An indicator of my mood...set in Enneadverse

Spoiler for the Pharaoh's name in the Ennead series

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Yugi couldn’t do it.

The deck she had used to send Oneesan, no, Sakhmet away was tainted. She could not bring herself to disassemble it, but at the same time she could not bring herself to use it either. The cards held too painful a memory to touch. However building a new deck, or rather, rebuilding her deck from the cards that her older twin had not taken through the gates to the Afterlife was proving too painful to do as well.

Her deck, the deck she had built with her other soul, had sung in her senses. The cards’ hearts reaching out to theirs and responding to them. These cards felt blank. Lifeless. Like the pieces of cardboard people who just did not understand the connection had always told her they were.

Even the Dark Magician card that her Grandfather had gotten her to replace the purple one, Mahad, who had gone on with Oneesan was little more than ink on card. That hurt the most. Her Dark Magician, the purple Dark Magician, had always felt alive and special to her. Even before she had borrowed her grandfather’s deck and used him for the first time, whenever she had been allowed to touch him, she had been able to feel his heart.

But he had not been hers. He had been Sakhmet’s and he had joined her in the afterlife. Yugi did not begrudge him that. He deserved his rest just as much as the former Pharaoh did but…

She just couldn’t do it. She could not build herself a deck out of any card that she couldn’t sense and trust.

And right now, that meant she could not build any deck at all.

She was beginning to wonder if it was her. That now she had completed her duties as the Vessel of the Pharaoh, that she would never be able to sense the cards like she had before. Or if, with Sakhmet’s departure, everything special about her was gone. Including her ability to feel the hearts of her cards.

Just pulling out the box of spares hurt. Where once she had rejoiced every time they had built their deck together, now seeing the rows of cards, worth thousands of Yen in money and so much more in time spent with her older twin, made her want to weep.

And she just could not do it. She could not handle the rejection of the cards on top of the loss of her duelling partner.

The box was put away for another attempt another day.

C.N. April 2014: Digital Distraction Part 29

“Hey!” Tea protested as she was shoved into a stone cell hard enough to stumble, preventing her from trying to bolt out before the heavy metal door slammed shut.

“Shut up.” The hooded mook who was locking her cell door growled, his companion limping slightly where she had driven her rather heavy boot into his foot.

“Why should I?” Tea demanded, glaring at him through the small barred window in the huge metal door.

“Because if you want to get out of here, you’ll shut up and do what you’re told.” The hooded creep informed her. “After all, the only people who know you’re here are our men. Your friend’s been drugged so heavily, if he wakes up in time for the ritual he’ll be lucky.”

Tea winced, having been pulled away from Yami, who they had taken to another part of the castle. They needed him. They had only survived the last few hundred ‘End of the World’ scenarios because the Pharaoh had been there to save the day. If Yami wasn’t going to wake up in time, she were in a lot of trouble and so was everyone on the island.

The mook seemed pleased at that reaction and he and his companion stalked off, leaving Tea alone in the dungeons.

She hadn’t expected to get thrown in the dungeon when she had been dragged out of the secret tunnels. She didn’t know what she had expected, but being separated from Yami and dragged down to the lower dungeon level hadn’t been on her list.

She had hoped to at least pass Yugi when she had realised where she was being taken but she hadn’t seen any sign of him which really worried her. She didn’t know if her friends had already managed to get him out or whether he was being held in a different part of the castle, and she was worried that, now they had Yami, they had had gotten rid of Yugi.

Yami would never forgive himself if he survived this and Yugi didn’t.

Tea didn’t bother pacing the cell, instead barging the door just once before spending the first ten minutes trying to get her arm through the bars on the door to allow her to either pick the lock or work out some other way of escaping.

When that didn’t work, she moved away from the door for a little bit to work out another way of opening the door.

She had no intention of being the damsel in distress again. She was sick of it. She had been planning on taking self defence lessons for that exact reason. Annoyingly they had been due to start next week.

Still she wasn’t as helpless as the bad guys thought she was. They hadn’t bothered to check her bag, believing her to be less of a threat then the King of Games. That meant she still had everything that she had packed ‘just in case.’ Including the set of lock picks she had been practising with ever since Marik had kidnapped her. She just had to, somehow, manage to reach the lock on the other side of the door.

She would have picked the lock from her side, except she didn’t appear to have a keyhole she could use to do so.

“I have to have something in here I can use.” Tea grouched as she went through her backpack, “I packed everything bar the kitchen si...ah ha!” She grinned as she pulled a small spool of crafting wire from her bag. “Let’s see if this works...”

C.N. April 2014: Digital Distration Part 26

“Yami?! Tea!?” Joey bellowed, scanning the beach for signs of his friends. He and Ombre had headed that way the moment that they had been dropped off.

The bad guys had been rather thorough in splitting them up. Tea, Ombre and Tristan hadn’t been on the guest list but those who had had been set at different points on the map. Yami had been on this beach, he had been dropped off at the Temple Point while Kari’s start point had been Waterfall Point. They were at completely different ends of the game map.

