In his pyramid among those who live of the earth of Egypt,
._._.
“You lose,” whispered the dark Yuugi, his grin broad and unwavering as the mere two pieces Sasori connected fell apart once more. He was shaking now with an excitement that was not benevolent: in a few moments now, the Dark Game would penalize Sasori for losing a game he himself initialized, would seize Sasori’s mind and destroy it completely. The dark Yuugi did not know how he planned on escaping after the Dark Game ended, but it didn’t matter yet.
There! The dark Yuugi saw it then in those mundane eyes, the sudden refocusing upon some unholy terror. He nearly gnashed his teeth in his desire to watch, never before having been so glad for another’s failings; usually he could see what horrors would be visited upon those who failed the Dark Games.
He was angered, then, when he realized that Sasori was facing his demons, and the dark Yuugi could not see them. Sasori had, in his panic, snatched pieces of the Puzzle and held them tight against his chest.
“No! Please,” he begged, shaking his head, his eyes seemingly unfocused, “they’re mine!” As the dark Yuugi watched, Sasori shook upon the ground, tears rolling down his face, dark and staining from his makeup. Oh, what terrifying truth was he witnessing! The dark Yuugi strained forward against the cuffs, the cold air of night chilling the sticky blood on his arms and torso. There! The dark Yuugi squinted, catching a glimpse of a semi-transparent… person? What—? The terror in Sasori’s eyes had completely vanished! Could he really have been so strong as to break the consequence of the Dark Game in such a short amount of time? The dark Yuugi squinted – yes! – and he again saw the flicker of the phantom retribution of the Puzzle, a man with dark hair stuck up like—
The dark Yuugi let out a gasp of pain as if kicked. “Aibou?” he whispered, no longer caring what would happen to Sasori, not when Yuugi was—
“Yes,” whispered Sasori, staring up at the space where he must be able to see Yuugi more clearly than the darker Yuugi could. What could his Yuugi possibly be saying to this scum? The darker Yuugi strained further against the cuffs as much as he could, the metal stinging into open cuts, desperately trying to hear the phantom Yuugi’s voice, but it was just as insubstantial and inconstant as his physical appearance.
It was only because the thing at which the dark Yuugi was staring so intently wasn’t there that he was could witness what happened next. Sasori’s eyes were still watering with tears, and the two Puzzle pieces fell to the floor with a loud clatter. “Please,” he whispered, his voice trembling as he fell forward onto his hands and knees. “Please.” Sasori’s expression melted into one of unrestrained joy.
WHAT?! exclaimed the dark Yuugi within the confines of his desolate and empty heart, he is to suffer for eternity for what he’s done to aibou! Dammit all!
Sasori’s joyful grin and his eyes full of worship did not falter, even as he tumbled over sideways, and from there he did not move again. Unconscious, or dead, the dark Yuugi couldn’t tell and he rattled the cuffs and his raw wrists with renewed fervor. This wasn’t how the Puzzle was supposed to work – it was not meant to allow the mercy of death, unless the weak soul brought it physically upon itself!
Again, the phantom flickered into visibility, and he could not subdue the scream of “Aibou!” from escaping his sore and battered throat. The phantom flickered again, and continued to do so, but the dark Yuugi could see the form more often than he could not.
“Yuugi? You…”
The phantom shook his head, and the dark Yuugi heard – imagined? – the subtle chime of clinking metal.
“The God Puzzle. You wish to solve it once more,” said the phantom Yuugi, but he… he didn’t really look like Yuugi, nor spoke like him. The dark Yuugi quickly took in the flickering details of this form, the differences so pronounced. The phantom Yuugi appeared clothed in great swatches of fabric – wraps and mantles, colors muted in their lack of opacity. His face, there was something different there, too, wasn’t there? If only that visage would stay constant, the dark Yuugi thought, then he’d be able to tell!
“Do not… not again,” said the phantom, and with a dismissive gesture with some sort of a cane in the dark Yuugi’s direction, he flickered out once more, for good.
