Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Téa sat on the bench in the park, staring at the direction the sun had set in. Hours ago. Her hands gripped her lap through her shorts.

‘… Why?’

There wasn’t anything that had actually gone wrong today.

Serenity had asked for a tour around town earlier, before she went back to wherever it was she and Joey’s mom lived. And she gave it, because she honestly could have fit right into their friend group. She was a wonderful person.

Then, dropping her off, she had plans with the Pharaoh to go to their second… date? The thought he even would consider that a date brought a tiny blush to her cheeks, before it got buried under the sickly feeling of her stomach again.

But they’d had a wonderful time. Even just hanging out was enough to make her happy. Then, after a few hours, Yugi switched back and then went home.

Leaving her here.

With no buffer to her thoughts.

Serenity’s great… but…

The only part that hadn’t made her flesh crawl was the place Joey had dueled Espa Roba. From the docks onward, even saying her feelings out loud. She was just…

Why did I agree to take her on the tour?? Téa mentally scolded herself. I never want to go back to any of those places again!!! Even just those kids dueling in the park hours ago…. Noah tried to kill us. Even if he didn’t go through with it, there…

There was the rest of Battle City she had to deal with.

The large gaps in her memory that led her to being on top of the tower…

Even this date hadn’t really helped with her anxiety, that one day… The Spirit of the Puzzle was going to be gone….

She coughed loudly, trying to keep the bile in her stomach from rising. Maybe I need to go home… it’s getting cold.

It still took effort to move from her seat, but luckily, she wasn’t staggering. Who knows who was around, and if they thought, she was drunk or something.

Téa held the sides of her jacket closer to each other, mostly looking at the ground as she walked. So absorbed in her own thoughts, she barely heard the roar of motorcycles…

“Watch it!” a voice snapped, as it was suddenly unclear who was in the wrong, the three of them being too close to the sidewalk or her more in the street than she thought. Not that it mattered, because they just as quickly sped away as they even crossed her to begin with.

She still screamed after them. As if they could hear.

The anger she felt at those jerks was enough to keep her head up to walk into the door of her house.

——

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M FIRED??"

The noise was too loud, Téa knew. If anyone were nearby, they'd have jumped at the volume of her voice. But having been called into the manager's office was already not a good sign, she hadn't even changed into her uniform yet for her shift. Standing there in a tank top and shorts, in this oddly frigid office was already making her nervous.

But, sighing in defeat, the overweight, middle-aged man looked at her with great disappointment in his face. They had a mostly professional relationship, with a few remarks from him that made Téa felt like she could have been safe there. That if anyone was irreplaceable, it should have been her.

"You know the rules" he sighed, as if in great pain. She was a pleasant girl who always showed up on time, even taking extra shifts to cover for her fellow coworkers. He didn't like this any more than she did. "You can't be in high school and have a job here."

The cold in the office wasn't just on her skin any more. It had formed over her stomach, turning it into a giant ice cube that felt like it punched the organs it had just taken over. How... how did he find out??

"Evidence from a criminal recently arrested was sent to me from the police department," he continued, as if he was reading her mind, in the same tired tone. "Although it is not an arrestable offence, I could lose a lot for this business if this leaked out I had hired a teenager, when you're supposed to be focusing on school."

For a moment, it felt like her heart had stopped... only...

The man sitting at his desk watched as her emotions started to change very rapidly. Her face went from scared, to a moment of contemplation... which quickly got replaced with an angry scowl over her face that he shuddered at.

"I'm the one who got threatened and blackmailed, and I'm the one getting punished??" she suddenly demanded as loudly as her previous question. But the surprise was completely gone from her voice. She was just... mad.

"There was clear definitions lined out in your contract, Miss Gardner. I can make sure your last paycheck is mailed to your home, but…" he replied and at that point his voice started to trail off as she just felt her anger, making Tea start to grind her teeth and almost start snarling at this man who started sweating profusely. The cold was completely gone from her stomach as she suddenly felt nothing but suddenly very hot prickles.

Not seeing the point in begging through the very foggy lens of her rage, she stopped snarling and just remained glaring at him. Digging through her bag, she threw her old uniform onto his desk before turning out and slamming the door behind her.

There were a few employees watching as she stormed out of the kitchen and out of the front door, also turning a few head of the patrons of the restaurant. She couldn't remember if Tristian was working today. She hadn't succumbed to her tears just yet, but she still barely saw anything else but the exit.

Aside from the jingling of the bell and omnipresent quiet pop music on the intercom, the tables that were seated there barely minded that she had stormed out of the restaurant. With an exception.

--------

A man sat staring at the door she had exited out of from his seat as his table. His companions were arguing, and although he wasn't paying much attention, the sound of it was that it was unimportant and not going well for either of them. But that was how most of their arguments went anyway. He was only keeping a half ear in case they started making one of their scenes in public.

"... Raph?" an accented voice asked him as he hadn't moved his head in the last half of a minute, watching the door with an intense, thinking look on his face. His expression was stern and decisive. He suddenly stood like a gigantic shadow in the otherwise bright and colorful restaurant.

"Where the hell are you going?" the redhead at the table asked, raising an eyebrow at the sudden standing. "What happened?"

He didn't reply right away, deciding on a quiet "Not sure, but I'll find out..." as he grabbed his trench coat off of his seat as he started to walk away.

"Hey wait!" the other voice suddenly demanded loudly. "You're not leavin', are ya?" They hadn't even ordered yet! "You're not sticking us with---"

Before the sentence even had really begun, the standing, towering wall turned and glared slightly at the two of his companions still looking at him incredibly confused, but also scared of the sudden mood shift. The look was enough to say this was over.

Wordlessly, what seemed like blinks between occurrences, he'd suddenly had his wallet in his hands, slammed an amount of money between the two of them, then continued walking out of the restaurant with only the command to behave themselves after putting on his coat. The redhead gingerly pocketed the amount for later to pay for the bill.

As a blue haired airhead introduced herself in the third person and welcomed them to the restaurant, the two young men remaining for a moment shared a mutual, surprised look. Which had successfully adverted them fighting in public, besides small acknowledgement talk of what Raphael had done, the two had the rest of their lunch in puzzled silence.

——

Kicking a large chunk of undiscernible trash in front of her, Téa had finally succumbed to her tears as she had let her rage ebb in some of her panic as well. He was worried for this dump's reputation, not that she barely made it out safely from that man. But without this place, what was she going to do?

 She stared up at the darkening sky. Rain had been threatening in large buckets from the start of the day, but they hadn't fallen yet.

The sky looked the same as it did in New York. She inhaled loudly as her own rain kept cascading down her face, trying to convince herself the sky over there wouldn't just be a memory.

It didn't work.

This place was her only way back over. She needed the money. Even if he kept her employment at her age a secret, it wouldn't be for long. No place was going to hire her after that, not until she got out of school.

Her parents weren’t an option either. They had told her point blank she was making a mistake, choosing wanting to dance.

She'd had nowhere near enough for a full four years over there, she had barely had enough for her plane ticket over and, provided she didn't need to do things like eat, maybe the first half of a year in an on-campus dorm room....

A sudden, bright light from behind her illuminated the entire alley she had wandered into.

Now what, she thought, annoyed, turning towards it with a glare that she hoped was overcompensating for the fact that her face was reddened and tear stained at the moment. Almost as quickly, her face dropped as well as feeling her heart thump in the process.

The light was coming from a gigantic teal motorcycle. And the rider, though silhouetted at the moment, did not look friendly.

Téa had known a lot of men in her life. There were her friends, that Odion guy from Battle City, Mako Tsunami from Duelist Kingdom. Those creeps from the digital world, not the least of whom was Kaiba's stepfather. Most of them were big. Not many were fat, except that penguin creep she had dueled, but they were all huge and wide, easily dominating and scary to look at.

This guy made all of them look like little boys.

Him standing up off his bike was easily the tallest person she had ever seen in her life. And the widest. Although his arms were hidden in the shadow he was in right now, she could just make out his legs from him getting off his seat, and they looked as thick as tree trunks!

He turned off the light to his bike's headlights. Though dark, it was still daytime out, and she could make out his all dark clothing from here. He looked at her for a moment, taking his sunglasses off. Then she heard his boots crunching against the ground as he started walking towards her.

I didn't even say 'Could today get any worse?'! she thought, trying to make light of the situation occurring. It always helped everyone else in the group get over their anxieties when she, or maybe Tristian, had cracked a little joke here and there.

She couldn't move her legs still, but her arms suddenly began to twitch as he looked away for a moment but kept moving forward, moving quickly as he was looking in the many pockets of his trench coat at the same time.

Téa felt all color promptly drain from her face.

Oh no... She started to twitch again as he kept coming closer... No... please!!!

Her arms suddenly snapped from her sides as she put them up in front of her face, with a loud shrill scream.

That's when the crunching stopped.

More than a few moments passed. And when the knife she was expecting him to pull out from his pockets never came, her blue eyes opened again, freshly glassy from tears of fear. She took a sharp inhale of breath before starting to move.

Her hands lowered, but still put in front of herself as a pitiful shield, turned to look up at this towering giant of a man, right in front of her. With... a surprised and mildly confused look on his face, making the bright blue of his eyes almost glow in the dark of this alley. In the hand that had been checking his pockets, he was holding something... a dark blue handkerchief?

A few moments of silence later, he started first. The hand that was holding the piece of fabric he extended to her, holding it in a way that meant he was offering it. "I saw you leave that burger place earlier. And you looked upset."

He had a big voice, deep and scratchy, but there still carried an incredible softness that the brunette certainly was not expecting. The sincerity of his claim made her lower her arms slightly more until they were at her sides, though she clenched her fists still. He held out the handkerchief in his hand to her. "I wanted to ask if you were okay."

Today was just full of surprises.

She stared at it a moment longer, before shakily reaching for it without breaking her expression. "... You really couldn't have picked a more normal way to say that...?" she sort of mumbled without thinking about how it would insult him, wiping the stains off her cheeks.

It wasn't meant to be heard or said out loud, but it sure was. Tea looked up to see that, even in the darkness of the day, his expression changed from a neutral, stony-faced look to one of surprise, and then a faint flush covered his cheeks as the expression turned embarrassed. He smiled uneasily, "Heh... um. Sorry."

As if it had just suddenly hit him what this might have looked like to an outsider. And what it could still very well be, to the person he was interacting with.

"Yeah... maybe I should have thought this out a little bit" he continued, sticking his hands into two pockets of his trench coat, trying to look casual about it. This giant muscular wall of a man, trying to look demure and casual after an introduction like that...

Téa let out a loud snort, followed by some sincere, if shaky, chuckles. She opened her eyes from her fit, to see not only was the pink on his face slightly deeper on his face, his smile had turned slightly more excited and less awkward. Something about it made her mouth do a tiny tug upwards as well, despite everything else that had happened today.

He held out his other gigantic hand to her. She accepted it, seeing how small and dainty her hands were compared to his. The tips of his fingers were slightly rough, and she could only assume his palms were as well, being under his gloves, but he both held and shook her hand gently. "... Hi. I'm Raphael."

 "Téa."

"Do you need to talk?" he tried again. "You just... looked like you needed someone to listen to you."

A tired smile came over her face. "Yeah... yeah, maybe I do need someone to talk to right now. Thanks." Something was making her bite her cheek, internally, that she had lots of people to listen to her. It's not like she knew where any of them were right now. And if this guy wanted to hurt her, he would have been able to do so, no problem.

Being downtown, they didn't take very long for them to find a place to sit down and 'talk'. It gave her hope for the world, if people like Raphael were around. A total stranger, willing to listen to her problems, buying her a hot chocolate from the nearly cafe they wound up in.

And listen he did, sipping a coffee he'd ordered occasionally as she vented her frustrations about suddenly being fired on the spot, with a vague reason as to why. There was no reason to share something that... intimate with a total stranger, regardless of kindness. She mentally giggled at how out of place this gigantic, darkly dressed, muscly biker looked in such a quaint, softly colored little shop.

After a few moments of contemplation when she had finished, loudly downing the liquid in his cup, then gently putting it down on the table in front of him. He spoke, staring at her with sincerity and stoicism.

"No."

"... No?" Téa repeated, slightly insulted and showing it with a small sneer and eyes slightly narrowed at him. What did he mean by no?

He held up a hand, as a sign of defense and apology. "Don't misunderstand, that's what you're upset about right now. And it's upsetting, completely." Raphael's stern face came over with an expression Tea knew he was thinking of how he was phrasing what he was going to say next. So she gave him a moment, albeit with her irked expression. "Just... are you sure that's... all you're upset about?"

Téa’s mouth opened a few times, just to close afterwards, her face losing all of the sass she had just moments ago.

"You're really crying about losing a dead-end job?" he continued, raising an eyebrow at her. "You weren't planning on doing that forever, right?"

 An uncomfortable silence came with a chill that suddenly crossed the cafe, as any attempts for Téa to speak either didn't come out, or in one instance, came out as "Well... I..." before dying altogether as she both wrestled with the… feelings from yesterday starting to bubble up with her.

 Her chin went into her hand while she was looking downwards at the table, trying to start a sentence multiple times and failing. There was a sparkle of a beautiful aquamarine in the corner of her eye, looking back up at Raphael. He was wearing a necklace that she had somehow missed, but was now holding it by the charm in his hand, staring in contemplation at it.

"That's such a pretty stone..." she said instead, hoping it might change the subject even a little. "Where'd you get it?"

After a few more moments of silence, a smile broke out on his face as he had come to some sort of internal conclusion. She may have been withholding details, but it didn't matter. He could help her. "I can take you to him."

Téa, despite the curiosity she was feeling about the stone, made no motion to stand, instead looking puzzled at Raphael. “… Who?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“My boss”, he replied, trying rapidly to think of a reason for her to come along. From the look on her face, there was something that wasn’t sure about going. “I think maybe he’d be able to help you out with a job…”

“I mean… I don’t know…” Téa’s slight frown only deepened as she wrestled internally with her thoughts. The last time she had gone off with someone she thought was nice, she would find herself strapped to a chair under a giant, looming crate.

But there wasn’t a way to tell that to Raphael.

“Well… why did you need the money from that place anyway?” he tried instead.

That was a question that could be answered without making it too weird. “Oh, I want to go back to the States. I was saving up to study dance in New York.”

“‘Back?’”

“I’ve been there before. My dad had us move out there once, for work.” A tiny, real smile came over her face, index finger running around the ring of her own mug, looking away in thought. “It was like something out of a fairy tale. I've always wanted to go back...”

Raphael paused before offering, slowly, “Our company is in the States. We’re heading back tomorrow morning.”

The slightly dreamy look on her face, talking about returning to New York, returned to an uneasy, guilty expression. “Tomorrow morning? That’s… really short notice. And I’m still in high school.”

“We’ve always got spots open,” he insisted. “It could just… be an option.” He waited a moment before continuing “If he doesn’t think you’d fit in, you’ll know right away.”

“…”

“Téa.” There was a serious, but not angry, tone to his voice that caught her attention. “I promise, if my… boss doesn’t like you, I’ll take you back to your house myself.”

After a few more moments, her uncertainty in her face and voice didn’t let up, but she looked up. He really did want to help her, she could tell. Téa finally breathed out “… okay… I guess…”

Raphael’s offered a gigantic hand to her again, a small smile on his face. She looked a little uncomfortable, and he understood. But this was going to be good for her, so it’d be worth it in the long run he was a little pushy.

They took the short walk back to his bike where he’d left it.

With loud rumbles, first from the motorcycle's engine and the second from the sky in echo, it finally started to rain on the scene.

"Do you ride?" he asked, unsurprised that she shook her head in the negative. "Thought so, here..." The seat was a little bit larger suddenly as he pulled on the back of it, and she gingerly sat down behind him.

"Where do my feet go?"

"There's a space down there."

"Oh."

As awkward as it was to get on, an unexplained flush came over her own cheeks this time as Téa wrapped her arms around Raphael as much as she could. She couldn't even get her arms completely around his torso!

With a quiet promise to her to drive slowly for her safety, Raphael revved the engine to his motorcycle and drove off.

—

The elevator up only beeped as it went towards the top.

Raphael looked down at Téa, staring at the numbers as they blinked in and out, passing the floors. He let out a small chuckle, which she snapped her head over to look at him. “… Never seen someone anxiously leg bouncing standing up before”.

The brunette mumbled something incoherently, probably an unnecessary apology, and tried to stay her bouncing leg. She wasn’t doing well, folding her arms even tighter as she started to sweat slightly.

“…. It’s gonna be okay.” he tried to assure. He wanted to reach out, but she seemed… tense.

“…. ‘Paradius’, huh?” she replied, trying to change the subject and still looking anywhere but Raphael’s face. “Never heard of them before.” Which wasn’t a lie; even knowing a CEO of a company personally. “What does it do?”

After a brief pause, he thankfully went with the change in conversation and looked up. The numbers were blinking closer and closer to the top. “Security, among other things. We just installed cameras in the city.”

“… I thought KaibaCorp was our security?” The tiniest fraction of confusion was in her voice over her fear. He kept going with it; maybe it would help with the anxiety.

“We’re branching out.”

“…. Did you install any cameras, is that what you do?”

“No.”

“So how do you work for Paradius?”

“I do a lot, but for trips like this I’m one of three bodyguards. I just met you on our break.”

“Body guard? For who?”

“Who you’re going to meet.”

With one final beep and a loud swoosh of the elevator, accompanied with a startled noise from Téa, they came to a very short hallway of the building. There was a gigantic red door with an insignia on it: an ankh, with some sort of geometric pattern over it, inside of a circle.

She barely got to stand in awe of it. Raphael turned to offer his hand again, but he didn’t really need to. She was already up here, it was too late to back out now.

Raphael opened the door.

Standing in the middle of the office was a figure that was just as surprising as everything else was in here. The blue hair that greeted them fell close to the figure’s feet that was tied in a very low ponytail. He turned around to look at the two walking in with mismatched, gold and green eyes. He was beautiful, wearing a dark blue suit and perfectly clean white shoes. A stern, unimpressed expression almost instantly melted into a tiny look of surprise, as quickly breaking into a charming smile as he and Téa made eye contact, slightly hiding behind Raphael’s arm.

She wasn’t sure why, but it just sent a shiver down her spine.

“Raphael.” he began, with a voice that was very smooth and soothing. “I see you’ve brought a guest with you.” He closed a folder he was reading, placing it on his desk to start walking towards them, never taking his eyes off of her. Téa felt herself slightly tense, as he continued. “I will handle this from here, you’re dismissed.”

Raphael closed his eyes and nodded once, turning without another word out of the office.

“Wait, Raphael!” Téa quickly said a bit too loudly. No doubt she had caught his attention, but he couldn’t stop and reassure her. She would be fine, but she still caught the guilty expression on his face.

The door quickly shut, with the man quietly chuckling at her reaction of surprise at his sudden departure. “I can take a guess as to why a young woman suddenly being alone would make her nervous…” He stopped a few steps ahead of her, and held out a hand as he continued “But you have nothing to fear from me, my dear. I’m an old man. Please, call me Dartz.”

Téa accepted politely after a few moments, before giving him a shy, uneasy smile. “Really? But you look so young...”

His smile grew a touch flattered at her comment, releasing her hand. “My, aren’t you a sweetheart.” Dartz gazed her over a moment, almost appraisingly. “Oh yes... I can see why Raphael brought you here. You do need help.”

“Help? Help with what?” she immediately asked back, slightly irked but mostly confused.

His smile became slightly sad as he looked her over. “The soul does not lie about the weight of the heart, Téa. You’ve been hurt, even if you were not... completely honest with Raphael about how you’ve been feeling as of late.”

Téa once again felt frozen by such an accusation she forgot, temporarily, to be scared about how he knew her name before she had told him anything. Shakily, an awkward smile came to grace her face. “What are you talking about? I’m... fine.”

An eyebrow being raised and an unconvinced expression was all it took for her to reconsider that statement.

“I--- I mean... I was fired today. That was really upsetting....” she mumbled, trying to look away. But the unchanging, constant gaze was suddenly hitting her with a thought about what Raphael had clearly seen in the cafe earlier. Was that what Dartz was talking about, too? “I mean... Raphael was right I didn’t want to be there forever. But I need the money to get back to the United States...”

“Yes, my dear,” he interrupted with an air of impatience. “But there was also your friend’s grandfather getting kidnapped and hospitalized over a trading card.”

Her mouth suddenly closed.

Why is the floor so far away...? Téa thought to herself, suddenly seeing nothing but the floor, suddenly down a dark tunnel. What was she standing on??

A look of small sympathy crossed over Dartz's face as she suddenly seemed to grow paler and paler by his words. “Being almost assaulted by a teacher from your school where you practice dancing... being followed by a man and used as part of a wager in a game… your friends almost being burned alive… you and your friend being kidnapped by a group of thugs and possessed… losing a friend to a dark nightmare... being kidnapped again into a digital world where you almost died, and your friend did, even temporarily. You were turned to stone, and when you barely escaped being blown up, another of you was struck down by a god...”

Téa had no idea she was even crying until a surprisingly soft hand brushed over her cheek, having suddenly stopped. “There there...” he quietly cooed, which jolted her in her place. “My apologies for putting it so bluntly, but it also seemed that you yourself had been denying yourself time to think about such things.”

Shakily demanding, “How did you know all of that?”

The calm, pitying smile remained on his face. That was his favorite question to be asked. “You told me. Your soul does have windows, after all. And it’s quite a beautiful soul, just in such pain...”

Suddenly feeling weak in the legs, Téa started to wobble a little from how hard her head was swimming. Can this guy read my mind?? She suddenly felt herself being walked to one of the thickly cushioned seats that sat near the walls.

Dartz held one hand, the other on her opposite shoulder to not only help lead her, but the way she was losing color from this assessment, well. It was safer to assume she needed the help walking than her pass out on him. He was a gentleman, after all. “Have you not... had time to reflect on these events, my dear? Allowed yourself time to process it was upsetting?”

She all but collapsed into the chair once they were close enough to it. Through numb lips, a tiny, shaking ‘No’ was only barely heard. Voice feeling thick, she coughed, to continue only slightly louder "... they all just sort of… kept happening."

How long ago was the start of Battle City? Suddenly she couldn’t remember. Maybe a month? And it just happened so quickly after Duelist Kingdom, they barely got a chance to settle back in before the guys had run off. And even that wasn't all that long ago, so short after Solomon was hospitalized...

“You poor thing... your so called ‘friends’ expecting you to always be okay for their sake...” Here, Téa suddenly snapped up with a visibly shaken and scared expression. “You feel it too, don’t you. They place all of their needs on you and never check on your own. Just because you support others does not mean you don’t need support in return.”

Hot, angry tears kept pricking in the corners of her eyes. "My friends are important to me!"

Dartz nodded sympathetically. “Of course they were important, and they should be. Your loyalty isn’t something to be ashamed of, Téa.” Then a sharp voice, meant to question but still stung as the words hit her.

