He lives on the stuff of the gods,
._._.
The court was going through witnesses faster than Yuugi went through pen-and-paper mazes, so when the dreaded name was called on still only the first day of trial, Yuugi was moderately panicked.
Souzouji Minoru was an upperclassman at Domino High that Yuugi had not seen for months: not since that night, the ‘all night karaoke party’ with just Yuugi, Hanasaki, Souzouji, and a microphone with fully blasted speakers. Yuugi remembered the painful sound of Souzouji’s voice, and remembered him knocking Hanasaki unconscious, but after that... Yuugi had a pretty good idea.
When Souzouji took the stand, Yuugi barely recognized the man; without his obnoxious headphones, or his headband, or his too small school jacket... no, those things were not what looked so different now. Souzouji was looking at Yuugi, and he was smiling. It was the way Jounouchi smiled when he was sharing a secret beside a shielding hand.
Considering the source, that smile struck Yuugi with painful threat, but he glared back with determination. Souzouji would do damage, yes, but Yuugi was not going to allow this one punk the opportunity to destroy Yuugi’s chance for freedom.
There was a woman standing next to Souzouji, a cute brunette with hair so curly Yuugi was reminded of thick telephone cords, and momentarily wondered in which of those two she would entangle her fingers while talking on the phone. She spoke in a gentle voice, as though she were accustomed to only speaking to distressed children. “Souzouji-kun has taken a vow of silence, so I am serving as his interpreter.”
The prosecutor, stiff and sleek like a new deck of cards, stood at her words, and turned to address the court. “Souzouji Minoru-san was a student at Domino High School not long ago, placed a couple years above the accused, Mutou Yuugi, but was placed in a mental hospital several months ago. Souzouji-san, would you please tell us about your acquaintance with Mutou-san?”
Souzouji nodded, and swiftly his hands came up in a rapid series of gestures – sign language? – that Yuugi couldn’t follow. The woman, the interpreter, spoke fluidly after a moment of pause.
“Yuugi-kun was one of those kids that was easy to bully,” she said in kind tones, as though she were talking more about children getting into fights over who got to be the leader of the sentai team out on the playground and not about physical assault; “he never fought back, never tried to get help, and he always looked so weak and pathetic, it was like he was asking for it. At least, he was... until that day.”
Souzouji’s hands paused; Yuugi did not like where this was going. After all, if Souzouji had been in a mental hospital, how could he possibly be a witness to this case? It didn’t make any sense. The only thing Souzouji could be describing was that day, when Yuugi’s other self did whatever it was that sent Souzouji to the mental institution in the first place. Then again, Yuugi couldn’t really say anything – after all, how could he know that Souzouji wasn’t meant to recover? How could he know that Souzouji hadn’t happened to been near the scene of the crime? Surely proclaiming certain knowledge of that would cast an even more terrible light on his already badly viewed image.
But still, that smile...
“What happened that day?” asked the prosecutor, his voice a confident purr of a predator approaching injured prey.
“Your Honor, I object to this witness!” Hoshikage proclaimed loudly, glaring at both the prosecutor and the judge in turn; Yuugi could have sagged in relief at his attorney’s intervention. “I see no reason why this witness is on the stand. He had not stepped foot outside of the Domino City Institute For The Improvement And Possible Restoration Of Mental Health for Those Who Can Afford It until several weeks after the event in question took place, and had been there for many weeks more than that before the crime; how then, Your Honor, can he constitute a viable witness? Especially considering his mental stability is obviously questionable, considering his permanent residence at said institute?”
“Your Honor,” the prosecutor interjected smoothly, “the defense is arguing that Mutou-san has no criminal history, no history of violence, and no motive for killing anyone, let alone two beloved celebrities and his own proclaimed best friend. If my witness can shine light on Mutou-san’s inherent character as someone who is, in fact, capable of such maliciousness, then such a testimony is crucial to this case.”
“Your Honor—”
“I’ll allow it,” cut in the judge, sharply, to Hoshikage, “for now. Mikami-san, if this witness is a waste of the court’s time, I will hold you in contempt. Is this clear?”
“Perfectly,” responded prosecutor Mikami, bowing respectfully to the judge. “You will find this testimony most enlightening.”
“Please continue, Souzouji-san,” the judge added kindly; Souzouji nodded politely (a sight Yuugi had never thought he would see in a hundred years), and began gesturing once more. After a moment, his interpreter resumed her translation.
“So, I used to love karaoke singing, and I know this seems off-topic, but please have faith in me. I was terrible at it, but in those days I didn’t care. I’d drag some underclassman to a karaoke club and blast out for hours. I was so bad, a bunch of them had to go to the doctor for ruptured eardrums and tin...”
