Disclaimer: I don't own the show and stuff.
Chapter 4: Eight Fingered Hope
Teacher's Dorm
"Atticus!" Jesse yelled, a triumphant glimmer in his eyes. He burst into his living room, startling the pop star out of his self-induced blanket cocoon. The brunette toppled off the couch and onto the floor with a thud, alarmed and wide-eyed. A pen clattered to the floor and lyric sheets drifted down as Jesse repeated what he had heard, causing another jaw to drop.
"Let's go!" the pop star whooped, springing up from his prison sheets with a grin like diamonds. Laughter was an easy response, so Jesse allowed himself a moment for it, unused to the raw bliss after three years in the dark.
The foreigner held out a waving hand to his bouncing guest and reached for his PDA with the other, gulping down air between chuckles. "Wait, wait."
"I've done enough of that!" Atticus yelped, latching onto his friend's bicep. The ex-duelist paused appreciatively at the muscles in his hand, giving Jesse a moment to retaliate.
"Just lemme call Alexis," he asked, retrieving his arm. "She'll wanna know."
He might as well as hit the pause button on Atticus. The elder's face stiffened, and his smile was oddly stretched at the suggestion. Remembering their argument, Jesse hesitated over his PDA screen and sucked in his bottom lip, debating the strain the call would cause.
"Or," he offered, stowing the palm-pilot, "we could bring her the surprise."
Atticus' joy was back in play, but slowed by a frame or two. "Sweet! Let's go!"
Without further word, Atticus banged out of Jesse's apartment and went flying down the stairs, hollering down the halls. Jesse cringed at the noise, decided it was far too early in the night to care, and went dashing after him. "Wait up!"
Jesse caught the elder Rhodes at the entrance, and then passed him at the forest edge, gaining speed as years of tension peeled off. Ruby led the way, dancing gleefully through the trees ahead, chirping as they grew closer to Axel's camping sight near the old ruin. Not even the sting of disrupted branches tugging at his flushed cheeks could slow him down—heck, he doubted even an apocalypse could stop him.
Atticus hot on his heels, the duelist burst into the ruin clearing. An unexpected glare of sunset reflected off the temple, blinding his eyes, which tripped up his feet, and caused him to tumble right into his African friend. The ground was hard and Axel's frame harder, but Jesse bounced right back up with no complaint, eyes on the prize.
The long lost duelist shook his head at him, held out his hand, and commented, "You haven't changed."
Jesse ignored the hand and launched forward, pulling the man into a bear hug. With a waxing smile, he said, "Wish I could say the same about you."
Girl's Dormitory
Alexis was getting used to these unpleasant awakenings. As she groaned into consciousness, a shivering breeze ran down her exposed arms—courtesy of Ms. Fontaine's air conditioning, she was sure. Despite this, she felt damp as if doused in sweat in spite of her missing sheets. She must have left the bedroom window open, and yes, that would explain the sounds of water. She felt for the bedding and instead felt the soft mattress fall through her grip like grains of sand.
Hazel eyes snapped open.
Gone were the light blue walls of Ms. Fontaine's bedroom, replaced by pastel skies and a thick layer of morning mist. Waves crashed into a shore of jagged rocks, crowning a plateau of loose sand that served as the bed for one Alexis Rhodes, who sat up in bewilderment at the ocean before her.
Alexis jumped to her feet and checked herself, stubbing her socked foot on jutting rock. Cursing, she brought the damaged toe to her hands and massaged it, standing like a rumpled flamingo. Throbbing foot aside, she had not been hurt, and she could still feel her wallet in her jacket pocket, so she hadn't been robbed.
Then that only left…
"All right girls," she sighed, putting her foot down. "You've had your fun. I've been pranked."
Waves crashed in response, echoing in the space where her students' laughter should have been. Spine tingling, Alexis hobbled towards the misted forest in front of her and squinted into the trees, making out a figure leaning against one. She stopped cold, flashes of her freshman year abduction playing out between the branches.
"Atticus?" she called.