"You've have died because of them. Even if temporarily. Which is more important, their pride or your life?"

Even sitting down was making her feel dizzy. He was silent, watching her intently. There was no hiding how she was actually feeling, or... forgetting to feel. But he had a point, which suddenly came crashing down onto her as she thought about what he was saying...

How much was being the cheerleader of the group actually wearing her out? They'd been through so much insanity lately, and she had to be fine...

“I... I just wanted to be helpful...” she mumbled again.

“You should never have to regret doing the right thing. Even if it is for people who don't understand you.”

Here, she turned up to look at Dartz. “My friends understand me fine!” she snapped at the accusation.

“Do they?”

She opened her mouth a few times to start her retort, only to make at the very most squeaks. It opened and closed a few times before the weight of his words finally hit. The thoughts flooded in before she could stop them.

When was the last time anyone listened to me? Even a little? The Pharaoh had… just… he had to fight, but he didn’t… is everything I think just… wrong to him? No one listens when I’m calling out traps or…

What I’m feeling doesn’t matter to him, because he believes a prophecy from someone who had been wrong before… Ishizu could be wrong, even she said. We all saw! She was wrong about Kaiba of all people!

Tristian and Duke had sided with him over me when I didn’t want him to fight Marik… Joey never listens to anyone that isn’t the Pharaoh or Yugi but… and Yugi didn’t think I could take care of myself in the Digital World… How hard could a stupid card game be?!

‘Do they?’

The question from Dartz just repeated itself over and over, thinking to all of the events of the past few months. And the more it repeated, the harder it was to pretend it was wrong…

Her mouth opened one more time to try. Choking on her words, she started to counter with a squeaked “Th-they…”

Dartz was quicker with his counter argument. “Did they ever tell you how you reached the top of the Tower? You started watching a duel with your friend Joseph… and then you were up there.” His expression was stern. “They know how you got there, did they tell you?”

The tears had come back, placing a hand over her mouth to try and fail to force the sounds back down. She huddled over in the seat until her forehead touched her knees before she finally let out a choked sob.

Dartz kept the smile off his face but not out of his head, arms folded and watching Téa finally start to accept unpleasant truths.

Perfect.

She heard a hand go into his pocket, which made her uncover her eyes and look up, eyes still wet. He was holding a stone that was just like the one Raphael was wearing. "Here, not only do we understand, we appreciate. Return the kindness." It started to glow with a wild, wonderful light as he offered it to her.

She looked beautiful, as if she was etched out of the bright green glow from its otherworldly intensity. “You’d be safe with us, Téa. You would finally get to be taken care of.”

“What... is that?” Despite its sparkling beauty, her heart had skipped into her throat for a moment. She was certain she heard a woman whisper...

Don't.

"It is something that has been waiting for you for a very long time. All you need to do, is take it."

Don't take it.

"It is a gem that admires the beauty of a soul like yours... it knows when a soul is darkened by evil, and when one is glowing with light."

Téa, please! Don’t take that stone! Another voice joined into this strange whisper’s begging and pleading, only to have another yelling, and another, another, more, until a cacophony rose in her head until it pounded. Her hands were twitching with the urge to cover her ears, even if it wouldn’t help.

“We will provide you with what you’ve given to others but never received. You’d not only be helpful, but important.”

A charming smile came over his face. “Well?”

The whispering just kept getting louder! It sounded like so many people and things, not even giving her the reason why she shouldn’t take it! They were all just yelling at her and ignoring what she wanted! The one main voice, though, it sounded like a woman’s pleading, begging, screaming for her not to take the stone. It was already getting too loud in here, he was right, but then…

You need to calm down, please.

‘Calm down???’ she thought angrily to herself, grinding her teeth as the voices vanished with her decision. ‘I don’t WANT to calm down!’

She stared at the stone with the glare meant for the voice.

‘I deserve to BE UPSET!’

Her hand shot out.

 ——

Raphael, standing just outside the door, opened his eyes to see the bright, glittering light of the Orichalcos stone around his neck suddenly flare into life.

In the city but miles away, his two companions noticed their stones outshining the light of the stars in the sky above for one moment, as quickly as it came it was gone.

A new soul had been accepted.

——

There was a burning sensation in her forehead as Téa held the stone seconds after receiving it from Dartz. It traveled to her eyes, her vision blurring for a fraction of a second, before it all vanished. She still was gritting her teeth and trembling slightly from the pain, looking at the cold, green stone that lay in her palm. She looked to Dartz, perplexed.

He smiled.

“Congratulations, dear. Welcome to our family.”

Chapter Text

Raphael stood outside of the large doors of the office. There was still some talk inside that he couldn’t make out, it was too quiet. He’d understood what the stone glowing meant, and he’d felt a flutter of happiness. He knew Téa would be pure enough to be able to take the Orichalcos!

There was a murmur of her and Master Dartz speaking once again, but he couldn’t decipher what either of them were saying. Not that he had much time to guess, as very quickly he heard them both approaching the door.

At first, there was a small smile on his face, observing his master’s calm look… but Téa wouldn’t meet his gaze, her eyes red and puffy and her face flushed from crying. His face dropped and before he could begin to ask how she was feeling, what happened—

“Raphael!” Dartz snapped, whip like to divert his attention. He placed his hands on her both shoulders gently but firmly. “Shame on you, Raphael.” He had his usual reserved venom in his voice, but the look on his face was supposed to be his ‘mildly scolding’ one. “You brought this girl to me and you’re both drenched. I know I’ve taught you better than that, you’re a gentleman.”

He gently pushed her forward towards the blond, her eyes open but not seeing anything. “You’re to take her to get a change of clothes before she comes with us.”

Raphael nodded once. “You know when we’re leaving, be back before then” was the only other command given before he disappeared into the door. It’d only take a few hours for them to disappear from this building entirely, but they needed to leave.

“Come on. And I’m sorry if being this drenched was uncomfortable.” He turned to look at the windows. There was still some rain falling, but it’d be ending soon. It wasn’t nearly as hard as it was.

He turned to walk away, only making it a few steps when she didn’t move from the spot Dartz had moved her to. She sullenly glared at the floor.

“… Téa?” The simultaneously rough and gentle voice managed to snap her head up to look at his face. It was concerned, expectantly waiting a reaction. “… Are you okay?”

She immediately didn’t look sure at the question, and turned slightly to look at the door. She was thinking intensely, and when more than a minute passed, he spoke again.

“Téa?”

“… That was the weirdest job interview I’ve ever had…” she muttered out loud, looking back at the door like it’d just reopen if she stared in confusion at it long enough. She had one fist still closed tightly, likely holding her Orichalcos shard.

A gentle, sad smile spread across his face. Now wasn’t the time to break it to her. “Yeah… Dartz has a way with directly telling what the problem is.” It was cold from the memory that shivered through him, not the rain.

“…. What am I going to be doing, exactly…?” she asked when she turned back around, shoving it into a pocket in her shorts.

“That’s for… Dartz to decide.” Not calling him ‘Master’ felt odd in the moment, but also felt like something that should be eased into. “He’s gonna be able to find you a place with us.”

“… Do you get used to it.”

He pressed the ground floor button. “No.” The door closed.

There wasn’t a lot of talking on the way down or the drive to her house, where he promised to wait outside while she grabbed anything she needed before. Master Dartz wasn’t always right about everything, she might want to hang on to some things from her life before Doma. Whatever was going on with her, he’d learn in time.

He could wait. So he waited.

     ——

Hot, angry tears kept pricking Téa’s eyes. Going through her closet and finding very little she wanted to wear all of a sudden. She’d all but ripped off her colorful outfit when she got in, suddenly feeling uncomfortable but not because they were wet. The colors were ill fitting in a broadly uncomfortable way.

Everything about the last few months suddenly felt broadly uncomfortable as she silently raged.

… I really need to go shopping… a thought interrupted, noting how bare her clothing options were at the moment anyway before finding… darker. Colors felt just wrong right now, colors implied happy. She settled on grabbing her two darkest shirts and one pair of shorts.

I really can’t believe I’m doing this… she started to think. Before thinking of Dartz’s… more than accurate assessment of her. Solomon being hospitalized and being kidnapped in a week was so long ago, before she remembered it had only been a few months.

How much danger she’d been put in…

How her friends did not care.

Because they were the reason she was in danger.

She angrily scrubbed at her face, trying to stop the tears. Dartz had mentioned they were going to San Francisco, it’d be a long time to be on a plane. Maybe he’d explain more on it. Packing what little she wanted to bring with a huff, she slung what used to be her school backpack over her shoulder.

Before she re-emerged from her house, she looked at the key hooks next to the door. Her house keys were the only ones on there, both of her parents out of town for work.

Dartz’s comment on how her needing to practice in secret, which almost got her assaulted, bubbled in her head, because they didn’t support her either.

She glared at the keys before grabbing them.

-----
Raphael was sitting patiently on his motorcycle just outside of her house. It was a good thing her neighbors were all such heavy sleepers, the rumble of it was loud, even in park.

He watched her turn around to lock the door behind her, having changed as requested. 

A faint blush crossed his face at the aggressive expression mixed with the darkness and tightness of her clothes looked so…

…The thought hit him like a truck, feeling his face start to get warm and red.

… OH.

He hadn’t stopped to think that she was pretty. Now it was the only thing he could even think about. He knew she was, of course, but that wasn’t the reason he had approached her earlier. She was crying and upset. Of course that wasn’t why he stopped her, but why was he trying to convince himself, it wasn’t like he was talking out loud?? 

The red got slightly darker, watching her intentionally stop before walking over a sewer drain. She had a look of complete resolution and anger on her face.

Something silver dropped from her hands and down the grate, never to be seen again.

“Sorry, I didn’t have much stuff to bring…” she muttered as she got back on his bike behind him. Shyly, she reached around him as much as she could reach around his chest again.

She was warm. 

He paused to mentally shake his head. “It’s fine.” Raphael coughed. FOCUS. He revved the engine back to life. “We can go out to get you stuff sometime, if you’d like.”

Raphael thought he’d burst into flames as he heard her give a small laugh, gently felt her head hit his back, squeezing slightly more tightly for a moment before returning to a more normal hold. “… I’d like that, thanks.” she quietly mumbled into his coat.

How he even got the both of them to the plane in one piece would be beyond him for an indescribably long amount of time in the following months. If one would ask him, he couldn’t even remember seeing the road…

----

Far in the back of the plane was quiet as they waited for the time to leave.

The morning was starting to creep over the horizon as they’d pulled up in the airport, where the sleek dark airplane waited, the door to it open. Raphael needed to open the hatch to the plane from the inside for a moment to store that motorcycle of his, leaving Dartz’s newest addition alone with him briefly while he stored it.

A gold-and-green gazed looked over the young woman as she anxiously was looking anywhere but his face.

“Perhaps you should sit down, Miss Gardner.” Dartz commented after a few moments of silence, her finally looking over at him. “You look exhausted.”

“Huh?” was what she responded with before letting out a gigantic yawn that lasted a few moments. She blinked furiously for a few more moments before continuing, “I didn’t even realize how early it was…”

She’d chosen to sit down, good. Head leaning against the window that she had chosen to sit down in, even better. He gave her a polite smile and a head nod before leaving her alone.

He disappeared into the back of the plane after having made sure she was sitting down. Waiting for Raphael to come on board, Dartz made a number of short calls to the headquarters in California of their newest arrival, that’d she’d need something readied for a room and that all staff would be informed of her presence.

Raphael would begin what would be a very brief description of what he’d accomplished to him, who started typing something into the laptop he had on board. He had thought to have Alister do this for him, but not only would just doing it now would save the time, what a wonderful surprise for this unusual event would be waiting for Raphael.

“We’ve updated all the cameras in place, Master Dartz.” Raphael was reporting, standing by the door as he debriefed what had happened the past few days. Dartz was sitting silently, unresponsive, typing on a laptop in front of him. “And we’re certain of the God Cards’ location. We’re working on reserving the---“

“I like your new friend, Raphael.” Dartz interrupted, not looking up from what he was typing on the laptop in front of him. 

Raphael’s mouth instantly closed, a faint pink starting to form. The heterochrome eyes glanced upwards to meet his, with an amused, knowing smile on his face.

“She’s rather pretty.” he continued, not expecting a response and not getting one. He was pleased by the sudden muteness the blond was suddenly exhibiting. It was time for him to listen, not to speak unless spoken to. And to be direct. “Where did you meet her.”

“… On our break, Master. She got fired from her job.”

“Are you sure you haven’t met before?” A genuine, teasing smile came to his face before he could stop himself. “A secret girlfriend I knew nothing of?” 

“Of course not…” he grumbled lowly in embarrassment, glancing downwards and shoving his hands in his coat’s pockets like a petulant child. 

He truly hadn’t thought of what the implication of bringing a girl with him would do. 

Raphael made himself too easy a target at times. How kind of him. 

Dartz stopped to think for a moment. Not the strongest soul he had ever encountered. But certainly not without some stubborn strength and determination, he could sense it right away. It had an unmistakable aura about it that he had not encountered in some time.

Something ancient. Someone ancient.

He could hardly contain his excitement at the idea where and how that would manifest itself. 

Dartz glanced back down, resuming his typing for a few more moments. “Have you told your friends yet?” 

“I haven’t seen them since yesterday...”

Téa suddenly screamed from the front of the plane. Raphael, predictably, whipped around and abandoned their conversation to go rush to her aid. Clearly not the way he had intended to introduce her to the other Swordsmen. Dartz’s smile deepened.

Not only had he not thought of what bringing a girl with him would imply, he didn’t seem to even notice how he was reacting to her already.

Waiting for a particular lull in their conversation, he heard Valon’s thick accent screaming like a child in excitement that she was on the plane, and hearing Alister’s snide voice bicker back at him and Raphael at the same time. 

He placed a hand around his mouth for his own effect, as it was not that he needed to yell particularly loud often at the three of his Swordsmen.

“RAPHAEL, INTRODUCE YOUR NEW ‘FRIEND’.” 

 
Alister and Valon would handle the rest of his mild shaming from here. Dartz minutely typed a few more things, then smirked at his work as it updated. 

The surprise would be wonderful. Raphael was going to enjoy it.
----

Téa put her head on the window, as Dartz had a point that she was exhausted. How long had she been hanging out with Raphael anyway, it hadn’t felt that long. But then again, how was she supposed to know, turns out that nothing had made sense. A whirlwind had blown through yesterday with that rain, and with it swept away all sense of time.

Dully eyed glazing out the window, she tried to guess the time from the bright red sun starting to peak over the horizon. …Six? 

She closed her eyes and leaned further against the window, pillowing the side of her head with her hand. The guys would be walking to school right around now…
…
I deserve to be upset but… 

“Well, well, well, who do we have here?” a thickly accented Australian voice cooed.

Téa’s eyes snapped back open to a face that was leaning in very close to hers with a small, shrill scream. She stared back into bright blue eyes with an even brighter, excited grin on his face, leaning all the way over the seat in front of her to get directly into her face. He had a lot of unruly, spiky brown hair which wasn’t so much as held back by his goggles as they seemed to be almost part of the hairstyle of this guy.

Slightly behind him was another man, so pretty that Téa did a double look-over before realizing that he was not a lady. He was standing in the aisle just in the way of her escape route if she could even move. He had a mildly surprised but still unimpressed look on his face. His arms were crossed, as he also looked her over with his visibly silver eyes, his face framed in his dark red bangs. It was just like the face Dartz had made looking her over last night, but not smiling, almost pouting if she was being honest.

A few moments passed before Téa had realized that she hadn’t said anything. The guy right in front of her was staring expectantly. In a weird way she didn’t have words for yet, she wasn’t going to explain herself to them for being there--- she’d been invited to come, it wasn’t like she was a criminal for being on the plane--- until she saw the glitter of their Orichalcos stones. 

“… Oh!” she gasped. “You must be the other bodyguards Raphael was talking about…” If they had this stone like he did, and now so did she, they must have been part of Paradius. They’d fastened theirs into jewelry they were both wearing, maybe she could get her stone made into something too.

The brunet leaned considerably back, leaning on his folded arms on the back of the seat. He still kept up the bright smile, still staring her down with eyes sparkling. “Tha’s right, sweetie, but I think I was askin’ ‘bout you.”

“You just scared her awake, Valon.” the redhead snapped, glaring at the brunet, hoping the ‘idiot’ in his voice was pronounced enough. The gesture enough meant ‘Give her a minute’, but it seemed he was too excited to listen to orders that were only implied at the moment.

He was focused back on Téa’s face again, close enough to feel his breath on her face, continuing to loudly ask ‘ice breaker’ questions without stopping for an inhale. “What’syournamehowoldareyawhendidyougethereyagonnaworkwithusdoyouduelany—“

The direct staring into her eyes made her shift in her seat, lips slightly curling even more closed. He probably knows he’s making me uncomfortable Téa thought, trying to escape by pressing backwards into her seat more. The redhead standing next to them looked ready to strangle his coworker. 

The commotion was finally getting loud enough to catch wind in the back of the plane, suddenly hearing Raphael’s heavy footsteps as he emerged. He was startled and turning pink. 

“Raph!” the young man chirped, smiling at the blond’s glowering, flushed face. He gestured a thumb towards Téa in an exaggerated, knowing manner. “Maybe you can tell me and Al who this bird is!”

“Don’t ever call me that again,” the redhead snapped at him, before also diverting all his attention to Raphael. “But for once, Valon’s got a point. She’s not saying anything.”

“She doesn’t have to, Alister” he angrily, lowly growled. Usually the tone would have meant something akin to ‘this conversation is over’. But that was for times that there wasn’t a pretty girl that Raphael brought with him.

"RAPHAEL. INTRODUCE YOUR NEW FRIEND" a familiar, shaming voice came from the back of the plane.

There was a few moments of silence after the announcement. Suddenly Raphael couldn't talk. ‘Alister’s’ face suddenly gained genuine surprise as an emotion; though his arms stayed folded, his eyebrows went up and mouth dropped slightly open. ‘Valon’, on the other hand…

His grin, somehow, grew even wider and he started to laugh quickly as he turned to Raphael in the aisle, who was growing redder by the minute. His chuckles was almost entirely timed to the rapid rabbit punches he was giving to Raphael’s upper arm, in an extremely approving tone. “Ohhohoho~!!”

Though the gesture was affectionate and teasing, Raphael was too frozen in embarrassment to do anything he wanted. Like slam Valon face first into the ground. His bright red face went into one of his hands, using the opposite folded arm to help keep it in place. Maybe if he held it there long enough he’d suffocate.

“Raph, you dog!” Valon teased with a grin. “You left us yesterday so you could go an’ hit on some girl?” His smile was bright before, now it almost seemed to glow with the excitement and amusement he was feeling. How it had not fallen off his face, no one was sure. “That’s something I’d do, I thought you were supposed to be the best of us!”

Alister’s peripheral vision caught a pink flush over the girl’s face. She was embarrassed, just like Raphael at this extensive nonsense. He sighed inwardly, trying to keep his expression as neutral as he possibly could, before offering her his hand.

“Please forgive my associate here” he began, bored almost but with sincere apology in his voice. Even a drop of amusement as he glanced over with a smirk “Valon’s an idiot.”

Valon turning around to shout at him had the desired effect he had wanted. That Raphael could turn away for a moment to compose himself before he would have decked the Australian in the face. As much as that would have been amusing to see for himself, she didn’t need any more anxiety given the look on her face.

A tiny smile came to grace her face, appreciation evident in her expression. “I’m Téa” she introduced herself.

Before he entirely let go of her hand, he nodded his head and gave the hand a singular quick shake as his expression returned to its stoicy. The gesture was both an acknowledgment and a dismissal at the same time. “Alister.” was all he said before getting up and walking away towards the cockpit of the plane, pulling a pair of sunglasses out of seemingly nowhere to put them on.

She only got to watch him disappear for a moment before Valon thumped down into the seat next to her. He threw an arm over the top of her airplane seat, in a way that showed he was just getting comfortable instead of flirty. He crossed his legs cheerfully and turned to flash her a toothy, sunny smile again--- still bright and excited, but considerably less annoying than he was just being a moment ago. “And I’m Valon, you prolly gathered that, though!”

Téa blinked a few times before flashing him a smile back, feeling tired now from the lack of sleep compared to how grating he had been. Something about him just feels familiar she thought to herself. Goodness knows, she had plenty of experience with really annoying boys. “It was hard not to pick up” she teased back at him.

“Valon, leave her alone.” Raphael grumbled again, finally managing to keep his expression slightly more neutral. “She’s exhausted.”

“But I got questions!” Valon then turned over to her, slightly pleading look on his face. “Come on, you can handle talkin’ for a little bit, right?”

Téa shrugged good-naturedly, despite how tired he’d just made her feel from freaking her out. “Sure.”

The arm draped around the top of her chair traveled down for a moment to roughly squeeze a shoulder, pulling her slightly closer to Valon with a purred ‘Atta girl!’ before returning to his original pose to start asking the same questions, but with pauses. Raphael and Téa briefly made an understanding eye contact before her attention was pulled away by Valon again. He'd startled her, but she was quickly getting comfortable as he just asked questions over and over, seemingly wanting to know her completely within the first five minutes...


She blinked during their conversation...


... and the blink opened up to him not there anymore?

What looked like Raphael's large and heavy--- but admittedly warm--- trench coat draped over her as well, and the two who she talked to last now sitting a few seats ahead of her, talking loudly about something before somehow her waking up had caught their attention. It definitely was his, given how giant his muscular arms were even from several seats away, these sleeves were huge.


"Woah, you musta been tired, luv!" Valon chirped, happy she was awake again.


"Yeah..." she agreed and nodded while yawning, eyes closing again briefly. "Guess I was..."


"You've been out for hours." Raphael added.


She nodded again.


"We're almost back to California!"


"... what?" her eyes reopened widely again.


She turned to look out the window, startled a bit that, in fact, the plane had been in the air for hours. They were no longer parked in Domino's airport, waiting for takeoff. There was a deep, dark ocean underneath that was the only 'ground' underneath them for miles in every direction, the sunrise changing to sunset evident as it was no longer shining light in her side of the plane.


From her window, still on the horizon but starting to take shape looked like an island with some sort of large pillar at the top. A few minutes closer and it seemed like the pillar was the only thing on the island, but that it still connected in some ways to near-by San Fransisco, maybe with bridges?


Well... she thought, suddenly having to be okay with that she couldn't have left the plane now anyway ...guess there's no turning back now...

Chapter Text

The sun was bright today, in stark contrast to the rain that had blown through yesterday. A dark and studded shoe splashed cheerfully on the ground as he practically skipped ahead of the tired sneakers and loafers behind him to run up to an apartment with a window facing the street.

“How are you already so awake, Yug?” Joey muttered, watching the small friend bounce and start knocking rapidly on Téa’s front door, yawning so widely the hand in front of his mouth had no chance of catching it at all.

