Chapter Twenty-Six

The rest of the Act consisted of set up scenes that killed Nadia's and Sota's characters. Although they were filming in the other half of the Inn at the moment, Sota and Tristan had rooms and hallways set up in exact copies of the ones on this end, so that when all put together, they would seem to be all in the same wing. Sota's character Akihito would leave his room, which appeared to be across the hall from Joey's, see a mysterious figure walking away that, according to the script, he mistook for Ishio, and would follow it, only to lose track of it. He'd creep downstairs, searching, only to be surprised off-screen on the bottom floor. His scream would be only just loud enough to rouse Nadia's character Nicole, who would leave and go in search of the noise. Why she went alone, Yugi had no idea, but that was horror movies for you. Even the script didn't bother to explain it.

Afterwards, the other characters were roused by antics from the killer, including banging on the walls, running down the stairs ahead of them, and ultimately leading them to the kitchen, where Nadia's character was displayed, skinned and gutted like a deer. End of Act II.

How charming.

The four of them here were sent back into their bedrooms, Yugi noting how uncomfortable and stiff Joey now seemed around Nadia. He'd had no clue she had a crush on him, and now that he did know, he was slowly starting to freak out about it. Yugi wished he could help, but he didn't know how to go about it. Maybe he could ask Tea.

For a while, he and Rin again had nothing to do but watch. Joey and Nadia climbed into the bed under the covers and the lights were dimmed somewhat. In the semi darkness, beneath the covers, Nadia tugged her nightgown off again and set it on the floor, then lay down. Joey closed his eyes and tried to fake snore, which ended up sounding like a rusty chainsaw hitting a tree knot. Nadia started giggling and the lights went back up. Smiling herself, Erica suggested that Joey just lay still with his eyes closed.

The lights went down again, but Nadia had caught the giggles and kept dissolving into them every time she looked at Joey, which clearly started to aggravate him. Erica had Nadia leave the room to calm down, which embarrassed her, and Yugi took the opportunity to go over to Joey.

"She doesn't mean anything by it," he said.

Joey huffed. As Yugi stared at him in silent reproach, he caved. "I know. It's just-"

"I know, but nothing will come of it, so don't worry about it. I'll talk to Tea. She might have some advice. In the meantime, don't bring it up. We still need to work together."

Joey nodded sullenly, but visibly relaxed, so Yugi left the room as Nadia came back. She apologized to Joey, who accepted it with an awkward smile. Yugi could see Rin looking at him curiously, clearly having heard him speaking to Joey, but she didn't say anything.

They reset and this time both Joey and Nadia were perfectly silent and still. Then, with a sound cue from one of the tech guys that would be dubbed over with Sota's scream, Nadia jerked slightly, then lifted her head from the pillow, listening. After a moment, she reached over and shook Joey's shoulder.

"I think I heard something."

As scripted, Joey only rolled over. As Nicole, Nadia frowned at him, then climbed out of bed. The cameras were studiously only on her back as she reached down for the nightgown and pulled it on. Yugi looked away while she did, even though he knew she was wearing the cover.

On her feet, Nadia picked up her flashlight, padded to the door, listened at it for a minute, then cracked the door open and listened again. Nothing but silence. She pulled the door open a little wider and peeked out, and that's when she noticed that Sota's door was open. She crossed the hall and used her flashlight to peer in and see the room was empty. It was of course not the room that Sota, across the Inn, was filming his scenes in, but made up to look exactly like it.

A sound tech down the hallway creaked a stair riser, playing the part of the unknown killer. Nadia's attention jerked to the staircase and then she started down the hallway, hem of the nightgown flying, hair bobbing, in a good facsimile of anger.

"Akihito, if that's you playing another trick on us, I'm going to kick you right in the balls!"

Joey snorted laughter, then immediately smothered himself in his pillow. Thankfully, none of the microphones were close enough to him and his own personal mike had been shut off as he had no lines. Yugi rolled his eyes, then watched on the monitor as Nadia reached the head of the stairs and stared down them.

Downstairs, under supervision of yet another assistant Yugi had never met, but had seen around, a tech walked past where "moonlight" was streaming through open curtains, causing a shadow to move across the floor. Nadia started down the stairs in righteous ire, crossed the threshold of the room the killer had gone into, and Erica cut for their group.

Nadia came back upstairs and Erica had nothing but praise.

