Here comes the ending of the story! And I don't know if my experiment was a failure or a success. I got one person cheering 'just make her end up with Yugi after a glorious apocalyptic battle!' and another person cheering, 'no! Make her end up with Yami! she loved him first!' and a whole bunch of other people just shrugging and saying they're as lost as I am.
But its time that I wrap this story up. I got a job ghostwriting a novel and, well, money makes the world go round. And yes, I am a full-time professional writer, woot woot, it does happen and they do exist outside of the realm of J.K. Rowling and Stephen King. But yes, time to wrap up my playtime so I can go back to work.
Now, grab some sweedish fish. This is going to be epic (I hope).
(p.s. please excuse my little mistakes, I didn't have time to edit. I'm also sorry this chapter is shorter than most, my baby wouldn't let me write longer.)
Chapter Ten: A Tidal Wave of Time
Seto wasn't entirely sure why Shadi was back in his break room. After having lost his temper at a small-end, third grade game store again, and all because of this blue eyed turban wearing freak, he couldn't be less happy to see him. Annoyed beyond belief, he sipped his coffee, letting one of his most poisonous glares be enough for the man.
Not to mention he was fairly unnerved by the crazed look in the Egyptian's usually blank face.
He swirled the creamer in floating across the dark liquid as he waited.
"She's gone," said Shadi, his voice flat.
"Whoopty." said Seto across the brim of his mug.
The building shivered and the coffee machine burst into a large pedestal and stone mortar with residue of what looked like flour still in it. Then it flashed back into a coffee machine and the lights flickered between firelight and artificial light.
Unphased, Seto continued to sip his coffee. He couldn't work like this, so at least he could enjoy his drink. Shame on anyone who ruined that last bit of pleasure for him.
Shadi, on the other hand, looked wide-eyed at his shifting surroundings. Sweat trickled past his turban and onto his chin.
"Please, is there anything you can do to help me? How did you find her last time?"
"No can do," said Seto, "with your luck my computer will turn into a rosetta stone again the moment I try looking." Man, irish cream. Good stuff
Shadi clutched his key, lips pale. "Can you find Mutou then? Perhaps with that device you used to locate the duel disks."
"Creepy how you know that, but I sincerely doubt Mutou is nerdy enough to carry that with
him outside of a tournament. Are you done yet?"
The floor shook again. This time when the light flickered it wasn't to candle light, but to darkness. The red emergency light was left to light the room alone. Seto finished the last of his coffee in one gulp and it burned all the way down to his stomach. He smacked his lips.
"Well, world's going to hell. Might as well get Mokuba and go home." he set his mug onto a table and made his way to the door, walking past the panicking Egyptian.
"Kaiba-!"
"Don't care."
"But we must find her, or the world-"
"World will end, everyone will die, because that's what evil Egyptian bastards like doing, yes, I know."
"Will you humble your arrogant heart and listen to me for once!"
Kaiba paused for only a second. In that second several things went through his mind. First the usual thoughts of how he really didn't care (he did tell the truth there, for despite his flaws he prided himself for his honesty), but behind that all was a smaller voice, a much older voice, which had prodded him through doing anything for the dweeb squad and their Egyptian fairy tales. It whispered they might be telling the truth. It whispered so softly he only moved on it by instinct, not by thought, word, or even emotion.
It was this voice that made him turn, but it was it's small prominence in his mind that made him snarl.
"Why can't you freaks just leave me be?" he said, "I am one of the most powerful men in the world, but I'm not a philanthropist, and for god's sake, I'm not a magician. Now thanks to you my life's work is turning into rocks and we all might be back in the bronze age tomorrow."
Shadi's eyes had turned cold. "But it's worse than that."
"Oh really? Let me guess, everyone dies."
Shadi said nothing, but his silence spoke a lot more than Seto wanted to hear. Cursing loudly, he kicked a trash can by the door and turned back around. The small voice was whispering again, and like always, he simply moved.
"Let's go find your damn girl."
The other man stood stunned and it took him a moment to follow the CEO.
"But how?" he asked, "you already told me your technology won't work in all this."
"Destiny," said Seto bitterly, "it hasn't failed yet to throw me in the middle of the crap, and where the middle of the crap is where she and Motou would be."
"I thought you didn't believe in destiny?"
"I don't."
And with that the two left down the stairs through the haze of red emergency lights.
! #$%^&*(&^%$# $%^&*
Yami shoved his abiou into the puzzle faster than he ever had before and leapt into Aleah right as the carriage and horses flashed back into a car and smashed into the building. Glass and bits of plastic showered across them and Yami flung his body across Aleah. It was only a moment later when he felt the sting of cuts along his back did he curse himself for his stupidity. He hadn't thought of Yugi.
