Kuriboh just seemed like an important addition here, and I'm not sure why he took the role he does here; but I don't think it's a bad thing that he showed up. It adds a touch of whimsy to the whole affair, and I think that's important.
Even in the darkest times, even when we're desperate to see something done, sometimes it's important to have something soft and fluffy around.
We can all just pretend that that's what I meant to do, yeah?
.
If not for the fact that Yugi was so obviously over the moon, Yuki might have thought that this little brown puffball with green-skinned claws was a prank. Kuriboh floated around like an excitable balloon, making little trilling sounds and brushing against Yugi's face. It was like watching a boy reunited with a favored puppy. Watching them together, Yuki found that she couldn't be too disappointed that their guide looked like a cross between a tumbleweed, a bullfrog, and a streetlamp.
Kuriboh's eyes gleamed even in stark daylight.
Sotaro started digging around his pack until he found his deck of Magic & Wizards cards. He sifted through them until he found the card he wanted and held it up for his parents to see. It was unmistakably the little animal floating in front of their eyes.
"Kuriboh is a defensive monster," Sotaro declared.
"Yes, he is," Yugi said, in a soft lilt that made it sound like he really was talking about his own pet. "And he's going to help us find our way to the mountain, aren't you, buddy?"
Kuriboh made his little trilling call and fluttered about.
He spun about Sotaro's head several times, flipping upside down and right-side up again, then settled near the boy's shoulder and studied the card in his hand. Kuriboh reached out with one of his tiny claws and tapped the artwork.
"That's you," Sotaro said, and Kuriboh trilled happily.
"I think I know why Kuriboh volunteered to help us," Yugi said. "He's one of the few monsters I know who's defeated the Blue-Eyes before. If anybody in this world isn't gonna be afraid of her, it's him."
Yuki took in the full sight of Kuriboh again. Quirked an eyebrow. "I imagine that was quite the match," she said flatly.
Yugi chuckled. "It was a, uh . . . well, it's a pretty long story. And really, I don't think I'm at liberty to tell it." At the Yagamis' searching looks, he held up his hands. "Kaiba and I have a fraught relationship with the game. There's a lot that goes into explaining our games against each other."
"Hm," said Yuki.
"In any case, we ought to get moving." Yugi adjusted the straps of his pack. "The sooner we get started, the sooner we can plead our case. We don't know how long we have before things go sideways again. Back home."
"For all we know," Kohaku said, "things could already be going sideways." As they began their unceremonious march along the dirt road leading out past the relative safety of the markets, he looked around. "Is this not sideways? What are we even doing?" He looked at his wife. "We're adults. We pay taxes. We have a water bill."
Yuki patted her husband's arm. "Sometimes," she said, "you just have to roll with the punches."
"I'm fine with rolling," Kohaku said. "I just wish there were fewer punches."
His sour mood didn't last long. It was difficult to be irritated when Sotaro was so obviously charmed, and there wasn't any denying that this world called the Barrier—at least here in the vast, oceanic fields surrounding the Great Arcade—was a staggeringly beautiful place. The air was crisp and clean, and the grass was so green that it was almost painful to behold. Wildflowers swayed in the breeze as they passed, so vibrant and filled with life that it seemed like they were dancing.
Which, Kohaku supposed, wasn't so farfetched an idea.
Who was he to say flowers couldn't dance here?
Sotaro kept a running monologue of the things he saw, with Yugi interjecting every so often with some tidbit of information from the game that had been built out of this world. Kuriboh danced around their heads accenting the conversation at certain intervals. Eventually, Sotaro started going through his other monsters and asking the little creature how many of them he knew.
Most, it seemed, Kuriboh found familiar.
"Really?" Sotaro asked eventually, snapping Kohaku out of a reverie; he'd been staring off in the distance at rolling clouds obscuring the horizon line, wondering if they would get rained on. "Tournaments? That sounds great!"
"Wait." Yugi stopped. Turned. "You can understand him?"
Sotaro stared openly at Yugi, clearly surprised at the question. "Um. Yes? He's been talking this whole time."
Kohaku closed his eyes, a slow smile spreading across his face. "But of course," he said. "Of course he can talk to them."
Yuki hid a grin with one hand. "Always full of surprises. That's our boy."
"Tournaments," Yugi repeated.
"Yuh-huh." Sotaro nodded. "Kuriboh says the beasts and warriors hold tourneys on festival days. It helps them train and show off their new moves. Monsters come around from all over so they can watch and study. Jousting, sparring, wood chopping, wood carving, stone stacking, all kinds of things."
"How many festival days are there?" Yugi wondered.
"A hundred," Sotaro said promptly. Yugi gave a low whistle. "There's so many different teams and factions, and there's all kinds of chances for the monsters to compete." It was clear the boy was entranced by this idea; he looked starstruck. "I wonder if we'll get to see one."
Kohaku found that he didn't feel right, thinking of the people who passed them on the road, in carts and on horses—and other animals—as monsters. But all the same, he recognized so many different features and flourishes from the card artwork he'd seen before. They weren't identical, the cards and these actual beings, but they were close enough to make him do double-takes at regular intervals as he recognized them.
The thought crossed his mind that he would have a permanent neck injury by the time he made it back home. If he made it back home.
Kohaku stopped dead on the trail and shook his head. No. No. This was not the time to be thinking about failure. It was going to be hard enough, doing what needed to be done. The last thing he needed was the seductive crutch of nihilism.
In attempting to force himself back into the moment, Kohaku was first to notice the stranger approaching. They were moving nearer to them than the other travelers so far, wrapped in a brown cloak with a deep cowl that obscured their features. Most pilgrims kept to one side of the path or the other, depending on whether they were heading toward or away from the Arcade; this stranger wasn't doing that. Rather, they were veering closer as they came up near Yugi.
Kuriboh was busy talking to Sotaro, and Yugi was focused on the path ahead. Neither noticed the hooded stranger. Kohaku kept them in his sights, all but sure he knew what was going on, and felt quite confident when he noticed them moving to collide with Yuki.
Kohaku whispered: "Step light."
Yuki slid smoothly to one side even as the stranger swerved to bump into her. The survival knife she'd strapped to her belt was sheathed in one moment, in her hand the next, and she brought it up to level it under the stranger's chin without changing her expression.
She looked pleasantly bored.
"You don't want to make this interaction any more awkward than it is," Yuki murmured, as Yugi whipped around and gawped at them. "Walk away, and we pretend none of this happened. You don't know me, I don't know you, and we don't have to move past that. Isn't that right?"
The stranger nodded and bolted away.
Kohaku let out a breath and shook his head.
He smiled at Yugi's deer-in-headlights expression.
"Yuki's from an old yakuza family."