Next was Rin and Yugi, who were for this shot only going to pretend to be asleep. Their characters did not hear anything of Nadia's and Sota's deaths until they were awakened by the killer taunting them. So, he and Rin climbed into the bed, Yugi examining the lamp next to the bed while Rin took off her nightgown and drew up the covers, and then they lay down and closed their eyes. Jason, who really was a nicer character than Adam, was actually cuddling with Yuki. Yugi privately thought, that if Adam and Nicole had been real people, that Nicole could have done a lot better than Adam.

The shot was finished and they exited the room. As Yugi did, he felt a mix of relief and satisfaction fill him. He'd done it, he and Joey both. And Kevin really had been right, he was loathe to admit, it really hadn't been as bad, in retrospect, as he'd thought it would be.

"We're going to need to work fast here to stay on schedule," Erica said. "Candy's sent up some grub we've laid out like a little buffet. Take real good care to keep your costumes clean as you eat, but we pretty much gotta eat on the fly. You four decide which pair of you eats and which pair of you sets up for getting a rude awakening. Well, which pair and which single, since Nadia's done for the time being."

"I'm not hungry," Rin said, then looked at Yugi.

Knowing that Joey was clearly torn between satisfying his appetite and getting to the blood and gore, Yugi agreed he wasn't hungry enough to take a break. So, as Joey, Nadia, and one each of the cameramen and boom mike operators headed to the table set up in the room behind Erica's monitoring station, which was now home to half a dozen covered metal buffet dishes, Yugi and Rin headed once again back to their bedroom set piece.

"Okay, you two go back to sleep. Doug here is going to be set up in the corner with Mike our mike man-" A joking nickname told over and over again with no end in sight "-getting a shot of you two reacting to our mystery killer trying to get in your room. We're going to shut the door and lock it. Then Amber's going to be rattling the door knob, shaking the door in its frame, pounding on it, the whole works. Remember how it goes?"

They nodded. "We think it's Akihito at first, then start to get worried," Rin said dutifully.

"Right. Nuance is really important here, body language, expressions, the growing dread in your voices, so expect we're going to be running this one a lot."

And they did, but not as often as the complicated diner scene. Rin was actually a pretty good actress, and her falsified mounting terror seemed so genuine that the atmosphere infected Yugi and he was halfway to spooked himself. Rin clutched his arm so tightly that he was glad for the terrycloth robe that padded her nails.

After a solid thirty seconds of wordless aggression, the door went still and running footsteps, from another assistant Yugi had forgotten the name of, heralded tense silence. Yuki and Jason then ended up out in the hall when Adam's short-tempered raging at Akihito started. At that point, the group realized Nicole was missing, sped through getting redressed, and headed out on a search party for their missing friends.

"Time to swap out," Erica said. "Great job, Rin, Yugi."

Back at the buffet table, Joey and Nadia were talking. Well, Nadia was, and flirting outright now, while Joey looked uncomfortable. He really had been unaware that Nadia liked him.

Yugi reluctantly went over to interrupt. Nadia was a nice girl, and he hated that she was going to be disappointed. He was pretty sure the kissing scene with Joey had made what might have been a passing attraction a million times worse. As he joined the pair, he did not miss Nadia's faint frown in his direction.

"What do you think is going on on the other side of the hotel?" he asked. "With Tristan's character Stefan, I mean."

"Who knows?" Nadia said, pointedly dismissive. "Guess we'll find out. Or, you could ask Erica for us."

She stared at him, practically having a blinking GO AWAY sign over her head. Yugi smiled weakly and pretended to have missed her inflection. He shrugged and said, "You know how she is, no spoilers, not even for us."

"Yeah, so, I guess we'll just have to wait, huh? Anyway… Joey, I was-"

"We know he's not the killer," Joey said quickly, latching onto Yugi's ploy. "But maybe there's two killers. He lures people in, and the guy with the skull ring offs them."

"Yeah, maybe," Yugi agreed, feeling like a jerk as Nadia glared at him.

"Joey, over here, please," Erica called. "Let me make sure you don't need a touch-up with Marie."

Nadia huffed and turned away, stalking over to the room's armchair and flopping into it, taking out her script and disappearing into it, though she surely had it memorized. Joey gave Yugi a tight-lipped grimace that was mixed gratitude and guilt. Feeling the same way, Yugi watched him go over to Erica before he turned to the buffet. He still wasn't really hungry, but it was something to do and they still had a few hours to go on their day.