The interpreter halted, her gaze confused and her responding gestures rapid. After a moment of silent dialog between the two, the woman shook her head and resumed. “Tinnitus. Things like that, but I didn’t care. After a while, I realized I could get money out of it, too, so I started making the underclassmen sell tickets, and I’d get all that too. I’d done it to Yuugi-kun a couple times already, so one week I snagged him and some other friendless runt. Yuugi-kun tried helping the kid – he’s like that, sticks up for everyone, never fights back though – so I’d dragged them both to the club. After I started wailing on the other kid for backing out, Yuugi...”
The woman trailed off again, for Souzouji’s hands had stilled in the air. All the court’s attention was fixed on the witness, including Yuugi’s, even as he conversed with his other self.
This does not make sense, said the other, staring at Souzouji through Yuugi’s eyes. I can still detect the hold of dark magic upon his mind. How can he possibly be able to speak?
Well, he isn’t really speaking, other me, Yuugi replied, focusing on the man on the witness stand whose mind should be lost to insanity. Yuugi tried to see what it was about the bully that looked so intrinsically different now as opposed to back at the karaoke club where Yuugi saw him last. There had to be something!
Slowly, Souzouji’s hands resumed their signing.
“He... challenged me to a game of silence,” said the interpreter, and Yuugi’s body tensed as adrenaline rushed through him; no, no, it couldn’t go like this, it couldn’t end like this, it couldn’t! That the other Yuugi was pressing against that cataract boundary, murmuring soft assurances and apologies in his heart did not drown out the rushing of blood in his ears, that rushing that silenced everything except the kind voice of the confused interpreter. “And I lost, and when Yuugi won, he... he showed me everything I’d been doing, all the pain I’d caused. Not that he hurt me or sang or anything, but...”
The hands paused again, so the woman trailed off, her expression both confused and comforting. The prosecutor – Mikami, the judge had called him – looked upset, and surprised, and Yuugi was not sure if this was a bad thing.
“It was overwhelming,” said Souzouji, his voice not loud, but audible and level all the same. His interpreter was trying to hide her shock; murmurs had broken out all over the courtroom.
“He can talk?” “What’s the deal?” “Does he even know what’s going on?” “Execute that bastard too!” “Why was he using sign language?” “What does this have to do with the Sasori twins?” “Who—”
Slam! Slam! went the gavel, the judge’s cries of “Order!” taking reign over all the noise. Souzouji had his hands clasped over his ears, and he was wincing.
“Would you all just shut up?! ” he shouted, pained, tears in his eyes.
His eyes! Other me, do you see that?
At that, the other Yuugi pulled away from Yuugi’s body and, knowing he could not be seen in this manifestation, crossed through the desk and across the courtroom, intent upon the witness stand. The court had quieted down, so when the other Yuugi spoke quietly with his inaudible voice, Yuugi heard him perfectly.
“His eyes are empty.”
“Order in the court! Souzouji-san, what is the meaning of this?”
Souzouji smiled again, that secret smile, and he turned his gaze back to the judge. “Sorry. I’m not deaf, or a mute. I just don’t like talking anymore.”
Mikami looked furious; in turn, Hoshikage looked pleased with this development. While Souzouji spoke, the other Yuugi did not stray from his examination.
“May I continue?” God, he didn’t even sound like Souzouji! The Souzouji Yuugi had known would never say something as polite as ‘may.’ The judge only gave him a small wave of his hand as an indication to continue. “Anyway. What Yuugi showed me – what he told me – it opened my eyes.”
“He has no pupils,” interjected the other Yuugi.
“It was a bit too much for me to comprehend; hell, it gave me a nervous breakdown! I took a vow of silence and everything. I think... if he hadn’t left, or if I’d had a gun, I would have killed him for it. Or myself. That’s just the way Yuugi is: he’s just so honest and open, you can’t help but hate that he makes it look so easy. If those Sasoris were anything as bad as the tabloids say, it’s no surprise that they’d go crazy after meeting Yuugi. I don’t doubt that it was one of them.” He smiled, and before the court could fully react to his proclamation he added, “thank you, Yuugi-kun.”
Souzouji covered his ears again as the courtroom exploded in noise. Hoshikage literally chuckled as he abdicated his cross-examination of the witness, and when Souzouji and his flustered interpreter walked away from the stand, Yuugi stared at the senior’s eyes. The other Yuugi was right: without his pupils, and with his irises so shiny and unending, Souzouji looked empty, hollow – nothing at all like the Souzouji Yuugi always tried to avoid. The other Yuugi re-entwined to Yuugi’s heart while the judge chewed out the prosecutor for such a useless witness, proclaiming to uphold his threat of contempt of court.
His mind is still locked within the Dark Game, said the other, and if he had a face at this point Yuugi knew it would be distorted with a scowl; Yuugi knew his own face was suffering that expression from confusion.
So he hasn’t recovered, then? He’s still insane?
Mm. Souzouji was not the one who spoke on the witness stand. There is something more at play here.
