Thank you so much to all the people who read and reviewed! I really appreciate your taking the time to leave feedback! Sorry this chapter isn't as long as I wanted-next week's should be longer and have a bit more substance to it.
Zero25: Thanks for reviewing! I'm glad you like this version better; that's really reassuring to me!
HermioneSakuraGardner07: Appreciate the review, as always! It's so nice of you to leave a comment on each chapter! More on this mysterious and grumpy boy will be explained in the future, I promise.
Numinous-Alqua: Thanks for reviewing! Don't fret, there will be much more gore and pain to come! Mwahahahaha!
Aya El maghrabi: Your reviews always make my day! Thank you so much for always commenting; it helps me get inspired for each new chapter! I like the idea about her going into music, thanks for that!
Hope you all enjoy!
I do not own Yugioh, but I do own the grumpy vampire. He is mine, all mine! Cough.
In a world, in a city, in a rundown suburb, in a surprisingly nice apartment in said rundown suburb, Tea Gardner learned she carried the fate of the world on her shoulders.
Well, sort of.
"You have twelve months from the first monster's appearance to stay alive," the boy told her bluntly. "If you get killed in that time period, your life force will be used to create a portal from my world to yours, and, as you may have guessed by now, most of the inhabitants of my world like to eat those of yours. Any questions?"
Tea gaped at him, her mind buzzing as she tried to take his blunt exposition and turn it into something that made any kind of logic. Except she had been living in a life including magic and monsters for years already, so it made more sense than she wanted to admit.
"Yes," she answered slowly, and then her words quickened, rushing over and out of her mouth. "I have so many questions I hardly know where to begin!"
The boy gave a long-suffering sigh. "Of course you do," he groused. "Alright, human, let's get this over with. What do you want to know?"
Tea took a split second to prioritize. "Are you going to try and kill or eat me?" she asked first.
He sneered at her, revealing again those terrible teeth. "If such had been my intention, you'd be dead by now. I'm a mark above the rest of the monsters you've already faced."
The girl guessed that was reassuring. Maybe. Actually, it really wasn't, not even a little, but her need for answers overweighed her terror.
"So they were monsters? Those things I, um, I killed," the girl looked down at her knees.
"Oh good grief," jeered the boy, crossing around to stand in front of her. "You're not feeling guilty, are you?" He took a look at her face and groaned. "You are feeling guilty. That's just pathetic."
Anger snapped the girl's head up and forced her to push down the fear holding her tongue captive. "I am not pathetic," she said, quick but clear and strung with all the emotion swelling her poor heart to bursting. "I am not strong, I am not a genius, and I do not understand what is going on, but I am not pathetic. And I am going to do my best in this, whatever it is, I only need to know how."
She met the boy's black glare squarely, her blue eyes fierce, and a small spark of delight at her defiance ignited in the boy's face. He laughed, the sound strained and awkward, and the girl jumped slightly at the noise.
"You are pathetic," he snorted. "But you are better than what I feared. You get two more questions, and then I'm leaving because you annoy me, this miniature house annoys me, and your catatonic friend here," he rapped the unresponsive Ryou on the head, "Also annoys me."
And Tea couldn't really find anything to say to that which wouldn't possibly provoke the boy to violence, so she silently closed her eyes and tried to decide what she needed to know the most.
"The monsters coming through, will they hurt anybody else?" she inquired.
Black eyes pinned her down, dissecting the girl and her question. "No," the boy replied, and he was too old to be a boy, she heard it in his voice, no matter how youthful his appearance. "No. The stone on your hand-it's the key. When one of my people come through, it will prevent them from being able to interact with anyone besides you. And by interact, I mean attack. It's kind of like a separate dimension, but one still overlapped onto yours. The details are complicated, but the gist of it is as I said earlier: as long as you live, all your people will be safe from mine."
The information settled like snowfall into Tea's mind, gentle and silent and chilling, numbing. That was good, and that was bad, but she had one more question left, and she crammed away the turmoil rising in her head.
"Can, um, other forms of magic be used to help me do this?" She pressed her knees together anxiously. She had wanted to ask more specifically about Shadow magic, about rings and pyramids and cards, but she feared for the safety of her friends, strong as they were.
The boy laughed at her again, and Tea bit down her angry words.
"You mean your comrades?" he mocked. "With their trinkets of gold and their obsolete power? No girl, they cannot aid you in this. Perhaps they might've, but the conditions prohibit such intervention. Why do you think the stone acted up when you tried to blab to this poor vessel?" he flicked Ryou in the forehead again, and Tea daringly swatted his pale hand away from her friend.
