Sooo [laughs nervously] I've realized I have a cliffhanger problem. But if that cliffhanger caused a lot of my readers to complain, GOD, I would hate to show you the cliffhangers I have in store for you later

Yeah sorry that was going to be reassuring at first, but I'm an asshole.

Anyway, this chapter is not a Lorna chapter (in case the title didn't give it away -I mean surely you've got the pattern down already)

Also make sure you read the second author's note guys :D

TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: Rape Mention and Suicide Mention -this is a pretty dark chapter, so if any of these things bother you, I urge you to scroll past EVERYTHING in italics, alright? Yeah, I know that means scrolling past the majority of the chapter but still... I'm not sure if I handled these issues well. Like I'm no stranger to depression, but rape (thankfully) is uncharted territory, and I can only hope I handled it tactfully.

That being said, read at your own risk.

"So my brother really is an Anchor," Ishizu mumbles, sitting at the edge of her bed and fiddling with her Millennium Necklace. It worries her enough that Marik is succumbing to the dark entity that has long threatened to consume his entire being, but the thought of him in the realm between life and death scares her; she doesn't want to think about him walking the tightrope of the Inbetween, especially when he won't even listen to her when she tries to help him.

Sun nods, leaning against the door and shutting her eyes in thought. "But the anchor to who?" she asks nobody in particular, for she knows that for all the answers Ishizu possessed, that is not one of them. "And why does he favor that girl?" She smirks before adding in a lighthearted tone, "Your baby brother wasn't lonely in that crypt, was he?"

Taken aback by the jab, Ishizu simply gawks, unsure of how to respond. "I-I… Well, he never seemed to be interested in women," she replies, and upon noticing Sun's knowing smile, she adds, "Or men, for that matter."

"Relax, Ishizu, I was only kidding," Sun clarifies. "That still doesn't explain who Marik is tethered to. He's been acting differently around Lorna, but I know for a fact that Lorna's anchor is Serenity Wheeler."

"How did you find out?" Ishizu questions, a puzzled expression on her face.

Sun pushes away from the wall and approaches Ishizu. "Marik's not the only one acting strangely. Serenity has been flinching at every shadow since she got here, and I overheard her confiding in her brother earlier. She may not completely remember what happened in the Inbetween, but she remembers bits and pieces from the time she spent there… and she certainly remembers Lorna."

"And what of Marik's tether?" Ishizu asks, getting them back on the more pressing matter at hand.

Sun strokes her chin thoughtfully, her mind going over the possibilities briefly before closing in on one certain thought. "Whoever it is, they're on this blimp somewhere, and between me, Zephyr and Lorna, there aren't many possibilities. I know I'm not his tether and it's pretty unlikely that Zephyr is either. Whoever this is… they must have snuck onto this blimp somehow…"

"And avoided KaibaCorp's security?" Ishizu asks, disbelief lacing her tone, and furrows her brow. "Kaiba would never allow for a breach like that to go unchecked."

"You're telling me?" Sun frowns. "I was the one making sure security was tight. Nobody got on or off this thing without me knowing." She feels a tightness in her chest and attempts to let out the breath she has been holding in. "Your brother's dueling now, isn't he?"

It's almost as though Ishizu is trying to forget this fact; whoever his unfortunate opponent is, their grim fate is casting shadows over her face, paving creases into her forehead and darkening her irises. "Yes." She lets out a shuddering exhale. "We should watch."

Ishizu's eyes aren't any brighter once her brother's duel is over, having seen the light in Mai's eyes go out so clearly, even on that small LCD monitor in the lounge. She doesn't want to breathe, afraid that the tiniest movement will set the girl's imprisonment in stone. This was Ishizu's idea -this tournament -and everyone who gets hurt is blood on her hands; or at least that's what she tells herself when Sun isn't around to snap her out of it.