“Téa!” Yugi chirped loudly outside of her house, backpack over his shoulder. “It’s time for school!”

The group had started walking together there a few weeks earlier, and he in particular had been excited about coming with all of his friends. Joey and Tristan remained a few steps away from him, muttering about how they were tired already. They had a math test today.

Silence greeted the group. And continued to meet them, despite the sounds of everyday life around them, the distant but nearby sound of a plane taking off.

That’s weird… Yugi thought.

It was already a little strange that she wasn’t out already waiting for them, but maybe she was just putting on her shoes or something. She’d at least reply…? Her parents weren’t often there in the morning, but as far as he knew they had left her alone for a few weeks.

“Téa!” he repeated, slightly louder this time. Was she upstairs, in her room? “We’re gonna be late!!” 

Nothing.

He rang the doorbell, what if she was in a part of the house where----

“Ehhh, forget it, Yugi.” Tristan quipped, shrugging nonchalantly. “Maybe she’s sick or something”, Joey agreeing and starting to walk off with him, hands behind his head.

Yugi glanced backwards, slightly worried, but ultimately deciding he was probably over-worried about nothing. Tomorrow would be a new day and she'd feel better then.

So when the same scene greeted them the next day, the anxiety became a lot more tangible. A loud greeting, to be greeted with nothing for a solid minute.

 Yugi, Joey and Tristian all exchanged concerned glances. Joey did the knocking and yelling of Téa’s name this time, as Yugi retreated into his thoughts for a moment.

"C'mon!" he yelled, after banging on the door loudly for a few seconds. "Ya gotta tell us if you're sick or somethin so we can tell the school---"

What’s happening? he asked internally into the Puzzle, eyebrows starting to knit in worry.

I’m… not sure. The Pharaoh replied, his deeper voice resonating with concern. Perhaps she is just---

They both were interrupted with their thoughts, as Joey made a loud, and incredibly startled announcement as he tried to twist the doorknob.

“The door’s locked?!”

Yugi and the Spirit stood there, watching in vain as Joey started suddenly pounding on the door.

“TÉA!” Joey tried again, truly shouting at this time, simply pounding on the door. If he were in a less panicked state he would have thought about how much his fists were in pain. “Are you okay??”

A bright light from the eye of the Puzzle flashed, indicating a change. Yami had felt that Yugi was suddenly in a state of panic, and he needed some time in their shared mental chamber to think.

While Tristian and Joey both discussed what was happening and how neither of them knew how to pick locks, he calmly had walked forward.

The bond given to them by the Puzzle ran deep. They shared more than the body, there was an exchange of feelings. And memories, which was what he was using from Yugi right now, calmly but still quickly walking past the two of their friends freaking out.

He kicked up the top left flap of the doormat. A bright sparkle came off of the ground when the light hit the key hidden under the mat.

A click interrupted the ‘fight’, as the door opened.

“Uh… yeah. That was my other idea!” Joey loudly, lamely, tried to joke. Tristan, always the one to remind when his jokes didn’t land, just walked past him quickly with growing anxiety.

No one had bothered with their shoes, just barging though to see the half dining room, half kitchen of the first room past the threshold, the living room just out of vision. The lights were still off, as they had been yesterday, but the silence had been waiting there. There wasn’t music playing from her room. Not the sound of a TV, of a radio station. There weren’t even sounds of coughing, sneezing, or even sleeping.

The silence was quieter than it was outside.

“A coffin’s noisier than in here.” Tristan muttered to himself, but was still heard by the other boys.

They quickly split up to look all over the house. Tristan and Joey stayed downstairs, dropping all of their childish goofiness in truly desperate calling a name that never answered back. Yami quietly walked up the stairs of the small house, the silence now just sounding like an imitation of his friends downstairs.

Both he (well, Yugi) only had been over a few times to Téa’s home before. It was never an ideal location for meeting up as she put it, as her family was rarely there but there was nothing to do, so the brunette had usually gone to Yugi’s, or their adventures would be at public locations like the time the two of them had gone on their… date.

While not knowing really the condition of her room usually, still this felt off. Her room was darkened, her usually open and colorful curtains were tightly shut together. Her bed was still made, and looked unslept in. The only thing that was even slightly out of place were a pair of missing sneakers, and her backpack was gone as well, as seen from a slightly ajar closet. Maybe some clothes would be missing if they decided to look into her drawers, but that seemed rude.

It doesn’t look like anyone broke in… Yugi commented in their mental space. Yami nodded mutely in agreement.

But with the acknowledgment, they both realized a horrible truth to the matter.

If her house wasn’t broken in to, she had vanished by herself.

**

They were back at the card shop.

Hours had passed, with neither Tristian nor Joey having taken the news well. Almost as in a cold sweat, they both bolted out of the empty house at the news, and mere minutes after Yami had come up with the plan to check any of her usual spaces she liked to hang out. Maybe she had gone to see someone and forgot to tell them, Joey had pondered out loud to the group, desperately trying to keep hope in his voice.

Yami and Yugi had internally disagreed, but still split up.

So hours later, back in Yugi’s room to regroup, they had recounted how they had all come back empty-handed with anything extremely useful.

——

"And don't you forget, those are for all of you for skipping class!" a female teacher huffed at Tristian for showing his face and, delicately, announcing they were ditching school in order to look for their friend who was missing, grumbling over the demerit slips he had been handed for himself, Yugi, and Joey. "... I hope you find her!" she cheerfully called after him.

Before he'd left, he spotted the phones. Thank god he had some change today! The disk spun and spun until the number was entered...

Ring ring...

"Hello?"

"SERENITY!" he screamed into the phone. There was a squeak of surprise from her even the student standing next to him gave a side-eye. "... Sorry, it's just an emergency!"

"Tristan? What's wrong?"

"Listen, have you seen Téa? You saw her before you left town, right?"

"Yes... but Tristian, I'm not in Domino anymore. I had to leave, with my mother, remember?"

He growled loudly, hitting his forehead against the wall next to the phone. "... Of course. Sorry, Serenity."

"What happened?"

"We don't know!" he announced, exasperated, free hand flailing in dramatics. "We can't find her anywhere, we think she just vanished..." There was a gasp on the other end of the phone, knowing the girl well enough to know a hand was going over her mouth in horror and surprise.

"Why would she do that?"

"I don't know, we're all kind of... freaking out right now."

"Well, look. I have not seen her, but I'll call you if I see or hear from her at all, okay?" she sadly promised, as if she was ashamed she couldn't do more or offer different comfort.

Under other circumstances, there'd have been an excited, warmed flutter of excitement that she would be calling him back. Instead he just nodded in appreciation, adding "Thanks, Serenity. We're counting on you!"

The phone went back on the receiver, but not taking his hand off of it yet. He looked down at the shiny small coins in his hand a moment longer before putting more in.

...

...

Ring ring ring...

"Hey! This is Duke Devlin! I'm not in the country at the moment, I have a meeting in America and I won't be back for a while. Leave me a message, and someone'll get back to you." the answering machine responded. 

A frustrated, strangled yell erupted from Tristan that the students around him, on the other phones or not, were looking at him with increased confusion and worry. 

"Lousy Devlin..."

The only other place he could think to look was gonna be work, which was on the other side of town. So it was time to start running (how she made it to her shifts on time every day after work was beyond him.)

Within a block distance of the restaurant, though. A different girl caught his eye, crying sadly and loudly in public, without a care who was watching.

"Miho?" he asked, slowing to be concerned about her for a bit. "What happened, what's up?"

"Miho got fired from her job at Burger World!" she announced with dramatical flare, blowing loudly into a tissue she suddenly seemed to have in her hands from nothing. "The manager there is going through employee records and firing all the teenagers!"

"Firing teenagers?" he repeated, hitting with the gut feeling that was a lead, but also he was lucky he always looked older than he was.

"Because Miho is supposed to be focusing on school until she graduates!" He'd always hated that rule, too, he had no idea what he wanted to do after high school, it was good to have some money until he decided what he wanted--- "Téa got fired the other day too, so he must be checking everyone."

"She got fired too?"

"She was very mad."

He nodded in agreement, knowing she took this job super seriously for some reason. She had promised not to snitch on him for his job, so he reciprocated that favor her way. Not that it seemed to matter.

"Listen, can you just keep an eye out if you see her?" He'd repeat that phrase a lot through the day, asking a few other employees there before making himself scarce in case he was up next...

-----

"I wish we had anything found anything even half that useful." Yugi replied dully. Tristian had done so much, he was the only one so far that had come back with anything useful.

-----

Starting at Domino's train station, Yugi put himself directly in the starting place where she was that day. It was time to retrace some steps.

First was that place where she and Yami had gone to grab that milkshake and talk about what they were gonna do so that she could help him recover some secrets. The hesitation from him to go straight to the meusem was so intense--- having no recollection was making him frustrated and seeing everything that he was there to have it seen being made--- she had gently persuaded him to go have some fun first.

First was a music store that reported a negative with anyone matching her description. The park was simply too wide an area to have anyone say they had seen her, so---- (Yugi's voice had dropped to a whisper, so that Grandpa might not have heard)--- the next stop was the card shop where he had made trades for cards. She had simply watched quietly, but still had caught the eye of a few other patrons to warrant him asking if they had seen her.

Last stop he remembered was the arcade, which was just as noisy and crowded as it was the first time they had stepped in. A familiar crazy hairdo had greeted him cheerfully when he had noticed his own crazy hairstyle, Johnny Steps. He'd sheepishly admitted that he was the arcade's owner and manager--- why else would he have the time to dance so often, he just did it on his own break time--- but quickly had revealed that he hadn't seen her, but was thinking about her lately. He'd tried her advice, and had promised to keep a watch out in case.

"Would you mind tellin' her for me, when you find her?" he'd asked politely, knowing she had shouted in order to help.

Yugi had nodded with a small, sad smile.

-----

"After that, we had gone to the Museum, but I couldn't get there in time..." Yugi was wrapping up his part of the adventure.

"Don't bother." Joey had interrupted, waving a hand with seriousness and defeat. "I already went and looked."

*****

“Joey…?” Ishizu had asked him at Domino Museum. Next to her were Marik and Odion, with a small group of people behind the group, taking notes and photographs of the displays on the walls. He was certainly allowed to come to a public place, this exhibit was hers and nothing else, up for several more weeks. But the fact he was here, and could hear the guard escorting him out for loudly yelling her name had distracted the tour. “What is wrong?”

Joey pleaded to the Ishtars about his case, ignoring how uncomfortable Marik seemed to get at the implication Joey thought she’d come to him. He'd started to stumble out an apology before Ishizu had stepped in with a huff, explaining she understood but the past was in their past and Marik would no longer have that type of power and the effects would not linger without the power. They all politely confirmed the same thing they had all been told it seems. 

“Not here.”

*****

“The only useful information we got is her reason!” Joey whined loudly, hands in his hair from frustration. He was really wracking his brain on what happened. Even if she was upset about being fired, that she just disappear without a trace? That wasn’t like her at all!

“Well, we’re not gonna find her right now and especially as tired as we are…” Yugi yawned loudly, feeling how hard his legs ached from all the exercise they had inadvertently gotten today. “For tomorrow, maybe we should go see Kaiba” he announced after a moment to think about it.

Both Tristian and Joey were incredulous. How they had any energy left defied explanation.

“Why?”

“Well…” Yugi started before he realized he had almost forgotten the plan as soon as he had it. “Maybe… he can check her out. Maybe she bought a bus ticket, and he can tell us where to.”

“Can we even trust that jerk to care enough to help?” Joey had sneered angrily as Yugi turned off the lights as he and Tristian laid down on the floor, exhausted. Sometimes Yugi’s unbridled optimism was too confusing to get his head around. This WAS Kaiba they were talking about.

“Well, we are just gonna have to try…” he admittedly lamely, face planting into his pillow after taking the Puzzle off and putting it on the side table.

The way all of them felt right now they all could have slept for days.

Despite the silence and the darkness, and the fact they were all exhausted, none of them fell asleep that night. Not even for short blocks of time

**

“Mr. Kaiba?” a young woman asked over the intercom, annoyingly early in the morning for the CEO’s taste.

“What is it?” he demanded snappily, putting his coffee mug down on his desk. He had a very busy schedule this morning, this had better be…

“A Mr. Moto and company are here to see you.” She sounded both confused and… disturbed? “Do they have an appointment?”

“No.” But for Yugi to be here? Despite everything, he was intrigued. “Send them in.” he decided quickly.

His secretary was no doubt confused, as the look on his face and Mokuba’s mirrored hers perfectly but for different reasons. For her, she’d been given such a confusing order. For them, Kaiba had a half of a snarky comment about how they apparently been hit by a bus but the words died in his mouth.

Yugi and his group of cheerleaders looked bad, even by their standards. They looked beyond exhausted and dirty, clothes had clearly not been changed since yesterday from how disheveled they were, and… a lot smaller than he remembered. Wheeler, of course, was there. And Tristian. But where was…?

“Woah!” Mokuba loudly declared, confirming his lack of a filter when it came to things that were actually surprising. “Guys, what happened? Are you okay?”

“Kaiba.” Yami had begun, his deep voice sounding scratchy from a lack of sleep and dehydration. “We need your help.”

“You do realize I run a company, right?” he snapped back, trying to sound annoyed as he could despite the concern trying to get onto his face. “You have five minutes.”

“Listen.” Wheeler’s voice, despite being thick with his obnoxious accent and contempt that he couldn’t care less about. There was a genuine undercurrent of fear to his voice that had caught his attention. “I don’t like it either, but you’re probably the only person who can help us.”

“Téa has seemingly vanished under circumstances we can’t understand.” Yami explained, watching Mokuba’s mouth slightly drop in surprise, quietly gasping in surprise, and Kaiba’s ‘emotionless’ face twitch around the eyes and brows. “Are you able to check if she’s purchased a bus ticket, and to where.”

A few moments passed, and without actually saying anything, Kaiba turned his attention to the computer in front of him, starting to type something.

“Alright, I knew we could count on you, rich boy!” Joey exclaimed loudly and with excitement, appreciation. In truth, they didn’t in fact know that, but it felt nice to be able to say for once he did something for them.

After making sure the encryption was to a point if anyone could trace his IP address, they’d have to have a warrant which he could easily wave, Kaiba had pulled up the Domino’s Archives website and started typing into the search bar in their files.

“Do any of you know if she has a middle name?” he asked, before hitting enter in case. Despite all their claims and speeches they were deeply connected, he had to scoff at the three of them just look at each other, at best Wheeler stuttering out an ‘Um.’

Luckily, her name was uncommon, and he quickly found her file after a few that weren’t her, which would be linked to her bank statements… and…

… and…

…

“… Kaiba…?” Yami had asked, as suddenly the brunet sat staring at the screen, his eyes slightly wider than normal. His mouth was closed in a perfectly straight line. “Are you well?”

“… Your five minutes is up.” Kaiba announced suddenly without looking up from the screen.

“WHAT?!” Joey yelled loudly despite how much it hurt his throat hurt. “That was not five minutes, Kaiba! We asked a question! Do you know anything or not, rich boy?”

Seto couldn’t take his eyes off the screen, so he simply waved a hand as two of his bodyguards appeared suddenly and started leading the group of Yugi and his friends out. “Maybe she finally grew a brain and got sick of you all” he simply retorted, trying to sound as rude and snarky as he could, but it still came off as mumbled when he still didn’t look up from the screen. “Take them to the medical ward, so they don’t pass out and then send them home.”

He sat there, unaffected by the loud yelling from Wheeler, still audible out the door and being escorted down the hallway.

Mokuba, although starting with his usual ‘What was that all about’ speech when it came to his brother’s more arrogant moments, now that they were finally alone the mask had cracked. He’d gotten whiter in the face, and the line had extended and flattened to the point it looked like he’d been punched directly in the stomach and had the wind knocked out of him. Both of his hands went into his hair, something his brother only did when he was truly stressed. The cold air of the office was not enough to stop him from sweating, which he’d started to do.

“… Seto?”

“… Battle City just ended." he responded, still not looking up and his words coming out, little more than a mumble. "How long ago did it start?"

“About a month…” Mokuba replied, after some thought. He started walking towards Seto still staring. “Why?”

Granted, she wasn’t one of the more important ones, but Kaiba had to admit that there was things about Téa he secretly admired. She was loud and confident, and she wasn’t afraid to yell at people who were stronger than her physically or socially. He could actually recall every time she’d ever went off on him, when most of the time he’d block it out. None of Yugi’s other cheerleaders were as effective or cutting.

Her values were unshakable and as annoying as it was to hear about them and at length, at the same time, she had a voice and refused to silence it. She was part of the structure so…

Seto was unconsciously aware of the immediate, embarrassingly intense feelings he was suddenly drowning in, he almost forgot to add confusion into the panic. Shouldn’t this only be updated with this if she’s been missing for years??

That thought was supposed to be his rationale coming to his rescue, but all it did was make the panic stronger. If she’s only been missing for a day, how did she get this status so quickly?

Mokuba finally reached the screen, where his face copied his brother’s expression after reading briefly, as the words that shocked his brother were made clear.

On her permanent file, there was a picture of her, recently taken as she looked the same in it, as well as various things that were tied to her identity and status as a Domino citizen, but there were only five words they saw that flashed back at them.

Téa Gardner.

Status: LEGALLY DECEASED

Chapter Text

The plane landed, there wasn't an airstrip to land on. If it had not been for the fact as soon as she'd regained consciousness, Valon was attempting to chat Téa's ear off again, she would have missed how utterly bizarre it was there was no airstrip. There was barely space for the plane to land, but somehow Alister had managed. The only thing that was even on this island was this giant spiraling building.
 

She stared up and up at it, the top blurred as it spiraled up and up into the sky, and shivered. Not just from the intimidating height, the sea surrounded all sides and though the waves were nowhere near them the cold of the spray misted the air--- the building of it all being as tall as the island was big downwards. There was a spiral carved into the side of the mountain that was wide enough to drive a car on, noting that a small part at the bottom connected to a bridge. Close enough to civilization for access to necessities, but remote enough no one who wasn't here would dare cross over.

...Well, now what...?

Valon hooted "Awright! Home sweet home!", loudly exiting the plane as he dramatically stretched in the background. Like he had been cooped up in one space for hours and not running around the plane like a puppy. Alister just looked tired and sounded tired, stretching with audible cracks as the pressure in his joints made noise they were relieved to not be anymore...

The squeak of surprise came with a shiver that tried to turn into a jump, a soft hand that brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear gently, being not the giant one she was expecting, and certainly not in the way someone traditionally got attention. Dartz smiled calmly. Was she really that in her thoughts, she didn't hear him at all...

"Well, Miss Gardner. Welcome home." he greeted politely, heterochromic eyes lidded as he watched her. He folded his arms regally behind his back, spine straight as a board. She was struck that he was tall, not as tall as Raphael of course, but still standing a good head and some odd above over her.

"... Thank you..." she mumbled again shyly, untucking her hair with a small amount of blush on her face as she looked away. But it just made her feel even colder. "Wh---Where's Raphael?" she asked, looking around to see the three rowdy men that were her new co-workers, in some capacity, had somehow vanished without a sound. Leaving her alone in the blowing wind, making her feel even smaller compared to Dartz.

"He and his associates are storing those bikes of theirs" he replied, regaining her attention as she had a mild look of confusion on her face. "I just wanted to have a word with you alone, my dear. Before you begin the training needed to be part of Paradius."

"Oh..." Right... I guess he is my boss now...

"I told you, you have nothing to fear from me. I'm an old man." He retucked the part of hair behind her ear again. "I think the look rather suits you. Allows the world to see your face."

Still weird, but I guess it's not as bad, when I didn't know who it was... she supposed, letting it sit. At least until the end of this conversation. His melting voice was trying to butter her up with compliments, but it was actually... nice. She couldn't remember the last time any of her friends had given her a compliment...

"I'm afraid Raphael was not entirely honest with you as to what the affairs of this company are." Her face twitched over with indignity on his behalf, that somehow he'd be lying. "We're not strictly in the security business, is all."

"... Okay? So, what else does it do?"

"We're going to save the world."

The phantom of a smile playing along his mouth was the only sign that he was happy at all, his face and voice suddenly dropped the pleasant and charming demeanor. The flinty, cold glint in his eyes made her shiver even more in than the wind. 

... Guess he takes this seriously... 

“You seem to be the type to want to help save the world” he continued, before she could even shift in being uncomfortable in that accurate assumption. "You've finally joined those who actually can."

"How is a security company going to save the world...?" she squeaked, only coming out as such because of the sudden dart into his pocket. He held another fragment of Orichalcos stone in his hand, his more proper smirk coming back over his face.

"How did you think?"

"... Listen, Dartz..." she mumbled shyly, looking away from him not strictly out of the nervousness he instilled but rather her own unease. His expression had dropped and started to frown, not that she could see but still feel. "I'm... grateful that you guys wanted to help me... but this is all... a lot." She gripped an upper arm and shrunk into herself, "I mean... I really rushed into this..."

"That is no matter." he interrupted sharply, tone alone commanding that she look back at him, looking less than amused. "You promised to join our quest, Miss Gardner."

"I just..."

"Are you not mad at your so-called friends for how they've treated you?"

"Yeah, I am, but..."

"But nothing." His snaps weren't even angry, they were cold and calm which was even more effective. "You have promised to help us, and we will promise to help you. First part of that is admitting you needed the help."

Téa's mouth curled closed at that. I guess I was right when I thought this was going to be a weird job... she thought, expression souring slightly more at his words. A job that requires me to admit I need help. Burger World didn't care about that. My friends didn't care about my feelings...


That's... good, right?

----------------------------------------------------

Over the course of the week, Raphael had proven to be very attentive to helping Téa adjust to being in Paradius, which she was more than appreciative of. He had jumped at mostly any excuse to have her around him in some capacity, actually taking her to get clothes as he'd promised, or even showing her around the grounds of Paradius. It had very quickly gained nothing but playful mocking from Valon who took every moment he could to tease him about hanging out with 'his new girlfriend' he sing-songed and quiet, quick judging glances from Alister. He hadn't really minded all that much, never answering to answers mild teasings or her asking if he actually did like her or something.

He'd never say, but the fact he'd made sure that she'd eaten something before staring what Dartz considered 'training', usually with him, said more than anything he could say with his words. Even today, when she'd gotten used to how strange and weirdly vast this building was, he'd been waiting in a small, break room type of area that the other two were in as well. There were rooms of that sort all over the campus, usually holding a coffee heater or two. 

"You're starting your Duel Monsters  training with Alister today..." was all Raphael had begun to get out after politely handing her a mug, and even more politely ignoring the sudden and intense drop in her expression at the arrival of the drink, before another older man interrupted all of them. Barking that he'd been summoned by Dartz, and shooting Téa a glare that she gave right back at him.

Within the first few days, she had run into... she didn't know his name, and didn't care to find out either. A lot of the older members here weren't especially nice, but this guy was nasty and mean from the first time she'd met him. Dismissing her as she was being introduced to the grounds of the place by Raphael, that this 'little girl' had no place in their affairs. Grumble and complain all he wanted, but Dartz had permitted her to be there.

