Previous disclaimers apply.
Promenade 25: Game Time
After re-establishing a sense of equilibrium in the peace of the study, Saguru returned to the game shop. Staying in the isolation of the study was hardly preparation for traveling with Kuroba and Riku, and helping in the shop let him feel slightly less indebted to Solomon for everything the older man had done. Not to mention the fact that Solomon was a knowledgeable and pleasant conversational partner, and time in his company passed quickly.
After a few hours, the bell above the game shop's door jingled as Yugi entered, accompanied by a white-haired boy that Saguru didn't recognize.
"We're home, Grandpa!" Yugi smiled. "Hi, Hakuba-kun. How are you doing?"
"Well enough, thank you." Luckily, Yugi had already left for school by the time Saguru had woken up and had missed the morning's drama entirely. "And yourself?"
"I'm fine. Oh, and this is Bakura-kun." The white-haired boy smiled and inclined his head. Yugi continued, "Kaito-kun didn't show up at the school, so we came to see if he was still here."
"He didn't?" Saguru clamped down on the abrupt clenching in his gut. Kuroba didn't miss appointments. "He said they were going out..."
"Of course, they could have easily returned without us noticing," Solomon added. "Why don't you boys go ahead and check?"
Yugi nodded cheerfully. "Sure. Come on, Bakura-kun. You should come too, Hakuba-kun — it can't hurt to know Kaito-kun's deck, and maybe it'll give you some ideas for your own."
Saguru briefly considered mentioning that Kuroba had said he'd say hello when he and Riku got back from wherever they were going, but decided against it. There was no point. And since Solomon didn't seem opposed to losing his assistance for the time being, Saguru shrugged and followed the pair into the house. It was better than facing a silently eloquent raised eyebrow from the older man, which needed no words to ask if Saguru were trying to avoid Kuroba again.
He shut the door behind him just as Yugi called, "Kaito-kun?" into the living room at large, walking with Bakura towards the middle of the room.
Bakura glanced over the back of the couch facing the TV, and stopped. "...Oh dear."
The back of Saguru's mind took a split-second to register Bakura's oddly British-tinged accent, but he was more intent on moving to see what on the couch had caught the other teen's attention, because he had a sinking suspicion he already knew...
Damn.
Sure enough, Kuroba lay stretched out on his side across the couch's cushions, knees slightly bent and an arm across his chest in a vaguely defensive posture, and his other arm hidden beneath his pillow. Even asleep, the magician's entire demeanor was tense and restless, brow furrowed over closed eyes and jaw clenched together.
Unease prickling, Saguru quickly rounded the couch while Yugi leaned over the back of it and carefully touched a hand to Kaito's arm, ready to duck if the older boy happened to wake up on the defensive.
"Kaito-kun?" Getting no response, Yugi looked up at Saguru and drew his hand back, silently giving Saguru the opportunity to try something similar. The look in Yugi's eyes clearly declared that since Saguru knew Kuroba better than they did, he'd be the best suited to try waking the mercurial teen.
Solomon and Yugi were both far too communicative in their silences. A raised eyebrow could practically fill a book.
Saguru didn't feel like protesting too hard about being the one to wake Kuroba up, though, not when the creeping sense that something was not right seemed less irrational by the second. He reached down and shook Kuroba by the shoulder, calling his name. Then shook him harder, when the dark-haired boy didn't even twitch.
"That's... not good," Yugi declared worriedly.
"Well, don't look at me," Bakura replied. "He... feels weird, but I've never seen him before right now."
Yugi nodded. "And if there is magic involved, it's not something I recognize..."
...Magic.
Saguru's eyes darted to the gloved hand gripping Kuroba's arm, eyes narrowing as he shoved aside the odd and entirely unhelpful sense of surrealism that threatened to overlay the situation. Physical interference didn't seem to be making a difference, but perhaps there were other ways to jar a person awake.
Ignoring the sudden background commotion of Yugi calling over his shoulder for Solomon, and footsteps on the stairs that were likely Riku coming to see what was going on, Saguru took a deep breath and yanked off a glove. He'd only discussed the possibility of his abilities' projective aspect with Solomon earlier this morning in the game shop, but he'd always been good at improvisation—and he'd gotten even better, since coming to Japan after Kid.
Before he could think better of the idea, Saguru focused entirely on his frustrated worry over Kuroba's current state, and touched his bare hand to the magician's face.
The world went strange, and then abruptly hazed out.
