Disclaimer: I don't own the show and stuff.
Chapter Five: Mirror, Mirror
She stared at the mirror. The reflection in the mirror. Her pale face. Her damp blonde hair. Her wet clothing. The bruises. The eight-fingered bruises. Her ten rising fingers. Touched the skin. Winced.
They were real. This was real.
Sweat did not line her body, it was the remnants of the ocean: her hair, too, was tangled from the mist coating the shoreline; therefore, her bruises, too large to be human, were from Brron, and if they were painful, then this was not a dream and she was not imagining their existence.
She had been in the Dark World.
She had been the only one to come into the Dark World for three years.
She reached for the mirror and touched the woman on the other side. Five tiny fingerprints. The expression on her face was frightened where it should be joyous, smiling where it should be concerned. She did not know how to feel.
Suspended in disbelief, Alexis Rhodes stood in front of the mirror, tests forgotten, Jesse forgotten, Atticus forgotten, and saw a face she hadn't in three years.
Reflection seared in her retina, she turned to her borrowed bed, laid atop the silken covers, and stared into the distant ceiling, superimposing the image above her. Then she closed her eyes to it.
When she opened them next some five hours later, she found herself not on Duel Academy shores, the Dark Kingdom's shores, or in Ms. Fontaine's bed in the Girl's Dorm. Instead, she found herself on the floor of Ms. Fontaine's bedroom, coiled in frustration, fists pounding the carpet.
Sleep would not come, so she spent her time planning.
Duel Academy Building
2:45pm
Five minutes until the bell, the thought that echoed through each and every head inside of Ms. Rhodes' classroom. The repeated lecture on study methods hung in the air around them, missing all ears. Still, the mouth of the head teacher continued to create them, monotonous, stale, expected. The tests had yet to be graded, but the results were always the same.
Four minutes.
Ms. Rhodes paused in her speech, turning from the board where her notes on the three learning types were written. Fatigue was obvious in her droopy eyes, robbing her face of the beauty that usually kept her male students enraptured. A shiver ran through the class as her lecture died out, all eyes glancing at the unusual slip-up in Ms. Rhodes' otherwise flawless professionalism.
The Duel Academy Professor frowned up at them, her audience a blur of red, yellow, and blue slackers. When she parted her pink lips next, the students prepared for another three minutes of lecture, but were thrown off by the small tut that came out.
"Failure," Ms. Rhodes said, shaking her head, "does not mean a bad grade on a test."
Whispers broke out among the Obelisks, confusion the Ras, and attention from the Slifers. Their professor ignored them all.
"Failure," she repeated, voice flat, "is the inability to rise to a challenge and overcome it."
Two minutes.
"Failure," she drilled, "is giving up without putting in real effort."
She put her felt-tip marker down without turning, making steady, glacial eye contact with the frozen student body.
One minute.
"You," she condemned, "chose to fail a piece of paper."
A sharp intake of breath echoed from the student body. A straight-A Obelisk dropped his pen up top, and a Slifer his doodle-filled notepad below. Even Dr. Crowler only targeted a handful of slackers to pick on: attacking a class at DA was unheard of.
As the clock ticked down, Ms. Rhodes crossed her arms and fixed her eyes on the classroom door as if visualizing herself outside of it.
"But I," she called, "chose to fail you."
Leaving her bag, computer, and the failed tests behind, Ms. Rhodes stalked to the staircase. The click of her heels echoed down each step, piercing through the air long after she had left.
The bell rang. No one moved.
Alexis hoped they would still be there, mouths agape, when the next class filed in, looking for their professor in vain. She pulled out her PDA on the way back to her apartment, phoning the education department about a sudden illness and requesting an immediate substitute. In three hours, she planned to call in again and use all the vacation days she had gathered. With get-well wishes ringing in her ear, she ended the call in front of her home's front door, fished her key from her jacket pocket, and entered.
As expected, Atticus was waiting on her couch. He jumped up, looked at the clock in confusion, and then back to her with an apology clear in his eyes. She beat him to the punch, side-stepping whatever sympathy he was going to offer. With the door wide open, she pointed and said, "I don't want any distractions today, Atticus."
He flinched. "Alexis, I'm sorry."
"Me too," she replied. "Get out."
Head tilting to the side, Atticus held the same confused look as her students. Somewhere buried in her chest, past the shock of her Dark World discovery, a laugh wanted to shake loose. She denied it, staying as firm as her finger pointing towards the exit.
"Okay?" Atticus moved towards her front door, scooping up his leather coat from the rack beside her. Their eyes met across the fall jacket ensemble, his the dark brown of their father and hers the light hazel of their mother.
Atticus questioned, "Are we… okay?"
To make him leave, she said, "Yes."
Her words made him smile, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. He gestured towards the coffee table, "Remember those letters from Jim and Hassleberry? I had them on priority mail, so we got them back today."
Pleasant surprise lit up her face, and in turn, his grin. Regaining his usual bubbliness, he knocked her on the shoulder and swept out of the room, calling, "You seemed so excited, I thought you might him a thing for our dear Jimmy!"
