~XxX~
They say that you learn something new everyday.
You're 're fine. You're fine.
Today I learnt something very valuble.
You're 're fine. You're fine.
A helicopter is nothing like an aeroplane.
You're 're fine. You're fine.
For starters there's a lot more noise.
You're fine. You're fine. You're fine.
There isn't a lot of room to move.
You're fine. You're fine. You're fine.
And the main difference was that on the aeroplane ride here, there wasn't a Kaiba taunting me for his own amusement sitting next to me.
"I had no idea you were scared of heights...maybe I shouldn't have offered you-" He once more commented on my clear discomfort with a distinct lack of empathy, he infact seemed to be enjoying seeing me 'put in my place' , my head was down and my eyes fixed on my hands which were currently digging their nails into one-another.
"Shut up." I cut him off without even looking up, my voice shaking as I continued my inner mantra. I had climbed the rope ladder with no problems, I hadn't even looked down once, but the second I was seated next to the window I realised just how much I hated my current situation, especially since the helicopter sat only three. My head was down for two reasons, the first and most important reason was for me to control my breathing after seeing the window, the second was a tad more embarassing; due to the fact that I was sat so close to Kaiba, I was blushing an even deeper colour than my hair, the breathing was helping this problem too. Mokuba seemed completely disinterested by our one-sided sparring, opting instead to look out of the window and tap a rythm out on The Briefcase as we flew to the KaibaCorp building., pausing once to ask his brother how long it would take before resuming drumming his fingers on the metal case. I heard Kaiba snicker at my tetchy answer before Mokuba's drumming stopped suddenly, followed by a slowing of the chopper and a shove in the arm from Kaiba.
"We're here, come on." Business now, taunting later it appeared as my head snapped up, I fumbled anxiously with the seatbelt for several seconds before hearing an exasperated sigh and noticing that he was pointing at a red button on the side of a bulky rectangle by my leg, I pressed it, smiled tightly and barrelled past him, out of the helicopter and onto the roof, breathing erratically. Mokuba walked past me carrying the case and made eye contact with me for a moment, looking a little sympathetic, he was followed shortly by his brother, who was calling ahead our arrival and didn't look in the slightest bit sympathetic. I wasn't really shocked. Once the door on the far end of the roof opened I straightened again and trailed after the two brothers into the shiny, florescently lit corridor on the top floor. It was only after I'd fully calmed down that I realised I had just been catching my breath next to the full sized duel arena I had called idiotic on my very first day here, I kept silent throughout our short walk to what appeared to be the tracking room of this Tournament until we actually stepped through the doors.
"I had no idea you had a harem Kaiba." I said, mimicking his taunt from earlier, my voice still a little shaky, but better now I had solid ground underneath my feet, he shot me a look of mild disgust but answered me anyway.
"I'm surprised you can talk and walk at the same time with all the blood in your face." He referred to my gradually fading blush, fortunately he seemed to attribute it more to my fear of heights than to his presence. "You're more intelligent than the mutt at least, but then, your inablity to bypass a simple children's-grade seatbelt makes me wonder if I should reconsider that statement." I frowned at him, thinking up a retort as he told one of the harem-dwellers to search for Yugi's tracker.
"I'll have you know that Vertigo is a universally recognised phobia which, among other things, impairs the thought process..." I paused for a second, "so there." I finished before turning to watch the women rushing around, follwing his orders and failing miserably. I coul feel the raised eyebrow in his next sentence.
"'So there'? How old are you, five?"
"I'm seventeen in August..." I countered lamely, "Look, that doesn't matter, where're my friends and why can't you find them?" The atmosphere switched instantly as he moved across to a bank of computers on the left side of the harem while Mokuba set down the case and answered me instead.
"Yugi's tracker stopped sending out a signal about fifteen minutes ago and we haven't been able to track him since, we don't know why." He amended the last part of his sentence just as I opened my mouth to ask the same question, instead I opted for a different, but equally important, question.
"You've got a tracking device on his person? But how did you do that without his know-" I froze as the answer hit me square between the eyes. "You put a tracking device in his Duel Disk!" I yelped at Kaiba, completely disbelieving, "but, you couldn't know exactly which Disk he'd buy..." I mulled the development over for several seconds before yelping even louder this time, "you put tracking devices in ALL the Duel Disks?" I turned to face him, only to be confronted by a smirk.
"Hmph, it seems I don't have to reconsider my initial statement, but your deductive skills leave a lot to be desired." I snorted, still in shock.
"Okay, right, first-off, I got to the right conclusion didn't I? Secondly, surely that's a violation of privacy? Or...something..." I tailed off, seeing that there was no point to me continuing the incredulity, he wasn't going to stop just because I'd told him to.
"Laws and great men..." He said, words dwindling as he concentrated wholly on triangulating the last known position of Yugi, I snorted again, this time turning away from him to look at the screen that dominated the far wall.
"Huh, didn't figure you for Mark Twain." He paused from his typing, glancing over his shoulder to frown at me before looking back at the computer he was bent over and continuing to type at an unfathomable speed. I disregarded this before I looked at Mokuba, wanting an answer to another question.
"So...why?" I asked him, figuring that he would be more forthcoming and less smug with his answers.
"The trackers?" I nodded, "so that we can find Duelists when things like this happen, also, we use it to check on whether or not anyone's cheating. It helps 'cuz Seto needs six locator cards too." I had been nodding all throughout the description, slotting the information into the gaps that my uninvolvement in Tournaments had given me, but stopped at the mention that Kaiba needed locator cards too.
"What? But," I turned round again to look at him as he typed, "you're running this. Surely you've got an automatic place in the finals?" He shook his head, not even looking up from the monitor.