Is a conclusion he'd come to eventually. In the moment, she'd punched him in the eye that didn't have, of all things, a monocle, as hard as she'd could. It had received a warning from Dartz even though it was clear he was trying to hide his amusement. Raphael had been stunned, not expecting that knee-jerk trigger, ultimately glad she could take care of herself. Valon had nearly fallen over laughing, chortling madly. Alister'd given a guarded, but clearly amused look and what was only described as the world's first and only sincere golf-clap.

Back in the present, Raphael muttered that he'd be back in a while and to get started without him.

Now came the worst part of the day.

Téa miserably glanced at the dark, glittering surface of the coffee in the mug she’d been given. She geared her shoulders, braced herself and made a face as if she were about to be struck. It came very quickly up to her mouth, throwing her head backwards slightly while scrunching her face. The bitter, scalding taste of it burned the tip of her tongue just long enough then fell down her throat. Couldn’t stop, if it was gonna be awful, it was gonna be over quickly…

“BLAGH!!!” she yelled and gasped at the same time once the cup came away from her lips, squinching her eyes and sticking her tongue out once it was safely down her burned throat. How do these guys drink this stuff?? So far as she’d seen, they all drank this terrible, awful bitter drink by the gallons. If they got cut, they’d bleed coffee instead of blood.

One eye opened to glance down and grimaced further. The mug was only half-way emptied. “Ugh…”

She glanced over at Valon and Alister at the counter, the former gently elbowing the latter in the ribs. “Remember when you were like that?”

“Shut up.” Not his wittiest retort, but instead lifting the coffee POT off of a burner and starting to drink from that instead of a mug, he was likely too tired to come up with a better jab. Given the shadow on the underside of his eyes, making it almost look like he'd been punched in both of his eyes, the redhead was undeniably the worst offender of needing a barista for a blood transfusion...

Téa just gaped incredulously.

Valon let out a chuckle at her horrified expression. “Don’t look too long, luv, it gets worse!” Without another acknowledgment of anyone else in the room, Alister had walked out still drinking. Valon had sat down at the table where Raphael had been seated.

“How long has he been here, anyway?” she asked after some thought. How long would someone have to be here before this bitter liquid be palatable?

“Mmmm…. think ‘bout seven years.” Of course, he hadn’t been here as long, but he’d grown up drinking this stuff. Even when he should not have.

She blinked quikly, each one more confused in her expression than the last. “… But can't possibly be twenty, did Dartz hire him as a child?”
 

Valon shrugged. “Ali never talks about himself ‘f ya ask him anythin’. ‘Spose he never will.”

“Mm.”

“What ‘bout you?” he asked with a point. “You’re a lot chattier than these otha two—- which, thank ya, I was gettin’ bored out of me skull talking to these brick walls fo’ years—-” Téa let out a small giggle at his description of the other two. “—-but I still don’t know much about ya. Wha’s your deal then, eh, how’d you get here?”

Her lips pressed together tightly, and looked away to hide the expression her body language was more than giving away. “It… it’s a long story” she finally tried.

An annoyed, strangled groan left Valon, leaning on the chair so the back legs were the only ones on the ground, palms grinding into and covering his eyes in frustration. "Noooooooooo, you're supposed to talk more!!!"

"..Sorry?" she asked, slightly sniggering at his over-reaction. The chair thumped back onto the ground.


“You’re alright, I guess…” he whined again dramatically, head going into his hand propped up by the elbow, trying to look sad and downcast. “I’ll just go back, talkin’ to walls again”

Téa frowned at that. “Trying to guilt the answer out of me isn’t gonna work.”

Given how quickly he snapped back into a more natural position and expression, clearly that wasn’t the intention behind him trying to ‘act cute’, probably in his head for that. She still folded her arms and crossed her legs at him, closing herself off. He whistled lowly, impressed. "I di'n't mean it like that, babe, but coo. I like it, you're takin' no one's guff!" Her anger was already ebbing out of her face and posture. “Hmmm… how’s ‘bout this then?” he offered after a moment of silence. “How ‘bout if I tell you yours, I’ll tell you mine. Just bare-bones. I know the one sentence version of Ali’s and Raph’s stories.”

"You first." A firm request, but still not a demand.


"Awright, bare-bones..." Here Valon paused, taking his own sip and looking up to find out how to phrase it. He had already proven himself to be short in thought, as apparently the 'bare-bones' blurt he thought to come up with was "Dartz ain't just my boss. He's been my parole officer since I was 'bout fourteen."

"You went to prison?" Now that itself wasn't really all that shocking, or even really a deal breaker--- Joey had mentioned once or twice how he'd been locked up for a night on occassion before he and Tristian had chosen to become friends with Yugi and herself. And most of them, were very minor offenses, likely done by a police officer with too much time on his hands...

"Practically grew up in one!" he announced proudly, thumping a hand against his puffed out chest. Her big blue eyes just blinked at him, waiting. That was sweet, that she wasn't judging. He tapped the outside of her mug, adding "You should prolly start drinking this again. 'Fore it gets awful."

“… what did you go to prison for…?” she asked conversationally, turning slightly to put the drink back to her mouth and sip it…

A bright and crazy grin flashed across his face in excitement, waiting until her mouth was full…

“Arson.”

The strangled gargling was accompanied with a loud snort from behind the hand that flew over her mouth to prevent exhaling a spray of coffee, eyes starting to water and face trying to turn pale and sweaty and red and hot at the same time. All in an effort to keep the liquid she claimed to hate from spitting out everywhere at his casual confession of felony.

He grinned when she managed to glance over at him, eyes shining in excitement like they did on the plane that there was a new person. “Of the orphanage and church I was raised in.”

Everything happened again, the chair getting a work out this early from how much it was rocking, as quickly falling over onto the floor with her still seated. Her grip on the mug was strong—- the liquid that was in it now joined the other stains on the carpet, but somehow she still had the cup in her hands. Téa’s jagged-edged coughs rumbled her chest.

Once she managed to start gasping for breath once again, looking down over the edge of the table at her, he quipped cheerfully “You alright, babe?”

“Ib wend ub mibe node…” Her hand pinched her bridge, eyes tightly shut. Valon had to start cackling at all this. The other two didn’t talk about themselves, the last person that had reacted to that story was in prison with Valon when he was younger. And there had been no argument that he was scared and confused—- horrified, even—-but it hadn’t been half of the show she just gave him.

“You don’t gotta worry ‘bout it, though, Téa. I didn’t actually burn it down!” he cooed after a bit of laughing and her finally regaining enough composure to look scared at the realization of what he’d confessed to. So she got to look confused instead as he helped her get off the floor and replacing what she’d spilled for her as she regained her breath.

“… How’d you end up in juvie, then?” was the first sentence that didn’t sound like a wheezing respirator.

He shrugged noncommittally. “Someone set me up, seems like.”

“Who’d want to set you up for arson?” That wasn’t exactly everyone’s first crime, HOW was someone even able to set him up for ARSON?

“It was in a real bad neighborhood as a kid, had a lot o’ rich criminals in’it. They bought the church an’ got mad that I wanted to fight ‘em.”

All she could do now was stare in sympathy.

“I’m sure any of ‘em woulda wanted me in jail anyway. Prolly paid the judge to make sure.” He scoffed arrogantly, almost proudly. “‘Sides, it was prolly only a matta of time ‘til I landed there on me own anyway. They just beat me to the punch.”

A stretch of silence followed after that statement, him turning away to finish his fourth or fifth cup of coffee while she just stared at hers. She bit the inside of her cheek, processing it all…

He felt a soft hand on top of his—-mostly just the pressure of it, grunting softly in surprise. He turned to see Téa’s eyebrows knotted in sympathy as she patted his hand. “I’m so sorry that happened to you, Valon” she gently cooed.

He blinked, stunned. Then he quickly shook his head, trying to give her a bright smile at her concern and wave away it with his opposite hand. “Don’t you worry ‘bout me, babe, I’m a man without feelins!” It didn’t look or sound as confident as many of the others she’d seen over the past few days. Like something she said and did had left him rattled. “Doesn’t botha me none. But you’re an angel.”

"Valon, it's okay if you wanna talk to me---"

"Well, I've done my sharing!" he cut off loudly, now leaning on both of his palms to stare at her with faux child-like wonder. "Your turn, ya promised!" He felt even his fake good mood fade, watching her face fall and not be able to look him in the eyes as she struggled with 'just bare bones'.

"... my friends did a lot of things to me that they weren't sorry for..." barely mumbled, feeling strange about all of this still. It had felt good, even empowering in a way, to make that split second decision to take her Orichalcos shard when she was angry. But to actually say and acknowledge out loud that she was hurt and her friends had hurt her still felt weird. After supporting them for so long...  "They'd do it again, probably. Probably don't even care I'm out of the picture."

Valon had paused for a length of time before making a pointed noise. "... They must've hurt ya an awful lot if you feel that uncomfortable talkin' about 'em, Téa."

The dark surface held an unhappy face, for once not aimed at it. "... Guess you're right..." 

"But you're one of us, now." He had a genuine small, comforting smile on his face as she looked back up. Promise crinkled along the edges of his eyes with the smile, almost ebbing away her sullen, sunken feeling in her chest. "We're gonna take care of ya. C'mon, Raph's gonna be a while, I'll take ya to your trainin' with Alister when ya done."


----

“Remind me why Raphael isn’t teaching me how to duel?” Téa asked, looking up at the unnecessarily tall doors Valon had just left her at, avoiding Alister’s looking at her. The impression she'd gotten was that he wasn't... exactly rude, per se. But he'd been coldly professional and snide whenever they did have to talk, which hadn't been often. Alister didn't talk much, and she'd opted to primarily leave him be. She had learned as quickly as she'd come that it was also how Raphael and Valon operated.

“Because I was told to do” he groaned, leaning against the doorframe as he pushed them open with a hand, a large gust of wind blowing into the room. Truth be told, he was probably the perfect teacher of this stupid game out of the three of them. Valon wouldn't explain anything and he was way too violent for her, Raphael's talent wasn't teachable. How long would it be before she learned he was nationally ranked? Why him specifically out of all of DOMA, out everyone who worked here, out of them why him? He hadn't a clue. "Why, you wanna spend time with your boyfriend?"

There was a strangled gurgle in place of the 'He's not my boyfriend!' comment he assumed she would be making right now. Whipping around to seeing her frozen in place, getting pale and her big eyes even bigger as she was frozen in mute horror, mouth flattened and visibly tense from even a few feet away.

"...What?" he asked snappily, hiding the genuine confusion and concern over such a sudden mood shift.

"... cards..." she was available to mumble out.

"... yeah...?"

Téa inhaled deeply and let out a long breath, it already having a visible effect on her body language. You have to open up... they're going to help, right...?

"A... lot of people that hurt me...play this stupid game..." Téa finally managed with a lot of effort. "It's never been my thing. And I see a lot of their stupid cards in this room..." Am I really avoiding a room because of my old friends...?

There was a quiet, awkward silence as Téa and Alister both stood there for a few moments. Eventually, he hummed an understanding sound, which was mildly surprising. He had a thoughtful and pensive expression across his face as he nodded. He continued with an exasperated exhale, reaching into a jacket pocket, pulling out a different pair of sunglasses than the ones he'd had the other day. "Look, I get that, but teaching you this is something you need done and I need to do." He started rapidly snapping his fingers over the backs of the lenses, creating a quiet crackling sound and a flurry of bright green sparkles, his own Orichalcos shard around his neck lighting up quickly. Lifting them up to look at them under the light, he repeated the action again before he was satisfied and held them out to her. "Try these, we don't have all day."

As she put them on, he strided into the room, opening the first door on the case closest to the door to grab a deck-sized amount of cards. "Name two cards that either or both of them had. Any card."

"... Dark Magician and Time Wizard."

After a few moments of flipping through some of the cards, he'd found two cards and stylishly but unceremoniously threw them at her, surprising even herself she was able to catch them. How often had she seen that trick done, and it was really that easy to do and catch? "What do you see on the cards?"

The sunglasses had made the room darker slightly, sure, but whatever he had done to them had blocked out the square of the picture on both of them. To say they were blacked out would mean that they were in fact something but the glasses had almost... put up a wall of anti-matter blocking the cards' pictures. "Nothing..." she mumbled, testing that if she lowered and saw over the ridge of the glasses, sure enough, the images of a purple wizard and a googly-eyed clock wizard appeared. Having it on half-way hurt for a fraction of a second, being seen and not seen at the same time.

"Great, then it worked." There was a smug smirk on his face, proud of himself. And she couldn't even argue. "It's temporary, but you'll be able to block out any image of something that reminds you of painful memories."

"... How'd you learn to do this, could you teach me?" Despite the awe, a thought worried her. Why would he even need magic to work like this...?

"If you've got five years in the next month you can kill."

She rolled his eyes at how suddenly he was trying to be snide and deadpan, instead sliding the sunglasses fully over her eyes and looked around the room. There weren't as many clouds of nothingness blocking out the cards like the ones she handed back to the redhead as she stepped in. All of the cards that had belonged to the Pharaoh, Joey, Kaiba, were all in here she knew. But after about ten minutes she noticed one case that had absolutely no blacked-out cards at all. She opened it and looked though, reading off a few names to herself. "Nightmare Tri-Mirror...Spell of Pain... Fairy's Hand Mirror?" She spoke up again, confused and somewhat accusatorily towards Alister. "I know someone who owns a card shop, and there's a million more in Domino. Why have I never heard of most of these?"

“You just told me you don't play." At her angry, puffed cheeked expression he rolled his own eyes and continued, " We also have access to every Duel Monsters card ever produced.” He paused, leaning against the wall in boredom, as if he’d had to explain this a million times before. Or if he’d still rather be anywhere but here. “... Every card.”

“… Okay?”

“Even the ones that were made and then pulled from rotations for being too overpowered” he continued. “They’d still register on any database, they’re not illegal.”

She glanced back down at the card in confusion. "They were just pulled from the game instead of fixing the effects…?”

“Pegasus is only a guy who paints pictures, he didn’t know how to make a game. He’s notorious for making cards too overpowered, like his own deck.”

I guess that makes sense... she thought with a grumbling hum, still looking through the cases. Him constantly cutting off her sentences, loudly and confidently, though. That was annoying enough to start quietly grinding her teeth for a bit.

Eventually settling on enough cards to be considered a deck, she handed them over to the disinterested redhead who started shuffling through them. When his neutral expression didn’t change for at least thirty seconds, barely even making noises of assessment of what she’d chosen.

“… So.” she tried, even though he didn’t look up still at the noise. “… you have every card in here?”

“Did I stutter?”

“… Even a Blue-Eyes?” she replied with a sneer. From what she remembered, there had only ever been four that were ever produced. And only three still existed in the world. Kaiba had ripped up Solomon’s, for the sole purpose of hurting an old man and making sure it’d never be used against him after he was told he couldn't have it.

Alister glanced up slowly with an intense glare at her. The anger was tangible, making her momentarily regret her mouthy retort. What did I do?!

“No.” he finally snapped, and confirmed her suspicions. “All of them belong to a selfish, greedy bastard whose cards do all the heavy lifting for him. He’s a talentless hack.” Surprised by the amount of uncontained, but trying to pretend like it was repressed, venom in his voice, Téa could only blink. This was going to be a tirade, she could tell. "My cards might not be the most common either, but I haven't thrown millions for a bunch of dragons with broken effects!" Even with him looking back down at the cards and not at her, he wasn’t seeing anything but the color red. “I think Dartz could get us working counterfeits, but I wouldn’t want anything to do with Seto Kaiba or his precious Blue Eyes—“

“Ugh, seriously” she agreed, rolling her eyes at the name. It didn't feel bad to talk badly about him. Her chin went into both of her hands, folded upwards to support it on the table. “He’s the worst.”

Alister’s hands stopped mindlessly shuffling through the deck she’d chosen, holding them that he had not fully moved the card into his other hand. Grey eyes widened at the realization of what she’d agreed to, twitching slightly as they immediately darted over to look at her. He had… he had heard that correctly, right…?

Turns out she did not need prompting he wanted to give to continue, although he was still too stunned to speak. “We’ve saved his ungrateful life so many times, he didn’t even like us.” A sneer came over Téa’s face as she looked away, remembering things, taking off Alister’s sunglasses in one hand to twirl them with her thoughts. “And you would not beLIEVE how often he repeats himself with all his ‘magic isn’t real’ spiels.”—- she did an imitation at that, mocking his voice, his breath hitched—-  “How everything is about him, except it’s not. And as if he hasn’t seen real, actual magic about a million times and he still acts like none of it’s real.” She rolled her eyes upwards with dramatic emphasis, continuing with “He had his SOUL STOLEN once! How does he rationalize that as not real magic, I mean—“

The hand holding the sunglasses was suddenly grabbed by both of the ones sitting across the table. Quickly, excitedly, but not intentionally roughly. Téa had stopped and redirected all of her attention to Alister, who was leaning so forwards onto the table he was basically laying down on it to look her in the face, cards abandoned to the side after quickly dropping them. He had an incredulous, surprised expression, mouth slightly agape. He pulled on the hand he’d grabbed to be slightly closer. A confused expression crossed over her face in response to his.

“… Seto Kaiba.” 

“… Yeah.”

“… he’s the worst…?”

Uh…? “Yeah? He’s super annoying, I—-“

A twitch at the side of his mouth, and the surprised expression on his face broke out into a gigantic, excited smile. Instantly, overwhelmingly flooded with joy. He was so suddenly happy at that it was almost scary, having a slight glaze of crazy in his eyes.

“… Alister?” she squeaked in mild fear. “… Are you okay…?”

Realizing how much relief and joy he had suddenly displayed, the flush over his cheeks from how excited he was suddenly darkened in embarrassment, slinking back over to his side of the table to finally sit back down in his seat. Instead of looking away, though, he still watched her. He couldn’t believe it. Finally.

“… I take it you don’t like him either?” she chirped with a nervous smile to break the atmosphere of awkward.

He nodded briefly, trying to regain his cool and collected composure he had no chance of regaining. Not after that. “I’ve got my reasons.” He paused for a moment, then tilting his head in confusion. “How do you know Kaiba?”

“It’s a long story.” she breathed out, feeling exhausted. Not that she didn’t want to tell him, just making it clear she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. They must've hurt ya an awful lot if you feel that uncomfortable talkin' about 'em, Téa...  "How do you know Kaiba?

He got slightly annoyed, but couldn’t blame her, keeping his face neutral. "It's a longer story..." To make her talk when he didn’t talk about his own past if he could help it… ‘hypocritical’ would be an understatement if ever there was one.

She glanced up to see him go through the oversized jacket he was wearing, pulling out a deck from a pocket. He looked through a few cards before his expression changed to annoyance that this wasn’t the one he wanted. Setting it carefully down, he reached into another pocket, pulling out another full deck of cards. Téa let out a snort as the process repeated with this one, as well. “How many decks do you have?” she giggled, as he finally seemed to find the card he was looking for.

“A few.” was his short reply, before offering the card he’d chosen.


“‘Royal Decree’?” she read.

“Stops any other Trap cards from being played, doesn't even cost Life Points to keep in effect. Don’t worry, I can get another copy, take it.” Before she could even begin saying or thinking of the retort of why couldn't she get it herself, "There's plenty of those in here, and I know where they are. You don't. If I know anything about your old friends' dueling habits--- and I do--- you're gonna want that."

Brows furrowed in confusion, knotting and raising but only glancing back up from the card. "How do you know---"

Alsiter ignored her, suddenly seriously considering the card in front of him, eyes narrowed. "Listen, actually, this isn't half bad for a first draft of a deck, but, you're probably gonna want something that destroys Monsters with Special Effects, I know that one kid has a Jinzo..." He'd suddenly stood up from the table, a warm and genuine smile on his face. "I know just what it needs, hold on."

Before she had even realized an hour had passed, she wasn't thinking about any of the questions how he knew her old friends, as Alister had suddenly showed her combinations in his own deck he had pulled the Trap card from. How for someone who claimed that the game wasn't something he cared about either, he was surprisingly loud and passionate about helping construct this deck of hers. How this card and this one would work, and eventually Raphael had appeared to tease how quickly Alister's edges had melted.

Nope.

She wasn't thinking about them at all.

Chapter Text

It was hard to say what had changed recently with her being here. It just had, and surprisingly quickly, Raphael had noted. She'd been here a week. A week and a day, he supposed, still getting dressed at the first sign of sunlight, despite having no sleep. As usual. But even just resting was better than nothing, he reasoned. He'd gotten far less than what this was before, back on the island.

Yesterday there was a sudden change in the other two Swordsmen that made something about his soul feel warm. Valon had, after giving his brief explanation he'd dropped her off with Alister because he was gone for a while--- in some miracle by whatever they were talking about--- quietly told him that she'd 'been through a ringer' and that he'd personally 'beat up anyone who looked at 'er funny.' 


  
And well... he hadn't ever seen Alister exactly 'smile' before. Not like that, where it was real, and directed at other people who weren't himself or Valon. Excitedly and semi-smugly, he was half explaining and half showing-off to the Duel Disk he'd designed with 'reverse engineered' blueprints of the KaibaCorp model and the effects he had added to how theirs operated when he'd found them in the room with the massive stockpile of cards were.

It sounded a lot nicer than 'he had stolen the blueprints and designed their Duel Disks before Battle City was even announced from his countless hours of spying on Seto Kaiba'. At least a little bit nicer.

Téa wasn't just pretty, it seemed. She was also kind. Of course, she'd been pure enough to take the Orichalcos, but it wasn't--- it was different...

He finished tying his boots but didn't move his hands off the laces for a moment more, before moving them to be in his lap. There was a huff, one not staying on his lap long but went to thread through the hair at the back of his head, looking down at the ground and feeling himself grow warmer.

Valon had every right to tease him, it seemed the last week had been accurate for a change. Just yesterday before she'd woken up and joined them for breakfast, he'd quite astutely elbowed him with a 'You're turnin' into a git, Raph...' Alister's complete lack of change in expression showed he agreed with Valon. He'd lost Alister too quickly, agreeing with the Australian was never his first choice of action. So it must have been true...

So it felt nice that Valon and Alister had both suddenly intensely warmed up to Téa as sporadically as they did. It would probably be necessary in the long run for all of them to be friends, they were too important to choose her or them. 

But with them suddenly liking her was important for another, more serious reason. It was now only slightly less embarrassing now how quickly he'd decided to just jump into... have her be in their lives.

At least I'm not alone in being an idiot now he thought with a self deprecating chuckle.

Téa had mentioned offhandedly how this was all still so new for her when they were walking out of her first session with Alister. He couldn't have agreed more. He had never been particularly impulsive, even before the island. He hadn't wanted for anything before or since, really, so what need was there to want?

