The Three Kings: Strike
Disclaimer (1): Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Studios, and TV Tokyo. Harry Potter is owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Arthur A. Levine Books, and Warner Bros. Please support the official releases.
Disclaimer (2): The Abbey Stadium is owned by the Grosvenor Group.
Warning: Mentions of dysphoria, transphobia, physical and emotional abuse, child abuse, panic attacks, past character death, genocide, gore, blood, gun violence, homophobic slang, drowning, suicidal inclinations, major character death, and unintentional misgendering of a closeted character.
Chapter 10: Recrudescence
The Zabini's are quite possibly the strangest family that Amane has ever met. Living in the middle of a quant muggle suburb, they made their home in a small three bedroom flat just outside of Cambridge's downtown core.
"Mum likes football. There's a stadium around the corner," Blaise tells her when she raises an eyebrow at him.
"It's the muggle in me. Frankly, it's far more exciting than watching people try to knock each other off their brooms," Mrs. Zabini says as she shrugs off her coat, hanging it on the hook by the door. "Now," she turns and looks at Amane, who feels so incredibly out of place that she's surprised that she hasn't managed to squirm out of her skin. "Let me see you, child."
Mrs. Zabini sits Amane on a kitchen chair, pulling out her wand as she moves gracefully around the open space. She magically sets the kettle to boil before approaching Amane herself, "Roll up your sleeves."
Amane hesitates, not wanting to show them. But in the end, she relents, exposing the purpling bruises that her father left when he grabbed her arm at the bank.
Blaise lets out a hiss when he sees them, his mother's eyes growing cold.
"My first husband left me with marks like these," Mrs. Zabini tells her, waving her wand over the bruises. Amane watches as they turn green, then yellow, and then finally disappear entirely. "I was glad when dragon pox took him. Merlin knows that I never would have had the courage to leave him back then."
"Thank you," Amane whispers as the tea kettle lets out a screech. Blaise picks it up off the burner and retrieves three large mugs from a cupboard.
"It's no problem," Mrs. Zabini smiles. Blaise pushes one of the mugs into her hands. It's chamomile, with a drop of honey. The tea is too hot when she tries to drink, but she swallows it anyways, taking another sip. "I'm going to go and set up the guest room. You two stay here and talk. It's not often that you get to know your intended before the wedding." Before Amane can get a word out, Mrs. Zabini turns to Blaise and sternly points her finger at him. "Be nice."
"Mother," Blaise says, clearly annoyed.
"I mean it," she snaps, disappearing behind the door to what Amane assumes is the guest room.
They sit in awkward silence for a few minutes, quietly sipping tea and trying not to make eye contact. Amane wonders if it's supposed to be some sort of competition, like, who will be the first to crack? It's probably going to be her, because she's desperate for answers to the million questions inside her head. Mentally, she sighs, and prepares herself for Blaise to smirk or laugh at her when-
"How long has he been hurting you?"
Amane's mouth clicks shut and she snaps her head towards him. Blaise isn't looking at her at all, instead staring blankly at the tea in his mug. His fingers as clasped tightly around the outside and his jaw is clenched.
Amane glances down at her own mug, shrugging, "I can't really remember. It's always been like that." She swallows hard, "My… My brother, he used to say that there was… a time when my parents were happy. But… um… after, well, after my father found out that Ryou was… that he was…"
"A mage," Blaise supplies for her. Like he knows a damn thing.
"Yeah, a mage," she snaps. "Got a problem?"
Blaise continues to stare at his mug. He takes a sip, sets it down, and makes some kind of non-committal noise.
"But he hurt you? Because of your brother?" Blaise asks.
"Why do you even care?" Amane growls, standing up from her chair, fists clenched at her side. When Blaise opens her mouth, she doesn't even let him speak, "And if you tell me that it's because we're engaged again, I'll hit you."
Blaise sneaks a glance at her before dropping his gaze back to his mug. He mumbles something.
"What?"
"I said, my mum wants a girl in the family."
Amane frowns, "What's that got to do with anything?"
"I don't know!" Blaise barks at her, almost defensive, almost like it hurt for some reason. "She just does, okay?"
"That's stupid," Amane says, her hands on her hips.
"I know that," Blaise can't even look at her. He sounds so angry, like he's blaming her for something.
"Do you have a problem with girls?" Amane asks.
"No."
"Do you have a problem with me being a girl?" She asks again, suddenly thinking back to Ryou's confession all those years ago. I think I like boys, too. Do you still love me?