...And when Saguru furiously blinked his eyes mostly back into focus, he was in another place entirely.
What the hell?
Seeing Kuroba up a tree was not, in and of itself, unusual; the magician had an extreme affinity for heights. Seeing him in all black, talking with Kudou Shinichi — and ye gods they really did look like twins, not counting the hair and Kudou's glasses and cane — with the expression of a cat playing with a rather interesting mouse, however, sent a chill down Saguru's spine.
"Welcome to my chess game, Kudou-kun." The twisted smirk on Kuroba's face did not belong there.
"Kuroba!" Saguru tried to get closer, but the surrealism was not so easily brushed off this time. It suffused everything, lending a strange, cloying depth that threatened to make him dizzy even as it highlighted every detail with burning clarity. He couldn't seem to push through it, couldn't alter his position, even when he thought he felt himself stagger and fall.
Saguru couldn't bring himself to be entirely surprised when neither teen seemed to hear him, and he clenched a hand into an unseen fist as the scene before him played on, Kuroba continuing without missing a beat, "The rules are simple. You don't tell anyone about me. If you can catch up to me and catch me, you win. If you don't, I get away to have more fun in the future. In return... as long as you don't break any rules, you get to live, and so do all your little friends."
Kudou growled. "Don't you have better things to do than pick on a blind man?"
Well, that explained the glasses and cane, but... Kudou was all-but-vanished from Tokyo, not walking around it blind. What was this even supposed to be?
"Mmm, my... colleagues... are psychopathic bores," Kuroba purred. "You're amusing. Given that you had the bad manners to survive, the least you could do is provide some challenge in return."
Saguru's stomach clenched again. Even knowing that there was no way this twisted reflection could ever be Kuroba — even in this world of knife-sharp edges and colors like fire through stained glass — every motion and nuance of voice were so familiar that to hear him talk so casually about attempted murder, and of Kudou...
"Oh, yeah, like the fact that I'll never see again wasn't enough of a sacrifice?" Kudou shot back, voice tight.
...this was Kuroba's nightmare. It had to be.
Which meant the most likely place for the magician to be watching this scene was from behind his double's eyes. Saguru felt ill, and he was only watching from the outside. He didn't even want to think about what it must be like to feel that twisted smirk stretch unbidden over one's own face, to be drowned in the foreign sentiments shaping it and forced to watch the drama play out with no control or means of escape.
Kuroba's smirk widened. "Come now, detective... I thought you never ran from a challenge, not to mention that an hour ago, you would have given anything to catch me." Kuroba paused, letting the implications of the statement sink in, then continued, "Excellent deductions, by the way. Especially the last; I was delighted to see your mind is still as sharp as ever. "
Kudou growled again, unable to do anything else. "Leave everyone else out of this. I won't tell anyone, but I swear, if you touch them..."
"I did promise immunity so long as they remain blissfully ignorant."
"...Fine. Since I don't have much choice... I'll play your game."
Kuroba's expression reflected a sadistic glee at Kudou's grudging capitulation. "I knew you'd see things my way," he purred, with just enough emphasis on 'see' to be cruel.
Kudou's hand tightened even further on the head of his cane. "If there's nothing else, I'm going home." The teenage detective turned and stalked off, tension evident in his lean frame.
"Give my regards to your girlfriend!" Kuroba called after him with a mocking laugh.
The taunting laughter continued to ring in Saguru's ears as the terrible intensity of the dream dissolved and he jerked awake, eyes he hadn't realized were closed snapping open. Kuroba's eyes opened at the same time, and for a few moments Saguru stared up into an empty, uncomprehending blue gaze.
Then the magician's brain rebooted, and the spark of devastating intelligence returned to Kuroba's eyes a split-second before a jumbled maelstrom too strong and tangled for Saguru to sort through threatened to overpower his mind and vision once more. He snatched his hand away from Kuroba's face, slumping against the base of the couch as he fought down a wave of nausea.
Too much. Too much...
Bach Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor, Prelude.
It took another long moment of fighting to draw himself inward, away from the intangible, overwhelming morass of sensation-that-wasn't-his pulling at him like quicksand, and shove it all away as best he could with the summoned memory of music. Even then, trying to drown them out was only a partial success, with faint, foreign whispers still clinging like London winter fog after sunrise.
The edge of his awareness not dedicated to tuning out the unwanted input registered through his refocusing peripheral vision that Kuroba hadn't moved on the couch except to sink further down into the cushions, shaking.
