Chapter 8 - Chapter Eight
Submitted January 23, 2009 Updated April 22, 2009 Status Complete | Takes place in the middle of Season Five- right after the Grand Prix tournament, and before they go on the memory journey to Egypt. I hope you guys like it! I'm not used to writing fanfictions! X]
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Anime/Manga » Yu-Gi-Oh! series |
Chapter 8 - Chapter Eight
Chapter 8 - Chapter Eight
So ended the third day of being work-free, I thought with a sigh as I slid into my bed; I was unused to going to bed at ten o’clock at night, but, despite myself, liked it. Maybe doing everything but working wasn’t so bad. Mokuba seemed to be happy with my stress-free personality.
I felt less exhausted, tonight. I lied in bed, wearing only a plain white t-shirt and boxers for the first time in my life, staring up at the ceiling of my canopy. My mind was racing. So Yugi wanted to go to Atlantis. Did he even know where that was?
Another thought crossed my mind. The monsters had shown up in my bedroom and office. How did they get there? Could they just …materialize wherever they wanted? If that was the case, then we weren’t safe anywhere…. Especially not at Atlantis! But, despite how I didn’t really like Yugi, I somehow- and only somewhat- trusted him. Maybe he knew what he was doing.
I turned onto my stomach and embraced one of my feather pillows. Maybe I was making the right decision in joining Yugi and his friends out tomorrow. My Blue-Eyes-White dragons were a formidable enemy to these monsters; if Yugi were to fail, that meant that the monsters would keep showing up in my house, just like Pegasus said.
And what about that dream that I’d had, last night… I had been so busy poring over Roland that I had forgotten about it until now. During my last duel with Yugi, I had seen a similar vision… myself, wearing those elaborate gold dressings, fighting against the Pharaoh , with my Blue-Eyes White Dragon… why did I see those sorts of things? I didn’t know what to believe about them. I’d had trouble believing Ishizu Ishtar when she had told me that I had existed 5,000 years ago as the Pharaoh’s High Priest, until I found that I could read Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, without having ever seen them before… it was how I knew how to defeat the Ra card, when Marik possessed it. Ishizu had said that I once held the Millennium Rod and had been the Pharaoh’s best friend, as well as greatest rival…Mostly, I didn’t think about the possibility of there being an Egyptian lineage in my family. I was too busy building theme parks.
I closed my eyes, warm and now tired. Tomorrow would be a big day. I enjoyed the lone moment of sleepy tranquility, before a terrible sensation of horror crashed violently through me; I sat up quickly and jerked the bed sheets off of myself; there was then an anguished yell and a loud crash from the end of the hallway. My heart stopped; I tore out of my bedroom and down the hall.
The ground beneath my feet seemed to vanish when I reached Mokuba’s room; two monsters were in here; he had a similar sword wall hanging on his wall, and had grabbed a sword, and was in the process of stabbing one monster; but, I had barely entered the room when the second grabbed him around the shoulders, and in a movement quicker than the speed of light, fastened its clawed, glowing hand to his chest.
He gasped in pain and dropped the sword, immobilized; I leapt on the monster and wrenched it off of him. I tumbled to the ground, with the monster. I was kneeled on top of it, pinning it to the ground; it shrieked as I snatched the sword off of the floor and stabbed it through its head; when it disappeared, I fell two feet to the ground.
“Mokuba!” I yelled, whipping around and seeing him crumpled to the floor a few feet behind me.
I could hardly breathe with worry; I kneeled beside him, frantically… he was conscious, whimpering with pain, clutching at his chest…
“Speak to me,” I whispered shakily, lifting him up, some; he looked up and said, equally quietly, but injected with fear, “I’m… so cold…”
A butler rushed into the room, and gasped, “Masters…!”
“Get a doctor in here!” I roared at him; he left the room. I was extremely frightened. Mokuba’s voice was weak and shaky, and he was trembling… I lifted him off of the floor and into my lap; together we were sitting on the ground in his bedroom, leaning against his bed; he put his arms around my neck and head on my collarbone, just shaking, clutching at my shirt painstakingly.