"No," Blaise says firmly, then hesitates, and then continues. "I don't have a problem with you being a girl."
Amane is so confused. She sits back in her seat, "So I'm here because your mom wants a girl?"
"Yeah," Blaise says bluntly, looking incredibly uncomfortable.
"If she wants one so badly, why didn't she just have another kid? She's had what? Ten different husbands?"
"Seven," Blaise corrects her. "And… I just don't know, alright? Can you stop asking?"
"Fine," Amane resumes her staring at her mug. She keeps looking over at him, though, waiting until the tension drained from his shoulders. "Why did you help me?"
"I just told you-"
"No, you said why your mother wanted to help me. Why did you?"
Blaise snorts, "What? Am I not allowed to help a pretty girl in distress?"
"I'm not pretty," Amane counters.
"Prettier than most," Blaise shrugs. "Maybe I just wanted to know why."
"Why what?"
"Why you. Mum could have picked any girl, but she wanted me to marry you," Blaise looks her over. Amane curls her feet under the hem of her dress. "I wanted to know why. Why were you at Gringotts anyways? Especially if you knew your father would hurt you for trying to run."
"A lady goblin gave me some kind of prophecy. I wanted to talk with her again," Amane says, seriously doubting that Blaise will believe her.
Except, Blaise looks at her with wide eyes and a shocked expression. He leans in, "Are you kidding me?"
Amane shrugs and lets him come to whatever conclusion he wants.
"An actual, real-life prophecy? From a goblin?" Blaise exclaims, "What'd she say?"
"I don't know. Something about finding a Secret Keeper called the Daughter of Avalon and a god. She said I had to learn the truth, whatever that means," Amane kicks her feet against the legs of the chair. "I didn't really understand it. She kept speaking in riddles."
"Seers tend to do that, I hear," Blaise says under his breath.
"What do you think it means?" Amane asks him.
"Could mean anything. Could mean nothing," Blaise shrugs and finishes his tea. "The real question is, why did some lady goblin go out of her way to talk to you? I didn't even know that they had women at Gringotts."
"Apparently, they all work in the back," Amane remembers what Nurnok told her.
"Did she say anything else?" Blaise asks.
Amane closes her and tries to remember, "She mentioned a building with blood in its walls and death in the land around it. But in the earth, it has a secret powerful enough to topple everything."
"And the Secret Keeper, this Daughter of Albion, knows about this?" Blaise asks.
"Apparently."
"Well then," Blaise smirks. "You just got significantly more interesting, Amane Andrews."
Amane rolls her eyes, "More interesting? So you thought I was interesting before?"
"You've got a mage brother, don't you? That's got to be interesting enough."
Amane feels her fingers go numb first, then the buzzing in her head. She can't seem to catch her breath. She feels Ryou above her, his lips pressing into her, as he slots himself between her thighs.
You're all I've got left, he'd said as he kissed her. She doesn't think that she'd wanted it.
"Hey, hey! Are you alright?" Blaise brings her back to reality, a hand on her shoulder. It's the first time he's ever touched her before. He's warm, she thinks.
"Fine. I- I'm fine," she says, reaching for her mug, trying to force some of the tea down. There are tears in her eyes.
"Hey, no. Don't-" Blaise gently pulls the mug from her grasp. "You'll choke."
"I'm fine," she lies again.
"You're not," he says, placing the mug on the table beside his own. "Is it… because I mentioned your brother? Look, I'm sorry. But after what happened… I mean, he attacked all those people. Maybe it was best that they sent him away-"
"They don't send mages away. They kill them. Ryou's dead."
"They what?" Blaise whispers.
"If a wizard-born mages doesn't complete the conversion program, the Department of Mysteries kills them. There's no camp. There's no- he's dead, alright? They killed my brother," she cries as tears roll down her cheeks. "Ryou… he did it on purpose, so that they'd have to. Because what they were doing to him was killing him so he- he just- he wanted to die so badly and I wasn't enough of a reason to stick around."
Blaise stares at her like he can't believe what's coming out of her mouth, "You couldn't have known."
"My father knew. He works for them - the Department - sometimes. So that he can publish his books. He knew what would happen to Ryou if he didn't do well," Amane says through the tears. "I… I hate him… so much…"
Blaise grabs her by the shoulder and pulls her into a bone crushing hug. Amane weeps openly into his collar, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt.
