggers.

"Lord Yugi!" The words shook him free of his reverie. Yugi looked to Shimon, all his familiar sharpness present in his eyes. "The others agree full-heartedly to your… decision…"

Yugi sensed the underlying emotion in Shimon's statement. "Yet you do not."

"Forgive me, Lord Yugi. I – I simply cannot feel the same fervor that you do in aiding these refugees. Your courageous spirit stirs the others' strong hearts, but myself… My heart is weak."

"That isn't true. Strength of the heart cannot be determined by one decision, one event in a life of thousands. Your heart is not any weaker than the others; you're just much less of a reckless fool than everyone else." He said the statement with utmost seriousness, but that didn't stop Joey from whacking him on the shoulder. "…Myself included," he amended, and felt Joey's grin warm his back.

Shimon stared in silence. After a long moment he said, "Lord Yugi… Though my mind may have doubts, my heart shall follow your every lead…"

Yugi had no reply. He turned back to the blur of land in front of him. Slight annoyance tickled his temples at the fact that his eyes still weren't completely healed. His vision was too foggy to see anything more than shapes and shadows. Color was next to pointless: he saw the blue of the sky and a murky, reddish brown hue in scattered bits of the landscape, but anything other than that was a wash of gray. He could just make out the shadows cast by the many hillocks below and a ridge of sharper, more mountain-like hills on the horizon.

"The refugee hideout is just on the other side of those hills," Shimon informed them all.

"And our hiding spot ain't much farther from there." Joey looked to Yugi. "We're all behind you. You still up for it?"

A deep chuckle sounded from his friend. Without turning back he answered, "You shouldn't have to ask that question."

What was once the horizon passed beneath them. Now they were beyond the smudgy gray peaks and flying over a valley. In the center was a darker geometric shape that stood out from the lighter grays of the grass around it. Just as Shimon had predicted, there was the refugees' base. What hadn't been predicted were the deafening blasts that surrounded it.

Flashes of light, fire, and smoke blazed at sporadic intervals around the structure. To Yugi the flames were colored like blood that oozed a tainted trail over the base. He could hear roars and see many swift blurs moving about but was unable to decipher anything else. He didn't need to, as Shimon suddenly yelled, "Imperial soldiers! They're attacking the base!"

"What? Why're they here?" demanded Joey. "The Emperor was killed! Shouldn't the army be gone?"

"He must have sent the order before his death," Shimon explained. "These soldiers haven't heard that their leader is dead."

Yugi's grip on Red-Eyes's neck tightened. "You said they only had one marshal, didn't you Shimon?"

"Six against one… they don't stand a chance with those odds!" Yugi full-heartedly agreed with Joey, but before he could call for an attack on the Imperial soldiers, he heard shouts from the battle below.

"Hyee hyee – we got 'er now!"

"Yew ain't gettin' away this time!"

"Shut your traps, monkeys!"

The last voice was different, not like the scraping calls of the Imperial soldiers. Firstly, it had been female. Secondly, it held the valiant glow of someone fighting from her heart fringed with the tremors of fatigue. The refugees' only marshal was on her last legs, facing death… but that wasn't what made Yugi's heart start pounding.

"We'll just have to even the fight!" Joey hollered, his eyes narrowing with Red-Eyes's smoky growl. "Go, Red-Eyes! Black Fire Bullet!" Red-Eyes launched a sphere of black and red flames that left a comet's tail in the sky. It impacted on an Imperial monster, causing it to explode in a rush of starving flames.

"Everyone, call your monsters to fight!" Yugi cried, a strange desperation, almost panic, in his voice. "Fight off the enemy!" Red-Eyes launched another blast at the battle below. It missed its target but caused the monster to pull back from the walls of the base.

"RAAAWHL!" Yugi's gaze snapped to the right with the roar. Piercing sapphire eyes blazed at him from a blur flying beside him. Seiyaryu's back was empty; it had deposited Fizdis on the ground so she could call Uraby. Without a moment's hesitation Yugi swung his leg from around Red-Eyes's neck and jumped. Seiyaryu caught him with grace. Yugi seized the reins and drove an order for attack in with his heels, his eyes shimmering.

"Shining plasma!" His forceful call for attack nearly matched his dragon's roar. A hailstorm of silver fireballs rained on the enemy with the viciousness of a swarm of bees. Yugi couldn't see what he was aiming at, and he didn't care. He knew Seiyaryu's attacks would seek out and chase the Imperial monsters on their own.