I had almost never felt so scared; he was completely cold, and moved only to barely shiver… what if his heart stopped? His face was stark white, completely pale… he wasn’t crying. I wanted to… my hand was on his back, directly over his heart, protectively… how could I have let this happen… how could I have been so stupid as to not check our rooms for more monsters…
He whimpered again and I felt his grip on me grow tighter. “It hurts…” he whispered. What could I do, other than to also hold him tighter, using my own warmth as a medicine?
Finally, a kind-looking doctor entered the room. “Thank you for coming here so late,” I told her. She smiled at me before kneeling down beside us. She looked gently at Mokuba and whispered, “Do you want to get in your bed?”
I felt him shake his head weakly. The woman nodded and said, “Stay with your brother,” before pulling a stethoscope out of her bag and sticking its ends into her ears and pressing the other end to his back, up his shirt; I moved my hand, and she moved it to the spot where my hand had just been.
“Oh, my,” she said softly. “Pulse rate is very irregular. A monster attack, right? About how many seconds?”
I nodded shortly and thought for a moment; I had been so panicked, I wasn’t sure… it had seemed like a million seconds, but realistically, it was probably less than five, and I told her that. She took the stethoscope off and put her hand on the back of Mokuba’s head gently. “Can you answer some questions for me?” she asked.
I felt him turn his head to look at her; he weakly nodded.
“Are you in any pain right now?”
He nodded again, still lightly trembling. “About how much?” the doctor continued.
“It’s… getting better…” he said, voice shaky.
“Can you breathe well?” she asked. I felt him just barely shrug and nod.
The doctor pulled a small vial of liquid medicine out of her bag and set it on the ground, before pulling a small notebook out of her bag and scribbling something down. “I recognize his symptoms. We’ve found this medicine to be very effective in restoring regular heart rate and temperature. He’s going to be okay. Keep him warm and have him drink this right now. He’ll feel better within thirty minutes and be completely back-to-normal in a few hours.” She stood up. “I’m sorry they hurt you, honey,” she said, patting his head gently and turning to leave.
“Thank you,” I told her. “Take your money out of my account.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said brightly, and left the room, leaving us alone.
Mokuba lifted his head off of my chest and said, “I should… drink that…”
“Yes,” I said, picking the small bottle off of the ground and uncapping it. “Here,” I handed it to him. He took it from me and downed it; I felt him recoil momentarily. “It’s… gross,” he said, with a small chuckle.
I put my arm under his knees and stood up. He wasn’t shaking anymore; “Hold on to me,” I said, and felt his arms tighten around my neck. I walked back to my room and sat down on my bed. He lifted his head off of my collarbone and let go of me; I laid him in my bed. He looked better, now; face re-gaining color, and he didn’t appear to be in much pain. He pulled the thick, heavy covers over himself and lied there, eyes closed tightly, voluntarily trying to steady his own breathing.
“How do you feel,” I asked nervously, poring over him.
He shrugged somewhat, on his back, not bothering to open his eyes now. “Not… too bad, I guess,” he said.
I frowned. I was still very upset. I knew it had only taken twenty-or-so minutes for me to feel better when I had been hurt, but who knows how comparable this was, to that- he was smaller, younger; and who knows how long the monster had been in contact with him. Maybe five seconds… it was such a blur. I was sitting on my bed, facing him.
He cracked open one eye and said, “Don’t worry, big brother… I’m okay. Really. Go to sleep… we have to get up early tomorrow…”
“I…” I began, not knowing if I could even fall asleep, now. “I’m sorry that I didn’t know that there were more monsters in the house…”
He opened both eyes now and turned his head slightly to face me, more. “I feel so stupid…” I continued miserably. “That was… way too close a call.”
He frowned. “But… I’m convinced more than ever, now, to go with Yugi to Atlantis,” I said. “I will not stand for those things to enter our house anymore. We’ve gotten lucky too many times…”
He smiled. “That’s the attitude I like to hear from you, Seto,” he said, with a light chuckle. The medicine was working quickly; I could hear his voice grow steadier. “Now… the next time I want you to work with someone whom you don’t like, please don’t make me risk losing my soul in order to get you to do it, okay?”
