THE SHADOWS

Mai stared at him as she considered her next words. Whilst there were a few people who knew some of the key events as they had transpired, she'd never told anyone the whole story. Partly because she knew how it sounded, but also because no one had ever asked. She drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. "Battle City," she began. "Marik cheats and wins our duel, and I end up in the Shadow Realm." She watched him, trying to gauge his reaction but, beyond an almost imperceptible tightening of his jawline, he seemed impassive as he stared at her through the darkness.

"When I finally get out, everything seems fine, well," she gave a short, humourless laugh, "fine except for the fact that I feel like I'm being dragged back into the damn shadows every time I duel."

"Meaning?"

She pulled a face. "I can't... I mean, I don't really know how to explain it. It's a sensation, a feeling deep down, like I'm not in control. I—" She paused for a moment before taking another deep breath. "That last duel in Vegas. I really needed to lose. I really had to because the consequences… You just don't mess about with someone like Francis Corelli. But, understanding all of that, as soon as I started playing, I knew."

"That you would win."

She nodded. "I wasn't the one in control. The shadows took over."

Risking a glance, she saw that Seto's gaze was fixed on a point on the opposite wall, his lips pressed tightly together as he processed her words. The soft light highlighted the lines on his brow and, as the silence stretched on, Mai felt her stomach twisting with an uncomfortable anxiety that only increased as she waited for his reaction.

"What I've just told you." Her voice broke the tension, her words coming fast despite her attempts to sound nonchalant. "I know none of it makes sense and that it sounds—" She shrugged, leaving the statement unfinished. "But you asked why I don't duel, and that's why. And it's okay if you don't believe me, I don't expect you to, but you asked and—"

"I believe you," Seto said, stopping her short.

The frown instantly left her face as she stared at him. "You do?"

He had shifted around so that he was facing towards her, and his eyes seemed to study her thoughtfully. "Not that it should matter, but yes."

"I…" she started, testing her own voice tentatively to make sure it didn't give her emotions away. "I didn't think. I mean, I know you're not a fan."

"A fan?"

"Of the Shadow Realm and all that."

"Is anyone a fan of the Shadow Realm?" He paused briefly. "Other than psychopaths," he added.

"You know what I mean. I thought you always dismissed it."

"With everything I've seen over the past few years, not believing stopped being an option some time ago." He took in her wide-eyed expression and shook his head. "But you'll have to forgive me if I don't go shouting about it from the rooftops." He gave her a wry smile. "My sanity is already called into question enough as it is, and the possibility of losing your soul is hardly a winning selling point for our flagship game."

She huffed out a small laugh, her surprise and relief combining with a strange warmth that bloomed in her chest as their eyes met. She swallowed, breaking their gaze.

"I wish I could trust Corelli to take it so well." She shifted her weight, focusing her attention to her arm as she pushed down the swell of emotions.

"I'd imagine that the less someone like Corelli knows about the Shadow Realm the better."

"Right." She nodded. "Which is why he just thinks I've screwed him over. It makes my life kind of complicated in a far less mystical and far more, he-wants-me-dead, kind of way."

Seto frowned. "I get that he's not exactly the forgiving type, but surely, if you left and haven't tried to use your stage name again, does it matter that much to him? I mean, it's not like you took the money."

"Oh," Mai gave a short laugh, as if she had forgotten something important. "Yeah, no, I took the money."

Seto's eyes widened.

"I said I left at the first opportunity, right?" she reminded him. "Well, the first opportunity happened to be just after they'd given me a big old briefcase full of money during the prize-giving. With all the lights and crowds and commotion, I managed to slip away. I grabbed a bag of stuff, jumped in my car and drove."

"And you took a briefcase with four hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars in cash with you?"

Mai went quiet again but this time there was a glint in her eye and when she caught his gaze, her lip twitched up into a crooked smile. "No," she said, "it was a million."

Seto sat forward. "You stole a million dollars?!"

Mai scowled. "I won a million dollars," she pointed out. "And it's not like it was my fault that it was so much. I just wanted the four-seven-two, it was Corelli who insisted on increasing the prize pot to get more publicity."