The buffet was comprised of light finger foods. Small triangular sandwiches; a charcuterie board of crackers, cheese, and pepperoni; a bowl of mixed nuts with dried apricots and cranberries; chocolate chip cookies; and a small selection of cans of soda and bottled water. Yugi and Rin got themselves some food and went to stand behind Erica at the monitoring station. There wasn't much for Joey to do except come awake at the pounding at the door across the hall, fumble out of bed, cross the room, and yank open his own door. His character did see the killer run off, mistaking him for Akihito in the dark, and railed curses at him. He was only stopped from immediately giving chase by Yuki and Jason, who had come out into the hall, noticing Nicole was gone. Unfortunately, Ishio's character would rejoin them at this point, realize Yuki had spent the night with Jason, and delay further investigation by wanting to make rude remarks. It was only the killer downstairs messing around that prevented a fight from breaking out.

Joey had to do his own scene a couple times over, once because he bumped his mike, once because he tongue-tied himself. He got it perfectly on the third try and looked quite pleased with himself as Erica called a wrap for the time being while she called Kevin on the other side of the Inn and verified where he was with the other group.

"You did great," Yugi said when he rejoined them, which made him beam brighter.

"Yeah, I did, didn't I? Thanks, Spiky."

"All right, everyone," Erica said. "We need to get a move on. Ishio is headed down this way while Kevin works on some more scenes with just Tristan and Mark. We've got to wrap up the rest of the hallway scenes, then tomorrow we're on to the cat-and-mouse downstairs. Nadia, you'll be filming your death scene at a later date. Instead, what we'll have first is have Marie and Johanna and some more makeup artists they work with get you done up and we'll position you in the kitchen. Remember, the makeup process for this will take hours while they paint up your entire body. Although, rest assured, honey, there's no nudity. We've got a great bodysuit you'll be wearing that'll then be covered up in prosthetics."

Nadia nodded, though she didn't look thrilled.

Ishio actually came with Sota, who had nothing to do for a while. The pair walked up in icy silence, Sota joining them behind Erica while she worked with the equipment crew in getting reset.

"How's it going down that side?" Joey asked. "Do you know who the killer is?"

Sota shook his head glumly. "Nah, Kevin is making sure no one knows. Whatever Tristan and Mark are shooting together, he made damn sure they didn't tell us."

Joey sighed. Not long after that, the group were separated out with Nadia and Sota hanging out behind Erica while the other four had their scene in the hall. Ishio was stationed coming out of a bedroom they hadn't used yet, and Yugi quickly became uncomfortable with Akira's lines to Yuki. It seemed too much for just a protective brother, it was downright shaming her, and Ishio seemed genuinely vitriolic. However, Yuki was no shrinking violet, and shrugged off her brother's cruelty.

They went through the scene a few times, ending with the four heading down the hall, then down the stairs, across the dining room, and into the kitchen, led that way by flickering lights like breadcrumbs. The equipment crew danced around them as they moved, expertly weaving cameras and boom mikes, though occasionally even they messed up and the scene had to go again.

Eventually, they were done for the day. It was with no small amount of relief that Yugi heard the announcement, and parted from the group at the hotel with Joey, ready to head home and relax. However, fifteen minutes later, they were still waiting on Tristan, who hadn't returned from his bathroom stop.

"Man, where is he?" Joey grumbled. "If he doesn't show up in a minute, we're outta here."

"No, we're not," Yugi said patiently.

"I'll go get him."

"I'll bring the car around. It looks like it's about to start raining."

They parted and Yugi headed down the hall from the small conference room Cara had requisitioned as her office. As he rounded the corner to the elevator bay, he nearly bumped into Erica's twin sons. Up close, he realized just how big they were. Both had to be well over six feet tall, several inches taller than even Kaiba, with barrel chests and arms thicker than his waist. They had hard, mean, unattractive faces with noses that looked like they'd both been broken more than once and low foreheads beneath their thatches of blond hair. Only their eyes looked like their mother's, the gray of storm clouds, though cold and steely. One had a horrible scar that ran from one side of his neck to the other. It looked like someone had tried to slit his throat.

"The fuck you lookin' at, runt?" the other one said in English. His voice sounded like he gargled with gravel.

"Sorry," Yugi said, edging around them.

He pushed the button for the elevator at the end of the hall, feeling like their eyes were boring into his back. However, when he turned around after entering the cab, they were gone. Glad that Joey hadn't been with him to want to fight over the insult, Yugi rode the elevator to the bottom floor.