He laughed quietly. For some reason, his joking made me feel better… I laughed, too, and ruffled his hair before sliding down next to him, under the covers. He sighed. “When was the last time we had a sleepover, like this?” he asked.
A sleepover? Is that what this was turning into? “I suppose it’s been a while,” I said.
“You know, before we met Gozaburo, you used to tell me bedtime stories,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“Did I?” I laughed, turning off the bedside lamp; the room became completely dark. “I don’t remember.”
“I bet you do!” he said angrily.”I remember. Every night you used to tell me about the duck and the cat who would go on adventures. They had a new adventure every night. I think you used to make up the new adventures.”
“A duck and a cat?” I asked, in disbelief. “Why would a duck and a cat go on adventures together? Wouldn’t the cat just eat the duck?”
“Seto, you were ten!” he said. “In the mind of a genius child, anything is possible, except for the reality of animal violence. And you know…" he nestled himself against my side, still curled up, “I want you to tell me a story, now.”
“You want me to tell you a story?” I asked, happy to feel that he wasn’t cold anymore. “But you’re twelve! Do twelve-year-olds like stories?”
“Twelve-year-olds who haven’t had sleepovers with their brothers in six years like stories very much,” he said firmly, somewhat concealing a yawn. I sighed. “Fine,” I said. “Um… so, let me think of what that cat and that duck will do tonight…” After a moment of thinking, I came up with a stupid idea, good enough for a bedtime story. “Once upon a time, there was a little yellow duck and a little white cat. The duck was annoying, loud, and stupid; the cat was a coward who threw up hairballs every five minutes.”
“The duck wasn’t stupid!” Mokuba gasped, almost as though he was offended. “And the cat didn’t throw up hairballs! Don’t you remember? The duck was a famous opera singer because he had a beautiful voice, and the cat was a queen, because she had blue eyes and was gorgeous!”
I laughed. Had my ten-year-old mind really been so fertile as to imagine characters like those? “No, let me tell the story this new way. I have a plot going, you see.”
He scoffed and I felt him rub his eyes. “Fine. Go on.”
“So, one day, the stupid duck walked up to the coward cat and said, ‘Hey, Coward Cat, I learned that some new neighbors are moving into town.’ Coward Cat was surprised and scared. ‘Who are they?’ she asked. Droning Duck replied…”
“Droning Duck?” Mokuba asked sleepily, unable to control himself. “No, he wasn’t droning; he had a beautiful voice.”
“Let me tell the story!” I said, with mock exasperation. “So, Droning Duck replied, ‘It’s Dumb Brown Dog and Obese Lazy Kitty.’ He paused dramatically. ‘You know… the ladies who are…”
“Obese Lazy Kitty has no alliteration in her name,” Mokuba yawned, interrupting again. “And why do the bad guys get three words in their names?”
“I couldn’t think of a synonym for ‘fat’ that starts with a c or k,” I said. “And three is an evil number in this story, so all of the evil characters have three names.”
“Chunky? Chunky Lazy Kitty? That’s…” he yawned widely again, “…alliteration.”
“Oh, sort of. Well, forget it. I like Obese Lazy Kitty. It’s more extreme. Droning Duck replied, ‘You know… the ladies who are prostituting themselves and going around spreading Ebola.’ So, Coward Cat, after hacking up ten pounds of hairball mass, says, ‘We should spy on them, because we know they’re up to no good.’ So Droning Duck and Coward Cat went to the house of Obese Lazy Kitty and Dumb Brown Dog and they caught Ebola. All of the animals then began to bleed profusely from every pore because the tissues of their blood vessels had deteriorated. Each of them drowning face-down in each others’ blood, they all died slowly and painfully, each of them proceeding to empty their bowels as they died. Dumb Brown Dog even had an epileptic seizure that sent her twitching across the floor, smearing blood all over the entire house, and the police had to come get their horrible, bloody, feces-covered, decomposing corpses out of Dumb Brown Dog’s and Obese Lazy Kitty’s house. The end. Now, wasn’t that a great story?”