"If that's all you're going to say," she stated stiffly. "Then please fix this." With a broad wave of her hand, the girl indicated the eerie wash of pink light.
"It'll go away on its own, given time," the pale boy answered, his eyes pits of darkness in his face. He moved away towards the window in the kitchen, throwing upon the latch and peering up into the star ridden sky. For the first time, he properly looked his young age, a sort of wonder in his face as he leaned out. "I'll see you again, I think," he sighed out into the night. "It's more than I can say for many, for what it's worth."
And then he was gone, a shadow sliding away through a sleeping city, and the girl was left to ponder the curious nature of her newly momentous fate, touching the stone in her hand with trembling fingers.
To her relief, the strange light from the gem died out in the next few minutes, receding back into the rosy depths of the bizarre stone. Ryou blinked a bit as he woke, but appeared otherwise unaffected and unaware of the time he had spent frozen.
He stared up at her expectantly, and Tea struggled to remember what they had been talking about.
"Er," she said intelligibly, and she would have felt stupid, but under the circumstances, she was actually rather proud of herself for managing the guttural syllable.
"Was it Marik?" Ryou asked urgently.
Which was another wrench in the work of her thoughts, and Tea frowned. "Marik? Marik?! Isn't he permanently incarcerated in the Shadow Realm or, you know, otherwise dead?"
Ryou took a turn at monosyllables then. "Um," he stated simply.
"Oh no," Tea groaned. "I knew things were going too smoothly in your tournament. What happened? Is everyone alright? Are you alright?" She peered at him suspiciously, as though he might be hiding gruesome injuries under his shirt. Ryou found this a little hypocritical, but beneath her bright blue stare he didn't dare to state this opinion.
"I'm fine," he assured her(it was just like her to be so concerned about others even when she was hurt, and it made him feel warm in a way he hadn't for a long, long time). "And everyone else is, well, mostly fine."
"Mostly?" demanded the girl, growing increasingly frazzled at the thought of her friends being harmed.
"It is a bit difficult to explain," Ryou sighed, sitting beside her on the sofa. "I think it might be best if you heard the story from everyone, instead of just bits from me."
Tea almost pressed the issue, but Ryou looked tired in a way that was more than physical. So she merely sighed as well, turning her eyes back to the open window, wondering what in the world she was going to do.
"So, what did happen to you, if not Marik?"
Wrinkling her nose, the girl debated on how best to answer. "I got mugged," she decided to say. "Um, again."
Ryou looked at her, really looked at her, and a bit of her resolve crumpled. She hid her face in her hands(she couldn't do this, couldn't do this, but she had to).
"You didn't get mugged," the boy said quietly, and there was no judgment in his voice, just certainty and empathy and a weariness that never really left.
"No," Tea replied miserably. "I didn't."
He turned to stare out the open window as well(he distinctly remembered it had been closed only minutes earlier.) "Is it something you can talk about?"
"No," the girl breathed. "No, I really can't."
"Okay then," Ryou said. "But Tea?"
"Yes?"
There was a pause, as they both stared towards faraway stars and horizon lines.
"If you need anything, I'm here."
And somehow, that made everything seem a bit more possible. The girl grinned at him, watery-eyed and warm. "Thanks, Ryou."
He smiled back at her softly. "Anytime. Now, why don't we get some sleep, hmm? I believe we've both had something of a difficult day."
Tea laughed, because that was such an understatement it was obviously a joke, and Ryou joined in. They both sounded slightly hysterical, but being able to laugh gave them great relief regardless.
Ryou attempted to be chivalrous, offering the girl his bed. He may as well have been offering her a basket of venomous snakes for the way she reacted. She insisted that she had already gotten blood all over his sofa, and she refused to do the same to his bed.
He relented eventually, too tired to put up too much of fight, and Tea bid him goodnight as she laid back on the sofa.
Understandably, sleep seemed impossible. The monstrous boy's words bounced around and around in her head. She scowled at the memory of his rudeness. Still, such was far preferable to being assaulted, especially as he appeared much more intelligent and powerful than the other two monsters.
What was she going to do? She needed to stay alive for ten and a half more months, or so about. She was going to be attacked repeatedly for almost eleven straight months.
Well, that sucked. Almost as much as the fact that if she died, other people would suffer for her failure. Oh, and she couldn't tell anyone about the possible invasion from another dimension, because the stone in her hand was a big fat jerk.
And now she was assigning personalities to rocks. Brilliant.
The girl groaned, covering her face with the blanket Ryou had given her. What were her parents going to think, if she kept getting hurt with no feasible explanation? School would be almost impossible to attend with any regularity.
This wasn't fair to anyone, but for now all she could was make the best of it, and maybe buy herself a chainsaw.