I do not own Yu Gi Oh, or any of its characters.
When Tea woke, it was to dirt in her mouth and dried blood in her eyes. She blinked, holding her hand up against the oppressive morning sun, and she gasped to see the bloody wounds marring her skin. Slowly, the girl examined her hand, turning over to her palm and realizing that the gouges passed all the way through.
Pain flooded through her then, and its coarse flow through her veins resurrected the memories of last night. She dry-heaved, fingers on her other hand pulling frantically at grass.
'I'm a murderer,' Tea thought blankly. 'I murdered the thing that wanted to murder me.'
She sat up slowly, feeling every little ache in her poor body scream out racous protest. She was situated beneath a vast oak tree in a park that she vaguely remembered stumbling into last night. Dancing through the green summer leaves, the angle of the sunlight indicated that ten o'clock at least had gone by.
It took her eleven times to get up, and the pain in her feet almost made her sink straight back down to the ground. But she clung to the tree's trunk instead, teeth gritted. Slowly, Tea hobbled out of the lonely park. She needed to go back to that alley, needed to find that body.
She needed to see it, just to prove to herself that she hadn't lost her mind.
...
Standing on the dock, Yugi couldn't help but wonder if they were doing the right thing. Backpack clutched in one hand, he stared at the phone in his hand.
I'm sorry aibou, Yami's regal tones interrupted his thoughts. But if Tea hasn't returned your call yet then it is unlikely she will be doing so in the near future.
Yugi flinched at the former Pharaoh's insinuation that Tea would not be forgiving him soon, and Yami sighed as he realized his tactless choice of speech. Lately it seemed that he did more harm than good, where Yugi was concerned. It is for the best, aibou. Tea will surely come to understand this. Now let us go before we are late, or before Duke unleashes the wrath of his dice upon us.
Yugi smiled, pushing down his negative thoughts, and followed the impatient Duke up the ramp onto the waiting boat out without a second look at the phone. After all, it was for the best, and now he needed to prepare himself for the challenge ahead.
...
Tea stared dully at the empty alley. This isn't right, she thought. This just isn't right.
What had been a fifteen minute run the night before, fueled by adrenaline and the freedom from pain accompanied by shock, had this morning proven to be a grueling two hour struggle back through the ancient streets. The scant people she passed had hurried on by her, shrunken into their bland clothes and uninterrupted lives.
One or two had asked her if she needed help, in halting, skittish tones, but Tea could not hear them over the turmoil in her own mind, and she looked such a dreadful and terrifying sight that none of the people she passed pushed the issue.
She had to get that corpse. She had to. She would find it, and then she would have proof to show the police(because this wasn't shadow magic, no one's souls had been meddled with-this was physical and fatal). Besides, her friends were probably gone by now, so it wasn't like she could turn to them for help anyways.
Panting, Tea rested against a wall for a moment. Her knees trembled beneath her, and her breath whistled pitifully through her panting mouth.
She wondered if the monster had killed anyone before her, and she almost cried again, just thinking about it.
She wondered if there were more of the monsters out there.
Tea had experience with skepticism. She had been somewhat disbelieving herself, in the days before Millenium Items and Unnamed Pharaohs and adventures that never seemed to end. She knew she would need the body to prove her story, otherwise people would just think that her brain had been addled after getting mugged, and no one would be properly informed of the danger lurking in their city.
She had to get that body.
It was hard, forcing her legs to start moving again. It hurt, and her balance was poor, so that she had to trail her fingers along the all as she continued.
Simple cause and effect, that was what it was, something they taught grade school(you study hard to get good grades, you get good grades to go to a good school, which leads to a job, which leads to hopeful retirement instead of being murdered in some dark alley).
"I need the body, so people will know that this threat is real," Tea coached herself in a dull whisper. "I need people to know the threat is real so no one else gets hurt."
She dragged herself on, blue eyes wavering in and out.
But somehow the girl knew, even before she looked down the alleyway where she had killed her would-be killer, that the body would be gone. After all, as she was discovering all over again, life wasn't fair.
Still, she fell to her knees at the sight, body screaming at the jolt, because it always hurts to be proven wrong.
...