The cuffs disintegrated, and the darker Yuugi fell to his bound knees, banging and toppling mercilessly. The sleeves of his shirt stuck to the blood on his arms and wrists, and if he cared to think about it, the dark Yuugi might have felt worried or glad that the shirt was trapping the blood from splattering on the floor, and that the cuffs themselves had entirely ceased to exist. The dark Yuugi shakily untied the bindings on his bare legs, and he trembled as he stood once more. Staggering, he made his way to Sasori Tadashi, still sprawled across the floor, and the darker Yuugi easily confirmed the man’s newly acquired career as a professional corpse.
The darker Yuugi’s eyes darted to the scattered pieces of gold. What had that phantom Yuugi meant, ‘not again’? The dark Yuugi, after all, was not he who solved it before. He hissed through his teeth in frustration as he carefully gathered the pieces. After a minute or so, he had collected all forty-nine shards of the Puzzle, and after another moment of searching, went to the stockpile of musical instruments. Grabbing one of the small drums (a dingo? a bungle? He had no idea what it was called), he deposited each individual piece into the hollow interior of the drum, carefully counting the number again. Forty-nine.
With a shaking nod, the dark Yuugi carefully made his way out of the room, out of the building’s labyrinth of empty hallways, and onto the streets of Domino. He did not know where he was – hell, he wasn’t even sure if he was still in Domino – so he ran several abandoned dark city blocks until he found a still-open restaurant, another Meat Goes In Your Face Deliciously! In other circumstances, he might have been amused.
The girl working the register was a skinny, slightly masculine woman with blue hair, a bandaged and broken nose, and the eyes of the weary or the intoxicated. The dark Yuugi did not care that he looked ridiculous, a teenager with spiked up hair wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and a blood soaked, open dress shirt, and carrying a broken drum. He merely pointed at the girl and snarled, “Interfere and I will destroy you.”
The girl merely stared at him, confused, as the dark Yuugi stormed to the unoccupied back bathroom of the restaurant, locking the door firmly behind him. Uncaring for the environment, he sat upon the cold, tiled floor, setting the drum down before him. Tearing open the skin of the drum with steady hands, he poured out the pieces of the Millennium Puzzle upon the floor, and sorted them quickly into seven rows of seven. Forty-nine. Good.
It had taken Yuugi eight years to solve the Puzzle for many reasons: he did not, to start, have much skill in three-dimensional puzzle-building; he did not know the final shape of the object; he did not spend too much time working on it due to frustration and parent-enforced time limits; there were other things more important to worry about than an unsolvable puzzle. The darker Yuugi did not have these same handicaps: he knew precisely the shape of the complete Puzzle, and where every single piece would fall, and the most important and most precious existence was currently sealed from him by the pieces’ disunity. Even with all this knowledge as to the Puzzle’s construction, he did not know how much time it would take to complete it. Hours? Days? The dark Yuugi shuddered.
“How long was I locked away,” he asked quietly, staring at the pieces, “before I forgot everything? Centuries? Minutes?” And Yuugi had looked and acted so different; there had been almost no recognition in his eyes. None of the love and adoration the dark Yuugi had seen during the afterglow before the kidnapping – hell, there hadn’t even been the familiarity of a friend in those eyes. He was… he hadn’t even said ‘other me,’ but ‘Yuugi.’ Never had Yuugi referred to the darker Yuugi that way. The Puzzle was somehow changing Yuugi’s precious heart, and the dark Yuugi clenched his eyes tightly shut. His hands fell to the pieces.
._._.
The council was awaiting his return in the chamber of rest. The eldest of them, like the rest, bowed reverently at his entrance but was the only one who openly scowled upon rising.
“Great tower, why did you not punish the criminal that defiled your rest?” The others of the council seemed to pay the question no heed as they escorted him back to his cherished sarcophagus, but still he answered.
“He suffered from grief. His pain was his drive. He will disturb my rest no longer, and he no longer suffers. Is it not cruel to punish those who first punish their own hearts?”
“Your mercy is too swift, blessed one,” murmured his council, laying him down once more into the sarcophagus. Why had he so feared this place and these people before? He was only meant to cast judgment upon trespassers, and to sleep in the darkness of this tomb, nothing more. He let his eyes fall closed once again as he heard his trusted council close the lid above him. Before drifting off, his thoughts turned to the imprisoned and bloodied man with the trespasser.