The door to the guest room opens up and Mrs. Zabini comes out, her forehead pinched in frustration, "Blaise, I thought I told you to be nice?"
"I am," he tells her, rubbing a comforting hand up and down Amane's back. "I trying to be."
"Fuck. Fuck!" He swears, shredding his jacket into long strips to cloth that he uses to wrap around the bullet wound in his knee. The bone is shattered. Unless he gets to a healer soon, he might never be able to walk on it again.
Keith has no idea why he's alive.
"Fucking cocksucking shit," he gasps as he tightens the makeshift bandage, hoping to cut off the bleeding. "Damn it, why didn't he just fucking shoot me?"
The Devlin boy (girl? Like, the kid looked like a man, but Keith vividly remembers that Lindsay Devlin had had a muggle sister. But who even knows anymore?) at pulled the barrel of his gun away from Keith's head at the last moment and aimed it at his knee, firing point blank into the joint. Keith barely remembers what happened afterwards, nearly blind from the pain.
But Devlin had grabbed his face and forced Keith to look at him, his eyes pits of righteous fury.
"You want me to kill you, you sick bastard? You want that? You're not good enough for that," and with that, he'd pushed Keith away, smacking the back of his head against the stone of his cell. "When Atem and Bakura tear this island down around your head, I hope you fucking drown."
Devlin and the crew that he'd come with had disappeared some time after that; Keith doesn't exactly know when. Once he has the bleeding in his leg under control, he hauls himself towards the door of his cage.
It's locked. Devlin must have done that before he left. Keith stares at the hinges, grits his teeth, and thinks, Fuck it. Fuck you.
He's not dying here. After everything that he's learned, everything that Pegasus unlocked from beyond that mental block, he's not going to go out on the floor of a cell on some godforsaken rock. Keith thinks of Ryou, who'd used his last moments on this earth to push through a squad of Unspeakables and a wall several feet thick in order to see the moonlight one more time. To stand tall and proud and tell Keith that there was nothing to fix about who he was.
Thief King Bakura had ripped Ryou Andrews from the earth. Keith may die trying to kill that thing that used to live inside the Ring, but he's going to take the bastard down with him.
Devlin couldn't have locked the cell door with magic. Everything that they'd known about the kid had said that he was a muggle and Keith hadn't seen him use a wand (though he had allies that did and, damn, didn't that scare the shit out of Keith) or any kind of magic aside from whatever had turned him into a guy. There are no keys, but Keith isn't going to let that stop him.
The doors on this level are shit and for the first time in his life, he thanks Merlin for the Department's neglect of its infrastructure. He pulls on each the base of the bars; the third one in moving just slightly in his grasp. Keith kicks with all the desperate force that he can manage with his one good leg, keeps kicking until the entire bar comes loose, falling to the floor with a clang.
Keith squeezes himself through the two bars, hissing in pain as his knee catches against the harsh, unforgiving metal. He falls to the floor and crawls his way over to the cell door that once held Kisha Borrego and Delphia Caro.
Still slumped against the open door is the body of the wizard everyone had called Lee. Keith pushes him over so that he can see the boy's face. His eyes are open, eternally frozen in their wide eyed shock at his own death. Lee had been young, no more than twenty five.
It's longer than Ryou ever got to live, Keith brain supplies spitfully. And then, after he remembers the Spirit of the Millennium Ring tapping out his age against a wooden bench, he thinks, It's longer than most people ever got, too.
Fuck you, he thinks right back.
He steals Lee's wand. It's not going to work properly for him, as he never beat its previous owner, but it's the best that Keith can do right now. He also takes Lee's knife, which has been charmed to open up any lock, to undo any knot or hold. There's knives like these all over the world and they're a thorn in the side of aurors everywhere, never leaving a trace.
Keith figures that it will be useful as a makeshift weapon, at the very least.
As Keith pushes himself away, Lee's body shifts again and his wallet falls out of a pocket in his jacket. Keith opens it up, seeing a few notes of muggle money from different countries, and nearly puts it back when a picture falls out.
The people in the photo move, but only slightly, as if it had been developed by an amateur. In it, a slightly younger version of Lee sits at the bedside of a tall, black girl, holding her hand and staring in wonder at the bundle of blankets that the woman holds.
Keith can't see it clearly enough, but he knows that Lee had been a father.
He swallows hard and puts the photo back in the wallet, sliding the whole thing back into Lee's pocket. His vision swims and-
He's trapped behind a wall of crystal, his hands withering before his very eyes. He shouts, but nothing comes out, his voice aged so much that his vocal cords have frayed.