There's nothing you could have done… She can almost hear Sun say it. The only thing stopping her lips from moving is the lost expression on her face as she sits there, frozen, her eyes still on the empty duel arena on the screen long after the duel's devastating conclusion.

Lorna and her friends have already gone to the infirmary and the two women are the only ones left in the large room. It isn't long, however, before they see someone meekly shuffling back into the room with the defeated gait of someone who is so low that even simple thoughts have proven to be too draining a task.

"What's she doing?" Ishizu whispers -not that her words would have been heard had she spoken clearly.

Sun furrows her brow, moving her silky hair away from her face and rising to her feet. The figure seems to be moving back towards the dueling arena and everyone in the room knows that the only person left there is Marik. "Is she confronting him?" she questions uncertainly, taking a step towards the exit, her green eyes taking in the small shivering creature and the dishevelled black hair.

Her name is Yoon Seo Song and she's a quality assurance manager at a telecommunications firm -mainly a desk job, never getting any more exciting than the occasional facility inspection, and even that is her subordinates' job. It pays well, though, but with over one hundred grand a year and nobody to spend it on, she can't exactly call it glamorous. Years of studying for a master's degree in some shit she doesn't care about and a job that she hates. But it pays well enough that she drowns her frustrations in fancy champagne rather than cheap whiskey -that she can buy a flat big enough that she has an excuse for all the dreams she lost.

"Yoon Seo, how's the feasibility study going?" he comes by and asks. He knows she's not finished -the jackass.

She smiles at him so he doesn't make her job any worse than it has to be -or worse: fires her. Then again, she wouldn't mind getting fired actually… "It's going, Bill," she says with a nervous chuckle. "I'll have it done by the end of the day. My team's hard at work, so don't worry about it."

"Great!" he gives her a predatory grin. He knows she's interested in women, but that doesn't really seem to matter to him, judging by the way he eyed her lithe form, his eyes taking in her long tan arms in the light blue sleeveless button-up shirt she has chosen to wear. If anything, her explicit interest in women and only women seems to encourage him further. He's never taken it farther than strange smiles and mental molestation so he's harmless as far as she's concerned. "I'm looking forward to your presentation. The meeting's at eleven tomorrow. Got it?"

With a professional nod, she replies. "Of course."

Of course.

She's lying.

She lives alone. Perhaps that's not too surprising. It's not called 'drowning your sorrows' if you've got someone to drink with -no, that's just socialization, something that Yoon Seo doesn't get much of -not that she actually looks for it. She can't even remember the last social visit she'd gotten that wasn't her drunk next-door neighbor asking for condoms; she doesn't even own any condoms and part of her thinks he only asks because he thinks she's some kind of Asian prostitute; so she's not sure which part of that asshole she hates more: the racist or the perverted drunk.

Some lonely people keep cats around for company and sometimes she wonders if that's a good idea. When your brain's messed up and you can't for the life of you find a single emotion worth living for, maybe keeping a cat would be cruel. She knows that if she actually did it -if she actually took her own life, it would take months for them to actually find her body, and who would take care of little Whiskers then? It wouldn't be able to leave her apartment either; she lives in a high rise building so if the door's not an option, neither are the windows. No, she can't handle the thought of something depending on her when she can barely depend on herself.

Of course, grim thoughts like these aren't the only thing on her mind as she lays on the couch, staring at the crack in the ceiling, wishing it would just fall down and crush her. Sometimes her mind wanders to the far corners of her adolescent years, when she thought she had a purpose -when she thought she had true love… That was so long ago. Does Felicity still think of her now? She's not sure, but she had heard from someone that a family priest (who the fuck even has a family priest?) had "successfully" prayed the gay out of her. What a ridiculous fucking joke.

And maybe that's what Yoon Seo needs: an exorcism. Less for her sexual preference, though, and more for the demons in her head, hiding in the ink black of her hair like parasites, clawing into the ground behind her so she never moves forward -only back. She wishes she could crack her skull open with a hammer and pull out every single, pesky one of them, and then maybe for once she can have a good night's sleep. For once she could leave her house, find a pretty girl, and charm the pants off of her. She could say "I'm fine" and actually mean it. She could be an actual human being rather than a useless sack of useless organs all carelessly piled up to keep a useless creature alive.