I would never know how good a story it was; Mokuba had fallen asleep. Maybe the story was boring, or maybe he was tired from nearly having his heart violently stopped. I frowned and turned onto my side and embraced him; he was warm, and I could feel his steady breaths on my collarbone. I sighed; a twinge of unhappiness was still possessing my mood. I was glad that he felt safe enough in his big brother’s arms to fall asleep, but I still felt uneasy… I let my eyes close. Tomorrow, we would find the Egyptian god cards, and get rid of these creatures.
I felt less exhausted, tonight. I lied in bed, wearing only a plain white t-shirt and boxers for the first time in my life, staring up at the ceiling of my canopy. My mind was racing. So Yugi wanted to go to Atlantis. Did he even know where that was?
Another thought crossed my mind. The monsters had shown up in my bedroom and office. How did they get there? Could they just …materialize wherever they wanted? If that was the case, then we weren’t safe anywhere…. Especially not at Atlantis! But, despite how I didn’t really like Yugi, I somehow- and only somewhat- trusted him. Maybe he knew what he was doing.
I turned onto my stomach and embraced one of my feather pillows. Maybe I was making the right decision in joining Yugi and his friends out tomorrow. My Blue-Eyes-White dragons were a formidable enemy to these monsters; if Yugi were to fail, that meant that the monsters would keep showing up in my house, just like Pegasus said.
And what about that dream that I’d had, last night… I had been so busy poring over Roland that I had forgotten about it until now. During my last duel with Yugi, I had seen a similar vision… myself, wearing those elaborate gold dressings, fighting against the Pharaoh , with my Blue-Eyes White Dragon… why did I see those sorts of things? I didn’t know what to believe about them. I’d had trouble believing Ishizu Ishtar when she had told me that I had existed 5,000 years ago as the Pharaoh’s High Priest, until I found that I could read Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, without having ever seen them before… it was how I knew how to defeat the Ra card, when Marik possessed it. Ishizu had said that I once held the Millennium Rod and had been the Pharaoh’s best friend, as well as greatest rival…Mostly, I didn’t think about the possibility of there being an Egyptian lineage in my family. I was too busy building theme parks.
I closed my eyes, warm and now tired. Tomorrow would be a big day. I enjoyed the lone moment of sleepy tranquility, before a terrible sensation of horror crashed violently through me; I sat up quickly and jerked the bed sheets off of myself; there was then an anguished yell and a loud crash from the end of the hallway. My heart stopped; I tore out of my bedroom and down the hall.
The ground beneath my feet seemed to vanish when I reached Mokuba’s room; two monsters were in here; he had a similar sword wall hanging on his wall, and had grabbed a sword, and was in the process of stabbing one monster; but, I had barely entered the room when the second grabbed him around the shoulders, and in a movement quicker than the speed of light, fastened its clawed, glowing hand to his chest.
He gasped in pain and dropped the sword, immobilized; I leapt on the monster and wrenched it off of him. I tumbled to the ground, with the monster. I was kneeled on top of it, pinning it to the ground; it shrieked as I snatched the sword off of the floor and stabbed it through its head; when it disappeared, I fell two feet to the ground.
“Mokuba!” I yelled, whipping around and seeing him crumpled to the floor a few feet behind me.
I could hardly breathe with worry; I kneeled beside him, frantically… he was conscious, whimpering with pain, clutching at his chest…
“Speak to me,” I whispered shakily, lifting him up, some; he looked up and said, equally quietly, but injected with fear, “I’m… so cold…”
A butler rushed into the room, and gasped, “Masters…!”
“Get a doctor in here!” I roared at him; he left the room. I was extremely frightened. Mokuba’s voice was weak and shaky, and he was trembling… I lifted him off of the floor and into my lap; together we were sitting on the ground in his bedroom, leaning against his bed; he put his arms around my neck and head on my collarbone, just shaking, clutching at my shirt painstakingly.
I had almost never felt so scared; he was completely cold, and moved only to barely shiver… what if his heart stopped? His face was stark white, completely pale… he wasn’t crying. I wanted to… my hand was on his back, directly over his heart, protectively… how could I have let this happen… how could I have been so stupid as to not check our rooms for more monsters…
He whimpered again and I felt his grip on me grow tighter. “It hurts…” he whispered. What could I do, other than to also hold him tighter, using my own warmth as a medicine?