The figure on the other side of the wall approaches him and he calls out for her, trying to plead for his release. But she merely taps her wands against the glass and mutters something under her breath.
He cycles backwards, the age spots on his skin disappearing, his body becoming younger and younger, until loses his awareness, his very consciousness, before speaking forwards to the brink of death.
He reaches out towards the woman again as the other body - his brother, his mind supplies - in the bell jar does the same.
"Mother," he tries to say, looking out at the woman with dark hair and dark eyes. "Mother."
-Keith jerks away, flinging himself backwards from Lee's body.
"What the fuck?" He whispers hoarsely. "What was- what's going on?"
He knows that when Pegasus turned the Millennium Eye on him and Tilla, the man knocked something loose in his brain, tore down a mental shield that the Department had put up to hide the fact that everything he thought he knew was fake.
Keith thinks of his mother, his brother and sister, his step-father and realizes that, for as often as he thinks of them, he can't recall their names.
He wants to throw up. He wants to hit something.
But the memory that just surfaced, that hadn't been part of his training to become an Unspeakable - Keith might not be one hundred percent certain about a lot of things right now, but he knows that for certain. It had been from… before.
I called her mother, Keith thinks, feeling violently ill. What the actually hell?
He has to keep moving. If he stays here any longer, there's no telling what will happen.
The mages (and their wizarding and muggle allies, Keith literally can't get over that fact) had blown a hole in the floor, disappearing into the lower levels. The prisoners from their attack on San Francisco are down there. Thankfully, the huge guy who busted open Keith's cell decided to make a ramp out of the fallen rubble, so he's not going to have to jump down and jar his already screaming leg.
It hurts like a motherfucker anyways. Keith honestly wants to just sit down and quit, but doesn't because he's got a goddamn job to do.
The cells down here are empty. Keith assumes that Devlin, Wheeler, and their crew must have busted them all out. He limps down the hallways, leaning against the wall when the edges of his vision darken. The bandage around his knee is soaked red; he needs to change it.
Keith trips and falls to the floor three feet from the door, knocking the air from his lungs. He feels his eyes well up, feels the shame well up in his gut at the fact that he's crying, clutching at his knee with hands that come away bloody. He can't breathe. He can't fucking breathe.
The door opens up with a loud screech and Keith sees a pair of feet. Their quickly covered up by knees hitting the ground.
"Merlin," Coppermine helps him sit up. "Holy crap, Keith. What the hell happened to you? Have you been shot?"
Keith tries to say something snappy back, but all he manages to force out is a low whine.
"Just- just calm down. I've got you. I've got-" Coppermine murmurs something under his breath. Keith blinks, clearing his vision just in time for him to catch the kid's healing spell seeping into his leg, the blood that had soaked through his bandage sliding back into his wound. "Oh my god, oh my god-"
Keith grabs Coppermine by the collar, dragging him down so that he can look the kid in the eye, "What's going on?"
"I don't- It's just-" Coppermine takes a deep breath, trying to center himself. "The alarm went off while I was still in the medical wing. They're saying that there are dead bodies all over the grounds outside, that there are- oh shit. Oh shit," Coppermine sputters as he looks down at Keith's knee, his mind seeming to catch onto how utterly fucked they are. "Did mages do this?"
"No. A fucking muggle," Keith admits, struggling to his feet. He stumbles and Coppermine catches him, hauling him upwards. "How bad is it out there?"
"Bad," Coppermine says, his face grim as he loops Keith's arm around his shoulders. They walk together towards the exit. "Mook's just up the way. She sent me to find you. Scott's with her."
Keith's heart clenches as he remembers that Coppermine doesn't know, can't ever know, the truth about the Department. Keith's barely ever felt a protective instinct towards the brat, but he does now. He's just a kid. I have to.
"Merlin, Keith," Mook gasps when she sees him, Depre Scott standing at her side as usual. "What happened?"
"He says a muggle did it to him," Coppermine supplies before Keith can get a word out. "Fuck, if they've got muggles working with them, then the mages have broken the Statute. They know about us."
"It's not just muggles. They've got wizarding allies, too," Keith says and Coppermine gapes at him.
"Pretty sure they've brought the Thief King, Bakura, with them, too, considering that the anti-muggle technology charm just got taken down," Mook supplies.