He heard dark laughter over the sounds of battle. Listening intently, he tried to steer Seiyaryu to its source, for he knew that was his target.

"HAH HA HA HA HA! You gave me a pretty good run, little girl, I'll give you that!" The owner of the voice was the leader of this unit of the Imperial army. He had the refugee marshal cornered against the burning wall of the hideout.

"There's nowhere left to run…" she murmured. Her monsters had fallen long before. She closed her eyes in acceptance of her fate as the Imperial officer readied his killing strike.

Yugi was not about to let that happen.

An arrow-tipped pink blur swooped upon the Imperial officer. Chains of silver fireballs ate up his monsters before they could do a thing to aid their master. The officer scraped along the ground on his back, throwing up clouds of dust to join the thick layer of smoke in the air. Before he had even fully stopped moving Yugi had him pinned and had seized his ornate collar. "Don't you dare," he growled, "lay a hand on Téa."

"Yugi!" Téa exclaimed, utterly shocked by his presence. To her he had appeared from the sky like a guardian angel. Yugi felt inwardly grateful that he had made it in time yet did not let it show past the anger on his face.

The officer shivered beneath his gaze. "I-I…" he stammered, "I-I didn't–"

A glare like an amethyst blade cut into him; "Just die." /Mahado!/

Mahado heard the summon and sensed his master's intentions. In a blaze of violet light Mahado appeared with a look to match Yugi's on his face. Téa gasped audibly; even she could tell why Yugi had called forth the magician. Mahado granted Yugi a few seconds to pull away from the Imperial officer before loosing a torrent of blackened death upon him. Yugi averted his gaze quickly, not wanting to see the deed. After a few moments he felt the silent signal from Mahado that it was done.

"Yugi, how…?" Téa began, but Yugi's bladed words, armed for battle, cut her off.

"Never mind that now! We came to help!" Seiyaryu was instantly back at his side and he took off to rejoin the fight. Stunned, Téa could only watch.

A hatred unlike anything he had previously unleashed in this realm commanded Yugi's eyes. He would not allow for the mistreatment of Téa. No, all of them would be destroyed for it.

/Mahado!/ His voice carried his fierce emotional fervor. Mahado felt his own strength grow from the fires in Yugi's heart. /Let not live one monster to attack us. Should their Imperial masters resist us further, let them meet the same fate./ Mahado's staff filled with violet-stained vermilion. Twisting, howling, fierce ebony winds ripped across the valley, snuffing the flames still eating the building and dissolving all of the enemy forces. As it turns out, none of the Imperial soldiers had submitted to the resistance. Everything that was considered the enemy was gone in a matter of seconds.

Seiyaryu flew back towards Téa. While it was still in the air Yugi leapt off and landed on the ground a few feet away. Immediately, without a moment's thought other than to assure her safety, he ran to her.

"Téa! Are you all right? Téa!" he called to her over the shock-induced dullness in her eyes.

"Yugi…" she breathed. He stared at her. For some reason she seemed less blurry than everything else around her did. The heavenly blue of her eyes was the only color on her but it sufficed to freeze Yugi where he stood. She was looking back at him, staring, with a mixture of fear and relief swimming in her gaze. As he stood enraptured by her eyes he noticed tears welling up in them. Viscerally something between them clicked, and suddenly the distance between them was nothing.

"Yugi! I'm so glad I found you!" Téa half-sobbed into his shoulder. "I was worried you might have been hurt – even all the time I was with Joey, I never heard anything from you… I thought… I thought you might be…"

"Shhh," he whispered past her sobs. "It's all right. I'm fine. But what about you? I hadn't heard anything about you, even from Joey or Tristan. Are you injured?" Téa sniffed and shook her head numbly. Just hearing his voice again after so long filled her with relief. "You're safe now," he soothed. "Nothing shall ever touch you again." The both of them fell silent after that, ensorcelled by each other's touch.

Joey's Red-Eyes had been about to launch another fireball when the dark wind had melted his target. The blonde pulled his mount back and flew to where he had seen Yugi rush off. He saw his friend standing with Téa, and a smirk took over his face. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" he asked as Red-Eyes landed. This caused both Téa and Yugi to realize that they had their arms wrapped around each other in a hug. They jumped away from each other as though each was engulfed in flames.

"N-No!" they denied simultaneously. Joey's grin only grew wider at the red hues creeping up their faces.