As his focus returned to the real world, a dull throbbing in his left hand demanded attention, and he glanced down to see his glove trapped in a fist clenched tight enough to bruise. He opened the fist and quickly tugged the glove back over his bare hand.
"God..." Saguru rested his hands on top of his thighs, letting his breathing slowly even out. "What the hell was that?"
"You saw it?" Riku sounded... oddly unsurprised, really. Saguru looked up, but his gaze caught on Kuroba's face as the other teen glanced at him with a half-startled, half-haunted expression and then quickly looking away again, jaw clenching.
Yugi spoke, reminding Saguru that they had company. "You just froze for a moment, and then fell to your knees... and wouldn't wake up, either."
"Mmm. Apparently 'empathy' is a horribly inaccurate term." Whatever he'd just done, it was not empathy in any traditional understanding of the term, even from the perspective of a psychic ability.
"Oh dear," Solomon commented mildly.
There'd be time to think about that later, though. Saguru sighed. "Let me get off the floor... and then I think we need to talk."
Kuroba did, at the very least. And while a part of Saguru wanted nothing more than to shove the entirety of the past several minutes into a mental oubliette and continue on as normal, they couldn't afford to ignore this... whatever it was. Keeping the melody of the violin at the forefront of his mind would do until the conversation was over, and the he could quietly acquire some paracetamol from Solomon for the inevitable headache. He refused to let Kuroba see how much he wanted to disappear back into the blessed silence of the study, because Kuroba had enough on his mind already.
"Good idea," Riku agreed. He reached over the couch's arm to nudge Kuroba's shoulder. "Come on, Kaito-kun... there's not enough couch for you to take up the whole thing."
Saguru almost expected Kuroba to protest, but the teen silently swung himself into a sitting position, legs narrowly missing Saguru in the process, and dropped his forehead into his palms, fingers fisting tightly in his hair.
Riku immediately sat down beside Kuroba, placing a hand on the older teen's shoulder and letting his forearm rest against Kuroba's back as well. Saguru hoisted himself up, still feeling more than a little unsteady, and settled down on Kuroba's other side, close enough to establish his presence without crowding the thief. After a moment's hesitation, he extended his hand to grip Kuroba's other shoulder, mirroring Riku's position, determinedly ignoring the echoes still lurking around the edges of his mind. They only emphasized how much Kuroba obviously needed... needed something right now. And he could handle this much, now, with that extra sense dulled by gloves and layers of cloth and the memory of violin. He could.
From the corner of his eye, Saguru watched Solomon return to oversee the game shop while Yugi and Bakura quietly sat nearby, listening but unobtrusive. Kuroba didn't seem inclined to move except for a few fine tremors, however, so Saguru ventured, "Given that Riku-kun wasn't present for that... perhaps you'd better tell him what you saw. Then I'll give him my experience."
And hopefully talking it out here would keep this nightmare from slipping into his own dreams, in all its too-intense splendor.
Kuroba took a shuddery breath, and exhaled slowly. "I... give me a minute."
Saguru nodded. "Take all the time you need."
Several long, silent minutes passed. Then Kuroba took his head out of his hands and leaned folded arms on top of his knees, keeping his eyes on the carpet as he began to speak.
"I was in a park... waiting for Kudou." His head turned slightly towards Riku. "He's our age. Not a bad guy, for a detective. He runs into murders a lot; solves them."
Riku nodded, squeezing Kuroba's shoulder slightly. Kuroba swallowed and looked back down.
"He'd run into one he couldn't solve, this time, not completely. The murderer... was a yakuza operative. Thief. And occasionally assassin."
"Oh, hell." Riku looked like he'd eaten something sour. Saguru didn't blame him; even with Kuroba taking refuge in third person, it wasn't hard to read between the lines.
"Kudou'd run into them before," Kuroba continued, voice hollow. "The same operative'd knocked his visual cortex offline six months earlier, after Kudou poked his nose somewhere he shouldn't have. Since he'd survived, and had even gone back to being a detective... he had a chance of actually providing a challenge for once."
The dull throbbing in his palm was back. Saguru glanced down and found it clenched into a fist again, and realized his other hand was clamped down on Kuroba's shoulder tight enough to cause pain, even though the magician hadn't said anything. He eased his grip, but deliberately didn't pull away.
Kuroba dropped his head again, this time clasping his hands together against the back of his neck. "The operative confronted Kudou, laid out the rules for the "game" he'd come up with. Kudou'd chase whenever they crossed paths, wouldn't tell anyone anything about it... and his friends would be left alone so long as they didn't know about the game, and he didn't stop playing."