And just seeing her upset in public had been enough to make him jump that gun? To invade on a total stranger's privacy? It couldn't just be because of that fact, could it?

He sighed... maybe this restless overthinking this was all because if anyone was mocking him-- Valon he could handle just by being near him everyday. Alister's was nowhere near as obvious, but it was starting to show--- it was Master Dartz. He always knew how to make him feel like an idiot.


“It’s finally finished.” Raphael had started before leaving her at her room yesterday, holding a very small box, comparably to his hands. Handing it over to Téa, who tilted her head slightly as she took it before opening its contents. She had mentioned wanting something to hold her Orichalcos shard, Dartz had agreed the day she'd arrived and took her stone from her. And then had vanished. That in itself wasn't unusual, he was rarely seen by anyone here. Even the Swordsmen. It wasn't uncommon to go a few weeks without seeing Dartz.

"Really? I didn't expect it to take... so... long... "After a emphasized blink, pink started to flush her face, line straight but eyebrows darting up under her bangs. “Uh… wow, Raph…” she managed to gasp incredulously. 

“… What?” he asked with his own head tilt, seeing the jewelry that just a minor glance into made him realize he probably should have check it himself.

An elegant black choker sat in the pure white box, looking like a soft fabric, velvet maybe, as compared to leather that matched the recent aesthetic to her change in clothes to match the Swordsmen's. A sparkling silver filigree chain was threaded the middle of it, the exact middle of the necklace having a prong that held the shard she had received from Dartz when she had been inducted, with added other side stones of the Orichalcos. If she was wearing it currently, they would be placed directly over the middle of her throat.

The center stone was glittering in the overhead light as if it was happy to see her. 

They both stood there in the hallways with stunted confusion at the gift. Every single part of this looked expensive, never once had Raphael’s simple skull charm around his own neck had felt awkward. Until right now.

"What happens now, do you... uh..." he stammered, embarrassedly looking away as they both turned a similar rosy shade, too shy to look at each other. "... did you want help... putting it on...?" Thank goodness she eventually stammered 'sure...', and his hands felt like wringing. He couldn't remember the last time they'd ever done that... or ever.

And it looked beautiful on her. Or maybe she was just beautiful, and the necklace was just showing it...

He groaned, alone, hand running over his face. The fact that her necklace was an expensive gift to help her put it on was going to haunt him for the remainder of his life and beyond the grave..

You do wish to woo the young lady, do you not? Dartz had asked him on the plane ride back while she was unconscious, and he'd returned to the back as part of a brief walk to keep his joints from over-stiffening. It will be awfully hard to do so in a very short amount of time... 

...

...

He didn't have a response there, and he didn't have one still.

Granted, this was the first time for him ever really dealing with this feeling. But it felt a lot deeper than just admitting that he thought she was pretty. Of course, she was, a lot, but...

Ugh.

Thinking this much already was starting to make his head swim with the feelings of being tired again, so there'd be time to mull over his brain turning into mush later. He needed an exorbitant amount of caffeine, if for no other reason to get his mind off of his brain's impulsive decision.

A quick walk to the common break room--- the one closest to all of their rooms. Neither of the other two looked particularly rested either, but Valon somehow managed to look bright and chipper and obnoxious first thing in the morning, with a chipper 'Mornin!' Alister was pouring over something printed in front of him, only acknowledging him with a single hand flicking his middle and index fingers away from his temple in the vague direction Raphael was.

Half-emptying the cup with a singular sip later, and a quiet look around the nondescript and otherwise silent room, his first words of the day were a still groggy and gruff  "... Where's Téa?" He could have slapped himself.

Dammit.

That thought appeared, but it'd have to wait with both of the other two suddenly glancing around and noticing she wasn't in there yet. Remarkably, the insanely early hours they had to adhere to were not something she struggled with. 'I go to high school, I know early hours.' she had joked the first day after they'd landed. The staying awake was the harder part, but she would adjust. In the meantime, there was always enough caffeine to keep the entire city of Los Angeles awake on the premises.

Five minutes passed. 

Still no show. 

But whatever.

Ten...

...

Twenty??

"I'm gonna go get her..." he muttered to himself after a half hour had passed, without even realizing he had been tapping his fingers nervously on the table. It was easier than listening to his anxiety increase. There was a schedule to being here, and goodness knows what would happen if she couldn't follow...

"You're overthinking this, Raph." Alister had called after him without looking up from what he'd been reading. 

He'd definitely been overthinking a lot of things, without question, but who knew what would suddenly be too much for Master Dartz to tolerate and have her not...

He shook his head, already outside her door. Don't think about that, in case Dartz HEARD it somehow...

"Téa? Are you okay?" he asked loudly, knocking on her door. Judging from the lack of light under the door, she hadn't gotten up yet. But putting an ear up to the door, he heard a loud, muffled groan of agony. His confused frown deepened at the sound, feeling bad but still deciding to open the door. The temple's rooms could get very dark, but in the corner there was a huddled ball of a girl in the middle, still in her sleep clothes and only barely out of her sheets.

"Téa?” he repeated, quieter and gentler than before as he approached her, folded and minutely trembling in agony, hands clenched around her middle. The signs were there, she had tried to get up and just couldn’t. Even with the lights turned off, she was paler than her usual tone, sweating profusely, her legs shivering from lack of strength, even while not using them to stand. He placed a hand on her back for a moment, only to retract it at her following groan of pain.

“Hey Raph…” she grumbled face-first into her mattress, wheezing each short burst of sentence. He didn’t even need to see her face to know she was grinding her teeth. “That… wasn’t… you didn’t... hurt me…”

“What happened? What’s wrong?” Quickly looking over her, nothing seemed to be wrong. Until the faint smell of iron danced in the air, coupled with what looked like a large dark stain, underneath on the mattress where she was holding herself…

“… Oh.” A slight flush of embarrassment started to flush his face as he suddenly blinked in understanding at the wriggling body. Not that it was wrong or anything like that, she was a young lady, these things happened. But the last person he even knew who’d had them was his mother, long past a decade ago. It had been only other men in his life until recently… “Is… are they… are they normally this bad?” he asked slowly, awkwardly, leaning to try and get a glimpse of her face.

Tears peaked along the edges of her eyes peaking from under her messy hair, and it instantly ended his feelings of discomfort of dealing with this for the first time, with the need to get her better, quickly.

“They… they usually hurt” she wheezed, sitting up with him gently leaning her back into a hunched, but kneeling position as he sat down next to her on her bed, gently laying her down to have her head in his lap. One hand moved from her sides to find his hand to squeeze when she found it being offered. Squeezing as hard as she could, knowing it couldn’t possibly hurt him to do so. “But this one’s just…"

She inhaled sharply again, adding just a tiny bit more pressure to her grip at the cramp, before it ebbed long enough to add “This one’s really bad, I don’t get why it hurts so bad…”

“… Do you think you can handle being carried?” he whispered after a lengthy pause of consideration. She lifted her head up enough to look at him, puzzled. “I can’t fix this problem, I can take you downstairs, though. There’s a medical ward down there that can help you.”

She grunted in agreement, nodded into the mattress, and then squeaked as he was able to effortlessly and gently scoop her up into his arms. He stopped immediately at the squeak.

"What's wrong? I didn't hurt you, did I?" he asked immediately, as looked her over at how he was holding her. He'd put a lot of thought into how he was holding her, trying to be mindful of where she was sore and trying not to touch her in a place she might not like, even with her still trying to be curled up in a ball to some degree.

She shook her head, still looking dumbstruck despite the pain,"No...I know it shouldn't be surprising, like, look at you... it's just..." she tried to explain, "... do I even weigh anything to you?"

There he let out a small laugh. "Only a little bit. I can carry both of the other two at the same time. You're is a lot easier." He quietly smiled at her gaping, incredulous look. 

"Every day I think I can't learn anything else weird about this place, and then I'm proven wrong..." she muttered, shutting her eyes and thumping her head on his chest with him turning around and walking out of her room and towards the stairs. There hadn't been an elevator installed in the living quarters of the building, but he could be very quick where there'd be access very soon. But still trying to be gentle and not jostle her, in case.

When they made it to an elevator, she'd finally managed the energy to open her eyes as he somehow had managed to hold her in one hand, but he'd quickly encouraged her to keep her eyes closed. Before she did her exasperated expression looked at him in the eyes and shook her head. He let out a tiny chuckle, she could get so cute in how weird everything just was to her, it seemed, as he pushed the button for the ground floor.

... cute...

The main doctor relayed a preliminary diagnosis that the likely cause of her inability to walk from pain was likely due to stress from such drastic lifestyle changes in a short amount of time. They would need to have her for the rest of the day, keep her hydrated and monitored, get her something for pain. Raphael was certainly no doctor, and this doctor had correctly guessed pain from numerous injuries he'd done on himself in the past, it sounded logical enough.

He shook his head walking away. For reasons even he wasn't entirely sure why, even he had to mentally eye roll at just how unreasonable his brain was being today.

Looking back in the direction of the medical ward, then at a coat pocket that was suddenly bothering him. It was the pocket that he usually kept his motorcycle's keys in, and sure enough they just sat in his palm after pulling them out from it. 

The doctor had also mentioned she'd be needing sanitary things when she left their care for the day. There weren't many female employees here, so they weren't usually required as such.

Overthinking was something he'd been excelling at over the past few days, but this one line of logic didn't require much thought. He'd almost instantly offered to go get her something, anything at this line. After all, it was going to a store. 

How hard could this possibly be?

---

Suddenly all that overthinking wasn't even an option. 

It was just panic.

Of course, Raphael wasn't so stupid as to be intimidated by cardboard, plastic and some absorbent materials. There were scarier things in the world than sanitary women's items, and even the unease of the situation he found himself in wasn't what was bothering him. But the amount of them was. He wasn't a doctor, he didn't know what she needed! How often she'd need them! Which one of these she even used! He wasn't a lady, either, so it wasn't like he could ask her! It felt way too personal, especially for a girl he barely knew!

Most of the employees here in this drugstore were looking at him with a tangible aura of nervousness as he towered over all of them and looked like he'd take them all if a brawl broke out--- and he could, without question--- but this one time. The one time he wasn't trying to be intimating was somehow scaring people the most.

"Excuse me..." a quiet, mousy little voice came up next to him after hearing him sigh for the thirtieth time today, and it wasn't even noon. He turned his head slightly to see a small young lady, smaller than Téa even. She gave him a genuine, patient smile. "... do you need help sir?"

Within his peripheral vision, a cowarding group of other young adult were watching the interaction. He visibly rolled his eyes at them before looking back down.

"Yeah... I have no idea what I'm doing." he answered honestly, looking back at the wall and running a hand through the hair at the nape of his neck. That sentence could be said about a lot of things... "She didn't specify what she wanted or needed..."

"Didn't?"

He felt an embarrassed glower cross his face at her knowing smirk and folding her arms, even if he wasn't looking at her and instead the shelf. If he wanted that to see that look he could have stayed at home.

"... Alright, fine, I didn't ask. It seemed rude."

A more real, happy smile crossed her face at that. "Well, if you're not sure what you're looking for, why not just get two options right now? And then next time you'll know!"

...Thank The Great Beast there was common sense filters in the world, as he muttered a ashamed thanks grabbing a box of both pads and tampons off the shelves.

"Not to worry, you've never done this!" she told him sympathetically while ringing him up a short minute later. "I mean, clearly they're not for you."

He merely grunted in agreement.

"Well, I gotta say, whoever your girlfriend is, she's super lucky!" she sighed, "My boyfriend thinks he's gonna die or something if I ever asked him to go get me stuff like this..."

... Instead of a feeling of panic or confusion, something warm settled not just over his face but over what... felt in his chest. Not an organ, but it still felt part of him...

...my girlfriend...?

... boyfriend...

-----

The following day, giving something for her pain and what Raphael had gotten the day before, Téa had been released from her overnight stay with the medical ward for observation he pain would subside. The doctor had stuck with his preliminary thought of 'stress from drastic changes' as the reason for the influx of pain she'd experienced.

"I mean, I've been through much crazier things, but he's got a point..." she admitted to Raphael sitting across from her, quietly as they were the first two in the break room today. She grimaced at the coffee machine making the liquid, as he came back with one for her. But before she could even be unhappy at it...

"... You alright?" she asked, tilting her head slightly, noticing that he looked tense and serious. Even for Raphael, whose physique didn't stop at being built like a brick wall. Sometimes he could pull the expressions of them, too.

"... I think I like you..." he sighed after an ample pause from her question.

Both of them started turning pink at the statement. It wasn't hard to pick up for her even when they met a few days ago, the blond wasn't exactly subtle, but to hear it so bluntly... was very Raphael. Even for how short they had known each other, this seemed in character, she could only feel...

"So there's... some things I'm going to do."

He didn't normally wear the large purple trench coat he'd worn the first day they met to breakfast, and while he wasn't wearing it yet, that he'd brought it was still a little strange. He was looking for something in the pockets, of which there were many.

Before she could come up with a response, any response at all or think what she really thought of this guy who'd just appeared one day and a week later everything was different...

A giant handful of blue paper packets came out of the pocket he was in, and put them directly in front of her. Téa recognized them as sugar packets before she even picked one up. The receipt at the drugstore would show they were added to his purchase after the other products.

"These are for you. And only you, none of us would ever use them." She didn't need to know that they were contraband--- Dartz had never really allowed them to have it. The other Swordsmen and himself had just adapted to that expectation for various reasons--- but telling her "So you can keep them. In your room, somewhere. But they should make this not as hard for you, I know you don't really like it..."

As he ripped open two of the paper packets roughly and poured the crystals into the dark brown liquid before stuffing them carelessly into the pocket that they'd come from.

She took a tentative sip, after a pause of staring at Raphael. It was better. Not great, but better even if in a small way. It wasn't enough to make it not taste bitter, but it was sweet enough that she could drink it... it wasn't so bad...

"... Thanks, Raph." she smiled shyly at, talking quietly. She closed her eyes for the next sip, trying to enjoy the new change to what used to be awful. 

He smiled, just watching her for a few more moments before looking back down into his coat.

“… I have something to show you.” He announced, already flushing over his face for a different reason as he looked away to both find the thing he was looking for, and that he was suddenly too shy to look at her. 

This had to go well.

That peaked Téa’s interest. She put down the now semi-drinkable liquid carefully, when he continued “… Close your eyes and hold out your hands.” As she did and registered the slightest of weight in her hands, he added quickly “And please be gentle with it.”

She opened her eyes.

He had given her… the most faded Duel Monsters card she’d ever seen, not that the back could say the same as the pictured side. The back had a back that felt like a freshly printed card, and the front was severely faded in large blots, barely being able to make out the picture, listed effects, even the name of the card. She had to hold it close to her face for an ensuing amount of time, squinting and re-reading the first words she was able to make out, to make sure she wasn’t mis-reading the monster’s name.

“Guardian… Eatos.” she finally, slowly, read, moving it down and further from her face. Looking straight down at it, she didn’t notice how intensely Raphael was looking straight at her. Focused on not just how she was holding the card, he was sweating slightly and still blushing, leaning on his tightly overlapped hands next to his mouth.

Good thing she couldn’t hear how hard his heart was pumping from the anxiety.

“Y... yeah.” he managed out with effort. “She… she’s my favorite monster. She… uh… really means a lot to me.” If she was ready to hear the unedited, long winded version of this story, he would have started talking to never stop.

Téa held it slightly further away from her face now to try and make out the picture on the card. A woman with a fierce fighting pose and expression looked back at her, wearing what looked like a bird monster on her head, and Native American-inspired garb. Almost blotted out by the fading was the fact she had a wingspan in the back that didn’t even stay in the frame.

Several moments of complete silence later, Téa’s expression shifted to be smiling softly at the card she was holding. “She’s a very nice card, I can tell. Why is she your favorite?”

… His heart suddenly started careening against his rib cage, the concept of speech was thrown completely out of the window, probably forever.

Of course, that just as quickly wasn’t the only reason. Not that she could see or hear it, but a gentle flutter of wings had opened up above her like an angel’s, revealing the woman pictured on the card he was showing, who let out a small caw of surprise as she rapidly made eye contact with an extremely tense and almost paper-white Raphael, then looking down at the unknown young lady under her. Lowering herself gently to be next to Téa, but still leaning over her shoulder to be able observe her face and her character in whatever way she could. Eatos had never met this girl before, after all.

Almost instantaneous shifts in expression from surprise, to a neutral glance over, to approving, mirroring Téa’s own soft and warm expression with another gentle crowing sound. A hand brushed down the girl’s brown hair from the top of her head, lightly flicking it up at the ends towards her before disappearing before his eyes.

Téa’s expression turned puzzled, head turning towards the direction Eatos had vanished in. “… Did you hear that…?” If he’d felt anything either, he must have heard it.

He hadn't. There wasn't anything to hear over how hard his heart was pounding from the swing of emotions of anxiety to excitement that they had met. And approved of the other.

And it wasn't all that was there to see, either. Now it was his turn for the expression to become confused. If he had blinked he would have missed it, but there was... pink? Not that the shade wasn't uncommon when they did talk to each other, but with the flip of her hair... there was a pulse of pink coming from the top of her head. As if his vision was peripheral, looking straight at her...

And then as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone.

With the audio of the world turned back on, what would have been a private conversation quickly heard soft sobbing from outside the door frame, and as Valon was the only one in the doorframe with a surprised expression, slightly tearing at the eyes, mouth a straight line. 


Whatever the reason that she was his favorite, would have to wait.

Chapter Text

“Really, what’s the big deal about it, all I did was hold a really old card…” Téa huffed lowly, folding her arms as they walked down the corridors away from the scene. Alister had actually needed a few good minutes to compose himself, walking away to save any dignity over both the emotions and his inability to mask at the scene they’d walked in on.

“I’ve known Raph for years, and I’ve never held Eatos…” Valon muttered aloud, primarily to himself, still awestruck. He periodically glanced back at her, uncharacteristically calm and quiet, seriously regarding her for the first time in the past week as more than just a new face to bother.

There had been showing of the card to both himself and Alister over the time they’d all known each other, but Raphael had always held it. He’d never said why, but given how it looked like it was gonna fall apart any second now, even when he was gluing the new backs onto them, it wasn’t hard to pick up that they were important to him. Eatos most of all. The only way to describe how he smiled when he had a moment to glance through his deck whenever he wasn’t busy was if he was staring at an old family photo, a cherished photograph…

It was like that with Alister’s very burnt figurine he had shown off to him and Raphael, too. ‘Look with your eyes, not your hands, but I’m still showing this to you because I deem it important’. Valon felt left out in the sense he had nothing from before his life that meant anything like that to him. But in his own way had cherished what was probably, at least to them, something big and that signified of their respective trusts in him.

For Téa to actually hold that? She’d gotten farther than he had. Either of them.

He starting trying to stand up straighter as he walked whenever he glanced her slightly pouting, mostly embarrassed face.

Guess I won’t gotta worry about punchin’ out people for her. Raph’s got that covered…

“Where are we going, anyway?” she finally asked, desperately trying to change the conversation. Or change his expression. Change something.

He glanced seriously for a bit longer with the serious expression, before breaking out in a smile that was more in character for him. “Well, you were sayin’ the otha’ day how you wanted to do more stuff?” 

She nodded. Trying to keep the confusion out of her voice when she said it, it hadn’t been lost on her how little Dartz had been making her do so far. They were gone for very long hours on any given day at the headquarters on the mainland, and she was held up in here, never leaving except with that exception of taking her to build a deck with Alister once. There wasn’t much to do if you didn’t like reading, and the lack of activity was starting to surpass ‘needing to settle in’. He understood, if Dartz had kept him all cooped up when he first left jail and landed here he would’ve gone crazy.

“I mean, it’s…” she said with a perplexed face starting to form, starting to gesticulate her hands trying to describe how she was feeling. “I guess it’s just getting weird, this is a job and I haven’t done anything but get comfortable…”

He blinked and then after a pause, nodded in agreement, hand going to a chin in thought. “‘Spose I neva thought of this asa job, but yeah. You gotta point.”

“… if it’s not a job, then what…?”

Before she could finish the thought, a hand dig into a pocket on his jeans, quickly fishing out a shining key attached to an intensely dented and scratched fob, from the result of dropping it repeatedly and as many times falling off his bike to skid a few meters, with a returning wide grin. “So! I get to teach ya how to drive!” And if she was good at it, then Dartz would get her a motorcycle to truly ride with them. The thought made him happy, he’d basically jumped at the idea of getting to teach her to drive when the idea was floated around the other day while she was sick. Especially since she was gonna be around for the long haul.

“I get to drive?!” she repeated, actually sounded excited about that, starting to smile in a way that mirrored his own. She gingerly took his keys, now walking next to him rather than behind, looking at them as they reached the arch of the way hallway leading outside. “I’ve never driven before, I walked everywhere back in Domino.”

“Wha, they got crazy laws or somethin’?”

“Not really, just no money for it. Walking is free.”

"True, but what's walkin' got on flyin'?"

She gave him a small smile at how excited he was already becoming, starting to shake his hands to get them ready for how he was going to teach her whatever riding a motorcycle entailed.

The bright sunlight and smell of cold salt mist hit the air, and a bright yellow motorcycle parked immediately in the line of vision. There was barely a moment to even bask in the moment, Valon immediately darting over to his bike, grabbing her wrist to keep up. He was almost skipping, she noticed steps away from where it was parked. He even gently pushed her down onto the seat by her shoulders.


" Are you always this handsy?" she awkwardly chuckled, noticing that just moving into a sitting position on his motorcycle, he was wordlessly and physically correcting her posture, moving her hands and legs for her, furrowing his brows and flattening his smile, not as a sign of anger but rather concentration.

"You wanna be safe on a bike, doll. How ya sit mattas." There was a change to genuine surprise at how serious he was all of a sudden. "Should see some of me old helmets, they're scratched up n' straight flat on one side from skiddin' on the road..."

"... Oh, right..." There was a blink, her own teasing smile dropping to remember that this loud, annoying guy was here to teach her how to drive. It was also a bit of a weird feeling, she realized, just how ridiculously solid all of these guys seemed to be. It shouldn't have felt weird because they were all muscled in some way, but now that she was thinking about it, Raphael had no problem picking her up with one arm, and Valon was moving her with just as little effort. If any of them really wanted to hurt her... they could, no problem, but that didn't really feel like what any of them would do. 

"'Sides..." he eventually chimed in when he was satisfied with her position. He returned her cheeky smirk, "You're awful cute, babe... but you're not 'xactly my type."

"... Honestly, don't take it the wrong way but thank God. You're cute, too. Also not my type. And I just wanna have some friends I don't think want to get in my pants..."

"Oh, them fucks you used to roll with been bad to ya that way too?"

"No one's ever tried to force themself like that, no, but they've all really been... gross." A memory she had even forgotten she had. "... There were these old friends of mine, but before we were friends. Their names were Tristan and Joey, and they'd had tried lifting my school skirt with rulers before. More than once, and I wasn't allowed to punch them in school."