Yugi stepped from the boat onto the island that the contest would be held on. The setup was eerily reminiscent of Pegasus's challenge, and Yugi dreaded that the Tournament would take a similarly dangerous turn. However, the presence of his friends cheered him considerably. Joey was there, bickering with Duke and Honda while Mai scoffed on the sidelines and Bakura struggled to mediate. Malik waved to him from a boat that had just pulled up to dock, Ishizu and Rishid at his shoulder. Weevil and Raptor stood to the side, glaring at everyone.
"Well, this shall be interesting then," he opined optimistically.
"It would be more interesting if I could actually get past your huge head off the ramp, Motou," Seto growled from behind him, and Yugi jumped to the side quickly.
"Sorry, sorry!" he apologized. The tall brunette sniffed at him as he swept by, his coattails snapping in the breeze.
Lightly, Yugi laughed. It would indeed be an interesting journey. His smile fell as he realized he was searching for a head of brown hair, for a cheery smile, and a happy 'Yugi!' ringing out in feminine tones; none of which were there.
He missed Tea dearly, and he once again questioned himself over their decision to exclude her. Still, what was done was done.
At least like this, she'd be safe.
...
Mokuba was suffering terribly. This was worse than when he had been kidnapped by Pegasus. Or by Noah. Or by-well, no. No. He was not going to go down that list. It would just be unnecessarily humiliating to remember.
The important thing was his current situation, which was horrible, awful, and miserable beyond belief.
Mokuba Kaiba was bored.
He sighed, laying his head against the limo's tinted window. A drive had seemed like a good thing to do in order to alleviate the tedium of the day( the first of many tedious days without his big brother) but so far none of the city sights had done anything to soothe his ennui.
"Driver, take us to the left, please," he ordered politely, seeing a road he hadn't been done yet.
"Are you sure, Mr. Kaiba?" the chauffer asked dubiously. "That leads to the, er, less civilized portion of Domino."
"Well, with any luck," Mokuba replied wryly. "It'll be more interesting than the civil section. Take us left."
The driver obeyed quickly, and soon the limo was traveling down small ramshackle streets occupied by small ramshackle buildings, looking exactly the proverbial diamond in the rough.
"Is it more interesting to you, Mr. Kaiba?" the driver asked blandly, and the boy snorted, appreciating the sense of humor. If there was one advantage to his older brother's absence, it was that his employees suddenly regained their personalities when he left.
"Fine, fine," the boy conceded, a resigned smile tugging on his face. "Let's head back."
He stared morosely out the window. He didn't know why he had bothered driving this way after all; it held nothing more intriguing than the well-beaten paths of central Domino. Just a sad little tree here, a broken store front there, a fallen figure in an alleyway.
Wait. Back it up one.
"Driver, stop!" the boy ordered frantically, and the wheels on the limo squealed as the man hastily obeyed. Mokuba shot out of the car, ignoring the startled shout of the chauffer.
He ran towards the prone form, and as he drew closer, he realized to his horror that he knew the person lying there.
"Tea?" he whispered, his brain shutting down as he struggled to reconcile the image of the bright, cheerful girl with this bloody mess.
"Good lord!" exclaimed the chauffer, running out of the car to stand beside the youngest Kaiba. "Mr. Kaiba, please go back in the car where it's safe."
Mokuba clenched his fists, shaking himself from his stupor. "Don't be an idiot!" he said heatedly. "I am not leaving her! Now call an ambulance!"
The man blinked, then tripped over his own feet in his haste to oblige. "Right away sir!"
Mokuba shook his head at the undeniable idiocy of the world(an act his brother would have highly approved of) and crouched down by the unconscious teenager, brushing a strand of crusty hair from her bruised face(an act his brother would have highly disapproved of).
"Hang on, Tea," he whispered. "Help is coming, I promise."
And he sat there beside her until a screaming ambulance pulled up, and white-faced paramedics loaded her onto a stretcher and took her silent form away, and he was not sire whether to be grateful or begrudging towards whatever had led him in pursuit of something interesting that day.
AN: This is shorter than I wanted it to be, sorry! I'm trying to get a better handle on the characters, so I've been re-immersing myself in the world of Yugioh. It has even more card games than I remembered. Umm, I'm not sure who I'm going to have paired with who(gosh that sounds so weird), because quite frankly, all the characters are so dynamic that I can't pick who I want to feature more of. Friendships will be prevalent, because that's a predominant theme of the show, and it's something I personally hold a lot of faith in. Thanks for reading; hope you enjoyed!