Cackling laughter proved her wrong. Heart in throat, foot in hand, Alexis found herself face-to-face with her once murderer.
"Hello, Sadness."
"Brron," she mustered, keeping her voice as even as possible. "I thought Jaden killed you."
The Mad King Brron leered at her over the top of the slope, eight toes wiggling in the grass at the beach's edge. Aware of her own instability, Alexis stomped her injured foot back into the sand and raised her arms protectively in front of her, wishing for a duel disk for the first time in three years.
He laughed again, bony dreadlocks bouncing. "I'm afraid your memory is bad, my dear. It was the other way around—I killed Jaden in that very enjoyable duel. It was the Supreme King that got me, just as I wanted. But of course, you can't keep a mad king down!"
He threw his head back in his next fit of laughter, crossing his grayish arms in front of him as if calling for a time out. Yet he made no move to approach her, keeping a surprisingly respectable distance from the unguarded female duelist. Realizing this, Alexis steadied her trembling arms and breathed out, straightening to face the insane monster. If he had no interest in fighting, she sure as hell wasn't going to instigate.
"What do you want?" she asked. The laughter stopped and she tensed, skin crawling as Brron twisted his head towards her, glaring with one large, glossy eye.
"How rude of you!" Brron chided, unfolding from his self-made straightjacket pose. "You're the one who came here without permission."
"Without permission…?" Alexis repeated. A hot spike of rage stabbed down her esophagus, enflaming her words. "Duel Academy is my home. And if I have to, I will protect it."
The absence of her duel disk had never been so poignant. Even with her deck, she doubted she still had the skills to take on the Mad King—it had cost Jaden his last shred of humanity to beat this creature in the Dark World. She had no inner power to rely on or spirits to summon; she would be crushed like an insect.
Alexis squared her shoulders and back against the crashing sea behind her. She could not win, but that did not mean she couldn't fight. She could still die for this school in Jaden's place.
"Why did you bring me here?" she demanded, taking one step towards the monster. The man stood his ground with a perplexed expression, brining his hand to his chin as he observed her.
"Me? Oh, no," he replied, bouncing his weight from one foot to the other. The chains wrapped around his forearms rattled with each shift, driving the sound into her brain like tiny knives. "I plucked you"—he raised two crabbed fingers to demonstrate—"right from the sky. Someone else was summoning you, and I was just in the mood for some fishing."
Alexis took another step forward, shaking loose Brron's nonsense away with a jerk of her head. "Stop lying. You're the culprit here—so tell me what you want!"
The laughter was back. Shark-toothed grin wide, Brron asked, "You tell me! What does Yubel want with a sad, little girl?"
The name stopped Alexis' death march, and changed the world around her. The mist cleared to dawn's first strong rays, hissing the landscape into pastel-lined clarity: the unfamiliar shoreline, the ancient forest, the sprits dashing overheard, and the half-destroyed ruins of a spiraling castle where the Girl's Dorms should have been.
She was in the Dark World.
"Lexi!"
The spray from the ocean made it hard to breathe, but panic made it harder. She spun around at the disembodied call of her name, Atticus' name on her lips. In the distance, she saw two figures bowed on the rocks; a tall, misshapen draconic figure knelt beside a human male.
"Atticus?!"
Eight-toed footsteps drowned their voices, and eight clawed fingers gave her a new thing to fear. She screeched as Brron took ahold of her by the forearms, lifting her off the rock outcropping as if she weighed as much as the dust he could crush her into.
The killer's cloudy eyes bore into her, and then at the pair just beyond her shoulder, where his cracked lips twisted into a vicious frown. "Listen to me."
"Atticus!" she called, twisting in the Mad King's grip. Her legs flailed uselessly against his armored skin.
He shook her then, rattling the world out of focus. The monster's face swam before her in a blur of contrasting grays and pink skies, but his words were jagged with their clarity. "Don't ever come back here."
Alexis cried out as his grip tightened, ceasing her struggles for a moment of pain.
"If you interfere, you'll kill—!"
"LEXI!"