She met his incredulous expression with a defiant one of her own and, after a long moment, Seto sat back again with a small laugh. "You weren't kidding when you said you had been busy."

She seemed to relax a little. "Well, all that was six months ago now. More recently I've been less busy and more…" she paused, searching for the right word, "hiding."

His smile faded at the implication. "Hence the need to sneak into a tournament through the underground car park?"

She shrugged. "A girl's gotta take precautions." Something seemed to occur to her. "I'm kind of assuming you'll be able to resist selling me out to Corelli, what with already being a gazillionaire and all?"

He shifted to kneel beside her, gently taking hold of her arm. "That depends. How much are we talking?" He met her gaze with a small smile that she matched.

Mai expected him to start examining her arm but, whilst he continued to hold it gently, his cool fingers providing the lightest touch to the underside of her wrist, he kept his eyes focused on hers.

"How does it feel?" he asked in a low voice.

For a split-second, under the intensity of his gaze, Mai wasn't sure what he was asking, but when he briefly glanced down at her arm, she almost laughed at her own confusion. "The err, the heat has gone," she said hastily, "but it's painful still. And I feel kind of… jangly."

"From the electricity?"

"I guess. It's like every nerve ending is vibrating."

"Hmm."

He was about to move away again but something caught his attention. He examined the floor in the dim light, reaching out with his fingertips to touch it. When he held them up in front of him, they shone with water.

"That's not great." He turned on the torch function and shone it across the floor.

"Is that coming from the wall?"

He shook his head. "It's all over." He shone the torch into the crater in the centre of the space. The concrete block now sat in its own small moat. "I'm guessing it's been building up slowly the whole time we've been here."

"Yeah, not great," Mai agreed. She looked to the side where she could see water was already creeping up on her seated position and she made a move to stand up. She was barely on her feet before she was hit by a powerful wave of nausea and dizziness. Her vision blurred and she dropped back down onto one knee with a gasp of pain.

"Valentine!"

Mai reached a hand out towards him to stop him coming closer. "I'm fine," she said through gritted teeth. "I just stood up too fast, that's all."

She slowly raised herself up to full height, leaning heavily on the metal doors.

"You need to be seen by a doctor."

"Well yeah. I mean, that would be good if we weren't very stuck in here."

"Hmm."

Mai squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath as the dizziness finally started to fade. When she opened her eyes, she saw that he was still staring at her, concern etched on his face.

"I'm fine," she assured him, "really."

He gave a brief nod that was coupled with an even briefer smile and then his eyes cut away from her, looking just off to the side and Mai realised he was studying the doors again. Then he turned his gaze back down to the floor where the water was already forming larger puddles even as they watched. He seemed lost in thought.

"So what's the plan?" she asked.

"How do you know I have a plan?"

She could have told him that it was in the way his eyes sparked or how his movements sharpened whenever he had an idea, but instead, she shrugged. "Feminine intuition."

He held her gaze for a moment, the slightest hesitation clouding his features before he moved the torch to shine on the doors. "Okay," he said, "so, the entrance structure has the greatest level of reinforcement." He glanced at her as if to check she understood.

She gave a quick nod.

"And, whilst the doors are buckled, I still believe we might be able to create an opening. The left door, with the right persuasion, should open most of the way."

"The right persuasion being...?"

"A lever, a fulcrum, a bit of physical effort."

"That's what you were thinking before."

"Yes," he acknowledged, "but I didn't have a lever or anything that would act as one at that point."

"And now?"

He picked up one of the metal poles that had fallen after the second blast. He threw it lightly into the air and caught it again. "Now I have one."

"Right, so you can open it." She moved to stand beside him, in front of the doors. "But why would you? There still isn't an opening to the outside."

"No, it's the opening itself we can use." He turned to step into the middle of the space and used the pole to point upwards. "There is still a lot of rubble above us. This was just a relatively small collapse."

Mai frowned at this.

"If we can get the door open, we would be in a safer position should anything more come down. We would be protected by the reinforced frame."

"Right, so, rather than standing in the open space with the risk of being crushed at any second," Mai clarified, "we could stand in the very confined space with a slightly reduced risk of being crushed at any second."