Finally, a kind-looking doctor entered the room. “Thank you for coming here so late,” I told her. She smiled at me before kneeling down beside us. She looked gently at Mokuba and whispered, “Do you want to get in your bed?”
I felt him shake his head weakly. The woman nodded and said, “Stay with your brother,” before pulling a stethoscope out of her bag and sticking its ends into her ears and pressing the other end to his back, up his shirt; I moved my hand, and she moved it to the spot where my hand had just been.
“Oh, my,” she said softly. “Pulse rate is very irregular. A monster attack, right? About how many seconds?”
I nodded shortly and thought for a moment; I had been so panicked, I wasn’t sure… it had seemed like a million seconds, but realistically, it was probably less than five, and I told her that. She took the stethoscope off and put her hand on the back of Mokuba’s head gently. “Can you answer some questions for me?” she asked.
I felt him turn his head to look at her; he weakly nodded.
“Are you in any pain right now?”
He nodded again, still lightly trembling. “About how much?” the doctor continued.
“It’s… getting better…” he said, voice shaky.
“Can you breathe well?” she asked. I felt him just barely shrug and nod.
The doctor pulled a small vial of liquid medicine out of her bag and set it on the ground, before pulling a small notebook out of her bag and scribbling something down. “I recognize his symptoms. We’ve found this medicine to be very effective in restoring regular heart rate and temperature. He’s going to be okay. Keep him warm and have him drink this right now. He’ll feel better within thirty minutes and be completely back-to-normal in a few hours.” She stood up. “I’m sorry they hurt you, honey,” she said, patting his head gently and turning to leave.
“Thank you,” I told her. “Take your money out of my account.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said brightly, and left the room, leaving us alone.
Mokuba lifted his head off of my chest and said, “I should… drink that…”
“Yes,” I said, picking the small bottle off of the ground and uncapping it. “Here,” I handed it to him. He took it from me and downed it; I felt him recoil momentarily. “It’s… gross,” he said, with a small chuckle.
I put my arm under his knees and stood up. He wasn’t shaking anymore; “Hold on to me,” I said, and felt his arms tighten around my neck. I walked back to my room and sat down on my bed. He lifted his head off of my collarbone and let go of me; I laid him in my bed. He looked better, now; face re-gaining color, and he didn’t appear to be in much pain. He pulled the thick, heavy covers over himself and lied there, eyes closed tightly, voluntarily trying to steady his own breathing.
“How do you feel,” I asked nervously, poring over him.
He shrugged somewhat, on his back, not bothering to open his eyes now. “Not… too bad, I guess,” he said.
I frowned. I was still very upset. I knew it had only taken twenty-or-so minutes for me to feel better when I had been hurt, but who knows how comparable this was, to that- he was smaller, younger; and who knows how long the monster had been in contact with him. Maybe five seconds… it was such a blur. I was sitting on my bed, facing him.
He cracked open one eye and said, “Don’t worry, big brother… I’m okay. Really. Go to sleep… we have to get up early tomorrow…”
“I…” I began, not knowing if I could even fall asleep, now. “I’m sorry that I didn’t know that there were more monsters in the house…”
He opened both eyes now and turned his head slightly to face me, more. “I feel so stupid…” I continued miserably. “That was… way too close a call.”
He frowned. “But… I’m convinced more than ever, now, to go with Yugi to Atlantis,” I said. “I will not stand for those things to enter our house anymore. We’ve gotten lucky too many times…”
He smiled. “That’s the attitude I like to hear from you, Seto,” he said, with a light chuckle. The medicine was working quickly; I could hear his voice grow steadier. “Now… the next time I want you to work with someone whom you don’t like, please don’t make me risk losing my soul in order to get you to do it, okay?”
He laughed quietly. For some reason, his joking made me feel better… I laughed, too, and ruffled his hair before sliding down next to him, under the covers. He sighed. “When was the last time we had a sleepover, like this?” he asked.
A sleepover? Is that what this was turning into? “I suppose it’s been a while,” I said.
“You know, before we met Gozaburo, you used to tell me bedtime stories,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“Did I?” I laughed, turning off the bedside lamp; the room became completely dark. “I don’t remember.”