One great thing about the independent Asian business woman, she thinks, is the fact that nobody gives a shit -not one solitary shit. She doesn't have to explain why she hates herself. She doesn't have to explain why her eyes are cold and dead, waiting for the rest of her body to catch up. All she has to do is take that one step into oblivion, and when she does, she'll make sure she takes at least one piece of shit down with her. A funny thing about depression, however, is that it gets to a point where even killing yourself is an obligation that you just don't have the strength to get done, buried under months upon months of procrastination.

She's an incompetent mockery of a human being. Three extra years getting a minor in psychology and she can't even figure out why she wants to die, nor can she put together the reason why she hasn't done it yet. Is there a pill for that? Yeah, sure there is. There are a whole bunch of pills that, when swallowed in the dozens, could probably end it for good, but that's too much work, isn't it?

She never really resolves to finally do it the next day; it just sort of happens, and maybe that is how it was meant to be. She still has that meeting at eleven… three hours is a lot of time.

"Yoonie!" someone calls out timidly as she settles into her cubicle. It's a short blonde woman with a button nose and two earnest eyes, the only person Yoon Seo tolerates at this godforsaken firm.

"Joan, are you okay?" she asks, noting the distress on the woman's face. Her face is pale and sickly, her eyes wide, glancing around the room, her hands clasped together in an attempt to stop them from shaking. Yoon Seo stands up, reaching for the woman's hands; they're cold and clammy to the touch.

"Do you want to go and get coffee?" Joan asks, biting her lip.

"I've got a break at 12:30 -"

"N-Now… if… if you can." Her voice is soft and shaky, her tone terrified, like some horrifying and omniscient being is listening in on their conversation. This isn't Joan. Joan is a big fan of pleasant conversation, rabbits, and pleasant conversation about rabbits (of which she owns three and gives Yoon Seo daily updates on their adventures). This Joan speaking right now is anxious and almost afraid.

With a sigh, Yoon Seo nods and puts her hand on Joan's shoulder. "Yeah, sure." Those are the last words spoken between the women before their arrival at a nearby coffeeshop.

It doesn't take her long to speak up once the two of them have settled. Joan isn't too good at keeping things bottled up inside; she is as honest and open as one could be -almost to a fault -and Yoon Seo feels dread pooling in the pit of her stomach at the thought of something Joan would want to keep a secret. Of course, Joan is small and sheltered despite being twenty-seven years old, so this could all be something trivial in comparison to the horrors speeding through Yoon Seo's mind.

"I- I can't… don't know how to… tell you- I can't say…" The woman begins to babble, her entire body shaking and her voice just as well. Her tone is hesitant and lower than a whisper, while her eyes still search for the omniscient being from before. Yoon Seo doesn't know how to stop it or how to make her better, so she simply reaches out for her hand and nods slowly; somehow, this gets Joan to shut her mouth and take a deep breath before trying again. "Bill," she finally blurts out. Her voice is still quiet and almost inaudible, but it's louder than the frantic rasping noises she had been making earlier.

Yoon Seo isn't sure she heard her friend correctly, but her mind begins to put things together anyway. "Bill?" She can see it in her mind already -

"He… he… f-fuh…" The word struggles to get out of the girl's throat and Yoon Seo can feel a dark cloud forming over their heads -or maybe it's just Yoon Seo's dark cloud reaching out and darkening Joan's sky as well. Joan puts her hands around her neck, feeling for her voice-box, as though that would make her words come out more easily.

"What did he do?" She almost doesn't want Joan to answer. Somehow she already knows; she has been expecting it in some sick, twisted way.

"He fucked me." she blurts out in as hushed a tone as she could manage.