She leaned on a hand and sighed, putting it over her eyes and under her bangs, muttering something barely audible about needing 'female friends'. So she missed Valon's expression briefly turn murderous, teeth grinding from how tightly they were pressed and making them feel sharper, while his eye twitched at her casual confession of brushing off assault.

One lesson in manners he hadn't mind learning from Dartz came long ago, when he first started showing an interest in girls.


Never force a woman to do anything she doesn't want. And if a man ever touches a woman in a way she doesn't like, by all means she should stab him in the hand.

"... Is that so."

"Unfortunately..."

She didn't hear how grumbling and low his voice had been, even barely speaking with an accent.

"Well, don't you worry," he said lowly while handing her the keys, quickly finding the ignition and revving it to life, "You're ridin' with us, remember? We're gonna help ya. And I promise to not interfere with you two, there's only one person here interested in jumpin' your bones---"

"Are we ever gonna start the driving lesson?" she whined, missing his expression shift back without her ever seeing his grim, silent pledge to himself he was now out for blood.

----

Hours later, it didn't occur when he said he was gonna teach her how to drive a motorcycle today, they were literally going to be outside on the damn thing all day. It started with the basics, what the controls were. How to use the turn signal (something he was 'legally required' to teach, not that Valon used it himself). Basic maintenance for when she'd get her own. Basic traffic laws in San Fransisco, stuff like that.

That was only an hour long, not that his speedy explanations of things were hard to follow.

No, they spent the last, what, ten hours or more literally just driving the bike up and down the pathway carved into the side of the mountain all day. 

It was there she discovered it wasn't just a pathway.

They were all stairs.

Currently, she was hobbling along with Valon more or less carrying her while she leaned on him, arm over both his shoulders as he laughed at her pain and commented on her improvement over the day. It didn't matter she didn't have the stuff down there to make it hurt, driving over bumps at high speeds as if she wasn't bleeding still had made her too sensitive to really walk.

"You sure you don't want nothin' to eat, darlin'?" he asked in sincerity, stopping in front of the room that had been given to her.

"No." The only thing she wanted right now was to sleep. It being only six in the evening? Who cared.

"Alright, darlin'. If ya say so~" Valon clapped her on the shoulder and smiled at the back of her head earnestly, watching her stumble away into an already dark room, already starting to kick off her shoes. "Night, dollface!"

She grumbled a good bye as the door slammed in his face, cheerfully walking away and heading off towards any general direction of a fridge...

"Valon."

A calm, smooth voice had Valon turn his head that he met evenly. His mildly surprised expression was met with an ever present soft smirk. And how those white robes stayed snow white and seemingly glowing in the dark, highlighted further by the accents of blues he'd never get. Must have been some sort of magic trick, Dartz had plenty of those up his sleeves.

"Hiya, boss!" he smiled, folding his arms casually and flashing a bright smile, trying to act unfazed. The way the man just appeared and reappeared at will didn't bother him as much as the other two... out loud, anyway. But given what he was doing here, it shouldn't have been weird that he was so creepy. "What's the story?"

"Nothing of great importance, Valon. I only had a matter I wished to discuss with Miss Gardner..." He glanced at the closed door, being able to hear a faint 'whump' of her landing into her bed from behind the wood. "But I suppose it can wait a day..." He put a hand on the door for only a moment, slowly removing it almost immediately after.

".... How is the young lady?" he asked, looking at the closed door with a small smirk to his face.

"Aw, she's was a real fast learner when I was with her! She's complainin' a little cause she's all sore she said, but she'll be ridin' with us in no time! I'd say she's sound to get a bike real soon."

His smirk deepened. 

"Wonderful."
-----

…. Téa Gardner…

A grumbling whisper that was felt, not heard, in all directions. Not with the skin but something more… abstract…

An abyss surrounded on all sides, darkness that had no beginning or end. The temperature of non-existence. Despite this, if she looked down with a gasp as she did, she was perfectly illuminated. She was still wearing the clothes she was wearing when she had gone to sleep.

No source of light. Just that she was visible, standing on, in, with nothing.

… Téa….

The voice repeated, blowing with a wind that felt neither colder or hotter… just movement.

Not knowing what else to do, she looked left and right, up and down at the voice, trying in vain to have a point of origin, but eventually it answered...

With a tiny flicker of green light, not down a long tunnel, but what felt like a canyon away...

She was moving toward it before she could even wonder where it led...

----

Alister let out a yawn he would refused to accept went on for over thirty seconds, when his eyes reopened he tried to make his vision focus on the laptop he had on his bed through the tears that had welled up from how long it was. The bed was his own, but he often used it more as a flat, rectangular chair rather than something he was supposed to sleep on. How was he this tired already, it was only ten...

What broke his attempt at refocus wasn't the exhaustion, refusing to go to sleep yet. There wasn't anyone else awake right now, or at least no one was allowed to leave their rooms at this point at night. Why Dartz insisted this curfew when he knew none of them followed it, he wasn't sure. Raphael had as many problems with sleep as he did, and Valon likely was just working himself out until he fell asleep. His chainsaw-like snores were a way to tell he was asleep. But it wasn't his place to question why, it was Dartz's, especially since he couldn't find a great answer to why not.

... "Is that footsteps...?" he asked himself out loud, actually looking away from his computer towards the sound, gently putting it on the bed. Those were definitely footsteps... too light to be any of the other Swordsmen's...

After a minute of contemplation, he decided to... peek. It wasn't technically breaking a rule if he stayed inside his room, right?

Oh. It was Téa...? What's she doing up...?

He squinted at her, as she walked right past his door without looking at him or acknowledging him at all. Even for as briefly he'd known her, she didn't seem the rude type.

...
...

... Is she sleep-walking...? he thought, watching her stumble. She seemed to be muttering to herself, about what he couldn't discern. Was this something she did often? Not knowing what else to do, especially about the 'don't leave after nine' rule... but also... that 'don't wake a sleepwalker' rule...

---

Téa... This way...

The more she followed the voice, the closer it felt. The more the light grew. The darkness inside was dissolving into the great green light, like watching a starless night change from early morning into a glorious sunrise...

She remembered where she had seen the glow before, and it had provided some relief...

It had almost felt... comfortable...

She'd been walking with her head up to watch the emptiness go away, so stubbing her foot in a way that didn't hurt at all on... what could only be described as a solid white light, like a step.

She climbed.

A different voice, faint as a distant star, asked from far away in the train of thought... "...Téa...?"

Please.... STOP!!!

... A different voice? A woman's? It also felt vaguely familiar... Had she heard...

"TÉA!"

The faint voice from the dream revealed itself to belong to Alister, as her eyes suddenly snapped open with a gasp, being held by both of her upper arms by the redhead. A quick glance down revealed her feet standing in a large window, with little to no sill to stand on. The long, long, drop down didn't even see the ground that this building stood on, only seeing the inky, but noisy waves of the Pacific. They looked so far away, but felt like they were right next to her feet as her brain suddenly caught up with what was happening out of the fog of her dream.

"AHHH!" she screamed, flailing slightly but stepping backwards towards the young man pulling her down off the window, catching her with the slight drop falling would have caused her to have. He might not have been as muscular, but he didn't have as much trouble holding her and setting her down on the ground next to it as she just froze, clutching around her collarbone in fear.

"Geez... are you alright??" he asked, placing both of his hands on her shoulders and trying to look back up at him. "What the hell was that?" He emphasized the window they stood next to with a hand before returning it to her shoulder, apprehensive but trying to stay calm as he only got her to make fear-glazed eye contact, mouth agape with loss of words.

He eventually sighed. "Okay... okay, got it." Too overwhelmed to answer. Probably couldn't give him an answer even if she had one. He was glancing back towards his own bedroom, door still ajar. It wouldn't be a good idea to send her back to her room... what if she did this again? And he didn't hear next time...?

I'll get an answer later, he thought with an internal head nod, keeping his hands on her shoulders but stepping behind her to gently start pushing her towards his door, barely minding that she started sputtering, as if her brain finally loaded in to where she was and what was going on.

It wasn't that they both were in the threshold of the door that he remembered how cluttered his room could get, as if he'd never seen this room before once in his life and then suddenly, while forgetting this room, at the same time remembering that all this mess was his fault. It made sense, if you knew where to look for things. But he was usually the only one in here. Which meant if he was holed up in here a few days doing work, it didn't matter if paper was everywhere. If there were clothes he wasn't wearing on his unused bed. If there were several 'missing' sets of dishes and coffee burners from the commons area...

"... Sorry." he muttered, turning a slight pink in embarrassment, walking past her after closing the door as she just looked. "I try to clean sometimes... doesn't stick..." He unceremoniously dumped what was on the bed on the floor, except the laptop which he moved to a desk.

"It's fine, Alister..." she finally smiled awkwardly at him, once it clicked. She had enough good grace to not mention how he'd literally dragged her into his room and was nonverbally saying to get on his bed. That he was going to make sure it didn't happen again, right now honestly that was just fine by her in her overly frazzled state. But the tense expression of her eyes wasn't at him, especially as he walked away from it and sat down in front of his door. it was more for how lost in her own head she was...


For as vivid as that dream felt, must have been if she was sleepwalking...


Why did she already forget what it was about?

Minutes kept ticking past and Alister himself was seated by his door, jackknifed as tightly as he could to himself as he could manage, chin resting on his knees.


...this feels familiar...

A scene flashed before his eyes, watching her start to fall and stay asleep once again…

It was just after the city had started being invaded, people were already fleeing for their lives or starting to go into hiding. The tanks hadn’t been brought in yet, but there was still the foot soldiers that were given free, legal permission to start invading homes and assaulting citizens in whatever way they saw fit. More than a few multi-home fires had been set that day. He and Mikey had started hiding out in a ruined house, right now being under a destroyed bed. They’d grabbed what bedsheets and pillows were even there, this house had been abandoned shortly after the invasion. Cowards. The family here had chosen to run instead of fight for their home.

“Mikey, it’s okay. You can sleep tonight, I can handle this…” he’d promised for the fifth time that night.

“But you need sleep too!” the younger boy argued back angrily, but whispering. No need to draw any attention to themselves from any kind of attention outside.

“I can’t sleep, anyway. Not after today.” It’d been a few weeks since the quiet plain life of this town had been thrown into chaos at the whim of a madman. He thought he’d be used to the carnage and chaos by now, but he’d never be okay with this. No need to tell that, he was supposed to be strong, he was the older brother, he was…

A tinier, gentle hand put itself on a shoulder, and crawled closer and closer to it until the other boy was furiously cuddled up next to him, throwing both arms around his neck.

“We’re brothers. We have to take care of each other.” Mikey had whisper-announced with pride. “You can tell me if something is wrong.”

A sad smile came to paint Alister’s face the other child could not see, returning the embrace. No way, he couldn’t bother putting all this on an eight year old. “Okay.” he cheerfully lied. “How about I keep a watch out for you, and you keep watch out for me?”

Mikey had agreed to that, and eventually he’d drifted off to sleep being held by his older brother. Little did he know at the time, he’d also been tricked. He had managed to last a little bit longer to be sure his little brother was asleep, but the warm, tight hug and being able to hear Mikey’s heartbeat had made him fall asleep that night. He’d thankfully been startled awake, a few houses over gunshots started to go off, so that they’d be able to scurry away without being seen…

Here, there was no gunshots. No immediate danger. Just a dark, quiet, admittedly messy cocoon that had no sounds other than some chirping in sleep and being able to hear his own heartbeat with how he was sitting. Mikey was long gone—- even if he’d been captured it had been seven years. What they did to prisoners of war—- so he’d been forced to find comfort and connection with Raphael and Valon. It was a necessity that wasn’t grating— in the long run at least, the first few months were awkward and quiet with Raph, and Valon still got on his nerves and likely always would—- but the fact he’d been able to find connection at all after that had happened to him was astonishing but he’d never admit it, as badly as he wanted to.

But a familiar feeling that felt entirely different and new bloomed in his mind, noticing that all of a sudden he was struggling to keep his eyes open on the girl asleep. He barely knew her, all that had happened between them before right now was that he found someone with to finally complain about what an arrogant bastard Kaiba was. She understood. Valon and Raphael, whenever they had the patience at least, listened and sympathized but didn’t understand why his hate for the CEO ran so deep. She could, and had, prove that every terrible thing he ever thought about Seto Kaiba was accurate.

His new family was enough for him, but he’d been unable to stop the warm feeling before he noticed his own eyes betraying him as they closed. Maybe he'd finally lost it, but given that she was nice... she made him feel something he hadn't in a very while that he was too tired to fight...

He barely knew her…

But…

I’ve never had a sister…

——

"Raph, you're turnin into a fool, you're way past 'git'"


The doorknob easily turned, it wasn't locked. Locks didn't exist in the doors, you abided by the rules and stayed until you were allowed out or else. His, Valon's, and Alister's. When his knock went unanswered, Raphael just started opening the door.


"It's already weird that Alister's not out before you and me. And I can't find Téa, and they'd both get in trouble if..."


The conversation died to both become mutually astonished.

Téa was asleep on his bed, which was so seldom used by the room’s occupant that Raphael and Valon honestly had forgotten he had one. She twitched occasionally in her sleep, making a sound that sounded pained. It would have gotten noticed sooner if not for the even stranger image of Alister being asleep in here didn't get their attention first.

Granted, he was on the floor, sleeping under his heavy coat instead of a blanket, his arms and a half-folded half balled up dirty shirt instead of a pillow, a foot about to kick over several dirty bowls and cups he’d left on the floor with him. His mouth was slightly open, leading to not only snoring of all things, but there was a puddle of his saliva, gluing his face onto his arm, and his arm to the ground underneath it.

But the fact remained that somehow. He was asleep.

Not that the other two had never seen him asleep before, but he never used his room for that reason, and he certainly was trying to exist on four hours of sleep a night at the most. Alister would sometimes be found asleep from exhaustion at desks and tables around the property and at headquarters proper, with some paper surrounding him on any number of things but usually about his unhealthy obsession with Seto Kaiba. He’d always snap immediately awake at the smallest noise with some loud, startled declaration he wasn’t asleep whenever anyone, even the two of his teammates, got anywhere near him. He'd then proceed to get snippy with his retorts upon being commented on, and as immediately as he startled awake he’d resume his work. 

Here, he mumbled something in his sleep but didn’t quite stir until he’d felt Raphael’s foot gently nudge his shoulder a few times. There was a sharp inhale…

Three… two… 

“Hey Raph…” he grumbled into the floor, rapidly blinking groggily and stretching, before reaching over to a criminally unused alarm clock that was plugged into the wall.

Now he jolted in place as the digital numbers stared back in a minimal angry red glow.

“SHIT!” Alister cursed, bolting immediately into sitting up, and grabbing the device to hold close to his face, as if staring into the screen would the roll the numbers backwards. “I overslept!”

“I think you mean ‘I slept at all’. It’s six AM.”Raphael commented with a raised eyebrow and chuckle, kneeling down next to him. “Are you feeling okay? All the nights you stay up were going to catch up with you eventually—-“

Alister braced himself for the hand coming over his forehead, which covered more than it and closed his eyes briefly as Raphael was likely feeling for a fever. There would have been no stopping the other man anyway. But he could do without a stern-but-well-meaning lecture, it was first thing in the morning after all.  “Relax, I’m fine.” he whined, punctuating his sentence with an eye roll at the gesture,  as gently shoving Raphael’s hand off of him when he was satisfied the redhead wasn’t sick “I didn’t mean it…”

“So… what happened here?” Valon cooed, watching her slowly get into a sitting position. And her startled little squeak, as if she'd forgotten where she was and was surprised where she was, and who she was with.


In a twinkle, in a move very not like the redhead at all blinked and stared vaguely into nothing "... I don't remember..." He turned to his bed and found her expression mirroring his, puzzled and lost. "Do you remember why you're in here...?"


"... no..."


An uncomfortable, confused pause in the air came over them all, not knowing what to make of this, what to say, why was everyone suddenly tense...


"Gettin' more than two hours a sleep must of scrambled ya" Valon cracked, the redhead getting off the floor with another appreciative eye-roll at the break. The shirt he'd slept on was mildly clean, he guessed, putting it on and completely forgetting there was a person who'd never seen him in a state of undress before also in the room. And it was supposed to be weird that she was a girl.


"Go get dressed, Téa."


"Yeah, Dartz wanted to talk to ya about something..."


"Really? What did..."


An unpleasant wave of nausea rolled through her again, barely making it to her feet before the thought got interrupted. A common theme these days, and one she was starting to get sick of...


"Are you okay? Are you still bleeding?" Raphael asked, over the childish yells of his teammates claiming it was gross like they were still eight.


"... Yeah.. but... it's not the..."


A large glob of red-tinted drool suddenly spilled from her mouth as it was so painful. The world went blurry and sideways before it went straight up white. She knew Raphael would catch her before her head hit the ground.

Chapter Text

The whiteness returned from the blackness that passing out had entailed, but with none of the pain... so far. Her arms and knees felt stiff and sore from laying flat and perfectly straight from what felt like a rock, turns out was the medical ward's bed from a few days ago.

What kept her from going completely off like that immediately upon waking up, though... was a familiar, exhausted looking Raphael who looked like he was barely fitting in that chair sitting next to the cot she was on, and as hooked up to actual machines this time, could only barely stretch her hand over to gently pat his own hand to wake him up without making the IV's needle shoot pain up her arm. 

Of course he was here... she thought, smiling softly at him immediately snapping awake to look over at her, relief evident in his expression that was emphasized by the fatigue in his face. He had paused, looking at her hand she'd used to wake him with uncertainty now. 

It was only until she nodded her head a little at it that he finally held it.

"Hey." he lowly muttered, leaning over the bedside rail to whisper.

"Hey."

---

Everyone had a role to play.

The Swordsmen had yet to fulfill their ultimate purpose, but for a time serving their tertiary roles was satisfactory enough. The time was drawing close to see if they'd be fulfilling their secondary roles, as well, before the ultimate ones. 

It would finally be time to talk to Miss Gardner about hers...

A good distance from him in the hallway--- they would never do this if they knew that he was watching--- cutting from around the corner and watching an impatient redhead shove over an older man in black monk robes to the floor with an audible "Move it, ya geezer!" as the Australian just a few steps behind him laughed, jumped over the man on the floor instead of helping him up, and they sped off down the hallway like the children they were. 

Dartz watched the old man on the floor, who was grumbling to himself as they just as quickly were out of eyesight and adjusting his monocle.  Admittedly, he had a more unique purpose here. It wasn't too important in the grand scheme of their goals, no. This fool couldn't be trusted with anything of their caliber...

But he had to have someone around to talk to about the children these days, he was the only one even close to being old enough to understand about how hard it was to relate to this group of rowdy young men... 

"Children." he simply said as he approached, watching the direction they had vanished towards so quickly after the briefest of eye contact, folding his arms in casual conversation. 

"Hmph.... children." the other old man agreed with disdain, briskly nodding his head as he got to stand up and dust himself off, as if he'd been sullied by the touch of the redhead. "I'm glad I never had them."

"They're not for everyone. I'll have to have a word with mine for you, but I must say, I've never seen them all so... enthusiastic before."

"That wretched little girl Raphael brought here woke up finally. It's all they've been worried about for the last few days..."

"... All of them?" Though the posture didn't change, he felt a blink of astonishment at the news. He'd already lost Raphael for a day or two, that was expected over this silly little infatuation of his. But all of them being so wrapped up in concern...? "All three of them were worried about her?"

"I can't get them to regain attention, they claimed to be this close to finding the God Cards with the cameras installed in Domino, and then suddenly it became all about if she would wake up or not!" he honestly whined, gesturing wildly that Dartz could only see peripherally. "Master Dartz, if you would please..."

He felt his expression flatten, watching the blue haired man walk away towards the medical ward without further acknowledgement of his existence. Not quickly, but decidedly with intent to confirm.

...All of them...?
---

The door dramatically flung open, no doubt the intention favoring emotions rather than logic. Any harder, it would have been possible for the door to have snapped clean off it's hinges, the loud bang even getting a minor jolt of alarm from Raphael, not just Téa's more noticeable one. The expression of dismay on Alister's face gained relief as they all made eye contact though it was primarily in the eyes as the look of his face didn't change much, Valon a step behind with a look of tired relief on his face that wasn't all that different than how Raphael's looked. 

"You're okay!" the redhead exclaimed, arms outstretched, quickly at the side of her bed, Téa confused why Raphael was moving...? Until she was so suddenly felt an embrace so tight that she painfully exhaled as the air left her body, arms pinned to her sides and held tightly against his body as, hearing an audible crack where her neck met her shoulders as he squeezed again. She could see an exhausted and puzzled look of amusement cross Raphael's features, who was this guy? What had he done with Alister? When was the last time he'd hugged anyone, he clearly wasn't good at it. "You scared us..." he muttered quietly.

"It's... nice to see you too... Alister..." she wheezed, starting to see spots in  her vision and feel her skin purple. "I'm... sorry you... were so... worried..."

"Oi. Ali, let up. She's a person, not a stuffed toy, mate." Valon gently shoved him off of her, before going into the same type of hold after a much needed gasp of air, only much gentler in execution and she could move her arms of her own free will.

"It's okay, I didn't need that air anyway..." she mumbled into Valon's shoulder, starting to feel a dull pain start to simmer in her body, gaining a tired chuckle from him.

“I dunno how ya’d do it, angel, but you can’t pass out like that anymore. You finally got Alister to start sleepin’ and then he hasn’t since you went down."

The redhead huffed at the factual information, pouting and crossing his arms. "You know I wasn't alone in that, Valon. I didn't see you or Raph sleep or eat for the last three days, either."

"I was out for three days?" She seemed startled by how casually they confessed to how they'd completely abandoned their own health for... her? They were that worried? That was so...

"Indeed, it was quite a disturbance."

All of them turned to see the source of the voice came from a familiar figure, Téa's expression gaining confusion very quickly at the scene that unfolded in mere seconds. At first, she hadn't expected the clothes Dartz was wearing, compared to the suit he'd been wearing when they first met... the white robes with the blue trim and hood were strange. But not as strange as how all three of the Swordsmen all started talking at the same time after a nanosecond long pause in surprise. To not be mad at her, that they were sorry for how they'd been behaving, they promised to... 

He held up a hand, closing his eyes with an annoyed frown. They all immediately stopped talking.

"All of you, please leave. I need some time alone with Miss Gardner." He shot a deadpanned look at Alister and Valon, adding "You two have someone you need to apologize to." His glance back to Raphael to continue "And you need to stay outside for when I'm done." Only when they had left the room entirely after exchanging worried glances at each other and then back at her, large shadow outside the door and the other two barely whispering confusion over who they were supposed to apologize to...

"I must say, my dear..." he began slowly, looking directly at her. She'd tried to hide the jolt and sweat starting to form as best she could, though. "You've stumbled into some... issues, since you've come here, haven't you." A guilty expression crossed her face. "Hardly exemplary of an employee in a trainee status, you've fainted on my time twice."