Yuugi only gave a slight nod that people would take as a gesture to Souzouji’s departure, and he felt the other Yuugi’s internal embrace. They watched Souzouji stride out of the courtroom, his mind and heart still clouded with darkness, even as he walked beneath the brilliant skylights and into the bright afternoon sun.
._._.
The Judge had, after that waste of the court’s time, called both Hoshikage and Mikami into his chambers to question them on their pending witnesses. Only after nearly twenty minutes of debate behind closed doors were the two lawyers released, and when Hoshikage told Yuugi that three of the prosecution’s witnesses were being forcibly dropped, Yuugi let off a small internal cheer. Souzouji may have been able to claim that his mental instability was nothing more than an adverse reaction to a good deed, but Yuugi doubted that even most of those affected by the Dark Games could be distorted in Yuugi’s favor.
Hoshikage continued. “I’d had a couple of your classmates down as character witnesses as well, but those have also been stricken.”
This, too, was good news – as much as he loved... well, as much as he liked Anzu and Honda and everyone else in his class he... did not want to hear them try to talk him up. Anzu’s comments in the article still gnawed at his thoughts. Had it come up when she was working at the Game Shop? Even if it had, she’d accused him of being untrustworthy, and— he thought she knew him better than that!
“So what happens now?” Yuugi asked, worried; Hoshikage was much too tense for this to be good news. His suspicions were confirmed.
“The prosecution would like to call Mutou Yuugi to the stand.”
Hushed murmurs erupted from the audience, and Yuugi blanched. He knew it was unreasonable, and though they had prepared, Yuugi had hoped he would not have been forced to testify at all; to be called on the first day was not something he expected. One false step, and the case would be over with a guilty verdict.
You can do it, aibou, whispered the other Yuugi, and at the judge’s summons Yuugi stood, crossing to the witness stand.
The prosecutor stood once Yuugi was placed, making his way to the open courtroom floor before he spoke.
“Mutou-san. On the night in question, you were arrested at the scene of the murder. Is this true?”
He nodded, shakily, before remembering the court stenographer. “Ah. Yes. I was.”
“You admit to being the only survivor at the crime scene?”
“Everyone was dead when I woke up, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said, seeing where the prosecutor was attempting to lead. The prosecutor looked amused.
“Woke up? Do you mean to tell the court that you were sleeping at the time of the murder?”
Yuugi shook his head, his hands sweating against the wood of the podium, but he felt the comforting pressure of his other self trying to alleviate his nervousness. Yuugi swallowed the lump of fear in his throat, shaking his head.
“N-no. I blacked out after I was shot.”
Loud murmurs broke out amongst the audience, and the gavel slammed repeatedly for silence.
“Mutou-san,” said the judge, “would you please tell the court everything that happened on the night in question?”
Here it was: the most important part, the only part that Yuugi could control. He nodded.
“Jounouchi-kun was walking me home, since it was after curfew, and we ran into Hikari-san and Hebi-san on the way. I didn’t know they were idols, but Jounouchi-kun might have... Well, Hikari-san and Jounouchi-kun seemed really... interested, in one another, so when Hebi-san suggested we all go play Monsters Kill You Dead, I was the only one who wasn’t thrilled.”
“Monsters... kill you dead?” interjected Mikami, and Yuugi nodded.
“Mm. It’s a board game. It’s not particularly popular, but it has its fans. The game changes every time you play, so it’s really fun for parties. Ah, you probably don’t want to hear about that, though, right? So, we all went up to their flat, and we started playing the game. I didn’t want to be there anyway, so I tried beating the game as fast as I could. I’m really good with games, so usually I can end them really fast, but Monsters Kill You Dead is an unusual game. It was set up so one of the players would be competing against all the others, so by chance it wound up being me against everyone else—”
“And is this why you killed them?” interjected Mikami, smoothly, “because the game portrayed you as the villain?”
“I didn’t kill anybody!” Yuugi exclaimed, his attention diverted, but Hoshikage came to his rescue once more.
“Your Honor, the prosecution is attempting the badger the defendant!”
“Objection sustained,” replied the judge, pointing his gavel at Mikami. “You’re already going into custody at the end of today’s session, Mikami-san. Don’t force me to bar you from the courtroom itself.”
Mikami smiled, and nodded, and Yuugi felt the other Yuugi pull away so as to be able to give him a more physical-feeling assurance. Yuugi bowed his head to hide his smile at the feel of the looping embrace, and his hands relaxed from their clenched fists.
“Near... near the end of the game, Hikari-san had a chance of killing my character, but... luck of the dice, I beat her instead. She was... she was so angry about it that she stormed out of the room. We got through a round of turns before she was supposed to go again, and she came back, and that’s when... it all happened so fast! I looked up from the board and she was holding a gun and she shot me.”
His right hand touched the juncture of his shoulder and torso, where the bullet scar remained, and he felt the phantom hand of the other Yuugi cover his own.