He paused, then added, "It was... high school, this time. Five years earlier than when... than the other dream." Where Kuroba'd supposedly killed Saguru, and which had started this whole mess.
"With the same depth of back-story, I see..." Saguru commented thoughtfully.
"...Same back-story," Kuroba clarified. "This just... filled in a lot of details."
"Bloody hell."
"That about sums it up." Kuroba uncurled enough to look over his shoulder and give Saguru a smile with no humor in it whatsoever. "You wondered why I was so sure you were dead."
"It seemed...very real, yes," Saguru agreed, pulling his thoughts into order. More than real. "I entered... probably half-way through? The..." — he edited out 'assassin' — "operative was just starting to explain the rules of his "game" to Kudou..."
Kuroba shivered briefly. "I don't remember seeing you..."
"I was..." Saguru hesitated, trying to find the right words for it. "I was watching it something more like from the outside, I think. Like the difference between being in a play and being in the audience."
"Mmm."
And if Kuroba had experienced that too-real world from a first-person perspective..."No wonder you were watching over me that first night here." It had seemed odd at the time, but it certainly made sense now.
"I preferred you breathing." Kuroba replied shortly.
Saguru inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment. "I don't blame you."
Kuroba ran a hand through his hair, face regaining its typical composure once more. Saguru didn't believe it for a second, but recognized that challenging it would do more harm than good at this point. Kuroba did not show weaknesses to an audience. Not by choice.
"Dammit. One was bad enough." Kuroba glanced around, gaze settling on Yugi. "I think I'm going to need to borrow more of Solomon-san's tea, Yugi-kun."
With the magician's change in demeanor, signaling the other teen's shift to packing everything away for the time being to hopefully finish processing once alone, Saguru took his hand away and leaned back into the couch. He felt half-tempted to try some of the tea himself, though, at least for this evening.
Yugi smiled slightly. "I'll make sure Grandpa makes some up for you to take with you when you go. ...And some for tonight, too."
"Thanks." Kuroba's gaze slid from Yugi across to Bakura. "...Damn. I overslept, didn't I. Sorry."
"Given what I just heard, I think you can be excused," Bakura replied. "Would you like the deck-building lesson now, as distraction?"
Kuroba grinned weakly. "Sounds great. If I can, I'd like to have a playable deck with cards that are useful in case of running into something nasty."
"I think we can deal with that..." Bakura bowed his head for a moment, and when he looked up, his face and body language had all changed subtly.
Kuroba couldn't possibly have missed the change, but he kept smiling. "Right."
Saguru raised an eyebrow. "Mind if I sit in?" The distraction would be welcome, right now. Something much more pleasant to focus on than the lingering echoes still whispering darkly, just beyond comprehension.
"As long as you can keep your mouth shut," Bakura allowed curtly.
...He'd definitely missed something here.
"I think I can manage that."
"Are you sure?" Kuroba asked with a small grin.
"My track record is remarkably better than yours," Saguru retorted, amused.
"I deny everything. Hang on a second and I'll get my cards," Kuroba added to Bakura, standing.
"I'll get mine, too," Yugi offered. "I have a lot I never use in my decks, and some of them might be useful."
"Thanks."
The pair disappeared up the stairs, then returned and quickly proceeded to turn the living room floor into a study of organized chaos under Bakura's supervision.
"First principle to remember: The Shadows can always go one better than the game; you can modify a card's basic framework to fit a given situation. Pegasus was mad, but he was a genius, and designed every modern Duel Monsters card on the market — and he could see a lot further than most people. The descriptions are useless if you're only playing the game, because everything comes down to lifepoints, but in a real fight, it's about the monster, spell, or trap, and what it can do for you. A monster WILL follow its card specs, from the picture to the pithy comments, except for game conventions that don't properly exist, like a specific number of lifepoints, defined turns, or trap criteria."
Kuroba nodded thoughtfully. "Right. Dark Sage is a special summon."
"And if you're good, you can broaden some of the definitions to your advantage."
"Like what?"
Bakura reached unerringly across the semi-arranged piles of cards and picked one up, flipping it in his fingers so Kaito could see it. "Man-eater Bug. In a game, it takes two turns to get the Flip-effect on a Monster. In a fight, if you're strong enough you can use it for an instant win against one target." The white-haired teen grinned, nastily. "And if you broaden your definition of "Monster," it works against humans, too."