"Devlin, the muggle kid- he mentioned someone else," Keith says. "Someone named Atem. He put them in the same category as Bakura, so-"
"They had the Lady Pharaoh's Item in San Francisco," Coppermine says, his eyes managing to get even wider. "Fuck, you don't think-"
"That they've got a second King? Yeah, that's exactly what I fucking think," Keith spits.
"We need to get out of here. Now," Mook says.
"And abandon our post?" Coppermine asks, looking shocked that that's even an option that they're discussing.
"Look, Pete. There's a lot more going on here than you know. We need to leave before anyone can stop us," Mook tries to gentle her voice, but it's clear that she's terrified. They all were.
Coppermine, to the surprise of everyone, doesn't fight her on the point. He just nods and moves his shoulder to take more of Keith's weight.
Keith shakes his head, "Leave me behind. I'll just slow you down."
"Keith-"
"Don't. Seriously, don't fight me on this," Keith says. "Just go."
A look is shared between the three of them, going from Coppermine to Mook to Scott. Then Scott moves forwards, pulls Keith's other arm around his shoulders and takes his remaining weight. Mook nods and they start walking.
"What are you going?!" He shouts as he's practically carried in a direction he most certainly doesn't want to go.
"Don't fight me on this," Tilla tells him. "You're not the leader any more, Keith. I am. And you're going to lose that leg if we don't check it out soon, so just shut up."
Keith's jaw drops open and then he shuts it with a click. He did say that. Drunk Keith is an idiot sometimes (though he's not sure if this is one of them).
They rush towards the staircase and Keith uselessly swinging his legs in an attempt to walk. Mook shoulders through Unspeakables running in the other direction, cursing one that tries to recruit her to head upstairs. An explosion rocks the island at one point and the south side of the building crumbles to bits in an electrical storm. But they keep moving towards the exit and with each and every step Keith wonders why they're not dead yet.
Pegasus is waiting for them at the gates, blood dripping from the Millennium Eye.
Coppermine swears up a storm and Keith barely manages to stop him from going for his wand.
"You'll just get us all killed, you idiot," he growls.
"Listen to Keith, boy," Pegasus laughs and between him and the closed front gates lay the broken, battered bodies of the near fifty mage prisoners that they'd taken from San Francisco. Sensing Keith's thoughts, he says, "Oh don't worry, not all of them are dead."
One of the prisoners closest to him grabs Pegasus's ankle in an attempt to do… something? Keith doesn't know what. But Pegasus just rolls his eyes and fires a silent green Killing Curse directly into the man's skull.
Solomon Mutuo dies with a look of shock painted across his features. And that's when Keith realizes that everything up to this point has been for nothing.
I'm scared. Oh god, I don't want to die.
"Now, where are you going, Ms. Mook?" Pegasus steps forwards and Keith does something so incredibly stupid, wrenching himself away from Scott and Coppermine and throwing himself in front of all three of them because something tells him that Pegasus doesn't want to mow through him as much as he does everyone else. Pegasus laughs at him, "And what exactly makes you think that, Keith Howard?"
He has no fucking clue.
"I wonder why I ever bothered," Pegasus snarls, raising his wand. Green sparks fly from the end. "Traitors to the end. Just like your filthy Plant mother."
If there's anything that Keith is going to take to the grave with him, it's that, in this tiny fraction of a second, Maximillion Pegasus is dead wrong. Because he remembers the vision he'd had about the woman standing outside the bell jar, the one that had aged and de-aged him and his brother a thousand million times over before she was satisfied, and that woman had not been a Plant.
"Avada-"
An unholy scream erupts from the bodies behind Pegasus as the earth rips wide open. Lava and seawater erupt from the crack, rising up and crashing down on the madman. Pegasus circles his wand around himself, forming a shield around his body.
Matthew Jacques stands, beaten and bloody and terrifying, his hair flying in the wind as he chanted in a tongue that Keith would never understand. He points towards Keith and suddenly, a misty apparition of Jacques stands beside him.
"Leave or die. I don't care which. Just don't get in my way," Jacques's ghost explodes, the dust forming a million knives that fly towards Pegasus at break neck speeds. They shatter his shield, forcing him to aparate. Pegasus appears amists the bodies, yanking one of the survivors from the pile and holding the kid in front of him like a human shield.
It's Weevil Underwood. Because, of course it is.