He looked at her, a small smile playing on his lips. "I don't think we would be. The weakest point, as far as I can tell, is over in that corner." He pointed away from the doors with the pole. "But anywhere in the open is potentially dangerous."

He lowered the pole as he waited for her response.

Watching fingers tapping against the pole, Mai narrowed her eyes. "There's something else, isn't there?"

Seto hesitated. "Yes," he admitted, "but I don't think you'll like it."

Mai raised an eyebrow. "Try me."

He studied her for a long moment and then nodded. "If we can protect ourselves by being in the doorway," he said, "I think we should consider trying to bring it all down."

Her eyes widened.

"The vibration dampened equipment might take hours to arrive," Seto continued, speaking quickly before she could recover herself. "It may even take days. It's highly specialist and there's only so much available around the world at any given time. If there's an earthquake, or a building collapse or any number of other emergencies." He shook his head. "We can't prioritise our situation over anything like that."

A scowl crossed her face as she recognised his logic. She looked around the space, as if properly seeing the results of the collapse for the first time. As well as the concrete block, a number of pieces of twisted metal and longer poles lay strewn about. The shattered remains of the light littered the floor and, dangling from the ceiling in the furthest corner, she noted the dark electric cable with a small shudder. "So, your fancy stuff might take ages and, rather than wait, you think we should deliberately cause another collapse?"

He shrugged. "You do need a doctor."

She turned and seemed to study him. "And what if I didn't? Would you still be contemplating this?"

He met her gaze. "Probably." A slow smile transformed his usually hard features. "I'm not very patient."

The absurdity of the situation made Mai feel quite heady. "In other words, you're bored."

Seto ducked his head in acknowledgement and Mai rolled her eyes, seemingly unable to stop smiling.

"It's a crazy idea." She gave a small laugh. "Insane."

"As you said, we're here together. If you don't want to go down this route..."

"You really think it will work?"

"Yes."

"And I should just trust you on that?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I'm always right."

She laughed, shaking her head as she studied him. He was waiting for her judgement, his expression conveying a warmth that she had never seen in him before. She cast her eyes up towards the ceiling before bringing them back to him.

"How would you even bring it down?" she asked, her tone more serious. "If the weakest point is there." She pointed upwards with her bandaged hand to where Seto had indicated. "How are you going to get to it and get back safely? Your new lever isn't going to be long enough to poke the ceiling from that distance. And surely, it will need more than that anyway?"

Seto studied her with interest, intrigued by her response. "Hence my pause about mentioning it at all."

Mai laughed again. "That was what you had a problem with? Not the suicidally dangerous part?"

Seto shrugged. "I don't like sharing incomplete plans."

Her eyes locked with his as she wondered at the way his mind worked. "Well, my plans tend to be less fully formed anyway, so maybe we should start with the part that probably won't kill us, and build up to the kamikaze bit, yeah?"

He smiled at that, even as he turned to begin pulling apart the system of water channels he had constructed. The discarded metal strips splashed into the shallow water and Mai pushed them aside with her boot. Once cleared, Seto took the pole and thrust it between the doors at their narrowest point and then pushed. The doors made a horrible screeching noise as they inched apart.

"Need a hand?" Mai offered, half expecting him to brush her aside as he had before.

Instead, he nodded. "Yes. If you're not too injured."

She grinned at him. "I can lean," she said, coming to stand beside him and adding her weight behind the pole.

Together, they achieved a few more inches before it became clear that the pole would no longer work. Seto laid it down on the floor to focus on the concrete block, or fulcrum, as he said to Mai. Getting the block out from its crater was the hardest part, but once free, he was able to move it, inch by inch across the floor to the doors. He picked up the pole again and pushed.

When he felt the left door had opened far enough, Seto positioned himself with his back against it and pushed at the right hand door with his legs. A sudden jolt moved it another foot and Mai moved close to him as there was a shower of dust from the lift's movement.

They waited, pressed between the doors, until they were certain there would be no further debris.

"Okay," Seto said, finally relaxing and turning to face Mai in the narrow space, "so it's not a big gap..."

"I've been thinking." Mai craned her neck to meet his gaze, seemingly unconcerned about the proximity. "Your plan to come in from the side."

"Yes?"