Useless eyes screwed shut, she jerked forward, fully intending on smashing foreheads with the beast. Stars exploded behind her lids as she hit home, freeing her arms from her captive and drawing a startled cry. She hit the ground much sooner than she should have, stumbled backwards, and hit a wall that certainly hadn't been there before.
Drawing her legs under her, she snapped upwards and opened her eyes, ready to bolt or defend herself and her brother... who was standing right in front of her, about a foot too low, rubbing his red forehead with tears in his eyes.
Bewildered, Alexis dropped her guard and took in her surroundings. She was standing on a bed inside of Ms. Fontaine's bedroom with four unwanted visitors. Jesse stood at the foot of her bed, trying and failing to contain giggles, Atticus just in front of him with a whining frown, and Axel of all people was leaning against the doorframe with an impressed expression. But the person who really caught her attention was the only one whose face she could not see—a man in dark jeans and a white T-shirt, identity concealed by a paper bag over his head.
About 70% sure she had fallen from one strange dream into another, Alexis ventured, "Uh, hello?"
Bag-face nodded in her general direction, and then turned to her brother. "Do I have to wear this Atticus? It's preposterous."
"Yes," Atticus asserted, stepping away from her bedside. "It's a surprise!"
"Judging from your screams, I can tell Alexis is still not fond of those."
Alexis could almost see the person in the bag roll their eyes, but then her stinging mind registered the voice.
"Bastion?!" Alexis shouted, jumping out of bed and with shock. He grumbled something like 'finally' and lifted the bag off of his head to smile at her warmly. He offered her his hand, but she hugged him instead, stunning the general population of the room. Hope bloomed in her chest at the sight of her returned friend.
"How've you been? Where've you been?"
Bastion gave a nervous laugh and wormed out of her embrace before it could become awkward. "I've been excellent, thank you for asking. As to where I've been, I was in the Dark World with Tanya. I was helping out her and her friends rebuild their society. It has taken some time, but it was worth it."
"How'd you get out of the Dark World?" Jesse asked for them all. He nodded towards his shoulder as if speaking for his duel spirits and continued, "We've been trying to break in for years with no luck."
Bastion contemplated this for a few minutes before coming up with an answer. "That… would explain some things."
Everyone gave him a blank stare. Bastion shook his head and leaned against Ms. Fontaine's vanity as if the information was too heavy to stand on. "For the past three years, kidnapped humans have been returning to their worlds with the aid of spirits, but we haven't been able to establish contact with them after they've returned. Many have left worried families behind."
"Oh," Jesse replied, his face still uncomprehending.
"Tanya suspects that the inbound portals to the Dark World have all been sealed," Bastion elaborated. "In all honesty, investigating the truth of her suspicions was half of the reason for my homecoming."
Alexis frowned, moving past her brother, who refused eye contact. "Why would they be sealed?"
"That's the question," Bastion replied, shaking his head once more. "But I digress, how have you all been? I can see that you and Alexis are staying here as teachers, but what of the others? Atticus, I'm guessing you're a pop star; Syrus and Chazz are probably in the Pros, what about Hassleberry and Jim? Or Jaden?"
Everything came to a crashing halt. The swollen balloon of hope in Alexis' chest burst and drowned her lungs. "You mean he wasn't with you?"
"Jaden?" Bastion appeared to be just as alarmed as the rest. "No, I concluded that he returned years ago. Are you all saying that you haven't seen him since this incident ended?"
The five friends fell into a pit of dark, watery fear. Tidal truths of Jaden's vanishing grabbed them by the feet, pulled them into the cold, drowned reality of a world without him, and suffocated the delusional image of him happy in the other world, working to come home as promised. Alexis felt the ocean from her dream crashing at her neck, the waves whispering the truth: if Bastion had not heard anything about their hyperactive, boat-rocking friend for three years in the Dark World, then he wasn't there.
Jesse grit his teeth and broke the surface. "Only in our dreams."
Alexis felt weightless, adrift in the current of her doubts. Beside her, Atticus sunk to the floor as if swimming with rocks tied to his feet.