Which was probably why Kari and Tristan weren’t here yet. At least that was what he hoped as he searched the beach for clues as to where his friends had vanished to.

Ombre was on edge as they headed towards the caves that Yami had mentioned to Kari. She half wished that Yami hadn’t insisted that she and Kari split up. It had been logical, that didn’t mean she had to like it. Especially when there was no sign of the Pharaoh or her light.

“Yami!” Joey bellowed again, making Ombre grimace, wishing he wasn’t giving their location away to any bad guys that might have been in the area. “Tea!”

There was no reply but Ombre didn’t need one as they entered the cave. There were footprints in the sandy floor that led in, but there none leading back out. “Joey.” She murmured, pointing them out.

The teen nodded, worried now for his friends as he followed Ombre warily into the cave system. They followed the footprints further in, until they reached a large empty cavern. As Ombre noted the increase in the number of footprints around, Joey searched around for clues.

“There was a fight here.” Ombre said, scanning the floor and noting the scuff marks where it looked like people had been knocked backwards or sent flying.

“Ombre.” Joey’s tense tone made the spirit of the Orb frown as she joined him over to one side of the cavern, where it looked like someone had hit the floor, hard. “Look.” He said as he scooped something out from under a rock.

She took it from him, scowling at she recognised the wand in his hand. The gold stemmed focus could only belong to Yugi or Yami. It wasn’t hard to guess that it had fallen from Yami’s pocket, or out of his hand at some point, probably when the bad guys had jumped them.

“Crap.” Ombre breathed, scanning their surroundings again. There was another exit to the cavern, one that headed further into the cave system that apparently ran underneath the island. The footprints led in that direction, there were several pairs of almost identical treads, alongside a much different set of prints that staggered as they headed into the tunnel at the back.

Where the prints looked like their owner had staggered, Ombre found Tea’s phone pressed into the sandy floor.

“Guess we know which way they went.” Joey grimaced as she scooped the phone up.

“I don’t think we’ve ever run into bad guys with uniforms before. At least not ones that even included shoes.” Ombre snorted, trying not to be worried that there was only one pair of unusual shoes amongst the footprints, suggesting that they had carried Yami. There was no way that he would have allowed that if he had been conscious, meaning that they had knocked him out somehow.

“First time for everything.” Joey snorted, “Shall we?” He gestured into the tunnel.

Ombre hesitated, glancing back towards the entrance. “Kari and Tristan are heading this way...” She pulled Kari’s phone out of her pocket, having borrowed it from her light. “No signal.”

“I’m going on.” Joey informed her, “If you want to go back and phone Kari, you can catch up but...”

“I’ve got a better idea.” Ombre shook her head, snatching a pen out of her bag and a piece of paper and leaving a note for her lighter half and her chaperone and leaving it by the entrance before following Joey. The teen, who was racing further into the cave system, was miles ahead of her when he let out a frustrated curse.

Ombre barely noticed the fact the floor went from a sandy surface to a solid stone as she caught up to him. The tunnel split into three, heading off in different directions and there weren’t any signs of which way the goons had taken their friends.

Joey swore and kicked the wall, only to start swearing harder and lean against the wall so he could cradle his foot.

“I swear if you break your toes, I’ll have no sympathy.” Ombre grouched at him, trying to see if she could work out which way they had gone. She had hoped to see a trail of sand or something that could guide them. Unfortunately there was sand leading down all three corridors, but not enough to leave foot prints.

They were about ready to pick one at random when Joey spotted something glinting on the floor just inside one of the tunnels. He bent down to pick it up and grinned slightly. “Remind me to tell Tea she’s awesome.”

“Why?” Ombre asked, coming over to look at what he was holding. “Oh you had better look after that carefully.”

Joey nodded and pocketed the earring. Kari had commented on the fact Tea had had her ears pierced during the school year, telling the teen that her earrings looked really pretty. Tea had apparently dropped one of them to give her friends a clue as to which way they were heading.

C.N. April 2014: Digital Distraction Part 25

It wasn’t hard to lose the other three players who were starting on the same strip of beach as he was. They wanted to head straight for the castle where the boss was, spurred on by the promise of a prize for the first ones to make it into the building.

Yami had no interest in the castle, outside of the fact that it could have been where they had been holding Yugi for the last two days. Instead he and Tea headed for the rendezvous point that he had been told about. He wasn’t stupid. He knew that it was a trap. The likelihood of them actually handing Yugi over was slim to none.

It didn’t help his mood that he hadn’t been able to convince Tea to stay back and let him handle the situation. With the others all spread across the island, she had been determined to stay with him and give him a bit of backup, even if there wasn’t much she could do.

He arrived at the cave entrance that had been mentioned well within the half an hour and was frustrated to find that there was no one there to meet him. Considering their insistence that he had to be there on time, it was rather rude of them to keep him waiting.