"Are you sure? 'Cause I can leave if you want to keep going with that–"

"Téa!" Mai's bright voice interrupted as she flew near, fortunately for Joey halting Yugi's attempt to murder him on the spot. "You're all right!"

"Mai!" Téa replied just as brightly. "Yeah, I'm fine! What about you? It's been so long since I've seen you…" The two began chatting it up as though they had been best friends for years. Yugi was surprised that the two were acting so friendly. In the real world, Téa had always been a little touchy around Mai, but he supposed that the two had already spent some time together here in the virtual world and had worked through their problems.

"Lord Yugi!" Shimon finally descended on the scene. "Scott's forces are almost here! If they get here we've had it! Now that we've rescued Miss Téa and the other refugees, we need to move our entire force into the Craw-Valley!" His words restored the battle-hardened expression to Yugi's eyes. Celebrating this reunion would have to wait a bit longer.

"Téa!" he called to her, not harshly, but with that intentional edge that made even those close to him feel the strike of his words. "You are defending a group of rebels here in the canyon, are you not?"

"Yes… but when we heard of an attack on our base by the Empire, I sent them away for safety. I'm the only one here now."

"Where did you send them?"

"There's an offset of this canyon a little way's west of here. There are lots of caves and crevices there, deep ones, where they can hide from the Imperial soldiers if they start a search…"

"That's the Craw-Valley!" exclaimed Joey. "I know that place. I've used it as a hiding spot myself… It'd take ages for anyone to find us there."

Mai looked at him. "So the refugees we came to take with us are already there?"

"You came here for us? Why?" asked Téa.

Yugi turned behind him, where the black stain of Scott's demons was already seeping its way into the sky. "That's why. We're currently being followed by a huge army. We were coming here to escape them, but when we learned of your position we knew you'd be in their path too. They'll mow over anything in their way, and with only one marshal we knew you'd be flattened."

"If it's an army, can't you fight them?"

"You think we can win a fight against a hundred demons?" asked Joey darkly. His tone of chilling spite made Téa shiver. "I'd hardly call it an army so much as death itself."

/Soulmaster, the darkness is about to enter the valley,/ Mahado urged. /Any more delay and we will be visible./

/Right./ "Now is not the time for discussion. We need to get out of here now." Everyone nodded at Yugi's order, preparing his or her mounts to leave. "Joey, take the lead, since you know where we're going."

Once everyone was in the air, Yugi, Joey, and Tristan wasted no time in explaining all that they knew about Scott and his demon army to Téa. She shifted on Seiyaryu's back uneasily (she had no mount of her own, so Yugi rode with Joey on Red-Eyes) with every detail, until in the end she looked unnaturally pale, although that may have been due to her newfound disliking of high-speed flight.

"That damn Scott controls everything here! He built the damn place!" Joey spat out, keeping the many more colorful words he was thinking to himself. "He wiped out the Emperor like that. What's to say he can't do the same to us? Like, I don't know, maybe there's some computer programs somewhere with our names on 'em that he can just walk up to and delete!"

"Joey," Yugi said calmly. He had his eyes on Téa, whose expression had steadily worsened as Joey progressed in his speech. "That's enough. We understand what you're saying, but fear will only make things worse." Joey fell silent, though he still let slip another "Damn him" under his breath.

The entrance to the Craw-Valley lived up to its legendary status as a hideaway. A deep crack split the side of the canyon, a little more than the width of a person in diameter. Red-Eyes flew past it before Joey had time to announce it to the group. The blackness was still visible as a strip eating away at the horizon, smaller than it had been previously, but never losing its living, breathing presence. Sunset was near and it seemed to lose its pastel beauty to the rattling breath of the opposite sky. Casting fretful glances towards it every few seconds, the resistance members recalled their monsters and entered the crevice.

Craw-Valley was hardly a valley. The resistance moved single-file, Joey at the front, through the narrow path. Chilled slate walls brushed against their shoulders. The crack in the layers of rock extended to the sky to reveal the dying sunset. Whole minutes passed as they walked. Then, finally the walls began to slope away, curving outward so that the passage was wider where they walked and still just as narrow above them. It was fast becoming dark; Yugi switched places with Joey so the light from the orb could guide their way. The shadows it cast danced with misshapen glee.

All of a sudden, the walls fell away. They found themselves in a huge cave room. The ceiling still looked the same, bearing a single split, but the room beneath was so large the light from Yugi's orb barely touched the walls. Scarcely visible in the faint red light were numerous tunnels twisting away into the rock.