“I went into shock. I was bleeding, I was bleeding a lot, and I heard a couple more gunshots before I blacked out. When I woke up I...” Only tell them what you saw, he reminded himself, not what you actually know. “I had been moved, I was sitting up, leaning against the couch, and Hikari-san sat across from me, having... having slit her own throat. I didn’t know she was dead at first, so I nudged her, to see if she was awake, but she toppled over and there was so much blood, and I didn’t know where Jounouchi-kun was, so I went to look and he was dead! My best friend...” Yuugi took a deep breath, hearing the utter and eerie silence of the courtroom around him, his words overpowering all. When he looked up, everyone was staring at him in open shock, the whirr of the electronics the only noise that filled the air. It was a long silence, and Yuugi saw the expressions of disbelief on familiar faces, and the looks of trust on others; Hoshikage looked triumphant. Then again, so did Mikami.
“Mutou-san, we realize that you are pleading innocence in this case, but you will also go so far as to accuse one of your victims of being the culprit?”
Yuugi’s hand fisted in the material of his borrowed suit jacket, still held over the healed wound. “You asked me to tell the truth,” he said quietly. “It’s not my fault that the truth doesn’t comply with your argument, Mikami-san.”
The courtroom exploded. Voices were clamoring for a recess – most loudly were the newscasters, wanting to cash in on such a startling statement. The noise was overpowered by the gavel, but it took nearly ten minutes for the din to quiet down regardless.
Ugh, commented the other Yuugi, why must everything be so loud?
We should have brought ear plugs, added Yuugi with half-hearted jest.
“Your Honor!” Hoshikage shouted, “The defense would like to amend its plea!”
“WHAT?! ” The exclamation came from so many directions at once; Yuugi barely heard his own shout in the cacophony.
How dare—
Wait, aibou. Look at his face. It is the expression of victory.
“The defense will not only prove that Mutou Yuugi is innocent,” Hoshikage said with a grin distorting his narrow features, “but that Sasori Hikari had invited both Jounouchi Katsuya and my client to her apartment with the sole intent of killing them.”
._._.
Again the gavel came down, each attack so forceful that Yuugi was afraid the judge’s podium would split down the middle under the force of it.
“Of course,” added Hoshikage, his victorious grin still upon his face, “the prosecution is more than welcome to keep trying to pin these murders on an innocent young man, but he should know he will fail.”
“Order, order! The court hereby recognizes the defense’s amendment, and—”
“I object!” proclaimed Mikami, glaring venomously at Hoshikage before turning his attention to the judge. “Your Honor, the prosecution has not seen any of the evidence the defense wishes to submit regarding this change of plea, can not report the validity of such, and the prosecution will not stand for this verdict being determined by unexamined parlor tricks!”
“Your Honor, I object to this slander the prosecution is slinging—”
“The prosecution would like to present a dictionary to the defense, so that he may be made aware that a statement of fact does not fall under the definition of slander—”
“Enough!” the judge roared, nearly flinging the gavel at the stenographer in his haste. “I am now holding both of you in contempt of court. Today’s trial has been running far too long as it is, so I hereby adjourn today’s session. We will reconvene tomorrow morning at nine a.m. to recommence with the cross-examination of Mutou Yuugi, should it be necessary. Court is dismissed, so everybody get the hell out!”
The gavel came down loudly one final time, and several bailiffs were already taking the two lawyers into custody.
“You may step down, Mutou-san,” the judge added, nodding to Yuugi. He bowed his head in return, forcing himself to relax, feeling the other Yuugi take his newly free hand.
“You did it, aibou,” said the other Yuugi, grinning. “Enough doubt of your guilt is cast among their hearts, they surely will be willing to learn the truth.”
But will it be enough? He thought, not daring to speak, and was surprised when the other Yuugi smiled at him and nodded in understanding.
“It will.”
The walrus bailiff had come to take him into custody, whereupon he would be taken back to the detention center from which he had seemingly so long ago escaped.
Other me? he prodded, not truly sure if the other could hear him if he did not speak (he could not before, after all), how did you break us out before?
Yuugi did not feel comfortable gazing at the semi-opaque projection of his other self, or speaking aloud, so he hoped that the other would either have been able to somehow hear the thought, or return to Yuugi’s heart where they could converse.
It was the former.
“Why do you ask, aibou? I thought—”
And I am, Yuugi replied, easily anticipating the question. I just wondered—
“I used the Fire Axe—”
Jounouchi-kun’s trick, I remember that much, but I don’t understand how—
“I’m the King of Games,” said the other, confident and with a grin. “I realize now that I have dominion over all games. I can manipulate them; I can call them out into reality. Duck.”
Yuugi easily dodged the volley of airborne slippers targeting him on his approach to the police car. I guess that makes sense, he thought as he climbed into the backseat of the car, ignoring the crowds of reporters screaming his name, or the fangirls calling for his head. The other Yuugi slid in through the closed door with a brief expression of amusement.