Pegasus holds his wand to the kid's throat, laughing as he drags the kid backwards, "One wrong move, Jacques, and you'll kill us both. You wouldn't want to do that, now would you?" He turns to Underwood, "You're friend Bakura won't save you now, no matter how much you're practically praying for him to. Bakura! Bakura!" He says in a high pitched mocking tone. "You see Keith over there. The blond one with the broken leg?"
Keith sees Weevil's eyes flit to him for a second.
"He's the one who called your precious Bakura to tell him to save you, because he couldn't bare the thought of Ryou Andrews' sacrifice being in vein," Pegasus presses the tip of his wand into Underwood's fresh, strong enough to leave a bruise. "But I can see your thoughts, boy. Shall we tell him what really happened to his precious mage boy? Before he makes his biggest mistake yet?"
Underwood slams his head back into Pegasus's nose, breaking it with a crack, before grabbing for his face with his hands. Keith remembers a little bit of what Underwood was capable of, knows that right now the kid is injecting the most deadly disease he can come up with into Pegasus's body.
Pegasus screams, his skin blistering, popping and sizzling where Underwood is touching him. Another figure leaps from the crowd, grabbing Underwood and pulling him from Pegasus's grasp before they both fall to the ground and Mokuba Kaiba shouts, "Now!"
Keith reacts at the same time Jacques does, at the same time Scott and Coppermine and Mook all do. The combination of wizarding and mage magic blasts Pegasus with more power than his wand is able to handle, throwing him through the brick wall behind him. Keith figures that that will buy them all a few seconds if nothing else.
"Hey!" Comes the sound of a few of the Unspeakables that they passed on the way here. Keith spins just in time to see the front gates crashing open dramatically, but he feels how the temperature in the room skyrockets and an ocean of sand floods the corridor.
The roar of death and destruction is the only warning Keith gets before Coppermine tackles him to the floor and a great lioness made of blood and sand jumps overtop of them, sinking it's teeth and claws into the first Unspeakable it reaches, tearing him in half. Before anyone can react, the monster uses the bottom end of its staff to impale another and rip the head off of a third.
Keith thinks of the aurors in the American Ministry of Magic and realizes that they were very, very lucky.
More mages swarm the gates, some picking through the bodies on the floor looking for survivors, while other marched passed Keith, muggle guns held at the ready. Jacques rushes forwards to pull Amanda Green from the sands of the lioness body she'd surrounded herself with. A one legged Mokuba Kaiba gapes openly at the stunning Cassandra Bleu, who helps him to stand as another girl, this one black with a wand and a missing finger, wrenches Underwood to his feet. A third woman, tiny, bald, and one-eyed, watches them with a bored look on her face.
Lost in the swarm, Mook grabs Keith and together with their team, they haul ass towards the open gateway, running passed mages and wizards and muggles alike.
Because they're done. Done with this fucking organization that's robbed them of so much. Done with the jobs that hurt people. Done with everything that Keith did that led to the death of Ryou Andrews.
But before they can pass through, they hear, "Avada Kedavra Maxima!"
Millions of green bolts fire from the hole in the wall created by Pegasus, killing anyone and everyone who got in their path. Keith just manages to pull Coppermine out of harm's way, while Mook uses her body to cover Depre Scott. Unspeakables and their lifelong enemies die side by side and the main hallway of the Department of Mysteries is reduced to molten slone.
"Mama! Mama!"
A terrible scream erupts from the mouth of the black woman beside Cassandra Bleu. She's shaking the body of the bald woman, who'd leapt in front both girls to shield them from the blast. The clothing on her back is shredded open, her skin burnt and bubbling.
"Captain!" Shouts a huge man from the far end of the hall. It's Kebade, the same giant wizard who'd travelled with Devlin's group. He sprints towards the three girls, eyes panicked, but he's struck down before he can make it.
"Enough!" Maximillion Pegasus shouts as he emerges from the hole in the wall. His face is covered in the open, bleeding sores that Underwood had infected him with. "Enough!"
"Fuck you!" Keith shouts firing a curse at his former boss. Pegasus knocks it away without even looking at him.
"You all die," Pegasus growls. "All of you. I will purge you from this earth. None of you deserve to live any longer." He turns his gaze towards the screaming woman. "Oh, do shut up. She never loved you, Meron Tadesse. You, your father, or your screaming bastard. I'll be sure to wipe out the rest of your pathetic family when I'm done here, once and for all."
Cassandra Bleu punches forwards and lightning arches out from her fingers, striking the shield that Pegasus just manages to get up. The wizard's magic holds for a second before buckling backwards, imploding in on itself and blasting Pegasus right in the face. When he look back up, Pegasus is missing half the skin on his wand arm.