"Welcome to the Maze of Hell," Joey announced. The heavy air stifled his voice and made it flat. "Téa, I hope you know which way they went, because otherwise it'll be a few years before we find them."

"I-I do," she answered, her words frail behind their façade. "There's a pattern… They took paths according to everyone's dominant hand, starting with me and going from oldest to youngest." She pointed to the tunnel on their right, from which a stagnant breeze blew like a monster's breath. "Most everyone is right-handed, but two are left-handed which throws things a bit off."

With a grand flourish of his hand, Joey bowed and said, "Lead the way."

Téa stepped into the mouth-like opening, stalactites gleaming like bloodstained teeth in the red glow. As their source of light Yugi fell into step beside her. The others moved behind them, the sounds of their footfalls compressed by the weight of the rock. Their quiet voices jittered back and forth in conversation. Yugi felt that he should say something to Téa to break the uncomfortable silence emanating from her. When they had first found her she seemed happy enough, but after their explanation of Scott and Joey's proclamations of doom she had withdrawn into the haunted being now walking beside him, lost in thought. She was not taking this virtual realm well, he assessed, but he knew not what he could do to relieve her of her thoughts.

While the cave they traveled through was not cold per say, it was cool enough to notice the absence of heat. When Yugi caught sight of a few well-hidden shivers in Téa's shoulders he leapt on the excuse to speak. "Are you cold?" he asked her in his marble-smooth voice. Like spring water splashed upon her face, Yugi's roborant words seemed to lift her from her daze by their sound alone. She glanced at him, her dulled sapphire eyes still visibly veiled by her preoccupied mind, but beneath them there lay the reassuring glow of happiness that had sparked from his concern.

She looked away. "A little," she admitted. Here the trail split and she led them down the left fork. In the cool, slightly damp air she could feel the heat from Yugi as they walked together. True, she was cold, more so than she had admitted to, but she was willing to hide it for now. After all, Yugi and the others were always so strong… Suddenly a feeling of warmth blanketed her shoulders. She snapped from her daze and realized that Yugi had given her his school jacket. (1)

"Better you be warm than I," he answered simply. After that they spoke no more.

At last they arrived to their desired cave. By now Ryou had forfeited his jacket to Fizdis, whom was downright freezing in her simple robes. On their approach the refugees heard the noise and came out to meet them. There were perhaps a dozen people present, men and women, mostly middle-aged, but there were two teenagers in the group about Fizdis's age. They cheered and hugged Téa when they saw her, and she seemed just as happy to see them. Once she had been passed around to everyone for a hug the group then surged upon the resistance, eagerly thanking them for bringing back their leader unharmed. Yugi got the front of the wave once it became known that he had saved her mere moments away from death. As the refugees babbled on and on to him he cast an irritated look at Téa, whom giggled behind her hand innocently.

One of the teenagers called out that they had brought enough food to share with the visiting resistance. At these words both Joey and Tristan's heads snapped around. Barreling through the jumble of people they were already digging in before anyone else had even moved. Over the talkative feasting (which included scolding for Joey and Tristan from a sharp-eyed refugee woman) the resistance members caught each other's eyes and silently agreed not to mention the demons sweeping the land above them. With the recent turn of events, no one wanted to disrupt the current happiness. They knew that it would be in short supply soon.

Notes:

(One) – OVERUSED! I know.

SC: Wow! What a horrible ending! This whole chapter was pointless beyond reason!

DragonBoy178: I used the full five weeks. I forced myself to finish this so that I wouldn't go over your deadline. Thanks!

And now, what you've all been waiting for… announcements concerning the next, best, and most anticipated (ha ha) chapter ever, "Counterattack!" Indeed, it is the next chapter, and let me be honest with you. I'm overly-obsessed with it; we all know that because I've been ranting about it forever. But let me reveal something to you: I'm so obsessed, and so excited about it, that I couldn't wait to write the chapter. So I wrote fourteen pages of "Counterattack"… in July! That's right, I had eighty percent of chapter thirteen done before I had even written chapter seven! That's seven months I've been sitting on it!

Now you know why I'm so excited.

I should post it soon, since I've already written so much of it. And to those of you who have played the game, I warn you: my idea goes way off the game's plot. Don't think you can guess what will happen.

I'm such a nerd.

Thanks for reading, and please review! It's cold here and I need the internal warmth they give me. (smile)