“Was there anything else?” he asked, settling so it looked as though he sat far too close to Yuugi for how spacious the backseat really was; their legs were pressed together softly. Yuugi felt the ghostly hand slide over his own, let the flesh-feeling fingers intertwine with his own.
I... I guess that would explain the chess set, on the train, he added, still lost in thought as the car began moving. His thoughts were quiet after that, his ponderings only slight upon the past, and the future. He did not wonder as to what caused this transition that allowed the other to hear his thoughts – if he did, he’d have to ponder how the other could project outwards, or how the other Yuugi existed in the first place, and Yuugi’s thoughts were far too focused on himself to want to travel down those answerless roads.
Yuugi’s quiet ponderings were cut when the other Yuugi leaned over and kissed his cheek.
“After breaking out last time,” he murmured against Yuugi’s flushing cheek, “do you think they’ll leave us unsupervised?”
Yuugi’s choking fit confused the policemen, but when the driver tried to pull over, the passenger said something, but Yuugi didn’t hear any of this because the other Yuugi was exhaling very shallow breaths onto his ear.
I’m pretty... pretty sure they won’t let— ah! What are you doing?!
Yuugi could feel and hear the vibration as it traveled along the shell of his ear from where the other Yuugi hummed.
“You’re brooding,” muttered the other, pulling away. “I hate it when you brood.” Almost reluctantly, the other Yuugi pulled away, and when Yuugi turned the other had already faded back into the Puzzle. Yuugi sighed, allowing the officers to escort him once more into the Domino City Detention Center.
The place was teeming with about twice as many people as it had been that day, several weeks ago, and the way everyone seemed to slow down and stare at Yuugi did not make him feel at ease.
As he was led through the detention center, Yuugi tried to maintain a posture of confidence under all the malicious stares, but it was getting so old by this point. After passing through the main foyer, Yuugi was escorted into one of the smaller corridor hallways leading to the holding cells.
“Kid! You, yes,” called one of the policemen not escorting Yuugi, a man with a mohawk so obscenely tall and dyed so ostentatiously bright that Yuugi knew instantly that he could only work behind a desk and hated every minute of it; Yuugi was essentially dragged to this man’s station, and he had to force himself to relax.
Mohawk lazily pointed his cheap disposable pen at Yuugi, the cap of which was chewed beyond functionality. “I’m going to have to confiscate that necklace of yours.”
Yuugi’s eyes widened in fear, and his hands grabbed the stained Puzzle, tarnished still with blood even after so long.
“Wha-what? Why?” Yuugi asked with a stutter, scared. The other Yuugi was coiled tightly within him, ready to surge forward and attack them all for the threat, and almost all Yuugi’s attention went to keeping his other self from doing so.
“There’s no need to be alarmed, son,” said Mohawk, his eyes not fixed on Yuugi’s face; “you just can’t take something so large and valuable with you into a cell. It’s my job to make sure you’re not hiding anything inside it that—”
“Inside?!” Yuugi’s voice cracked on the word. “You want to break it open?!” His imagination easily projected the image of a couple police officers, tearing apart his Puzzle, splitting the pieces between them to melt, or sell, and Yuugi was panicking. He couldn’t get away, couldn’t let the other Yuugi out, couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t do anything. “You can’t! Please, don’t!”
They had his arms, he couldn’t break away, couldn’t prevent Mohawk from pulling the necklace off of him, couldn’t stop the other Yuugi from going, he who screamed AIBOU! to echo only in Yuugi’s heart, couldn’t stop shaking and almost crying. He couldn’t let them destroy his other self, he couldn’t!
“Please, there’s nothing inside it, please, it took me years to put that together, don’t, don’t—”
“Jeez, the kid’s hysterical, what do—augh!” Yuugi, in his panicked flailing, had elbowed one of his escorts in the stomach and broke to freedom, but barely restrained himself from jumping the man who held his Puzzle.
“Please,” said Yuugi, his arms low and extended away from his body, “you can... you can keep the Pyramid away from me, but I’m begging you not to break it. Please.”
Mohawk looked at the gold of the Pyramid, and his was a malicious smile. “I don’t think breaking it would be necessary,” he said, his voice oily and sly, “it feels like solid gold to me. I could probably just melt it—”
“Watanabe! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Mohawk – Watanabe – blanched at the voice. “Chief?”
Yuugi turned, sizing up the ox of a man who now stood behind him, nearly filling the corridor with his presence.
“I said,” he said, his voice strong and deep like something rising from the depths of the ocean, “what the hell do you think you’re doing? Because to me,” he said, moving slowly forward and nearly atop Mohawk, easily smothering the other man’s temporary power-trip, and the Chief’s large and calloused hand was outstretched, “it looks that you’re breaking half a dozen ordinances of conduct, and threatening to destroy the personal property of someone who hasn’t been proven guilty of anything. Is that what I’m seeing, Watanabe?”