"I'm really sorry, Dartz..." she sighed, looking away with a slump in her shoulders. "I'm... not sure what's been happening to me lately. Even the doctor said he wasn't sure what was up..." Téa would have to think later about how she was apologizing for being sick when she couldn't help it. He was her boss, after all, now wasn't the time to get mouthy with the retorts. And she couldn't even act like it wasn't bothering her, either...

Instead of starting with that, though, a nonplussed look crossed his features. "Am I supposed to punish you for being sick, my dear? I was merely stating the obvious."

"...You're not mad?"

He didn't reply, an awkward silence filling the room, only being broken when she tried looking away. He made sure she redirected her vision to him immediately.

“Well.”

“… Well?”

“How are you feeling, my dear? Are you in any pain...?”

Almost as if on cue, a full-body jolt, what maybe being struck by lightning felt like, flared through her entire body and caused Téa to grab around her middle, pressing her legs closed together at the knees and curling on the cot into a ball in pain. She ground her teeth, in too much sudden pain to even scream.

What’s been HAPPENING she wondered when there was a moment to think, when her head wasn’t full of fuzz from the pain and when she hadn’t felt the tears well up. Téa had never before felt this level of excruciating pain, and all of a sudden since she got here, her body was falling apart like it’d had been suddenly ripped to shreds without her knowing, only to discover the wounds right now.

Through the haze, Dartz’s voice had said something, but she hadn’t heard. “I’m super sorry but… what did you say?” she panted with effort.

“I said, I could try something to help you.” he repeated, when she managed to look back up at him. “If I don’t, this level of pain you’ve been feeling will not go away. It will continue to get stronger and cause you damage until your body cannot handle it anymore.”

Enough anxiety had finally kicked in at his words to have dulled the pain for a pause, where she could think about what he’d said, and how… bluntly. How could he possibly know what was wrong with her, when the doctor didn't?

She hesitated, despite wanting it to stop. “What are you going to do? To make it stop?”

He calmly smirked at the question.

“Why, I’ve already told you before."

"...?"

"Nothing to fear.”

The…star?… pattern of the medallion he was wearing started to glow with the same wild, otherworldly light that all the other shards seemed to have, at the same time as him raising a hand and holding up his pointer and middle in a pose that he had clearly done thousands of times before.. He gently touched the hollow of her throat, and didn’t move his hand immediately away afterwards, holding it there for a few seconds. Before it could start feeling awkward, or even being unblinded by the pain to remember to even feel awkward…

“AH!”

An impossibly bright white-green flash filled the room, and when she could finally see past the phosphines that it had created in her eyes, there was the same pattern of the medallion on her skin, surrounded by a circle of characters she couldn't read. Green and hot, too, like the flit of pain on her forehead she’d had when she first grabbed her shard…

This flash was gone as quickly as that one was, disappearing into her skin as quickly as it came. But there was something even stranger, that it really did make the pain go away! As quickly as it came and vanished, it had instantly sapped all the pain she had been feeling as if desert sand suddenly had a giant splash of snow come in to cool it, as if her entire body hadn't just felt like it was on fire and had for several days before. She must have been so focused on the light show of whatever Dartz had done that it just ebbed the pain away. Or at least… well, she couldn’t really guess what he’d done. This Orichalcos stone could really do some interesting things…

“There. Now we can have our talk without interruption.” He smirked at how Téa was moving her arms and legs up and down, noticing how they weren’t stiff like they had been only seconds ago from lying in the uncomfortable hospital bed for several days. Her expression soured to his amusement.

“Okay, I really gotta ask, what something even is here.” She finally, firmly asked, crossing her arms and glowering. At his unchanging expression, she continued “I have so many I don’t even know where to start! What is all this! What just happened!”

“So, they’ve been so enamored with you being here they’ve all forgotten to explain any of this to you?” Delightful, very good to know. It was easier when they made their feelings about something... in this case someone, made known to him. “If my employees haven’t been very forthcoming with you, allow me. 

The Orichalcos had accepted you, but you hadn’t fully accepted it. You're still denying your feelings, my dear. Still trying to hold on, they were going to fight…”

“...What?” 

“The ancient magics tend to disagree. If you did not choose between them the darkness’s and the light's fight over you would have torn you to shreds…”

“‘Ancient magic’?”

“An old friend of yours is archaic in terms of magical powers. A few of them, in fact, but there's one's power I'm sure you know more than others. It's dragged souls from one life to the next...” He stood up and started looking out the window while she watched his back. “I understand that this is very new for you, Miss Gardner, but your loyalty can’t lie everywhere. Especially not to those who are evil…”

Wait, did he mean…?

He turned back, neutral smile on his face. “You know already that they were the reason you were suddenly thrust into a life of danger. And they’re still trying to hurt you.” After a carefully timed pause he added “He has always had a way with trapping souls with magic and binding them to his own ego after all…”

"... The Pharaoh is doing this?" she guessed, and given that his smirk grew pleased with her reply, that she did it correctly. "How's he involved in all this?"

"The Shadow Games have always been about binding souls of others to powerful magic users. He may have forgotten when he was sealed away, but just because the mind did does not mean the ability did..."

"He doesn't... he.. he wouldn't..." Her head and heart were already swimming with what felt like a literal cloud of fog around her head, in the disappointment and fear of just how deep this 'my friends were the reason I was in danger' feeling she didn't have a name for yet, clouding her features from how impatient she just was for a response. The room looked and felt darker for a split second, but that was just... was it just her imagination?

Unsurprisingly. Dartz was quicker with the retort.

"How terrible is knowledge, isn't it, my dear." She suddenly felt like flinching, but stopped herself somehow, noticing a hand on her shoulder and looking once again directly into his eyes with nowhere else to hide from them. "Perhaps it was just your wish that they could still be good..." A sympathetic head tilt at her, and she suddenly felt tears peaking around her eyes. "But they can't. Especially since you don't know the truth."

She was wordless, letting her gaze finally fall away from his, but being felt his hand catch her face as she tried to look away again.

"They've hurt you in ways you never even realized you were hurt. And they did it with no intention to change their ways." He tilted her chin back up momentarily on his fingertips, to offer a small smile. "I promised I was going to help you, dear, did you not trust me?"

"I---- I did, just..."

"Say it, then."

Téa felt her brow furrow instead of feeling more tears well up at this request, hand falling from her chin and something dark glittering in his eyes... Something that felt like the pattern's fire again started to burn around her eyes and on her forehead....

"... I do trust you..."

----

"I must give you credit where it is due, Raphael. You have an eye for exceptional women." Dartz began, opening the door out to where he was sitting right outside, immediately standing to attention. "Miss Gardner is stronger than I had originally anticipated." When was the last time he had to have personally sealed a person? Not even with any of the Swordsmen, they'd passed their test and become hosts for the Orichalcos's power upon their first try. 

He'd sensed her connection to the Pharaoh upon their first meeting... but there was still something else off that he couldn't quite name.

"So... so she's okay? We're not sending her back...?" he asked, eyes lightening up at the declaration. 

Even his dumbstruck and relieved smile didn't drop at the insult given back, expression souring at such a stupid question. "Don't be an ass, Raphael. Of course not. Miss Gardner is an employee of mine, same as you."

"Master Dartz, thank y---"

"She requires a bit more... individualized time alone, though, it seems." Whatever this book she had claimed to read about Atlantis she was talking about had him already rolling his eyes like a disapproving father. "And I imagine you'll finally be able to court her, now that you'll be spending more time with her after you and the other Swordsmen return."

Raphael felt his smile fall, slowly, trying to understand. "... What?"

“I’ll be sending her with you on your trips, when you all return with the God Cards.” 

“But, Master Dartz, sir… she’s not…”

“Spare me, Raphael. I’ve decided she’ll join you all in your assignments. It will be a lot more helpful to you and stay focused rather than keeping her solely here like a canary." He turned to glare, frowning, "Since you all seem to be so fond of her presence, maybe it will incentivize you to stay focused on your missions lest I change my mind.”

Raphael’s mouth closed, feeling his heart feel like it was lumping in his throat just to swallow it, feeling the cold, heterochromic glare of his master observing him for a few moments with an stoic scowl.

“The young lady wants to be a dancer, doesn’t she?” he continued.

“… Yes? What does that—-“

“Well, she was very expensive. I expect her to perform.”

Chapter Text

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Long, curly blond hair spilled all over the top of her face-down in a pillow head, groaning at the aggravation that the alarm clock gave her headache first thing in this hotel room. Too loud for it being too close to her head. What was usually warm, inviting morning sunlight peeking through the window shades, added a different, louder groan as her eyes turned to face it. Too bright to be shining in her face right now. The debate to get up at all and not just throw the clock against the wall, was decided that, damningly, she was thirsty. Certainly not that it’d be added to the hotel’s tab, she had the money for it.

Mai never liked the mornings, but hangovers were a different type of morning problem she hated.

She begrudgingly rolled out of her position but not leaving the bed, not yet thinking as she numbly searched for something to wear in the open suitcase on the floor. What was a shirt and a skirt or some sort of pants took a few minutes to sort out when you only had one eye open. Groaning, she put on what she’d rummaged through, then slammed the lid. After a moment more of thought, she opened it again for a pair of sunglasses before closing it again.

Checkout was supposed to be an hour ago, glancing at the faint blue numbers, but what were they gonna do. It’s not like she was coming back here again, she was here to duel in a nearby tournament last night and leave. She placed the sunglasses over her eyes, cut down the brightness of the morning, help her get to the damn lobby.

Once the nausea had lessened to a point she could finally stand up, she did and started collecting the very few things she had even taken out, preferring to leave the suitcase open because she knew how she was gonna spend her evening. It just was a bonus that she had won, she supposed. But not for long.

The glittering trophy of last night just made her feel even worse in the sunlight, glaring at it while throwing it into her suitcase, having found it on the floor. It had been a totally empty experience. No one there would have been worth pick pocketing, let alone beating in their alleged profession. The only joy to be found last night was drinking at her own personal after party.

Battle City hadn't been that long ago, a week or two, maybe. It was hard to think about dates with how badly her head buzzed. But the only thing buzzing more in her head was the even more haunting glitter of a golden dragon...

The quick shake to her head, as if to shake off the thought, proved useful but not for the reason she was grateful for at the moment. It was hard to think about anything when too sudden movement made her need to vomit...

She sighed. Just leaving the hotel room had taken over half an hour. 

Despite how badly that dragon haunted, the feeling that she had seen herself outside of her own body, being trapped drowning in sand in an hour glass...

What had stopped it was the image of a sunny, smiling blond idiot who was wishing her farewell the last time she saw him. How he'd jumped in front to protect her from The Dragon of Ra. A kid with crazier hair taking the full front of a magical blast for her and him. A quiet but cute long haired redhead that smiled at her like she was a lifelong friend despite how short a time they'd interacted.... 

It wasn't enough to always stop the thoughts... but it was nice there was a buffer in them.

Mai smiled to herself for the first time in a while. It was incredible how quickly her thoughts of this group of kids had changed since Duelist Kingdom. 

From some pests to my people... Maybe I'll surprise visit them sometime... she thought, finally getting to the elevator and hitting the lobby's button.

"Ms. Valentine!" the young man at reception greeted brightly, still too loud for her tastes but not nearly as bad as it had been by the time she finally reached downstairs. "So nice that you've finally come down for us! We hope you're alright. I hope you don't mind the extra fee..."

"Yeah, yeah, kid." The polite talk about upping her rate already grated on her good mood, fishing in her purse for her wallet. "I'll be out of here..."

"Oh, that's a shame." The customer service smile said otherwise. "Is there anything we can offer you from our breakfast area before we check you out?"

“...Copy of Domino City’s newspaper?” she asked. She’d started to feel a little guilty about the last time she’d seen them on the way down, how she had driven off, watching the clerk behind the desk move about looking. Those kids were really sweet, she was already missing them.

I’m going soft, she thought both bitterly and fondly, as the paper was finally handed to her in exchange for her credit card. She started to open it I wonder if it’d be too… soon….

Mai felt her stomach drop from the random page she had opened up to. The headline she read.

This… couldn’t… possibly be right, she just saw all of them…

“Will there be anything else, ma’am?” She numbly took the card back, not yet looking up from the newspaper.

“… Directions to the nearest airport, please.”

“Of course!”
----

“Mr. Moto.”

To the company of Yugi Moto

On behalf of the Kaiba Corporation the President and Vice President send their sincerest regards and deepest condolences on the recent developments in local news, about the disappearance of one Miss Téa Gardner. 

The company wishes to offer you special attention and deals in this time of loss. All local gaming stores within the city of Domino selling KaibaCorp merchandise and Duel Monsters paraphernalia, have been alerted by the CEO to be free of charge until further notice. 

Regards,
Seto Kaiba, President of KaibaCorp
Mokuba Kaiba, Vice President of KaibaCorp

“… Mr. Moto.”

Yugi hummed without making sound as he stated blankly at the typed, single spaced letter in his hand. Joey’s and Tristan’s letters were nearly identical if it weren’t for the fact they had a different name than him. Joey had nearly thrown a fit at it, but Yugi knew what the letter was truly saying.

Seto and Mokuba had crisp, elegant signatures by signed under this brief paragraph of a letter that belied the fact that he wouldn’t have sent this if he wasn’t in a state of grief. He was sure.

He had found out before they did, after all.

“… Mr. Moto?”

They had been exiting the medical bay to check injuries that they did not have, at the headquarters a little more than a week ago, to see security guards not at all subtly also walking out the door the same time they did. They were mumbling into walkies-talkies in their headsets, repeating a vague description, ‘Yes, Mister Kaiba’, and then driving off in a car suddenly appearing.

Someone had driven them all to their houses in silence as soon as they’d driven off.

A few days later, after sleepless nights of wondering what he had seen to have thrown them out so abruptly even by Kaiba’s standards, in a newspaper. 

“… Mr. Moto.” the teacher at the front had repeated for the fourth time, worry and concern evident in her face. “If you can’t do the problem… please at least open your book.”

Dulled purple eyes stared off into nothing in response, after placing his chin in a hand and putting the letter down. The concern was there but even though he heard it he didn’t feel it.

It was hard to say he was feeling anything these days. The last thing he remembered feeling was what felt like his stomach dropping out and his heart in his throat.

He'd tried to stay positive the first couple of days. The group were who they were, they would find her! They would persevere! They hadn't looked hard enough yet, and besides, they had found Joey after that day he got the Red Eyes stolen from the Rare Hunter, right?

Something flickered inside the Puzzle, but he'd tried to ignore it. Going to school, skipping school, they surely had scoured all over the city and even the outskirts! They were going to be fine!

And then... there it was. Finally made public.

How she was legally declared dead due to how suddenly she'd vanished and how no trace of her body had been found. 

No clues.

No camera footage from her last known location.

No motive, other than her being fired.

It would have been more appropriate that the world was raining. But it hadn’t since the day before she vanished. Birds sang, flowers bloomed. The world could not have been brighter but despite its best efforts still looked gray.

“… Alright then, can we please have a volunteer to read the math problem in Mr. Moto’s place?”

School came and went. Yugi hadn’t absorbed any of the hours that just passed. He wasn't even sure why he was going other than he had to, it wasn't distracting like the doctors had hoped it would be. He might have well just blinked, and the day was over, standing in the frame of the school that led to outside... 

“…. YUGI!”

A rough shove to his shoulder, rougher than Joey had intended he was sure, got the first emotion he’d had that day of dulled, mild panic as he stumbled in no danger of hitting the floor. He looked backwards and up to see Joey immediately look apologetic and Tristan looking annoyed at him.

“Eh hem… sorry Yug. But I was callin’ ya for like three hallways!” he started, starting to wildly gesture with his hands, pointing behind them all.

“… Sorry. Didn’t hear you.” Joey’d even managed the first words he’d spoken. He really was good, four syllables.

“Listen... Yugi, I’m bummed too, but…” Tristan had begun, before looking into the dulled purple that blankly stared back. The bags under Tristan’s eyes also betrayed how much this had been weighing on him.

“Uh… me and Tristan are gonna… just walk around town. We wanted you to come.” Joey finally offered, hand going behind his head sheepishly. He hadn’t done that since the awkward days of when they first became friends. It had been tense, trying to talk to someone whom they both had only just stopped beating up and harassing.

"... No thanks, Joey..." he muttered, turning around but still not finding really enough strength to start walking. "Maybe some other time..."


A squeal was heard from the parking lot was enough to divert the attention of them, looking over to see a bright purple car suddenly stop, in between the empty spaces and instead parking in the middle of the lane. The school's parking lot was empty enough that this wouldn't cause issues, but still made itself known loudly.

The three of them stood in place, thankfully not a lot of students were around, very quickly understanding what was happening as a blonde haired woman peaked up from the car's lack of a roof, exasperation flooding her features.

“Mai?” Joey sounded surprised.

“There you are!” she gasped, turning off the car quickly to run over to them. Yugi blinked more in confusion as she ran over and pulled him into a tight embrace, even bending down to his height. The hugs she gave Joey and Tristan were no less affectionate, pulling away from her hug with Joey to reveal she was in tears.

"How'd you hear?" Yugi finally asked after the gear finally turned in his head why she was acting like this, feeling the surprise dull quickly as the logic soured his mood. Anyone feeling bad for them as individuals or as a group was getting hard to deal with. Students, teachers, neighbors kept offering their condolences but it's not like he could feel or hear what they had to say. Nothing they said could fix it.

"What do you mean, it's in the newspapers..." she began accusatorily, snappily turning to Yugi, before her expression softened. "I mean... I came as soon as I heard.... I was worried about you three..."

Mai stumbled with her words some more, as if the reality of having to comfort them all caught up with her emotions and how out of her depth this really was. She was barely used to having friends, she'd only started this year, let alone comforting anyone who wasn't herself. How long had she really known these kids, a few months? 

What could she possibly say here.

Everything else she even managed to stutter out just made the expressions get sadder and blanker, Yugi finally finding the strength to walk past her. Despite how badly she looked like she wanted to stop him, she didn't.

"Thanks, Mai... but I need to go home..." And do what? Not sleep? He wasn't sure. But he couldn't be here... 

----

A tired hand swept over Seto Kaiba's face, keeping it there as it was too hard to look at the screens he'd been staring at for hours on end at this point. They felt too dry, it hurt to blink. And he'd opened them back up to the same nothing he'd come up with for the past week or so, the bags under his eyes feeling heavier than he'd felt from exhaustion in some time.

His AI CECELIA was handling all of the company's problems at the moment, which did the things that required his thoughts and actions and his signature. Both of which she was capable of doing for him, something he was becoming more keen on doing with his upcoming project. Kaibaland's American location was about to be announced in a very short time, so she could handle what paperwork or authorization was needed to keep the timing on track, ignoring the notifications she was programmed to give him, like someone interested in buying shares.

So he'd diverted his attention to where it was needed.

On this useless computer with no information he didn't already have.

She used to have a cell phone that got destroyed over the course of Battle City when Marik's former goon squad that had kidnapped her and Wheeler at the same time as Mokuba, so that number was useless. She hadn't even bought a new one.

Still no contact with either of her parents, even though it had made news. They were in for a world of hell when they returned, he'd make sure of it. He demanded it be put out in case someone in some other city had seen, outside Domino or maybe even Japan.

She didn't duel, so she didn't have a Duel Disk which he could track.

It had already felt like an admission of defeat just sending that letter to Yugi and his friends, no doubt they were feeling useless right now, that he'd done more than any of them could and still nothing. So he'd vanished into this room where he hadn't seen the sun in a few days.

The 'words of wisdom' about losers were echoing in his head...

Why Mokuba bothered knocking when he just entered... wasn't something he had time to divert to right now.

"...Seto?" Mokuba had asked for the first time in a few days. "Anything?"

He sighed heavily in response, putting his hand over his eyes again due to the fatigue.

"No."

"Uh...  CECELIA kept trying to contact you but you're ignoring her. So she asked me to come in and tell you that someone was really interested in buying a lot of shares in KaibaCorp..."

Seto said nothing, just grunted.

"And there's cameras downtown that she can see, but aren't registered to her programming, they don't seem to be connected to our systems at all."

"Tell her to do anything to override and get them in. Probably someone who thinks it'd be really funny to mess with our system."

"And there's this really weird folder in the system that keeps..."

"Tell her to stop bothering me!" he suddenly snapped, still not turning around but hitting his hand on the desk in front of him. "She's supposed to be making decisions WITHOUT me, why is she bothering me with things this minor! I designed her better than that!"

Mokuba said nothing, but stood by the door blankly while Seto rambled. After weighing his options, he started walking towards his brother, silhouetted by the blue screen's light.

"And why are you still here either? You know I don't need you to babysit me!

"Seto..."

"And don't get started on the emotional stuff! I'm not---"

"Seto."

A tiny, gentle hand put itself on one that was flailing wildly in the air. In the same lights, Mokuba thought Seto looked something tired and ancient. Mokuba in the blue light, at least to Seto, looked the personification of sadness.

"It's okay. I'm sad, too, Seto."

Seto said nothing, even after reaching over and pulling his brother into his lap with him.

---

"....Partner..."


".... partn...er..."


".... p......"

Yugi's voice had trailed off. The labyrinth was contradicting itself with just his emotional state. What used to feel like a tight, dark, claustrophobic cluster of pathways that went nowhere suddenly felt like it was as empty as they had proven to be. Promising secrets and answers but never finding anything despite how hard he was searching.

Yami laid on the floor of the mental space of the Puzzle, staring up into the abyss of the labyrinth of staircases that went nowhere, and the ones that didn't end in the wall disappeared up into the darkness. He'd always been too afraid to step into those dark stairs...

Until recently.

How could she just... vanish? Where has she gone?

Yugi had tried to remain hopeful, as was his host's nature. Their friends tried to stay optimistic but...

It was instantly worse than dying again, the moment he felt himself lose hope. In his incorporeal form, outside of the Puzzle but not using their body, he'd clutched around where his heart used to be... but when he felt a punch to the soul...

He was the soul. Everything hurt instantly.

He hadn't felt this weak a connection to Yugi since the time the Puzzle was smashed, feeling his hope draining away as well as his own. He hadn't moved from this spot in the mindscape for what must have been days, not just feeling like days.

He hadn't felt this... timeless and space-less, so abstract a miserable concept since the thousands of years he spent as a unsolved puzzle in a box...

Téa...

She was one of the best things about me.

I never got a chance to...

...A whisper started to echo down the halls of the labyrinth...

Yami shivered at the sound, still staring into the abyss above him until he heard it again. It repeated over and over as he slowly started to sit up and look towards the direction it sounded the most from. It was getting progressively louder despite keeping a soft but frosty tone, eventually being able to make out the command the voice was saying.

Follow me...