“I’m sure they’ll be here.” Tea told him as he paced the entrance to the cave, keeping an eye on the interior as he did so. “They told you to...”

Both of them froze as a pained cry emerged from the back of the cave. Yami knew the voice it belonged to, knew it better than he knew his own and he darted into the caves as a second cry could be heard. Yami darted around the tall pillars of stone near the back, only to find a tunnel that led further into the cave system.

Tea was hot on his heels as a third yell, weaker and softer than the first two echoed down the corridor, drawing Yami onwards until he emerged into a large chamber where a group of men in black, hooded robes were waiting for him, one of whom was stood over the fallen form of his light.

“Yugi!” Tea took in a sharp breath as Yami went to dart to the teen’s side only to have to stop short when one of the goons pointed a gun at his light.

 “I wouldn’t.” The ringleader sniggered as Yami tore his eyes away from the battered, bruised, bound and blindfolded form of his other self to glower at the speaker.

“Let him go!” Yami demanded. Yugi whimpered at the sound of his voice, only increasing the Pharaoh’s anger at the men who had dared to lay a hand on Yugi.

“About time you got here, Yugi.” The ringleader laughed viciously, “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show.” A soft groan emerged from Yugi, distracting the Pharaoh. “I’d almost convinced him of it too.”

Yami let out a low growl at that, his hands balling into fists. He would never, ever leave Yugi in danger and that the man in front of him had even tried to convince Yugi otherwise royally ticked the Pharaoh off.

“What do you want from me?” Yami demanded, trying to calm down, knowing that staying furious wouldn’t help him work out a way out of the situation. There had to be a way out of the trap but Yugi was hurt and he couldn’t risk them shooting him.

“First off, hand over your deck and the Puzzle.” The ringleader informed him, holding out his hand for them.

Yami hesitated for a moment. If he handed over his deck and the Puzzle, he was giving up not only the most dangerous cards in the game, but Yugi’s most prized possession and the, so say, most powerful Millennium Item.

“Yami?” Tea asked, putting a hand on his arm. He could feel it trembling, though he couldn’t be sure if it was her trembling, or him.

“Of course if you don’t want to...” The ringleader shrugged, gesturing to the man closest to Yugi, who drove a boot into Yugi’s stomach. Yugi loosed a pained, winded gasp and tried to curl in on himself to shield his stomach from any more abuse.

“Leave him alone!” Yami snapped, ripping the Puzzle off and tossing it to the ringleader before his minion could kick Yugi again.

“And your deck.” The man smirked at him as he snatched the golden item out of the air. Yami, who hadn’t yet slipped his deck into his DimDisk, pulled the stack of forty cards out of his deck holster on his belt. He took a deep breath and stepped forward, offering the deck to the ringleader, hating every minute.

His foot hit a stone which skipped along the floor and, much to Yami’s shock bounced through Yugi. Yami was stunned for just long enough for the fact that the Yugi on the ground was a hologram to sink in, then he pulled back his deck, slipped it into his DimDisk in one smooth motion and called up his magic, pure fury unleashed at being tricked.

“Where’s Yugi?” He demanded, letting the Shadows run wild, swirling past Tea, leaving her unharmed, but blasting the minions away and slamming the ringleader against the wall, pinning him there.

“You’re Yugi.” The ringleader yelped, struggling, trying to free himself.

“My brother.” Yami growled at him, “The real Yugi, where is he?”

“Real?” The man looked confused before letting out a pained screech as Yami directed his magic to shock him. “I...”

“Yami!” The Pharaoh wheeled around to find Tea being threatened by the same mook with a gun who had been threatening the hologram of Yugi.

“Let him down.” The mook snapped at him, pressing the gun against Tea’s temple.

The Pharaoh glowered at him but did as directed, dropping the ringleader and drawing his magic back in, unable to do anything while his friend was in danger.

“You bastard.” The man behind him snarled as he picked himself up. The Pharaoh ignored him in favour of keeping his eyes on the mook next to Tea.

That was a mistake.

The ringleader drove something sharp into Yami’s arm and Yami reacted too slowly, blasting the man away to late to prevent him depressing the syringe and dosing him with something that caused his world to spin.

Yami staggered sideways, ending up leaning against one of the rock piles, as his mind swam and his vision blurred.

“Yami!” Tea struggled against the man holding her, frightened as she watched the Pharaoh’s legs give out, “Yami!”

“I...” He tried to get up, to fight whatever it was he had been drugged with, only to slip back to the ground, too dizzy to be able to get his feet under him properly.

“Take them both.” The mook holding Tea sounded smug as he lowered his weapon and Yami wanted to blast him, but he couldn’t see straight enough to trust his aim and he didn’t want to hurt Tea.

Several mooks advanced on him and Yami tried to push past the fact his world was swimming to defend himself, only for someone else to dose him and his world slipped sideways as he fell on his side. As he blacked out he was at least treated to the sight of Tea decking the mook who had made the mistake of letting her go.