Mohawk shook his head, and he handed over the Pyramid instantly to the Chief. “No sir, I was just confiscating this, sir.”
The Chief gave a bit of a hum. “That’s good to hear, because if the kid here reports you for any of those half-a-dozen ordinances, you’re on two months probation with reduced pay. You got me, Watanabe?”
“Like herpes from a hooker, sir,”
The Chief merely looked Watanabe in the eye before he began stuttering excuses about a shift in the mailroom before he fled from his desk and escaped the room entirely. The Chief shook his head, and muttered something under his breath that Yuugi couldn’t catch; Yuugi’s attention was fixed anxiously on the God Puzzle. Would merely being separated from his other self be enough to lock the other Yuugi back onto that black slab, or was it only the naming that had done so? Yuugi wasn’t sure, but could only hope. Dammit, they hadn’t cared the month before – why were they taking it now?
“Sir?” asked Yuugi, noticing for the first time that his two-man escort had apparently fled along with Mohawk when the Chief came in. “Can I... can I have my Puzzle back? Please?”
The man looked sympathetic, but shook his head. “Sorry kid, but rules are rules. Regulations are tighter these days, after some idiot let some brat escape a few weeks ago.” He gave a half-hearted shrug, his attention turned elsewhere. “I don’t really know all the details; I only got transferred in after everyone that was here got demoted and transferred out for the screw-up.” The Chief lightly bounced the Pyramid in his hand, feeling the weight of it. “Besides, you could easily use something like this as a weapon.”
You don’t know the half of it, thought Yuugi, but he pressed on. “Then... can you give it to my Grandfather? It’s a family heirloom, and I...”
The Chief nodded, and Yuugi released a sigh of relief. His grandfather knew the dangers of the Puzzle better than anyone, probably even more than Yuugi.
“Sure, we’ll call him up, tell him to come visit.”
Yuugi bowed, relieved. “You don’t know how much that means to me. Thank you so much.”
As it turned out, they didn’t have to call anyone at all – only a few minutes later Yuugi’s grandfather came to visit, and when confronted with Yuugi’s request, his grandfather carefully took the Pyramid and wrapped it in his suit jacket. With a hug, and assurance of visiting either later or the next day, he left the police station without ceremony to take the Pyramid somewhere safe.
This was now the second time Yuugi had been separated from his other self, but after a moment of reflection was able to release his panic. It had only been the false name that bound him before, after all – the Puzzle and his other self would be waiting at the Game Shop for Yuugi to come home. After all, he only had to win an innocent verdict in court in order to see his other self again.
It was only a matter of time.
._._.
It was early evening now, and due to the obscene length of the trial that day, no one felt up to dragging Yuugi into questioning again. For that, at least, he was grateful, and he would have been content to just sleep until court reconvened the next morning, but one of the many clean-cut and seemingly nameless guards had escorted him out of his cell.
“You’ve got a visitor,” he’d explained at Yuugi’s questioning look, leading Yuugi into a heavily monitored room of few features, consisting of three thick gray walls, a long desk, and a thick Plexiglas window showing the room adjacent. The person sitting on the opposite side of the glass was not someone Yuugi expected to see here.
Yuugi crossed to the empty stool set directly across from the window and calmly took up the telephone receiver.
“Hey, Yuugi,” said his visitor softly, but though Yuugi still felt hurt the smile came easily.
“Hey, Anzu. I thought—”
“What, aren’t you glad to see your big sister?” Anzu said meaningfully, her eyes opened wide and staring to convey her message. Yuugi nodded in understanding.
“I heard Grandpa has you working in the shop?”
Anzu nodded. “Yeah, you know me, always strapped for cash.” She smiled at him winningly, everything about her just as he remembered, but it did not make his stomach tighten or his face flush as it once had. After all...
“Anzu? Why are you visiting me?”
Anzu’s free hand was coiling itself nervously around the thick metal cord of the phone, a frown on her face. “You’re my friend, Yuugi, I haven’t seen you in ages! I was worried about you, and everything—”
“You want to know if I’m guilty,” he said in quiet realization, a sense of chill depression filling him with no one there to help push it away. Anzu looked surprised, or shocked, or scared, Yuugi couldn’t tell.
“What? Yuugi, I—”
“I saw your interviews, Anzu,” he said without anger. “You think I’m guilty, and you want to figure out why, right? It’s okay.”
Anzu looked frantic. “Yuugi, I don’t know what you’re even talking about!”
“Everyone knows you shouldn’t trust a boy without a father, right, Anzu?” Yuugi said sadly, and Anzu’s jaw clenched tightly shut. “Isn’t that how you feel?”
“You lied to me, Yuugi,” she said, tears nowhere near her throat, “you said he was away on business. I was friends with you when it happened – do you know how embarrassed I was when I asked your mother about what your father thought? God, Yuugi, what the hell were you thinking?”