Don't worry about me, he heard from the puzzle, Aleah!
Yami lifted himself away. "Are you all right?"
The girl beneath him groaned and raised her head, blinking. "Ugh, what in the world…"
He breathed a sigh of relief and made to stand, careful of the glass, when he heard a distinct hissing behind him. He looked around in time to notice something clear dripping from the car. Car's don't have water…
A thrill of horrified panic shot across his mind link with Yugi and he didn't need to ask before yanking Aleah up and bolting. She nearly tripped but he kept yanking her into motion, heart hammering, adrenaline pumping.
Only a few seconds later, the car exploded.
Glass and metal whizzed over their heads and Yami yanked Aleah and himself into an ally. The acrid smell of burnt rubber saturated the air, making them cough.
The horror he could feel from Yugi hadn't abated.
Those poor women…
Aleah leaned against the building, panting, eyes wide.
"Did what I think just happen just happen?" she said, then she looked to the side to see Yami and her face fell blank. "Oh."
Yami just looked back, his mind blank. Now here he was, facing her once more. Choas had erupted around them, two women were just scorched to death behind them, and yet he had no idea what to do. He usually could come up with at least some ideas of what to do in a desperate situation, but this was no duel. This was no shadow magic. For one of the few times in his life, he truly felt powerless, and right when he had to protect someone more than ever.
And he even had the stupidity to keep staring at her like that, even after she had turned away.
"We should do something."
"Like what?" he managed to say.
The burning rubber smell began to abate, allowing the smell of urine and trash to float up from the ally. Screaming filled the air, along with the general white noise of chaos. The sky couldn't decide on the weather and the very buildings around them seemed unstable.
Aleah took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. She closed her eyes, white lashes like fans across her flushed cheeks.
"Time is being upset," she said, "it's the same feeling of when I saw the time rift back in Egypt, except multiplied. I don't understand how this happened, but it feels like a really big rift. If it is just a rift, it should just go away eventually, but...aw man, I don't know what I'm saying, I don't even know what I'm talking about." she melted down the wall, slapping her hands to her forehead and running her hands through her hair. "Oh, pharaoh, I don't know what to do. I guess there's one good thing to all this, though."
"What?" asked Yami.
"The apocalypse sure makes it easy to ignore how awkward it is to see you again."
Another explosion came from somewhere in the distance. Rain abruptly poured down on them, then vanished just as quickly. Yami wiped the water out of his eyes and coughed to clear his lungs once more. They stood in silence for a moment, even when a pile of trash next to them shifted into a small sphinx then back again. The whole time Yami fought the urge to reach over and touch her and scrambled for something to say, but the problem was, he had too much to say. He could feel his chest constricting, but still he held back.
Yet there was no denying it. Even flushed, wet, and dirty, something undeniable and overwhelming washed over him. He loved her. He barely remembered her, but he loved her.
And yet, his abiou…
Closing his eyes he retreated back into the puzzle, nudging Yugi out. Even as Yugi took over, he could feel the confused curiosity being aimed his way. His partner, his lighter half, his savior, was also in love with her as well, whether he recognized it or not. And although he would give his life for Aleah without ever really knowing why, he would give his existence for Yugi with a complete understanding of why.
Besides, Yugi was far better than he ever was. Aleah would be happier with a man who was endlessly kind, not a man who had chained her as a slave and betrayed her. Not someone as arrogant, weak, and selfish as him.
"Aleah, are you hurt?" asked Yugi.
Yami turned to his soul room without a smile and looked up into the endless maze of his thoughts. As he looked at each door without really seeing them, he started to laugh out loud. The sound bounced off of the empty walls and staircases. How ridiculous could he get? The world was ending and he was more upset about the turn of his love life.
#$%^&*(&^%$ #! #$%^
Yugi couldn't decipher what was going on in Yami's mind as he sunk deeper into the puzzle. Though concerned, a part of him suspected that he didn't want to know what Yami was thinking. But he knew anyways as he looked up at Aleah and tried to focus on the task at hand.
"Aleah, are you hurt?"
She looked up at him in surprised and smiled that soft smile of hers. It caught Yugi off guard. How did she manage that at a time like this?
"Yugi! You're back!" she blinked and her smile dropped. "Boy, that's weird."
He was about to say 'tell me about it,' when the ground shook so hard they both fell onto their knees. Rain pattered on and off on their heads.
"You're bleeding!" she said.
"A car exploded," he said. That was enough of an explanation.