"Don't touch them," Bleu says through a mouthful of fangs, bone white wings bursting through the clothing on her back as her neck elongated, skin turning into hard scales.
Pegasus smirks as if he can't feel the pain, "Is this concern, Ms. Bleu?"
"Go to hell, you monster!" Meron throws the body of her mother away, raising her wand and throwing a curse Keith doesn't recognize at Pegasus. She follows up with a second and a third, spell after spell of new, unheard of magic, trying to catch Pegasus off guard while Bleu transformed behind her. Pegasus ducked and weaved the best that he could, but nothing that he seemed to throw back at either sister seemed to affect them for long.
A love shield, Keith thinks, staring at the tiny body of the woman who'd laid down her life for both girls. Their mother is protecting them. But then he thinks, It won't be enough.
Off to the side, Devlin and his crew rushed forwards, followed by the wizards and witches that they'd pulled from the cells below. With guns and wands held at the ready, they formed a circle around Amanda Green and Matthew Jacques as the great Spellcasters looked towards each other and nod. As Devlin and his crew fired on Pegasus, Green mutters in an ancient language as the molten floor twisted around her and rose, snakelike, up her body.
"What's going on?" Coppermine whispers hoarsely in Keith's ear.
"They're trying to hold him off," Scott answers for him. "But they can't win. And they know it."
He's right. Because keeping Pegasus distracted meant that a legless Mokuba Kaiba could rest his weight on Weevil Underwood's shoulders and guide the survivors out of the gates, towards the cliffs. Kaiba glances in their direction as the last of them pass through, looks Coppermine directly in the eye.
"Please. Please," Coppermine begs him. For what, Keith doesn't know.
Kaiba doesn't blink as he turns his back on them and Keith can't even blame him.
The rock around Amanda Green forms a massive snake with burning eyes and scales made of the black chunks of molten stone and rock and smoke. When it opens it's mouth, Keith sees an enferno swirling in it's belly beyond long stalactite fangs dripping with liquid fire. The thing shoots lava at Pegasus the same moment that Bleu's dragon unleashes a torrent of white hot lightning from it's mouth. The heat is so intense that it cracks the very foundations of the island, the sound snapping deep into the ground below.
And yet, Pegasus stands, a circle of untouched earth around his feet marred only by the blood dripping from his eye socket and arm.
Pegasus laughs.
"I was never much of a fighter," he tells them. "But I was always quite good at defending myself. So please, tire yourselves out, waste your bullets, call upon your gods, let your dead defend you. I can see what you will do before you do it. I will outlast you-"
Pegasus's voice is cut short as a bolt of lightning hits his shield, destroying it entirely. His eyes widen in shock.
He didn't see that one coming, Keith thinks. He looks towards the stairs and sees Bakura.
The mage is still short, wearing muggle tactical gear that looks to be a size too big for him with a baseball cap covering most of his white hair, like Devlin and Amanda Green and their entire crew had all worn Beside him walks an equally tiny woman with equally strange hair, bright red and woven into long dreadlocks, and wearing the same dark uniform. Her eyes are a dark purple, just like Bakura.
This must be Atem, the Lady Pharaoh of legend, Keith realizes. He has false memories of a mother that never existed reading him their story before he went to sleep at night. He never pictured them looking like this, so young and otherworldly.
And behind them both stood Reiko Kitamori, her pretty face twisted into something unrecognizable by the look of hatred it wore.
"Everyone get to the helicopters. Now," Atem says, her voice low and crackling with ancient power.
"I can't read your thoughts," Pegasus sounds terribly confused.
Bakura snorts at him, "Didn't you lot learn anything from the years you had a pair of divine weapons on this island? They don't work on each other, dumbass." Bakura then moves his hand so quickly that Keith almost misses it, blocking Kitamori's advance. "Don't."
"But-" The Plant tries to speak, but they cut her off.
"You'll just end up killing yourself. He's too powerful," Atem warns her. Then, to Keith's utter surprise, the Lady Pharaoh sends Kitamori a stunning smile. "Don't worry. We'll leave him alive for you."
"No!" Pegasus screams, launching a volley of powerful spells their way. Atem plants herself in front of both her friends, holds her hands with her palms out, and halts them in mid air. Then, she curls her fingers, contracting the rods of light into tiny, shaking spheres, before flinging them back at Pegasus. He just manages to get out of their way before the Killing Curses explode at his feet, carving deep craters into the ground where he once stood.