"Well, we could still try that, couldn't we? But without the fancy equipment. Get them to use normal stuff like... whatever it is they use to get through walls when they're not worried about vibrations. Then, if the ceiling comes down, well, that's what you want, right? And if it doesn't come down, which I personally feel would be the preferable option, then we're rescued, and we can all go home."

Seto studied the wall where the rescue attempt would most likely break through and then looked up towards the ceiling before returning his focus to her. She stared up at him, her violet eyes shining and expectant.

"Yes," he said, "yes… that would work." He was still thinking, his brow furrowing as he played the idea through in his mind.

"But?" Mai prompted, aware that his hesitation meant he had found a problem with her plan.

He looked at her. "But we would need to let someone on the outside know about it."

"Hmm." Mai shifted to be able to get her phone out of her pocket. Her body brushed against his as she moved, and she felt her skin heating at the touch.

"Anything?" Seto asked.

She kept her head down, avoiding his gaze as she checked her signal. "No."

"How are your phone batteries holding out?"

"Not good," she said. "Eighteen percent. But I only started on twenty this morning, so I guess that's to be expected."

Seto made his way across to retrieve his phone from where he'd left it propped against the wall. "Mine is down to forty-seven."

She finally dared to look up. "That's not bad."

"As someone who clearly has no concerns about leaving the house with only twenty percent battery, you probably would think that," he commented, "but it drops quickly with the torch on."

Mai ignored his jibe. "Maybe you should turn it off for a bit?"

"We should get a bandage on your arm first, if you're sure the heat has gone."

"Yeah, pretty much." She looked down at her arm where the swelling and redness was starting to fade, leaving a scorched grey mark that was blistered in places showing the shiny red of her raw skin beneath. She didn't like the idea of covering it but didn't much like the idea of dirt and dust getting into it either.

Seto bent to lift his coat off the floor. It was getting wet, but he turned it around to find a dry, clean bit of material to cut from it. Mai watched him thoughtfully.

"What were you trying to do right after we crashed?" she asked, an idea forming as she watched him.

He finished cutting a long strip of the satin lining material. "Right after?" He started cutting a second, more rectangular piece. "I checked my phone."

He indicated with a small gesture that she should hold out her arm to him, and she did so immediately, dismissing the small voice that told her she should be taking care of herself. Her head felt clear now and the pain in her arm was manageable enough that she could, with some effort, administer her own bandage. But, she had to admit, his closeness felt… nice, and the way that he held her arm was nice too. And when she caught those sharp blue eyes of his looking at her, like they were now…

Carefully laying the wider strip over the line of her burn, he gently started to wind the material around her arm. The touch of the material on her broken skin made her wince in pain and she forced herself to focus. "Before your phone," she said, "you were trying to communicate with was static."

Seto paused momentarily. "Oh, that," he said, not looking up. "That was an idea that didn't pan out."

Mai grimaced as the material tightened around her arm. "Share," she said.

Tucking the end of the material under itself, he stood back and inspected his handiwork. It was a few seconds before he raised his head to meet her expectant gaze. "My immediate instinct was to use the communication device in my collar." He spoke as if he were making a confession. "I think it was wearing that coat again; it was like habit."

Mai twisted her arm, getting used to the feel of the bandage and admiring its neatness. "Okay," she said, looking up at him, "so far so not-that-stupid."

Seto smiled then. "Ah, but it is stupid, you see," he said, a part of him wondering at the fact that he felt able to admit this to her. "It's been years since I've worn the coat or used the communicator."

"So?"

"So it doesn't connect to anything anymore."

"In other words, you were just talking to your collar for no reason?"

He stared at her as if daring her to laugh. She in turn managed a few seconds before she had to put a hand to her mouth in an attempt to hide her grin.

Seto shook his head in a show of annoyance, but when Mai finally gave up and laughed out loud, it was as if her unguarded humour shifted something in him. For a moment he found himself drawn in by her warmth, her infectious joy bringing a smile to his own face without him even realising. The pull of it was so unexpected, so unfamiliar that it startled him.

Turning away, he quickly reached for his phone. He was certain he hadn't given anything away in his expression and he definitely wasn't someone who ever blushed, but, as he turned off the torch light, he found that he was grateful for the concealing darkness.