"I can't believe this," the brunette admitted, brining his hands to the side of his head. "I just can't think that Jaden's... that he's..."
"DON'T!" Alexis snapped, whirling desperately in his direction. "Don't you dare give up on him."
"Alexis," Bastion said gently. "No one wants to give up on him. I don't believe in my heart that Jaden Yuki is dead, but logically, I know he most likely is."
"You're wrong," Jesse called, jumping to Alexis' defense. She latched onto his words like a lifeboat and added, "He's probably laying low—think about it, most of the monsters there hate him."
"That's the problem. The monsters hate him," Atticus whispered behind his hands, his chocolate eyes unseen.
"Don't act like he's dead," Alexis snarled at her brother. "He's a stronger duelist than anyone there."
"I agree with Alexis," Axel input, startling everyone with his quiet voice. They turned to look at him, Alexis dropping her anger to grab onto another friendly argument, Atticus and Bastion sinking deeper.
"You weren't there when I was fighting the Supreme King," Axel said. "If you had been, you would know that there is no way in hell that Jaden's dead. The monsters there may dislike him for what happened, but they are far too afraid to challenge him."
Unbidden, the image of Jaden under Burgundy's sword swam before Alexis' eyes. Fear could only last so long before melting into apathy and anger, they all knew that. It was what had destroyed Jaden in the Dark World in the first place. Who's to stay that the spirits wouldn't be affected as well?
As if sensing her guilty uncertainty, Jesse walked over to Alexis and sat down on the bed next to her, choosing sides. Bastion sighed, approached the resident pop star, and pulled Atticus up by the forearms. Alexis' brother was frowning and his eyes were heartbreaking—a mirror image from the sibling's argument before.
"I wish I had never said those things to him in—" He couldn't finished his sentence before salty tears made their way into his mouth.
"I'll look for him," Bastion promised, turning from Atticus to the rest. "If I can get back into the Dark World, I won't stop until I find him, dead or alive."
No one responded. The subject was dropped.
Again, Axel was the unlikely candidate to break the tension. "Atticus, you should call the others and tell them what happened. Bastion, accompany me back to the ruins—there are still things I want to investigate."
"Sure," Atticus mumbled, picking up his cell phone. He started dialing numbers and disappeared into the corridor, trailing three sets of concerned eyes.
Bastion turned to Alexis as if expecting her to follow, met a wall of stone, and left the room behind Axel, leaving Jesse and Alexis alone and uncomfortable.
"So," Jesse started. He offered her his knuckles and a weak smile. "Team Jaden?"
He was so lame she couldn't help but smile back. She tapped her knuckles against his and offered, "Yeah."
Two genuine grins bloomed from the tap, the physical reassurance of an ally. Jesse broke his first by sucking in his bottom lips, stifling another laugh, and strode towards the exit. They heard the front door shut with the exit of their two competitors and Axel, stopping Jesse at the bedroom doorframe.
He tilted his head back, all fond emerald eyes and smiles, and offered, "I'll be in the teacher's longue grading papers until 11 tonight if you want to join."
He was gone without waiting for an answer, and the sounds of his exit were much softer than the rest. Smile melting at the reminder of her students' terrible tests, Alexis glanced at her discarded briefcase and resigned herself to a night full of disappointment. Her body ached from the stress of Bastion's arrival, but she doubted sleep would come until much later in the night.
For much different reasons, she praised the late day tomorrow.
Deciding to take Jesse up on his offer, she moved towards the vanity, sizing up her rumpled form. The teacher's jacket was wrinkled and sweaty in odd places from her Dark World dream and her hair was half-frizzed, half wet. Grimacing, she pealed off her jacket for a shower and froze. Reflected in the glass, just below the creamy skin of her shoulders, peaking out from beneath her dark blue tank top were two bruises.
Eight-fingered bruises.
Thanks for reading!
There are two subtle differences between this chapter and the old version of it-two changes that are beyond important to the plot. Anyone remember or want to guess what they are? :D
~AxJfan