"Run. Now!" Keith can't remember which mages gave that order, but everyone seems to follow it, hurtling themselves towards the open gates and towards the two helicopters outside. Cassandra Bleu's dragon form shrinks before their eyes, wings disappearing into her back, and she runs naked into the cockpit, strapping herself in without a hint of shame.
Beside Devlin, Keith sees Joey Wheeler transform near instantaneously into the slightly smaller Black Dragon, crouching down low so that Devlin and the wizards from the cells can climb on board. He and his team try to escape onto one of the helicopters, to be forgotten in the chaos, but they are stopped by the terrifying form that Amanda Green has taken on.
"Amanda! Amanda, shift back!" Keith hears Jacques says somewhere off to the side. He thinks that the other Spellcaster is trying to calm Green, but to no avail.
Coppermine strikes first, sending a bolt of red towards the great molten snake. But the thing just opens its mouth and swallows the bolt whole before raining boiling hot magma on them, the thick, black smoke clogging the air. Keith's lungs fill and he can't breathe, it's burning inside his body and he can't breathe, oh god, he's going to die here and-
"Apep!" Shouts Kitamori from behind them as she clears the air of the smoke. Keith falls to his knees with Mook and Coppermine and Scott, gasping for breath. The giant snake turns its smoldering head towards her as, behind it, the blades of the helicopters start to turn. Keith turns his head and watches as Kitamori points a pair of wands at Green.
"You're Apep, god of evil. Give Amanda Green back," Kitamori says again. The demon just laughs at her.
"What are you doing?" Coppermine shouts, sounding so utterly confused. "Why are you helping us?"
Kitamori grimaces, "Because I'm an idiot. I got too close and I started to care." Then she looks directly at Coppermine and smiles, so heartbreakingly sad. "Because you were my first friend in a hundred years, Misha. And I'm not going to let you die."
The snake opens its mouth and roars. Meron, piloting the second helicopter opens the door to her cockpit to shout at Jacques, the only mage left on the island, "Get inside or I'm leaving you behind!"
"Get out of here! I'm make sure she's fine," Kitamori yells at him. Jacques gives her a tiny nod before hopping on board just before the pair of choppers rise into the air. Then she turns her attention back to Amanda Green, swallowing hard. The monster tries to snap at the choppers, but Bleu vears out of the way.
Then, Kitamori screams, "Mala Pukar!"
And suddenly all the snake can focus on his Reiko Kitamori.
The Plant grins in a way that makes Keith realize that she's absolutely terrified, "How's a rematch sound?"
Kitamori spits on the ground and the snake attacks.
Hello again!
I'd like to thank those who reviewed for the last chapter: BalaaSweetSlaughter, Moonfirekitsune, Winterholt, Tz342, dragomira, anita15, Dana Sto Helit, and Rita Mu. You guys are awesome!
So... Grandpa's dead. This was something that I'd planned from the get go. It's a complete departure from the Duelist Kingdom arc that Strike is very loosely based on, but I think that it's one that was needed. Grandpa dies, and Yuugi loses everything. And as for Atem, well, we might just see a reaction worthy of her Season 0 counterpart when she finds out.
Also, many of you expressed a bit of disappointment between the first interaction between Amanda and Reiko, and I totally get it. It was intended to be a bit of a let down Because while it may have been their first conversation with each other since Reiko killed Mala Pukar, it was, amongst many other things, the wrong time and place for them to have an argument with each other. But it also showed us one of Amanda's weaknesses: she represses things. Her anger towards Reiko. Her fear of what's happening to Matthew on the island. Her anxiety towards the upcoming war. Amanda says it herself, "It's me pretending to be normal."
But now, with the weight of Apep on her very soul, a god that feeds off of every dark thought within you, a god that was never worshipped in Ancient Egypt but actively fought against, Amanda cannot repress these thoughts anymore. It's why I've very purposefully not had an Amanda POV with Reiko present, because it would give away how she really felt towards her former killer.
And as a result, we now have Reiko "Kiyoshi" Kitamori vs. Apep!Amanda Green 2: The Reckoning. It's a fight we've all known was coming, so please enjoy the Smackdown of the Century. (Not to be confused with the Smackdown of the Millennia, which is going to be Atem and Bakura vs Pegasus. Which will be just as amazing.)
Until next time,
AlcatrazOutpatient