Yami was still thinking about the ‘if’ when they boarded Kaiba’s private jet to head back across to Japan. It was a pretty big ‘if’ considering everything that had happened and that Kaiba had a business to run, Kari had a job she was supposed to be doing and Yugi, Yami and Joey had to win enough prize money to be able to afford to come back next September as the conversion rate between Galleons and Yen was horrendous.
It was that ‘if’ that finally brought the invitations back to mind. Yugi, who by this point was managing to at least stay awake for more than a couple of hours at a time, was confused when the Pharaoh face palmed for no good reason.
“Yami?” He asked, tilting his head curiously, “What’s wrong? Did you leave something in the castle?”
“No.” Yami rummaged through his carryon luggage, having packed the invites on auto-pilot, and passed them to Yugi. The teen’s eyes widened for a moment, then Yugi seemed to freeze, close his eyes just long enough to take a deep breath and then shoved them back at Yami. “You’re the Yugi they want to see, not me.”
“You’re Yugi Mutou.” Yami reminded him, “Not me. If I’m going to compete, I’m going to have to do it under my own name if we both want to take part from now on.”
“I...” Yugi hesitated. He enjoyed helping Yami during the tournaments but Yami had still been the one in control during all of them and it had always been Yami who had fought during the finals. While he had helped against Pegasus, he had practically died during that battle, leaving Yami to win alone. And Marik had held him hostage, using his pain and fear to distract the Pharaoh from his most important game to date. Though he wanted to compete he wasn’t sure he should. He would only get in Yami’s way. Especially as he was at the moment.
“You compete in my place.” Yugi said finally, breaking the silence that had fallen as the rest of their friends tried to ignore the minor disagreement going on in their midst. “For now at least, until I’m better and I’ve gotten my head on straight again.”
“And what happens when you’re better?” Yami asked, “When I start competing under my name?”
“People mix us up all the time.” Yugi shrugged, “We just say that I was shy and you were using my name since people confused you with me on the Duellist registration forms and we never bothered to fix it.”
Yami paused and considered the option for a moment, then nodded, “That could work.” He allowed, “Though people are going to wonder where I came from.”
“Dare you to tell the first person who asks the truth.” Joey challenged, poking his head over the back of his chair to look at the pair of them.
“Yeah right.” Kari’s derogatory snort could just about be heard over the sound of her tapping on her keyboard, trying to catch up with some missed work while on the flight. “Can you imagine the uproar if the truth got out.”
“Only if anyone believed it.” Yami chuckled as Yugi leant against him and started dozing again, taking advantage of the quiet to catch a short nap. “They’d be more likely to think we’re all quite mad.”
“We are mad.” Kari chuckled, “We always have been. It’s the price of being a decent duellist. Haven’t you noticed? Most of the best ones have mental quirks.”
“Hey!” Joey protested before launching into a debate with Kari that dragged her away from her work and steadily got louder until Kaiba told them all to shut up unless they wanted to be walking home. Since they were over the pacific at the time, silence swiftly descended. Yami took advantage of the lull in conversation to look over the invites properly.
There were six invites in the pile from various companies. Industrial Illusions, Schroder Corp, Black Star, which was Duke’s company, and Kaiba Corp, who had in fact sent Yami one as well, but the Pharaoh had missed it in his distraction, were all put aside without much thought. It was pretty much a given that they would compete in those and bar a ‘yes I’ll be there’ note, they didn’t require much attention.
It was the invite for Dimension Software that caught his eye. He had heard about them before. Yugi had several of their video games. He had not been aware that they were ready to make the leap into holographic technology.
“Hey Kari?” He asked as he considered the invite, frowning slightly when he saw that it was only in just over a week’s time and would be held over two days on an island in the middle of nowhere.
“Huh?” The English teen asked as she looked up from her work briefly.
“What do you know about Dimension Software?”
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