Yuugi recoiled at the anger in her voice. “I... it wasn’t a big deal, I—”
“Your dad died and it’s ‘not a big deal’? Yuugi, that’s pretty much the biggest deal there is! Why would you hide something like that from me?”
Yuugi really, really wished his other self were here to help him find the words – he hadn’t even been reunited with the spirit for all that long before he was taken away again. He sighed. The other Yuugi was not the only person he wished he could have back.
“To tell you the truth... I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to feel sad over something that you couldn’t change, or wasn’t your fault.”
The guard on Anzu’s side said something Yuugi couldn’t hear, but she covered the receiver and responded in an obviously terse manner. After a moment she turned back to Yuugi, shaking her head.
“They’re kicking me out, can you believe that? And I’m still mad at you, you idiot.” The tone in her voice, though, told a different story: Yuugi recognized the joking pitch. She was, amazingly, close enough to forgiving him that it was almost a full pardon. He smiled.
“Don’t worry. As soon as this is over you can bully me into, well, whatever, until we’re okay. Okay?” At his lighthearted smile, Anzu frowned.
“You really think you’ll get an innocent verdict?”
She did not say how high the Domino City conviction rate was, or how very little of the evidence presented in court that day really seemed to help him, and how high the odds were stacked against him; she did not need to.
“Of course I will,” he said with a truthful smile, his voice not hopeful, but confident; “I’m innocent.”
She gave a tiny laugh down the telephone line, and she was smiling, even when the guard came to escort her back out of the room; Yuugi remembered exactly why he had been infatuated with Anzu. She was a good friend – a best friend – but she could never hope to compete against the spirit of the Pharaoh.
The Pharaoh never lost to anyone, after all.
._._.
Anzu turned out being his last visitor before regulation hours barred any potential others, but Yuugi didn’t mind; he knew his mother and grandfather had jobs to do and Yuugi’s Puzzle to watch over, so this sitting in his cell doing nothing wasn’t too terrible. He’d tried sleeping, but being fed and loud noises kept interrupting his rest. It was a little after three in the morning, and now Yuugi couldn’t sleep because he’d had too much already.
He stared at his unceasingly uniform ceiling, without even cracks to count or stains to shape like clouds. He sighed. If the other Yuugi were here, they could talk about how weird it was to see his loved ones again, or how the trial went, and Yuugi could tell him about the times he’d been to court before. The other Yuugi would not have stories to tell that were his own, but if Yuugi got too lost in worry and woe the other could distract him with shadow puppets or a new game or with kisses and touch. If the other Yuugi were there, he would have told Yuugi the moment when a man quietly and suddenly walked through the wall itself into Yuugi’s cell.
Yuugi didn’t notice him until the man spoke, whereupon Yuugi flailed in surprise and nearly fell off his cot.
“Are you he who solved the Millennium Puzzle?”
Yuugi, settling himself after his scare, sat up and examined the intruder before him. In the dim light emanating from the emergency lights outside, the man’s white clothing appeared blue, and his dark skin reflected light eerily.
“Who are you,” asked Yuugi, stilling his hand from reflexively clutching a Puzzle that was not there. The man’s stare did not waver from Yuugi, who could not help but think there were many things very wrong here.
“You are he who solved the Millennium Puzzle, are you not?” The foreign intruder asked again, and suddenly Yuugi’s attention was finally caught upon the balance in the man’s hand, and the pendant around his neck. Yuugi had not seen them before, but the book had described them perfectly. The Scales and the Key; two of the Just Seven. Millennium Items.
Yuugi nodded. “I am,” he said, trying to inject the other Yuugi’s confidence into his voice. “What does it matter to you?”
Again, the man ignored Yuugi’s question as he nearly glided, ghostlike, to Yuugi’s side, but he did not sit on the cot. Yuugi wanted to stand, but it would not have helped: he was in a locked cell in the middle of the night, so where would he go? He felt a very unwelcome sense of déjŕ vu at the scene. He stared up at the foreigner, finally seeing one of the things that was wrong. This man’s eyes were empty, just like Souzouji’s on the witness stand.
The man held out the Scales, easily balancing the Item flat on one palm. With his free hand, he pulled from his turban a small feather, appearing blue in the darkness.
“This is a Millennium Item, like the Puzzle,” the man said, but Yuugi already knew this. As soon as he saw the feather, his grandfather’s old stories came to mind, combining with Yuugi’s knowledge from the book on the Just Seven; Yuugi knew precisely what this meant.
“You’re going to weigh my heart,” he said quietly and with great trepidation. The Scales were one of the very last of the Items to be used in those ancient trials for a good reason. “Against the feather of Ma’at. Why?”
The man placed the feather in one of the two golden trays. The Scales tipped and shifted briefly, but remained balanced.
“But grandfather, hearts are heavier than feathers!” a younger Yuugi had said, fiddling with the pieces of an incomplete jigsaw, “How can anyone ever win?”