"No. That would be akin to cheating, I've got to earn my place like everyone else, like a True Duelist." I could hear the title capitalisations, but couldn't help my next comment, I was relaxing in their presence and speaking like I did when I was with my Mum, which was probably a mistake considering.
"Right, I love you n'all, but you really need to get a hobby or something." He froze again and half-turned to face me, frowning slightly.
"What?"
"I'm just saying, cardgames aren't everything, books are good, TV's fun...why're you looking at me like that?" I asked, my turn to frown as he looked at me strangely; it was like his features didn't know what to do on his face, he turned back to the computer and returned to typing for several seconds before standing back and looking over to Mokuba and I, who had sat down in two vacated seats on the opposing bank of computers. He cleared his throat.
"Yugi was last near the old arcade, Mokuba, you take Callaghan to the area and see if you can find his interminable friends too." I rolled my eyes to the Pleiades as I stood.
"We aren't interminable, we're nice." I paused, "well, they're nice, I'm learning from them." Mokuba nodded to his brother, running out of the sliding doors and down the hallway, to what I supposed would be the lifts with an eagerness I couldn't match, "thank you." I said, nodding my head at Kaiba and running after his brother.
I facepalmed as soon as I was in the lift.
"That." I said, drawing a mildly amused look from the younger brother and dragging my hand down my face, "Could be misconstrued..."
~XxX~
"TEÁ!" I yelled at the girl in the yellow top, breaking stride with a now walking Mokuba and ambush-hugging my friend, she patted my back awkwardly as I stepped back from her.
"What...was that about?" She asked me, frowning slightly and obviously fearing for my sanity, I rolled my eyes.
"You guys all left! I was in the coffee shop for, like, five minutes and you'd all buggered off by the time I came out! I had to seek help from Kaiba to find you!" I was gesticulating wildly at nothing in paticular before Yugi's Grandfather cut me off.
"You're looking for Yugi too? Have you found him?" I opened my mouth to tell him that he was in the area, but Mokuba explained instead.
"Seto tracked him to here, have you seen him?" Teá shook her head.
"No, the last time we saw him he followed a Duelist into a magic-trick box and disppeared." I took a step back from Teá, the roles reversed as I wondered about her sanity.
"I'm sorry, are you saying that Yugi was magicked away by a mysterious Duelist?" I mimicked Jimmy Carr's disbelievement move, fingers pointed to the sky, palms pushing forwards, Teá nodded. "Ber~illiant..." I elongated the first syllable and massaged the bridge of my nose to stave off the approaching headache, I was snapped back to the current situation by Mokuba yelling that the tracker had just come back online. I groaned as I watched my friends and even Yugi's Grandfather, run after the signal.
"More running..."
~XxX~
Seeing Yugi sitting in an energy-disk ringed arena with what appeared to be a dead magician in front of him wasn't exactly what I had expected for just a little after midday. As we had been running I decided to keep pace with Teá, who told me what had happened in my forced absence, Joey had had his Red Eyes stolen by a guy in a purple cloak, Yugi had dueled the man and won back Joey's card, Joey then insisted that Yugi kept it; instead staking his Time Wizard in the Tournament. I listened to this re-counting with increasing incredulity, but frowned at the explanation the Joey had given Yugi for not wanting his card back.
"'In the spirit of a True Duelist?'" I'd repeated after she'd told me, "what is wrong with some people..." I muttered, too low for Teá to hear.
Now, however, I was staring at a somewhat suspiciously unmoving magician and wonderng why he was so suspicious.
"What happened?" I asked, drawing looks from most of the assembled, Yugi looked over at the disks and then back at me.
"His soul was sent to the Shadow Realm after he didn't win against me." My eyebrow shot into my hairline as he turned to his other friends, to whom this explanation appeaered to be perfectly reasonable. "He was being controlled by someone with a Millennium Item guys, the same one who tried to steal my Puzzle with Bandit Keith. This is serious." I cut across him, feeling once more out-of-my-depth.
"What now?" My default answer when I heard something ludicrous, a look was shared between all of them before Teá nodded a little and Tristan shrugged.
"She was going to ask at some point after she saw him..." Was Teá's cryptic answer, Yugi nodded and stood up, walking past Mokuba and outside, followed by Teá, Tristan and Joey. Mokuba and Yugi's Grandfather stayed behind to get medical attention for the magician, I almost stamped my foot in petulance.
"ASK WHAT DAMNIT?" I ran after my supposed friends.
~XxX~
"I repeat, what now?" I leant against a wall in an alleyway as Teá finished her recounting of what had happened back in Duelist Kingdom and how that bore heavily on the man I had seen. Yugi had tried explaining, but I had cut him off saying that, in all fairness, I had seen two of him and only one of Teá.
"It's true, every word of it." She said, nodding as Tristan and Joey joined her in her explanation.
"I threw Bakura's Ring into the forest." Was Tristan's back-up, Joey going next.
"We've all seen him, and we even helped him beat Pegasus in the finals." I took a step backwards and my back hit the wall.
"This is insane. You're insane. I love you all, but this is insane."
"But it's true." Yugi said with a quiet confidence that almost made me reconsider, instead I shook my head disbelievingly.
"You keep saying that..." I trailed off, looking at the ground for a while before looking back up at the sound of Teá's voice.
"So, are you leaving?" My features jumped in the surprise I was feeling.
"What? NO!" I shook my head again, "why would I do that? Nooo...someone has to be the voice of sanity here and it might as well be me because," I looked over at Yugi and smirked slightly, "you aren't going to get it anywhere else."
~XxX~