Kuroba shivered almost imperceptibly; if Saguru hadn't been expecting it, he wouldn't have noticed. Definitely not a definition Kuroba was going to use anytime soon. The magician quickly nodded, then sorted through his own deck and pulled out a card, which Saguru recognized from the picture as Dian Keto the Cure Master.
"What about this one? It says lifepoints, but... could you use it to heal?"
Bakura snorted. "If you want to knock yourself out, sure. You'd be using Shadows and your own internal energy to speed up the healing process."
"Mmm." Kuroba paused, eyes thoughtful, then turned back to the cards, sorting through the pile vaguely lumped together as Wind Monsters. "Hey, Yugi-kun? Do you have the Sapphire Luster Dragon?"
Yugi shook his head. "I have a lot of cards, but definitely not all of them. Kaiba-kun does, though... I could ask him about selling or trading you one."
"Yeah. Thanks, that's be great."
Bakura gave Kaito a considering look. "Why that card? Both of the Luster Dragons are standard Monsters, no extras."
"Yugi-kun gave me the Emerald one when we first met... It seems fitting to have the matching set."
Bakura shrugged. "Since you're not limited by deck size, it won't hurt. Are you thinking of a Dragon deck?"
"Mmm... let's go with useful, with an emphasis on light and wings."
From there the discussion degraded into highly jargon-laced dialogue as Kaito rebuilt his deck in light of Bakura's suggestions. Saguru was highly amused to watch the magician cringe whenever an ichthyoid monster was presented for his consideration, particularly since by the third such card Saguru was positive that Bakura had caught on to the phobia and was doing it on purpose. The white-haired boy had fairly good suggestions otherwise, naming monsters, spells and traps that not only were useful individually as potential summons, but complemented each other for a gaming deck as well.
After forty-odd cards for a deck and a sidedeck of the fifteen cards Kaito considered best to have quickly accessible, the magician called a halt.
"That's all I need. Thanks for helping me set it up, Bakura-kun."
Bakura smirked. "Have fun with it."
Kuroba nodded, straightening his leftover cards into a pile. "And thanks for the cards, Yugi-kun. You guys can have these; split them however you want." He grinned, a hint of mischief returning. "Now, however, I need to see a man about a soldering iron."
Saguru rolled his eyes. "I REALLY don't want to know."
"You'll find out soon enough," Kaito promised, rising to his feet. He sauntered off to the game shop, humming tunelessly.
Saguru glanced at the door to the study, then at the stacks of cards Yugi was putting away into a box. At this point, he'd still prefer a better distraction than a book, and the game did make a good grounding tool. "Would you be interested in a duel, Yugi-kun?"
Bakura snickered, bowing his head, and when he looked up his body language had subtly altered once more. He gave Saguru a wry smile. "I hope you enjoy losing, Hakuba-kun."
"I managed to only lose by 1000 life points, last time... I'll consider myself improved if I can lose by less." Saguru smiled ruefully.
"Ehehe." Yugi ducked his head.
"Besides, the best way to improve a skill is play opposite someone better than you. If I ever hope to consistently beat Kuroba-kun at this sort of game, I could use the practice."
"Mmm. Better than Joey, he wound up learning the game under serious pressure."
"Pressure is an excellent teacher." He'd certainly proved it in the past few days. Kuroba too.
"Yeah," Yugi agreed. "...Getting your ass kicked by Kaiba's not bad, either." The younger boys blushed. "Oops."
"I've heard worse. Shall we? I'll get my deck."
Yugi smiled. "Sure, I'll put these away."
Bakura stood with them. "I really should head home... See you tomorrow, Yugi."
"Yep! Thanks, Bakura-kun. See you then."
Bakura left while Saguru retrieved his deck from the study, and he and Yugi settled in the living room to play. Riku stayed on the couch and watched. Kuroba returned from the game shop and disappeared into the storage room where Solomon kept his extra stock, but didn't make any comments about the duel.
After a while, when Saguru had several monsters out and had just played Umi, Riku suddenly snickered.
"A water-themed deck?" Riku glanced the way Kuroba had left, then smirked. "Nice gaming strategy."
Saguru smirked back and tilted the Monster cards in his hand slightly so that Riku, though not Yugi, could see them: Seven Colored Fish, Terrorking Salmon, and Piranha Army. "Someone has to keep him on his toes."
AN: Sometimes Saguru is evil too. ^^
Amazingly enough, this part of the story is finally winding down. Expect to see more KH plot soon.
12/08; edited 11/11