"So I haven't just lost my mind." she shook herself. "Forget that, what do we-" she stopped, staring at some point in the sky behind him. Her mouth dropped slightly. He turned around as well and looked hard, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Well, as out of the ordinary as everything had gone, given.
"What do you see?"
"The rift," she said breathlessly, "oh, it's huge. And so bright."
"I don't see anything." then he had to smack himself. Of course he couldn't see it. He wasn't Aleah.
"We need to find Shadi." she said as she pushed off from the wall.
"How-wait, why? Can't you see the time rift? What is a time rift anyways?"
"It's like a wave in a river. Shadi and I, well, we're kind of like surfers of the waves and we can see which one's are big enough to ride. If you can get on a wave you can ride a river to any destination you want, backwards or forwards. He told me time's like a circle too, a river that moves in a circle. You just have to keep focused on your goal." she shook her hands and looked at him with worry lines wrinkling her brow. "But like a surfer, if you do it wrong, you can drown. It's what also happened to me. Shadi's more experienced than I am, he should know what's happening and what to do about it."
Yugi followed her to the edge of the ally and peeked out with her. The streets were like a picture from a bad horror film and they both drew back. He glanced back up into the sky with her.
"I take it what you're seeing then is like a tidal wave."
She nodded, "Yeah. But something had to cause it. Something that shook time."
"Makes sense," he said, "real life tidal waves are caused by earthquakes. I wonder what could shake time, though." He fingered his puzzle without thinking about it and an idea came to mind. "I think I can help you find him."
She looked back at him. "Really?"
"This one time when I needed to find Joey the puzzle helped me to find him. Maybe…" he wrapped the puzzle up in his hands, trying to block out the noise of the panicked city. He could feel Yami stirring at his prods. He could feel the faintest touch of his ghostlike hands on his own as he prayed.
Please, Millennium Puzzle, help us find Shadi.
For a minute all he saw was the dark red underside of his eyelids. Then an image flashed across his mind. He saw Seto Kaiba, marching down a street, a familiar pissed off look sharpening his features. Behind him wandered an unnaturally worried looking Shadi. They were passing an arcade Yugi often frequented.
He opened his eyes and took her hand.
"I know where they are."
! #!$%^&*(&^%$# #$%^&*(
The fabric of the landscape looked torn and mismatched. The bright Egyptian sky had stripes of dark rain clouds across it, as though the blue had been clawed at revealing the greyness beneath. The glittering Nile flickered with black stone and the Pyramids in the distance kept straightening into tall, gleaming rectangle like buildings. Below his vantage point on top of the tower, the streets of Thebes were filled with panicking civilians. Atem's hands hurt from how hard he was clenching the railing.
"Is this another trick of Akifa?" he asked Set besides him. His cousin also stared in wide-mouthed confusion.
"I don't know." he said. "I've...I've never seen anything like this."
Across the city there came an explosion and fire spittled across the nearby thatched roofs. Instantly they took flame. Atem and Seth looked on in horror as the flames spread like locus from house to house, spitting out black plumes of smoke.
Footsteps pounded behind them and Shimon appeared, red-faced and wheezing. Set and Atem turned to meet him.
"Shimon, you shouldn't push yourself so at your age." said Atem, holding out his hands in case he had to catch the old man.
"I'll be all right, your majesty, but the city is falling apart!"
"I can see that."
"But that's not all," he straightened and wiped sweat off his leathery like face. "Shadi is missing!"
"What?"
"He was there, and suddenly he wasn't! He just vanished! And right after this all started."
Set and Atem exchanged glances. What had any of this to do with Shadi?
But before they could open discussion on it, rain started falling from the tears in the sky and in the distance a whole line of the rectangular like buildings appeared. The people below began screaming as strange metal poles and glass started falling from nowhere. More strange objects appeared around the city, taking the place of everyday objects such as stands, barrels, and house decorations.
"We'll have to discuss this later," said Atem, "Set, get some soldiers down there to calm the people and get them out of the city. I'll need a team to put out these fires as well, gather volunteers, if you must. Shimon," he turned to the elderly priest, "get the priests together and, for the sake of all that's holy, figure out what is happening here."
The two bowed low then ran down the stairs with Set in the lead. Atem watched them go before turning back to the city, his hand on his millenium puzzle.
As he ran through his mind of options he could do himself, a flicker of a white figured appeared beneath him, running behind a slender young man with similar hair to his own-it could only be himself. Before he could decide if what he was seeing was a trick of the mind or not, they vanished with the shadows of the clouds. He stood frozen to the spot. That could have only been one person.
Aleah.