It didn't sound like Yugi's voice. Or the ghost who had also found his way in here with the Millennium Key. Perplexion and a need to know had momentarily overpowered his feeling of grief, he noticed as he was as slowly standing up what almost felt like not of his own accord. Not knowing what to expect, but still following the sound regardless.

The most he had felt like himself in several days was when the voice stopped as he came to an empty, wide open space of the puzzle, the ceiling still shrouded in darkness but the metaphorical air felt thinner here... the ground seemed less solid, as if it was nothing more than stiff but loosening sand...

"What do you want, show yourself!" he barked loudly, still looking around and seeing nothing but his own maze of his mind, wildly looking around to see nothing.

Greetings, Pharaoh... the voice finally replied after staring at nothing but this room for a moment more. You have found us...

"'Us'? It does not sound like there's more than one of you!"

We are a collective of the gods' voices, Pharaoh. Many, finding a common voice to find you. We have been searching for you.

"How?" Surprise, too! In the back of his head, he'd feel about how wonderful it was to... feel again...

Why, you are a king. We always know how to find you, your magical energies have always been known to us...

"Why have you found me now?"

Your cries of despair have not gone unnoticed, Pharaoh. We know your struggles, your pain. We have answers about your latest heartache in your afterlife and rebirth of sorrow. We can tell you with no uncertainty that the soul that was lost to you is hale and healthy...

It felt like an light switch went on in his head listening to the voice, getting used to those but the simile fit perfectly for him. There was a sudden, blooming feeling of hope in his chest, as if the past suffering he'd just endured was nothing more than a lingering afterthought....

"She's... alive? And you, you... you know where she is??" A desperate, worried and hopeful smile came to cross his face.

Indeed we do. And we can tell you where she is, but there is something you need to do in order for us to show you...

Chapter Text

An airplane landed in a part of the airport that had been paid in advance to warn them of its arrival. Only hours after they’d all been ordered to actually rest, which was just fine by most of their impatience to actually get their goals in motion. Years of energy had been leading up to this, and despite it, they all felt in a collective bad mood upon landing. Maybe it was being forced to leave so suddenly, maybe it was that they'd brought along their collective least favorite person who was about as pleasant as always. Which was to say, about as pleasant as swallowing rusted nails.

Valon was the first one to complain. He usually was.

“Weren’t we just here?” he complained sourly as he walked down the stairs of the plane. It was too early for his tastes. “We was just here, like a few weeks ago.”

“It’s time for us to start putting Master Dartz’s plans in place.” Raphael grumbled quietly, even as they were mostly being ignored by the airport staff.

“I know, but why didn’t we just grab all this stuff the last time we was here?”

It was a good question and a valid thing to be agitated about, but one that none of them had ever been given the answer to. Dartz had always promised that he’d tell them once it was relevant but so far that hadn’t been happening. It was never that time, so far. Raphael could only give a non committal shrug while Alister was too jet-lagged and exhausted to fight at the moment, trying to hide the grogginess of it putting on a pair of sunglasses.
 

There was an answer, there had to be. They had found the location of the God Cards, the Pharaoh, even some other powerful souls in the area they would need, like Kaiba and Wheeler, almost as instantly as they were set back to the task of it. Not that they hadn't been close before, but then after Téa had woken up they had pinpointed the exact location they needed.

Why hadn't Dartz just let them wait it out until they had been successful at first? What was the point of a time limit to finding them anyway? As soon as Raphael had introduced Téa, it was if they needed to vanish as quickly as they'd gotten here. Then just yesterday, as soon as she'd woken up and probably needed help from them and himself, but they'd been ordered to leave her behind with Master Dartz...

I expect her to perform...

"It doesn't matter. We're here and we have work to do." he grumbled lowly, but with more determination. He watched his friends slightly change into more serious expressions and poses at his words, while he was trying to convince himself. "We're finally going to save the world from evil. We don't have time to dwell on it..."

“What are you three doing just standing there!” They all, more or less at the same time, turned with annoyance to the sound of the older man they'd had to bring, who returned their sour and irritated looks. "You have your job to do, and I have mine! I won't let you three be in my way!"

Right, collecting random souls was so important he had to bowl them over. The only reason he could shove them out of the way was mostly surprise, not that he was stronger than any of them, not even Alister. He was jealous of the fact they were more important to Dartz and always had been. It was pathetic, watching this man in his... late fourties? Mid fifties?...  petulantly storm down the steps and make his way towards Domino City. To be jealous of people probably at least a third his age.

“...Let me kill him.” Alister muttered through his ground teeth under his breath after a beat, after staring for a pause after, arms folded. Raphael was standing close enough to see the look in his eyes intensify behind the dark lenses, pleading in earnest but only slightly above a whisper. “PLEASE let me kill him.”

He tiredly smirked, finding the way his friend asked funny. He whispered lowly back.

“You know you’re not gonna, it’s not why we brought him.”

—-

Yugi dully woke up outside of his own body again, noticing that he opened an eye without feeling it open. At first he thought was the emotional state of being he was in, turns out was more abstract than that. He floated a good inch or two off the bed as his spiritual connection watched as Yami excitedly get dressed in front of them both. A stranger that looked almost like him sharing their mutual body.

…

I won’t ever have words to describe how weird what I experience is, will I? he thought to himself. It’d been a good long time since he’d finished the Puzzle and started sharing his body with a ghost. Although he’d argue this was better for him in the long run, the short term where he’d black out without recollection of things and feel only attached to his body with some vague spiritual strings….

“What are you doing up?” Yugi instead asked, instead of falling down that rabbit hole of thought, 'sitting up' and crossing his legs. It’d stop making sense to himself very quickly if he thought too hard. “You almost never wake up for the both of us!”

Yami did not look particularly rested, but still looked like this was the happiest he’d been in ages. Even after noticing Yugi awake, and getting distracted long enough by that to miss the shirt’s sleeveless holes a few times. Even looking in a mirror.

“Yugi!!!” he exclaimed loudly, happily, as if the sun was much higher in the sky than it was at the moment. He turned back towards the specter, with a smile that stretched his entire face and lit up his eyes. “Fantastic news! I have answers!”

“Oh? Answers about you? What’d you find out while you’ve been gone?” As hard as it was for him, he supposed having no memories on top of losing a friend was even rougher. But any step towards figuring out himself was good, it was something he needed to do.

“No! That’s what’s even better!” In his hand he held the three God Cards, which were just in a safe that had been Grandpa’s possession. He carefully placed them inside of the backpack which only had one folder inside of it.

“Wait, what are you doing with the God Cards?” A cursory glance around the tiny room. “Why is my school backpack all over the floor?”

“I’ll explain soon! They know where she is!” Yami had a way of somehow trailing off, feeling Yugi get both hopeful and confused before he disappeared into his thoughts.

—-

Purple car parked about a block away from the game store, Mai had been contemplating last night and what she'd done wrong in her quickly booked room. Trying to give herself more valid critique than just 'everything', of course it would have been. She was only getting started.

It wouldn't be good to do something that'd remind them of her... she had decided, which finally let her nod off last night. Start small... maybe offer to drive them to school or something... So she decided to, trying to play it off casually... as if she was the type of person to be up this early.

She yawned, then turned to take a swig from the enormous drink she'd gotten at a kissaten that was luckily open so early. It was a shame she had to take it to go, it was a cute little building... 

The door finally opened, as evidenced by the slam and crazily jingling bell, helping her focus. But even though the confusion woke her up more than the caffeine would provide, watching Yugi run off in the other direction that she was sure lead away from the school.

"Weird..." she muttered to herself, tilting her head as she put the car into drive. He kept making right turns, which was bad since she was driving in the left side of the road. As small as he was, and how few blocks she had actually driven, she quickly lost him. 

Luckily, some other dumb kids she was happy to see were walking together where she'd found herself a few minutes of driving later.

After turning agitated towards the car horn honk, starting with a “WATCH IT YA—-“, Joey finished by trailing off with the recollection of who it was who’d come to see them lately. His tone brightened considerably, even with “Oh, hey, Mai! What's up?"

“She’s here to see us, idiot.” Tristan grumbled, her pulling up right next to them.

“Hey, do you two know where Yugi’s going?” she asked quickly as she stopped, raising an eyebrow. “I thought he’d be wanna walk with you two but I saw him walking off somewhere else…”

Joey and Tristan looked at each other for an answer neither one had, "Neither of us seen 'em since he left yesterday..." Not even wandering aimlessly and Tristan staying in Joey's apartment last night had helped either of them... Where on earth could he be going, before school?

“Jump in while you’re thinking about it, guys.” Upon them sitting down she chuckled quietly to herself “We’ll probably have the answer by the time either of you think of something.”
——

The electronics store’s TVs blared loudly as the signs of life started to fill the city, in the square. He stood, arms folded and face impassive as he was just absorbing facts, and watching the large screens in the window display the news. Excited, sensational news about the discovery of ancient underwater ruins—-

All of it was quickly forgotten about, as a body not dissimilar to his own came crashing into his own, both of them as equally startled as they fell to the ground. They both fell to the ground, and he started to screech at this would be assailant, does he know who he was?? His lawyer was going to have a---

And then violet dots for eyes met soft blue ones. And the anger melted into... a different kind of anger. Mostly annoyance.

"Huh? Rex?"

"Weevil?" the slightly taller boy asked, as if he was surprised. They both jumped to their feet to point at each other dramatically, asking each other at the same time 

"What are you doing here??"

“Shouldn’t you be squirming home, Battle City’s been over.” Rex grumbled as he brushed his hands on his shirt front after their pointing proved to go nowhere as quickly as it started. Neither one of them would be intimidated by it.

“I actually live here, genius” Weevil sneered as he crossed his arms, annoyed as Rex flinched. Of course this idiot had forgotten. “So I should be asking you what you’re still doing here. You had a train to catch weeks ago, right?"

Rex thought to where he had been staying, and just how recently he'd lost a half sandwich to a racoon outside the dumpster of a nearby burger joint. "Uh... there's a.... cheese festival. I wanted to go to. Came back."

"With what, you liar." Weevil hadn't a need to be worried financially, even after his fall from grace as a Duelist. His parents had more than enough money to tide him over until he could finally leave them. Rex had only two yen to rub together before his rise to fame, and since his drop it had become one. "Face it, you're here to Duel Yugi for those God Cards." He scoffed, and started trying to walk past him. "Well, get in line, Raptor. Yugi's MY famous rival."

Rex, unfazed by his lie being called out so flatly, only waited a singular step before he started striding right next to Weevil. His wide swinging arms in faux confidence as he stared ahead, refusing to stop now with what little momentum he had to actually go Duel Yugi. He had no grief with him personally, even being friends with Wheeler. But just holding those would mean he wouldn't have to keep losing to those raccoons...

They'd only made it a few steps away from where they started before it started.

Weevil nudged him in the shoulder with his. Rex responded with the exact same gesture as Weevil tried to step faster.

It repeated back and forth with nudging and gaining speed til they were locked in immense eye contact, running down the street, grunting with each breath as they both refused to budge. So they didn't see anything but each other, not even that man in the black robes they were about to crash into. They fell down, he did not.

"Ever hear the pedestrian has the right of way?" Rex yelled upwards.

Ignoring that this man was also on the sidewalk, Weevil agreed "Yeah, what's your problem??"

This man only smiled darkly down at them.

"Finally. I was getting bored anyway."

-------

He'd only placed one foot onto the museum's steps when he finally heard the group of his friends shouting Yugi's name, stopping in his tracks to turn. They all looked... slightly better, compared to how they had all parted ways yesterday, running up to where he stood.

"We've been looking all over for you, and here's where you turn up? Um... you're looking a lot more chipper today!" Mai awkwardly smiled, as soon as she finally caught up. Right, now wasn't the time to be calling them out for strange and nonsense behaviors. They were all grieving. She had to keep reminding herself, she was a lot better for the action part of bereavement, not the emotional. 

"Yeah, what's the idea, Yug? We're really late, man!" Not once in his life did Joey think he'd ever cared there was a chance he was missing class. He probably still wasn't, he'd later mull over, just looking for Yugi's sense of being the student he was. He never skipped.

Yami huffed and smiled at their concern. "I apologize, everyone. There was just... something I needed to do here."

Mai's face twitched in confusion at how deep his voice was suddenly sometimes when yesterday he sounded like a sad little flute, losing the smile to a very confused frown. Puberty was waiting to hit this kid like a truck, it just kept hitting the brakes before it ran him over.

"I will meet you there when I'm finished, I promise. It just might be dangerous."

"Fat chance, we're all here wit' ya, pal! And we're gonna be there for ya, with... what are we doin', 'xactly?" Joey's confidence instantaneously melting into positive confusion was as endearing as it was dumb. Yami smiled anyway.

"Just stay close. They have answers!"

As a very small apology for how brief and callous she had been the other day when Joey came in, dismissive of the panic and concern he was right to have, Ishizu had waived the fees for them all to come in to the exhibit, they'd found when Mai had fished out her wallet to pay for their tickets in. A few rooms in, and the already chilly air conditioning felt more serious as he approached the room at the bottom of the stairs...

A destiny was hidden in here, and he had so many questions... who knows what else the gods's voice could answer, not just fulfilling their promise of the answers he wanted about her, when he completed their task...

“Wait, why is Yugi on this rock?” Mai asked, tilting her head and face genuinely scrunching in confusion as they approached, but stopped several feet away to look up at it. A tense look passed Joey’s face, as if the realization just sank in. He hadn’t forgotten of course, but in that same thought the truth was there. Mai had missed all this information while she was trapped in the Shadow Realm.

“It’s a really long and weird story.” Tristan wasn’t even sure on most of it himself, feeling like he was only experiencing it third hand despite actively spending time in this story every day. Yugi was Yugi, except when he wasn’t, could switch when he wanted, and his ‘other self’ was a Pharaoh’s ghost that looked just like him despite being in Japan and not Egypt. “It means accepting a lot of weird stuff at the same time, though.”

“My friends, I will explain! But first…” He held the God cards in his hand, staring seriously and pensively at them, with a strong resolution he hadn’t felt in himself for the past weeks.

The voice had made itself clear last night.

We can help you, Pharaoh. Bring us the God Cards to forge a connection in energy. Hold them as offering in front of the Tablet of The Pharaoh. Give unto us your complete faith, and all knowledge you seek will be revealed. Your life will never be the same.

He exhaled deeply, flashing the cards in front of the picture in the stone that bore his face, and waited. The center of the eye on the puzzle carved into the rock started to glow a bright yellow light.

Countries and time zones away, a bright green glow from another stone answered.

You’ve served the Gods well, Pharaoh….

The voice broke into mocking laughter as the following events occurred so quickly after one another, Yami only barely heard it, feeling his face fall in confusion and the beginning of horror.

There was a growing thick layer of ice forming over the tablet, blurring out the pictures and inscriptions, almost as instantaneous shooting a stabbing pain down his arm to the marrow from the cards downwards! Cracks of energy that were so black they almost seemed to be made of anti matter formed as well, sucking the energy and air out of the room into the injury, pulling the power with them! He could barely groan in pain, holding his wrist with his opposite hand, as Joey, Tristan and Mai responded in similar ways he was.

“Yug??” Joey was by his side instantly, watching his friend’s face contort in horrible pain. Tristan joined him on the opposite side, and Mai stood in place as she looked with more confusion than horror.


"What's wrong, man?" Tristan reached out a hand and had barely touched Yami's elbow before his hand felt like it was being stung on the finger tips and had to snap his hand away, grinding his teeth in agony. 

"I... I don't know!! I feel... I can't let them go!!!" The dark, draining feeling was slowly ebbing from the air, with the feeling that it was only stopping because it had what it came for, regardless of how tightly they were held. The wound that it had left in the air started to crack something far more abstract and invisible than the air itself, and just as endless...
----

The other patrons upstairs noticed a flicker of the lights from the event downstairs, before a giant tumbling shape caught in the corner of several, looking down the hallways towards where it went.

"That was.... just a mouse, right?" a woman asked, hand going to her chin in fear.

"Pretty big mouse..." a man replied, just staring past where it went.

"Well... it couldn't hurt to... check, right?" Another man asked.

Nobody wanted to be the hero, and luckily no one had to. After several long, harrowing seconds... a big ball did roll out into the open space for the handful of people in there to see. 

"Beedee?" the brown ball with large yellow and green eyes asked, tiny stumpy clawed arms and legs, tilting its whole body in confusion at the people looking down at it. 

A loud, piercingly shrill scream filled the air.

---

Instantly as they heard the scream downstairs, the group whipped their heads around as the black lights coming from the cards faded. Darting upstairs to find the upper floor deserted of people, the only clue as to where they had headed that the doors were still swinging with the wind. 

A push revealed that what the group had missed was nothing compared to the scene outside! Flying dragons, bright orange dinosaurs in the middle of traffic, a Grim Reaper with a card necklace wailing in agony as it sailed above crowds of people screaming as they scattered in every direction the could in any attempt to find safety. The group could only stand where they stood in shock and horror.

"Woah!" Tristan yelled. "Did a Duel Disk explode or something?"

"I don't think one would be enough to cause all of this..." Mai replied, eyes darting around. There were tens, probably hundreds, of monsters flooding just their line of vision right now. She snapped open her cell phone, and after typing in a number revealed a busy signal, audible without even the speaker option on.

"Who're you callin'?" Joey asked, turning to watch her grumble in frustration at it, snapping it shut.

"Kaibacorp Customer Service..."

"I can imagine they're pretty swamped..." Tristan muttered, watching another colossal monster form over the towering buildings in Domino...


Then he noticed.


Despite that the monsters towered over everything, it didn't seem like they were... trying to hurt anything. Cars got kicked but airbags went off, and an empty one crushed, but even the ones climbing buildings were doing just that... climbing. They weren't ripping out the window and throwing the sea of glass on the people running in a panic. They barely even were moving, in fear of stepping on anything, not even that weird cheese festival a few blocks away...


"They look more confused and scared than the people do about being here..." he muttered, with a quiet sobriety that had the whole group whipping their heads to stare at him.


"Who cares who's more scared, Tristan??" Joey yelled, grabbing the front of his shirt to get him to focus. "I'M SCARED, AND I WANT SOMEWHERE TO HIDE!"


The quick jog to Mai's car, watching and feeling her peel out of the parking lot and towards Kame Shop. The group could only look around the chaos of the city, everything blurring together because while the police were out, the last thing they would care about was how fast someone was driving away from the chaos. They were all talking confusedly into their walkie talkies, over what to even do, over how the guns did nothing, and two were even huddled over two bodies that they drove past.

They all swallowed thickly as familiar shades of blue hair with a green shirt, and long scraggly brown hair with a red beanie hat were the bodies on the pavement the officers were huddled around, the car's lights flashing...

---

And as quickly as they came... they were gone hours later. The giant monsters and lizards that stood proudly over the city had seemingly vanished. Nothing had been damaged, they


Only the police officers were still outside, though.


And the low rumble of motorcycles....

----

Luckily, Grandpa was very understanding why Yugi had brought over so many people. Mai had only introduced herself briefly before Grandpa tried asking too many questions about her. She was stressed out enough already about this afternoon, so he'd scurried everyone upstairs to his room. He'd said something about setting up a nice place for the God Cards to go...

They all sat around for hours trying to calm down, as a special bulletin on the news--- unsurprisingly, given the day's events---- KaibaCorp had promised an update over the days events.


The screen's feed directly to Kaiba's press conference room...


---

A security camera hummed as it scanned back and forth lazily outside under the ledge of the balcony above it outside. A cute measure, but just archaic. It was even flimsier than it looked as simply hurdling a rock at it knocked it clean off of its wiring when it faced the opposite direction. It probably couldn't see them anyway, it'd only get feed if something was standing right next to it. Alister smirked, shoving his hands into his coat's pockets in triumph. It felt good, in a childish sort of way. "Still got it."


"C'mon, fellas. They're in there, and this town needs a lil' more chaos... just an ol' man workin' the counter, right...?"



"... Don't hurt him." Raphael only ordered as they got off, their bike's engines running, causing the other two to turn back at him. He tightened the strap of his Duel Disk around his arm a little tighter, and shook his gloved hands. "He got out of the hospital only a month or so ago. Get the God Cards, but don't hurt him."


"Awww. Ya big lug, you're all soft."

---

"We've done extensive testing of our advanced technological systems! And I can promise without question, that our technology is working perfectly! All active Duel Disks are registered to our database, are updated in their softwares and are not responsible for these monster sightings!" Kaiba barked on the television screen. News reporters still screamed valid questions like what caused it, then? Were the residents of Domino in danger of KaibaCorp's technology? He ignored them as he walked off the stage, disappearing as suddenly as he appeared. He looked tired... more tired than usual.

"I mean, I guess it wouldn't make sense for them to be broken..." Mai talked over the news reporter, causing everyone to look at her. She gestured to Yugi's Duel Disk sitting on his bed a few steps away from them. "These are barely a month old. Kaiba's a lot of things, but cheap's not one of them. He wouldn't have put out junk that just broke for Battle City, he turned this whole city into a place to play games for weeks. He wouldn't make his most successful product garbage."

"... I guess that makes sense..." Joey pouted, hating he had to admit something good about Kaiba's craftsmanship. His Duel Disk was probably the nicest thing he owned. Even if they were working on updates, the newest model wouldn't be for months, probably.


"So, what caused all those monsters?" Tristan couldn't shake the feeling there was something... not normal. If he didn't know any better, he tucked a hand sheepishly and nervously behind his head, "You'd almost think they were real or something..."


"... Actually." Yami interrupted lowly, staring pensively at the carpet, letting enough of a pause set in to hear the commotion downstairs.


CRASH!


They were downstairs mere seconds after the sounds had stopped. Grandpa laid on the ground, hand outstretched towards the open doorway as he wheezed a "Wait...". There was smashed glass everywhere, even stuff that was in the counters on the floor. But Yugi knelt down to examine Solomon with an exclamation of his title... and he wasn't hurt. In his peripheral vision, his step stool he kept behind the counter which he stood on for things on the higher shelves was turned over.


"Yugi... your cards... " he groaned.


"The God Cards?? What happened to them?"


Solomon closed his eyes in shame and perhaps fatigue brought by panic.


Joey ran out the door without a second thought, loudly yelling "I'LL FIND 'EM, MR. MOTO----"


His sudden departure in yelling got everyone into the door after making sure Grandpa was alright, where they all stood next to him at the sight they walked in on.


A small group of young men on motorcycles drove right past them, speeding so fast that they were blocks away by the time they'd even had time to register that they used to be sitted right outside of Kame. They were all wearing helmets with opaque visors on them so it was impossible to identify facial features, let alone seeing them in sillhoutte. They must have had Duel Disks of their own, however, as the motions they all went through were placing cards--- not hard to guess which ones--- down on them while still actively in motion, even from back here the flash of lights going off, to explode with white with the power of what they were holding in their hands.

The sky filled with the primary colors of gods.

Chapter Text

We're Not Anti-Semetic, We Are Anti Genocide!

From the River To The Sea!