It was a day for bumping into people, because just as he was exiting the elevator, he heard voices around that corner, coming from the first floor's snack alcove.

"Oh, stop it. It's just a movie scene."

"So? You think I like watching you stick your tongue down that pipsqueak's throat?"

"Don't call him that."

"Why are you defending him?"

"Because Yugi's nice. And the scene's over with. And there was no tongue."

"Yeah, and what's going to be in the third Act?"

"Stop it. You're being ridiculous."

Concerned, Yugi peered into the alcove. Ishio and Rin stood with their arms around each other in front of a drink dispenser. Ishio glared at Yugi as he saw him.

"What the hell do you want?"

"Stop it," Rin said again, sounding exasperated, but not really upset. "Go have a smoke, I'll be out in a minute."

Ishio snatched up a bottle from the dispenser tray he'd apparently paid for before Yugi had arrived, then shoved past Yugi and headed towards the front doors. Rin sighed and pushed her hair back behind her ear.

"Don't mind him, he's just being an ass." As Yugi stared at her, she smiled and shrugged. "What can I say? I've always had a thing for bad boys. You understand, you're with Joey."

As Yugi started to defend Joey's character-Joey was rough around the edges, he was not a mean bastard-Rin patted him indulgently on the shoulder.

"See you tomorrow, Yugi."

Baffled, Yugi watched Rin saunter down the hall and out the front doors. Ishio was leaning against one of the canopy's support pillars, a freshly lit cigarette in his mouth. He put his arm around Rin as she came up, glowering at Yugi again over his shoulder as he steered Rin around to a motorcycle parked beside the front walk. With a roar, they were gone.

"Hey, Yug', what's up?"

Yugi hadn't realized he'd just been standing there until Joey and Tristan disembarked from the elevator.

"Uh, nothing," Yugi said, walking along with them across the entrance foyer to the doors. At least it hadn't started raining while he'd been distracted from his original reason for coming down here.

"She's really with that asshole?" Joey barked five minutes later as they were leaving the parking lot. "You gotta be kidding me. Did she get hit in the head at some point?"

"I thought that was you," Tristan teased from the backseat, waving off Joey's annoyed glare.

"Joey, pay attention to the road, please," Yugi said.

"Yeah, you don't want to act out the opening scene for real."

"Shut up, Tristan. Ew, Yug', you were kissing the lips that were kissing Ishio. Brush your teeth when we get home."

Yugi rolled his eyes. "I shouldn't have said anything."

"He's got a sweet bike, though," Tristan said. "Kawasaki Z900RS Café, custom package, Vintage Lime paintjob. I'd love a bike like that."

"With the money you're getting for the movie, maybe you could get one," Yugi suggested.

"Maybe," Tristan said, with not as much enthusiasm as Yugi had expected.

Joey pulled up in front of Tristan's apartment building. "You still coming out Saturday, T?"

"Yeah, I said I was." Tristan slid out of the backseat and shut the door. Waving over his shoulder, he trotted up the steps to the foyer entrance.

Back at the manor, Yugi turned to Joey as they settled down on the couch in the parlor. "Okay, what's going on with you and Tristan?"

"Nothing."

"Joey, come on. What's wrong?"

Joey sighed, frowning down at the plush beige carpet. "I don't know, Yug'. You know where he was, when he was keeping us waiting? Talking to Mark, making plans to go to a ball game Sunday."

Yugi hesitated before saying tentatively, "What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing. I guess. It's just… I don't know, he didn't want to go bowling, and he was too busy to go see that Kasa flick, but now he's blowing us off to go make plans with Mark."

"He didn't blow us off," Yugi said gently. "I think Tristan just might be lonely."

"Lonely?"

"Well, Tea has her dance practice and recitals and lives part time in New York now, and Ryou's in college, and you and I got together and now we're in the movie together-"

"Tristan's in the movie now."

"I know, Joey. You and Tristan used to hang out exclusively before you started hanging out with me more… and then a lot more. Things changed after school for pretty much everyone but Tristan. I think he's just trying to fill the gap."

Joey sighed and shifted around on the couch so he could lie back against Yugi. "Yeah, I guess. Everything really did change, huh? You know, sometimes, growing up's been kinda scary. Only it's not so scary when I got you."

Yugi smiled and stroked Joey's hair. "I love you, too."

tbc...