Like another project I started recently, "The City that Wouldn't Die," I'm going to be updating this story in a one-scene-per-chapter format. That means each chapter of this piece will be shorter than those of the original "Paved with Good Intentions." However, it also means that I will be able to update more often. I will be putting up one scene per week. Unlike the aforementioned other project, I can assure you that this update schedule will keep. I've run into a number of road blocks recently, and find it decidedly difficult to write. Nonetheless, I have plenty of raw material for this one already lined up, and can ensure my once-a-week schedule for a long time.
Enjoy this second installment, which will help to set the stage for where, and when, this story begins.
"You serious?"
Yugi nodded, looking partly excited, partly confused, partly...melancholy. Joey Wheeler frowned thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair, and stole a glance at Tristan and Téa, checking their reactions before saying anything else. Tristan looked confused, and Téa actually looked happy for the first time since that first day of her visit. She toyed with the ends of her hair, trying to hide her excitement. Yugi knew what she was thinking: if the puzzle was back, that might mean that the spirit who had called that puzzle home could be back, as well. Téa had always liked the spirit of the king who'd called himself Yami. She tried to hide it, for Yugi's sake, but they all knew full well that she'd had a not-so-secret crush on him almost from the first.
"Yeah," Yugi said, smiling in spite of his confusion. The idea of seeing his partner again after so long was...invigorating. "I just...woke up, went to my desk, and there it was."
"But not put together," Tristan said. "So it's like when you first got it."
Yugi nodded. "But I can put it back together. Easy."
"When you put it together the first time, how long did it take you?" Joey wondered.
"Um...about eight years." Yugi could almost hear a record scratching as his friends all stared at him. He laughed. "But after the first time, it's like the patterns burned themselves into my head. I can still remember how it goes. I could probably do it blindfolded."
It seemed so strange, thinking about that man again. The ancient king who had started as a stranger possessing his body like he was some kind of living puppet, and had become...a part of him. Almost everything Yugi had become over the past couple of years, he attributed to Yami. He wasn't positive that putting the puzzle back together would bring the spirit back, and he wasn't sure he wanted to disturb the former monarch's rest, but he thought that the puzzle's return had to mean something. Why would it have come back to him, if not for him to put it back together?
A part of him had wondered, that first night, whether or not the artifact was even genuine. He wondered if it was some kind of replica, and maybe his mother or his grandfather (or, some distant hope intoned, his father) had left it for him as a surprise. But any doubts as to the puzzle's authenticity had been dashed as soon as Yugi found the central piece, the center, the nexus, emblazoned with the immortal Eye of Horus.
As soon as he'd laid a single finger on that holy symbol, he'd known.
A familiar power had sung up his arm and blossomed in his chest, and he'd known.
It was real.
Even though a certain part of his mind told him that it might not be a good idea to disturb Yami, Yugi knew that he was going to put the Millennium Puzzle back together. No matter what arguments his mind and heart came up with, the majority of his thoughts espoused the theory that he'd known what he was going to do with those pieces the moment he'd seen them.
There was no use arguing about it.
He was going to do it.
"Why you think it came back?" Tristan asked. "Didn't it disappear when...when he did?"
Yugi nodded. "Yeah. I thought I'd never see it again. I thought Yami'd taken it with him, to...wherever it is he went. Heaven, I hope. Or maybe buried in that tomb, with the rest of them. I thought the time of the Millennium Items was over."
"I guess it isn't," Téa said. "I wonder what he has to do. What...what you have to do."
Yugi noticed that she didn't say "what we have to do," and part of him wondered why that would be. Part of him thought that maybe she didn't want to be a part of it this time, and he couldn't blame her if that were true. But the shrewd observer that Yami had sparked in him thought it more likely that she didn't think she deserved to be a part of it this time.
And Yugi couldn't blame her for that, either, considering her actions lately.
Mokuba was a good kid, a born charmer, but his tongue could be just as sharp as his brother's when he wanted it to be. And usually when he did tear into someone, it made ten times the impression on people than Kaiba ever could, simply because it was so rare.
It took a special sort of trespass to put that level of hatred into the eyes of a child.