She slammed the door on him and he laughed.
And she was alone.
And she grinned.
Excitement felt like little bowed caterpillars wriggling around in her throat and stomach, a few days away from metamorphosing into white, anxiety-filled bliss. She leapt to her coffee table and snatched the letter, fleeing quickly into the confines of her room. Spinning like Cyber Tutu, she swung her door open and flopped onto her bed, staring at the letter from Egypt with nothing but hope wriggling inside of her.
She had learned better to believe in destiny, but it was hard to ignore when it was knocking on her door. Jim's letter, her portal into the Dark World, and Bastion's arrival were all keys to finding Jaden, she could feel it. Ripping the ivory envelope open, she was surprised to find only two sentences in Jim's long handwriting:
We've got an international phone line on the site here, why don't you give me a ring? I already translated the times into your time zone, and if you don't mind, I'd like to talk about it rather than write about it.
Following was a list of time she could reach him and the number to dial, the first of which had started seventeen minutes ago. Seventeen minutes ago, she had walked out on her classroom. That was that, she decided, and rolled over to her desk, fixing her blonde hair with one hand and dialing the number with her other. The call took a moment to connect, and then three rings before going through, Jim' face grainy from the poor connection.
His skin had darkened under the desert sun, bringing out green specks in his exposed eye. But his best feature was the whooping grin taking over his face, along with the sound of his voice calling, "Lexi! You're sure eager."
"I'm just very busy," Alexis countered, cramming her excitement down. "I had to squeeze this in as soon as possible."
"Right, must be hard being a professor there," Jim chuckled. "How many people have tried to take over the world?"
"No one yet," she replied, and then touched her drumming heart. "But after teaching here, I can see why they'd try. Grading drives me crazy."
"I'm sure," he said, and then glanced off screen. He pointed into the vague left and asked, "You wanna talk to Hassleberry? I could kidnap him from the site for you."
A little bit of her happiness squeezed out through her clenched smile. Talking to Jim was fine—he hadn't been around her as long as Hassleberry had. The dino-duelist had been a staple at the Academy ever since their second year, and had even been under her tutelage during her first year of studying as a teacher. If anyone were to call out her strange behavior, it would be him.
"No time," Alexis lied. She shuffled some papers on her desk to add to the effect. "I just caught you between classes."
"Shame," Jim said, a little light leaking out of him. "We'll have to catch up another time."
"Yeah," she agreed.
"Yeah."
Feeling the awkwardness, the desert winds of Egypt blew sand all over Jim's screen, giving him something to do during the pause. With his face covered by the swipes of his white collared shirt, Alexis found the courage to ask, "Are you ready to talk about it?"
Jim removed his hand, leaving the corners of the calling system riddled with dust. "Yeah, it's just…"
"I know," she replied.
"Yeah," he said again. He scratched at his bandaged eye absently, glancing off screen in discomfort. "What exactly did you wanna know?"
"Everything about the Spirits called Claret and Burgundy. You met them, right?"
Their names caught Jim's single-eyed attention, which squinted at her in mild confusion. "Why do you wanna know about them?"
Alexis froze, some half-panicked expression on her face. Of all the things she had planned for today, making up an excuse about the Spirits had not been one of them. Thinking fast, she blurted, "Bastion!"
"Bastion?" Jim repeated. "That British bloke? What about him?"
It was Alexis' turn to be confused. "Didn't Atticus call you last night?"
"If he did, you can be sure I slept though it," Jim chuckled, pointing at the sunset sky behind him.
Alexis glanced at her midday clouds and nodded sheepishly. Time zones were the least of her worries. "Well, he's back from the Dark World."
Jim's jaw dropped, "Get outta here! Did the bloke have any news on Jaden?"
"No," Alexis dismissed. "But he mentioned Claret and Burgundy helping him out, and I wanted to know if we could trust them."
"Ah, well," Jim muttered, shaking his head in wonderment. The glee on his face dried out under the changing sun, darkened by the settling of the Dark World memories. He fixed his gaze on her, turning serious with the weight of his words, "Before I tell ya, just remember something, ok?"
"What?"
He sighed, "When The Supreme King had Jaden, there was no shred of light left in him. Even when I managed to break him out of his darkness the first time, he immediately fell back into it. He was lost and hopeless, and that made him do some pretty terrible things."
"I know that," she whispered, narrowing her eyes. Her heartbeat picked up as her brain predicted where this conversation was going.
"Burgundy and Claret," Jim continued, fiddling with his green jacket, "lived in the South Village together. Claret nursed me back to health after I was hurt and gave me a place to stay. She's probably the sweetest lady in all of the Dark World."
"And Burgundy?" Alexis asked, knowing the answer.
Jim winced. "Understand that he was just trying to save his village."
"What did he do?"
Jim sighed, leaning into the desk in front of him. "He tried to kill Jaden."
Alexis saw his blade at Jaden's neck once more. She felt the panic in her chest harden. "What happened?"