“A man has insulted you,” said the man, his empty eyes staring unblinkingly at Yuugi. “He has challenged you, broken your possessions, stolen from you, and hurt you repeatedly. Do you fight back to reclaim your honor?”
Unbidden, memories flooded Yuugi’s mind: the bullies from his school years were now merged and nameless in his mind, pushing him, taking from him, hurting and hurting and hurting him again. Ushio and Souzouji and Inogashira and others were there, but they were only recent; there had to be dozens of figures that flowed through his mind.
“Your treasure, huh? You sound like such a girl, Yuugi-kun.”
And all of them were Jounouchi – the Jounouchi that tried to make him fight, the Jounouchi that insulted him, the Jounouchi that stole the final piece of the Millennium Puzzle. The Jounouchi that Yuugi tried to defend from Ushio’s attack. The Jounouchi that became his friend.
Yuugi opened his eyes.
“I forgive him,” he whispered, and he heard the scales shift, but dared not look upon them, instead fixing his gaze on the empty eyes of the intruder with the Millennium Scales. The man stared back at Yuugi, and he too did not look to the Scales.
“A wealthy woman lies intoxicated in your presence. A beautiful bracelet of exquisite gems has come unfastened from her wrist, and now rests discarded on the floor. She will not notice it missing. Do you attempt to remedy her intoxication?”
“Are you upset that I quit playing?”
“Yeah,” Yuugi said, “I’d try to find one of her friends to help her.” Again the Scales shook, but neither man would look.
“The intoxicated woman is very beautiful,” he continued, “and has offered herself to you. You know nothing about her save her beauty.”
“Solitaire,” murmured the other Yuugi, and suddenly they were in the police car and he was kissing Yuugi’s ear, and he was tied down and so vulnerable to whatever Yuugi wanted to do to him in the Labyrinth of Black, crying out in pain, and Yuugi shook his head.
“No,” he whispered, remembering the temptation of the other in that dark place, remembering succumbing only to the still-platonic comfort of the other’s forehead.
There was another audible shift, and a soft clunk as the trays became unbalanced, and the perpendicular support bars chimed against one another. Both men looked down at the unbalanced Scales. One face was calm; the other, shocked.
“It is a very heavy feather,” whispered a younger Sugoroku in Yuugi’s past.
“Impossible,” muttered the man, his empty eyes widened and confused. “No heart can weigh less than the feather of Ma’at. ”
For when they looked down, it was as if the Millennium Scales were not magical at all; the empty tray representing Yuugi’s heart was elevated higher than that of the one possessing the feather. The memory of a man with skin as black as leather came to Yuugi then, his two hands each covered in thick, red blood. He had held something in each of his hands, but Yuugi could not then tell what they were – they were so small and mutilated, something inherently not right about them – but now the answer was so obvious.
“Unless it is not a complete heart,” Yuugi whispered, comprehension coming at last. If a starfish were cut in half, it would become two starfish, but it still took time for each to become whole once more. Somehow, somehow, the trapped Pharaoh had been only half a heart, and somehow – somehow, Yuugi was too. Not perfect halves any more, for they did not line up to become one, but not perfect wholes either.
The feather of Ma’at was said to be calibrated to the weight of the Just and Nameless Pharaoh’s heart. To be only a fraction of that same heart...
The man pulled the Scales away, visibly shaken. “I saw your image with the completed Puzzle,” he confessed, staring at Yuugi’s hands clutching the edge of the cot, “and I can not allow for it to be wielded by a criminal. It is my family’s duty to protect the Items. I cannot allow us to fail further.”
Yuugi’s eyes drifted back to the golden pendant hanging from the man’s neck – the Millennium Key, the Ankh of God. Something about it nagged at Yuugi, a half-understood suspicion, but he could not find the connection, not quite.
“He who carries the Pharaoh’s heart,” said the foreigner, his eyes kind even in their hollow expression, “are you innocent of the crimes for which you have been imprisoned?”
Yuugi nodded. Then, and only then, did the foreigner actually smile, though the gesture was small and barely visible in the darkness.
“The Puzzle has chosen you, and though at this moment it is out of your reach, its magic still clings to you. Even if the pieces fall away, it will call to you. Just as Osiris called out to Isis, even though his body lay broken and scattered about the land. This ordeal shall pass, I swear this,” he said, retrieving the feather from the tray and returning it to its place among the folds of his turban, “though others will be swift to follow for he who bears the Pyramid of God.
“Rest now, young King,” It was probably magic, but Yuugi quickly and easily felt fatigue gnawing at his eyes, and though he only blinked for a moment the stranger was gone. As Yuugi fell back against the cot, the stranger’s final words replayed in his mind, hitching on a phrase.
“Like Osiris called to Isis,” Yuugi repeated, groaning softly with an arm held over his eyes. “Dammit, why am I always the girl?”
._._.
