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He wakes up.
No, that’s—that’s not right. He was already awake. Upright in his chair, eyes wide open.
What was he doing again?
Oh, yes. The puzzle.
It’s complete. Finally. Every piece has been snapped perfectly into place, the scattered parts transformed into a seamless golden pyramid, a unified whole. He should be thrilled. But for some reason, it’s not the puzzle itself that draws his attention, but the fingers wrapped around it.
His hands are—his hands are wrong, but the reason slips away before he can fully grasp it. Something about their color? They do look strange in the pale light of the desk lamp, washed-out and almost blue, glowing like an afterimage.
He sets the puzzle gingerly down on the desk and casts his eyes around the shadowy bedroom. Everything is in its place. Everything is as it should be.
But still the wrongness claws at him.
He pushes himself to his feet. His legs feel strange beneath him. Untested, like a newborn foal’s. He takes an uncertain step forward, then another, a third, a fourth—
A wave of dizziness washes over him. White noise is roaring in his ears and half of him wants to compare it to waves crashing on a riverbank while the other half is reminded of TV static; the two halves are both talking at once and their voices blend together until he can’t focus on either one of them; he can feel his knees buckling under him but he’s also floating above himself, watching himself stagger, watching himself flail for purchase, his fingertips scrabbling against the edge of the desk, against the cold metal of the puzzle—
His mind clears. He squeezes the puzzle until its point digs painfully into his palm, and the churning waters go still.
All right. Let’s try this again.
This time, when he steps outside the small pool of lamplight, he brings the puzzle with him.
Just beyond the edge of the shadows is a mirror. Within the mirror is a face. Slowly, hesitantly, he reaches out to touch the face, but the reflection’s hand intercepts his own.
That’s him in the mirror.
Yugi Muto.
Wrong.
Wrong wrong wrong.
The name itches, grates against him, rests unnaturally on his tongue. But what other name does he have? Who else could he be?
Why else would he be standing here in Yugi’s skin, with Yugi’s reflection and Yugi’s memories?
He remembers…
He remembers everything.
He remembers standing in front of this very mirror, yesterday morning. Trying on chokers, heels, belts, jewelry, leather and studs, but ultimately discarding all of it. Yugi had been worried—he had been worried—about standing out too much on the first day of school.
He remembers his hopes for that day. He remembers those hopes being dashed. He remembers the bullies who stole the puzzle, but…strange…he also remembers defending those bullies.
He remembers fear. Anger. A wrong un-righted.
Ushio.
And there’s something else. It’s not a memory, exactly. More like a feeling, embedded somewhere deep in his soul.
The feeling is duty.
He is the guardian of all that is right and just. It is his responsibility to pass judgment on evil, and to prevent those who trespass from offending again. He’s not sure how he knows this, but it comes to him as naturally as remembering how to breathe.
By all rights he should trust less in some nebulous intuition than in the crystal clarity of his memories, yet somehow this sense of duty feels more solid than anything else he’s encountered tonight, and he clings to it with the desperation of a drowning man. There is a path before him now. He knows what he must do.
But first…
If he is Yugi Muto, then he ought to dress the part.
Off goes the baggy hoodie that Yugi, too anxious and bruised to do anything but curl up in his comfiest clothes and fiddle with the puzzle, had changed into after school. On goes every flashy accessory that Yugi would have worn yesterday, if he hadn’t been so afraid of exposing his true self. After a moment’s hesitation, he adds an extra set of baubles, ones he hadn’t actually considered the morning prior: a pair of ankh bracelets. Yugi had picked them out on a whim once at a costume store and then never gotten around to wearing them, but tonight they feel…right.
There’s a thin brown cord buried at the bottom of Yugi’s jewelry box, and he strings it through the loop at the base of the puzzle and ties the ends around his neck. He may not entirely understand why, but it's important that he keep the puzzle with him, and it would be difficult to carry out his task with a small metal pyramid clenched awkwardly in his fist.
He slinks through the house where Yugi grew up, past Grandpa’s darkened bedroom and down the stairs, into the game shop. There’s a phonebook behind the counter and a landline on the wall. He dials by muscle memory.
Next, he reaches into the cash register and pulls out a fistful of bills. Yugi would never steal from his grandpa, but if all goes as planned—and it will—he won’t need to spend a cent, so this is only borrowing.
He slips out the door, careful not to let the bell ring behind him, and melts into the shadows.
Ah, the cool night air is pleasant on his skin. It feels like an eternity since he’s breathed this deeply. But there’s no time to stand around and enjoy it. His purpose is clear.
Yugi loves games.
So it’s time to play a game.