No, that's not the correct term, Yoon Seo thinks; he didn't fuck her. He raped her. Joan isn't good at putting words together… or maybe she's scared that if she says the real word, that it would make her experience very real. Yoon Seo wants to feel empathy in that moment… she feels like that's what a normal person should feel… and she can only feel blind, murderous rage. Maybe it's because in that moment, she's broken too.

She can see it in her mind already -she can see how she's going to end him.

"Don't tell anyone, Yoonie."

She doesn't feel like Yoon Seo; she feels like a robot, cycling through files, her mind barely reading her thoughts as she tries to find the one she wants. It's an empty feeling. For a moment there's nothing on her mind at all, white noise and blackness. Her face is blank and her green eyes are nearly brown under her long lashes and the rain clouds whirling overhead.

She knows Bill's schedule; she watches him when she has nothing to do -she watches everyone, but this is the knowledge she chooses to access. He deliberately keeps his appointment book empty; 'one of the perks of the job' he tells everyone but his boss. He's sloppy though, like he wouldn't even dream of the target on his back, carved into his flesh and filled in with mucus and grime.

"What can I do for you?" he asks, surprised to see her in his office, and she's surprised to be there herself. She shuts the door behind her -one of the first warnings on the job was never to shut yourself in with this man if you were a woman; not really hitting at the root of the problem if that is the unspoken rule they choose to enforce rather than the more absolute alternative, an absolute alternative that she intends to bring into existence.

"I was hoping we could… discuss a thing or two," she tells him, her voice betraying no hint of emotion, and thankfully, men are infinitely skilled in the art of creating implication where there is none -that's what she's counting on. Men… they don't change.

It's her brain on autopilot, her entire body moving of its own accord. As far as she's concerned, she's been dead from the moment she began setting this plot into action, watching an empty shell of herself from above and wondering if she's doing the right thing. Too late when you're dead.

In fact she doesn't even need her degree in psychology to know how he wanted to interpret her actions and how he'll react. He does everything she needs him to like a scripted robot, his coarse hands grabbing her by the collar of her shirt, his wasted breath on her face, and now it's too late for him to back down. She shoves him away, scratching at his skin, making sure to get it firmly under her nails -it needs to be convincing.

He's heavy on top of her, and maybe she underestimated his weight, but it's too late. All too late.

She's breathing heavily, throwing a calculated strike to his neck and rushing to the back of his office near the tall glass windows. They aren't meant to be opened, but maybe she can coerce them… He follows after her, and even though she knows she's minutes away from the end she can't help but let out a smirk at how easy this is. He isn't stupid, of course, and he pins her against the window, making the entire row of fixtures vibrate under the sudden pressure.

"What are you doing, Song. Do you think this is some kind of fucking game?"

"What do you think I'm doing?" she says, deciding to stop the charade and give him a lazy smile.

"I could kill you right here and no one would bat a single eyelash. Your life is worthless. You think I haven't done a background check on you, Song? You live alone. You have no friends, no family, not even a goddamned cat. Do you think you can just end me right here, right now?" he asks, watching her face falter and for a moment feeling himself swell up with victory. "I'll let this one slide if you drop to your knees right now and give me a quick one. And then you take that tight ass of yours out of this office, clean yourself off, and get me that report ready in time for the meeting at eleven."

She doesn't say anything for what seems like forever, his hands digging into the skin of her wrists. Feeling her jaw tighten, she grimaces. "Fine." And the pressure on her wrists is gone, allowing her to drop to her knees. He turns them around so he's leaning more comfortably against the glass, and then proceeds to unzip his pants.

And oh, he is just too easy.

Checkmate.

In one final show of strength, she butts her head against his crotch, causing him to lose his balance, his body crashing against the glass, his head breaking through completely. He dies long before she does, his neck impaled on one stubborn shard of glass; it doesn't take much to push the rest of him through -the first cracks have already set.