"The Supreme King wiped out their village. Winged Inferno torched everything, burning them all alive," he murmured. "I barely escaped with my life. Claret and Burgundy weren't so lucky."
Jim was staring at his palms now, slowly opening and closing them into fists. Almost to himself, he continued, "Sometimes, I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed and fought with them."
"It doesn't matter," she supplied. They both knew he would have died. "When Jaden beat Yubel, he brought everyone back. Bastion spent the past three years helping the Dark World rebuild, and they're doing better now. I just needed to know if Bastion could trust those Spirits to help us find Jaden."
"Claret doesn't have a bad bone in her body," Jim replied. "Burgundy… might be a problem."
"If he met Jaden now," Alexis pressed, digging her hands into the sides of her PDA, "do you think he'd try to kill him?"
Jim locked eyes with her, trying to dig out meaning in the grainy sands and pixels between them. "I only knew him for a short time."
"Jim," she insisted. "Would Burgundy kill Jaden?"
"If he thought Jaden was still a threat," Jim sighed, "then yes."
Then she had all the information she needed, and she desperately needed to put her plan in action. She bid Jim goodbye, giving him a half-hearted promise to call again later with the group, and pulled up the school's administration number. Reaching Chancellor Sheppard, she explained that she needed to take her vacation days as soon as possible in order to reconnect with her duelist's passion so that she could be fit enough to take on Ms. Fontaine's position in the Blue Dorms. Being his favorite student, it was easy to push her request through and start immediately, earning herself two generous weeks off and good luck wishes. That only left one person to call, and one sacrifice to be made.
Ms. Fontaine picked up on the third ring. "Hello, this is Duel Academy's medical wing. How may I help you?"
"That depends on how much you mind sleeping in an old dorm room," Alexis replied. She could hear the tapping of Ms. Fontaine's pen over her clipboard as the woman tried to place the voice.
"Alexis!" the nurse realized. "I don't suppose that means you want to stay another night?"
"Actually," Alexis hedged, placing all of her hope on Ms. Fontaine's enthusiasm. "I was hoping to spend the next two weeks there."
The pen tapping stopped, and Alexis could hear her senior's lips pop open in surprise. Hastily, Alexis pushed on in her explanation, nerves wracking her. "I think you were right about taking on your position, but I'm really inexperienced. I haven't been myself lately, so I took some time off of work to get back into the dueling life. I really think staying in the Dorms and being in the middle of the dueling environment will help me make my decision."
"Are you sure?" There was something like apprehension in Ms. Fontaine's voice.
"Absolutely," Alexis replied. "I loved it there in the dorms, and if I'm going to take over, I want to be sure I do it right."
"Well then," Ms. Fontaine trilled, voice breaking with excitement. "Who am I to hold my old student back?"
"Thanks, Ms. Fontaine," Alexis sighed. There was one last step, and this one she had to be careful about, "Oh, and one more thing."
"Need help with the move?"
"Oh, um," Alexis spluttered, surprised. She regained composure and continued, "That's what I have Atticus and Jesse for. No, I need your medical advice on something."
"Oh, no, are you sick?"
"Nothing like that." Alexis felt the sudden urge to twist a phone cord, but her PDA had no strings attached to offer her. Instead she switched ears and kept her voice as nonchalant as possible. "It's just a bit louder than what I'm used to in the Dorms and I couldn't sleep last night. Do you have any sleeping pills I could try…?"
One hour later found Alexis inside her bedroom for the last time; sleeping pills in pocket and closet door handle in hand. She had given up her freedom as a teacher in order to acquire the pills, she was sure she could handle giving up her pride to face a piece of clothing. Fingers strong, Alexis pulled open the wardrobe door and glared at the hanging uniform inside.
The outfit wasn't as white as she remembered, and some of the blue edging had started to fray with time. Worse was the thin pocket of her hanging navy skirt, permanently bulged from protecting its contents for three years. Slowly, as if not to startle it, Alexis reached inside the old wood and touched the fabric, embracing the soft cotton like a baby animal. Her fingers slid down the material to her skirt-line and flirted with the lip of the pocket, hesitating. Eyes hard, she reached in and touched the neglected material of her deck, abandoned with every other memory the uniform carried.
She pulled it out, stared at the worn cards, and turned to her desk. Her last year Duel Disk sat proudly atop ungraded papers, still lustrous despite years of disuse. Back straight, Alexis snapped the machine onto her arm and slid in her deck, feeling powerful under the red glow of her 4000 life points.
This time when she entered the Dark World, she was going to be prepared. Whatever it took to save Jaden, she would do. She had two weeks and a handful of sleeping pills.
She would not fail.
A/N: You guys ready for the new-and-improved ventures of Alexis into the Dark World? I hope so, because I sure am!
Sorry about the long wait between this chapter and the previous. I had a really hard time starting this chapter and then just... kinda avoided working on it until I could solve the problem.
So what are the big differences to note here?
What should we be worrying about?
Guess we'll just have to wait and see~
With love always,
AxJfan