Indeed, I speak truth: That which is known to many as YuGiOh! Belongs not to me. So sayeth Thor, Norse….
Oh wait, that's still not me. But I don't own YuGiOh! either. So I'm still covered!
It was with an immense amount of relief that they made it to the only safe area in Movia. A vast city of tents and other half shack sorts of shelters sat at the base of a mountain. A swift moving river curved along the west and south side of the camp, forcing the group to walk across a VERY unstable looking/feeling rope bridge.
Yugi and his old friends walked across without a second glance at the bridge. Yami and Mokuba, however, clearly had second thoughts, but both were propelled forward by Seto; although for different reasons. Mokuba followed out of trust but Yami wasn't going to play the wimp in front of Seto. Besides, Yugi had walked across without a problem.
Still, it was with quite a sigh of relief that they arrived on the other side. Yugi shook his head. "We're already practically in range and we haven't even been challenged once! What happened to security procedures?" He shifted the dead weight of a sleeping Willow a bit. Dmitri shook his head.
"I'm pretty sure they procedures were still in place when we left, right? Then something bad must have happened." They stopped, and Yami noticed that the Movian children had paled a bit, though little trepidation actually showed on their faces.
"Cole, go find Asa. Careful. Eliana, scout. We'll stay here in the tree patch until you give the all clear." The two nodded and were off on their assigned missions. Aden asked quietly, "what's wrong?"
"Listen. Do you hear that?" asked Yugi. Aden stopped, listening closely. "I don't really hear anything," he said. Yugi nodded slowly. "Exactly." The boy still looked puzzled. "All right, survival 101. Think about it. Did you see how many tents there are?" A nod. "Right. Then how many people should be there? A lot, true? So, what do lots of people make?"
Yugi waited patiently for the boy to figure it out.
"Oh," said Aden softly. "Lots of noise, right? That's why you wanted me to stop and listen." Yugi gave a solemn nod. "So, when you go somewhere and you notice something is off, what should you do?"
"I understand. You have to see if everything is okay, right? Make sure that no one got in and killed everyone. That there's no enemy anywhere."
"Very good," came the reply. "Yes, I sent Cole to find Asa if he could and Eliana to scout. Hopefully at least one of them will figure it out." He looked at the boy. "Always careful. Remember, it means the difference between life or death, making sure that everything is safe before moving. As far as you can, anyway," and there came a long sigh, "but that's for another day."
Inwardly, Yugi was berating himself. He should have noticed the lack of movement in camp when they had first seen it, but he had simply assumed the early morning hours had been the reason for the now eerie stillness. Stupid! It could have been a trap. He only hoped that if it was, he hadn't sprung it yet, that they could still get out. To where, though, he had no clue.
He kept that pot simmering in the back of his mind, but forced himself to think on the moment. He had no way of knowing how long it would be before the two sent forward came back with news, and he was already on edge enough as it was.
To his utter relief, he spotted both teens coming back, and not trying to hide at all. Well, that was probably a good sign. Unless something in the camp had made them go insane, and they didn't care or remember about being careful and…
Whoa! Yugi pulled himself mentally to a stop. One could go a bit far with worry and paranoia. They needed clear thinking and a calm head, not baseless worries. Cole reached them first and started to explain.
"It's an epidemic. This is the…the abandoned side of camp. They're all on the other side." He was pale and shaken, but kept his voice strong. "It's really bad. We'll take you to the area where those who haven't caught it yet are, and the few" there was a disturbing emphasis on the word 'few', "who have survived it."
This was, Yugi mused, only to be expected. It was a commonly known fact that refugee camps were notorious for having epidemics. Death was expected, even on a large scale. But for the love of sanity, was he supposed to have to deal with it now?
Was he supposed to be this…adjusted to it?
Pushing anything introspective away, he and the others followed Cole to the area where the survivors gathered.
"Half the camp is dead or sick," Eliana reported. "They honestly aren't quite sure what is wrong, what it is. It's like the flu, except it's like there's two different strains of it. That's as far as I got, I wanted to get back to report. But Orren here was forced on bed rest by the other healers, so he can explain what is happening from a medical point of view."
Orren looked dead on his feet- or rather, dead on his cot. "We don't know quite what it is. But there are two strains. One takes weeks to get over, and has a 30% fatality rate. The problem is, it leaves the body weakened and the other strain takes over, and kills within a 24 hour period, and the survival rate for that one is roughly 45%. It has many flu-like symptoms, the first strain does, and the second one is like the flu on steroids."
Orren paused here to rub his hands over his face. "We don't think that it's natural. This has Camp 3 tested all over it."
Yugi paled. Could this be it? Is this what he had been dreading?
"Yugi, what is it? What's wrong?" Yami could have slapped himself. "I mean, what 's wrong that isn't already?" Yugi shook his head. "Not here." They found a place for the children and quickly moved away from everyone else.
"Seto," the short teen began shakily, "I think this might be the weapon we were looking for."