He's heavier than she expected, even heavier when he's dead, but she has to make this convincing. She's got him by the front of his shirt, making sure he doesn't fall yet. He doesn't get to choose his final thoughts, and though her mind is working with the resolve of a small toy at the ends of its battery life, she wants the insignificant privilege of being the survivor, the last one standing. Even though she's about to die, she knows that she's won; and perhaps she's been more proactive today than she's been in her entire life.

She wants to cry or something, not stare at Bill's lifeless face, her expression even more lifeless. She wonders if anyone heard the glass breaking, but nobody has burst through the door yet, if that's any indication.

He's not particularly overweight for a lecherous pig, but his weight beginning to build up strain in her unathletic arms, and she figures that it's now or never. There's no point in waiting to get caught.

The last thing she does is push him over, holding on to his shirt, making sure he's pulling her down with him. With enough circumstantial and physical evidence, she can only hope that he doesn't get off for this just because he's dead. But it's too late for thoughts like that.

She lets go of him midair and lets the both of them freefall into the congested sidewalk. She can feel her consciousness slip and it's a nice feeling.

GIVE IN.

She's paralyzed, time standing still, and she can't make her eyelids move, let alone her lips… but you don't need to tell her twice. She's been waiting her entire life to give in.

"Yoon Seo," Ishizu says, breaking the woman out of her reverie.

Sun's face twists, her eyes still fixed on the tiny girl meekly trying to get the door to the stairwell open -Lorna… Once she disappears behind the large metal slab, Sun turns around and firmly bores her eyes into Ishizu's. "I told you to call me Sun."

Ishizu looks uncomfortable under Sun's gaze, but she doesn't flinch away from it. "My apologies, but you weren't responding." An inquisitive look on her face, she asks, "What were you thinking about?"

"My last day," Sun replies quicker than she expects. She's never told Ishizu of that day and she never intended to tell anyone, but she finds herself more forthcoming in this unhinged state. "You know I studied psychology in my past life?"

Ishizu moves silently towards Sun and places her hand in the crook of a shaking elbow. "It suits you," she says in a soothing voice, feeling Sun's tension ease under her touch.

"I wasn't any good at it." Sun let out a derisive scoff. After a moment of complete silence, she speaks up again. "Hey, Ish… did you notice anything strange about Lorna?"

"Strange?" Ishizu asks. "I do not know her that well…"

"No, I mean…The way she walks… the way she talks... " Sun tries to elaborate. "She can't make eye contact with people. Have you noticed that?"

"She seems very shy and withdrawn," Ishizu offers, unsure of where Sun is taking their conversation.

"Not paranoid? Terrified? Sick?"

"After what she's been through today, I would imagine she has been under a lot of stress," Ishizu states, crossing her arms and glancing at the door to the dueling arena. "It would only be natural."

"I… I have a bad feeling," Sun mumbles, feeling her legs start to move her towards the exit. "He's still up there, isn't he?" she more states than asks, stopping right before the door.

"Are you worried about what he'll do to her?" Ishizu asks, her mind torn between trusting that her brother couldn't possibly be that depraved, and wondering what this new Marik is capable of.

Sun's face tightened. "More worried about what she's going to let him do," she says, pulling on the latch and dragging the door open. "Are you coming?" She turns to face Ishizu before going inside. Ishizu nods firmly and makes her way across the room to join Sun.

There, now that THAT's over with, the next chapter will be Lorna as usual.

Anyway, I wanted to ask you, now that I've gotten a reasonable number of followers and views on my fanfic, would any of you be interested if I started a tumblr blog for it? It'll mostly be for anyone who wants to ask something about the fanfic or characters, or just to mess around, and also so I can dump all my musical inspiration for you guys to listen to (and of course any fanworks I get). Would anyone be interested in something like that? I'll open up a poll on my profile for you guys (because I know not all of you like to review) and please let me know :) I've seen other authors do stuff like this and I thought it could be fun.