“I bet you do!” he said angrily.”I remember. Every night you used to tell me about the duck and the cat who would go on adventures. They had a new adventure every night. I think you used to make up the new adventures.”
“A duck and a cat?” I asked, in disbelief. “Why would a duck and a cat go on adventures together? Wouldn’t the cat just eat the duck?”
“Seto, you were ten!” he said. “In the mind of a genius child, anything is possible, except for the reality of animal violence. And you know…" he nestled himself against my side, still curled up, “I want you to tell me a story, now.”
“You want me to tell you a story?” I asked, happy to feel that he wasn’t cold anymore. “But you’re twelve! Do twelve-year-olds like stories?”
“Twelve-year-olds who haven’t had sleepovers with their brothers in six years like stories very much,” he said firmly, somewhat concealing a yawn. I sighed. “Fine,” I said. “Um… so, let me think of what that cat and that duck will do tonight…” After a moment of thinking, I came up with a stupid idea, good enough for a bedtime story. “Once upon a time, there was a little yellow duck and a little white cat. The duck was annoying, loud, and stupid; the cat was a coward who threw up hairballs every five minutes.”
“The duck wasn’t stupid!” Mokuba gasped, almost as though he was offended. “And the cat didn’t throw up hairballs! Don’t you remember? The duck was a famous opera singer because he had a beautiful voice, and the cat was a queen, because she had blue eyes and was gorgeous!”
I laughed. Had my ten-year-old mind really been so fertile as to imagine characters like those? “No, let me tell the story this new way. I have a plot going, you see.”
He scoffed and I felt him rub his eyes. “Fine. Go on.”
“So, one day, the stupid duck walked up to the coward cat and said, ‘Hey, Coward Cat, I learned that some new neighbors are moving into town.’ Coward Cat was surprised and scared. ‘Who are they?’ she asked. Droning Duck replied…”
“Droning Duck?” Mokuba asked sleepily, unable to control himself. “No, he wasn’t droning; he had a beautiful voice.”
“Let me tell the story!” I said, with mock exasperation. “So, Droning Duck replied, ‘It’s Dumb Brown Dog and Obese Lazy Kitty.’ He paused dramatically. ‘You know… the ladies who are…”
“Obese Lazy Kitty has no alliteration in her name,” Mokuba yawned, interrupting again. “And why do the bad guys get three words in their names?”
“I couldn’t think of a synonym for ‘fat’ that starts with a c or k,” I said. “And three is an evil number in this story, so all of the evil characters have three names.”
“Chunky? Chunky Lazy Kitty? That’s…” he yawned widely again, “…alliteration.”
“Oh, sort of. Well, forget it. I like Obese Lazy Kitty. It’s more extreme. Droning Duck replied, ‘You know… the ladies who are prostituting themselves and going around spreading Ebola.’ So, Coward Cat, after hacking up ten pounds of hairball mass, says, ‘We should spy on them, because we know they’re up to no good.’ So Droning Duck and Coward Cat went to the house of Obese Lazy Kitty and Dumb Brown Dog and they caught Ebola. All of the animals then began to bleed profusely from every pore because the tissues of their blood vessels had deteriorated. Each of them drowning face-down in each others’ blood, they all died slowly and painfully, each of them proceeding to empty their bowels as they died. Dumb Brown Dog even had an epileptic seizure that sent her twitching across the floor, smearing blood all over the entire house, and the police had to come get their horrible, bloody, feces-covered, decomposing corpses out of Dumb Brown Dog’s and Obese Lazy Kitty’s house. The end. Now, wasn’t that a great story?”
I would never know how good a story it was; Mokuba had fallen asleep. Maybe the story was boring, or maybe he was tired from nearly having his heart violently stopped. I frowned and turned onto my side and embraced him; he was warm, and I could feel his steady breaths on my collarbone. I sighed; a twinge of unhappiness was still possessing my mood. I was glad that he felt safe enough in his big brother’s arms to fall asleep, but I still felt uneasy… I let my eyes close. Tomorrow, we would find the Egyptian god cards, and get rid of these creatures.
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