He had seen traces of the Pyramid’s glow upon him; he, therefore, must have been the one who had assembled it last. The man had a name, of course – everyone did, but he dared not recall it again. He knew his own, and that was enough.
._._.
The pieces of the Puzzle were not all that terribly cold under his fingers, but the darker Yuugi was chilled regardless. The chaffed cuts on his wrists had stopped bleeding some time before, and the blood was irritatingly dried upon his arms, his every movement pulling a tiny, painful bit on his skin. His legs were numb, and cold, and the few garments he wore were completely pointless in protecting him against the cold of the bathroom tiles, or the circulating unheated air. But, when he shivered, he knew it had nothing to do with the external temperature.
For the first time he could ever recall, the other Yuugi was terrified. He had been worried for his partner before, true, and sometimes the Dark Games were a bit too evenly matched for his comfort, but never had he felt such a paralyzing fear seize him to the bones, never felt so frightened of failing before now. What if he couldn’t solve the Puzzle? What if it ensnared his mind and confused him, making him forget all of his promises to Yuugi, or consider them useless? What if, what if, what if; so many things could go wrong, so many had already, and wasn’t it always his fault? He couldn’t recall the last time he’d done something for Yuugi and have it go right, and didn’t that just bode terribly against him?
Minutes passed, and his limbs trembled under the cold of the room and the depth of his terror and despair, and with a cry he slapped one hand over one of the numerous shards of Puzzle. If he could not force himself to complete this task due to his fear of failure, then he had to make not solving it be worse.
Closing his eyes, he recalled several important things: the darker Yuugi was the King of Games. All games were under his dominion, most especially the Dark Games. Of them, the Millennium Puzzle was the greatest Dark Game of all.
“I challenge you,” he whispered, rage and terror and so much sorrow wracking his voice, “to a Game.”
If he could shatter a chess set, in spirit form, without even touching the pieces, then surely he could set up a Game against an inanimate object. He – well, he and Yuugi – had played Dark Games without opponents before, like that night of their first incarceration. Calling a game against the Puzzle would mean that, on its turn, the pieces would move of their own volition. Before he could lose what little nerve he had left, he sputtered out the conditions and the rules of the game – each turn would last fifteen seconds, wherein they would try to connect as many pieces as possible, and the winner would be the one to connect the last piece. If the darker Yuugi won, he would reclaim ownership of the Pyramid of God, but if he lost his penalty would be death.
The darker Yuugi snatched up two, three pieces of the Puzzle, clicking them together before his moment of courage failed. Snap out of it! he censured himself harshly, clenching his eyes shut. You cannot possibly hope to win if you’re terrified! Only aibou matters.
At the sound of additional pieces clicking into place, the dark Yuugi opened his eyes and was shocked to see a set of hands easily taking up more of the gold, and shocked further still when he saw his opponent. The phantom Yuugi returned the core chunk of Puzzle back to the tile floor between them, his eyes closed.
The darker Yuugi absently slipped a single piece into place, his full attention locked upon the other. The phantom Yuugi picked up four more pieces and slid them into place, not once opening his eyes, nor did he make any movement to indicate a different type of sight. The darker Yuugi slotted in the thirteenth, the eighteenth, the twenty-first pieces, easily and silently, but did neither as well as the phantom Yuugi did, his eyes closed and head bent as if sleeping, connecting the fifteenth, the twentieth, the twenty-third pieces.
Still the phantom Yuugi was dressed in great swatches of fabric, mantles layered upon his shoulders, and a thousand river-blue beads wrapped around his neck, interspersed with ones of gold, and gold bangles on his arms, and some sort of gold headband, or a tiara, or a circlet on his brow. A crown! The phantom Yuugi wore a crown beneath his translucent bleached-blond hair, it adorned with a snake and an eye similar to that on the God Pyramid but unfamiliar in this context. As he connected the twenty-eighth piece, the dark Yuugi wondered what terrible curse was afflicting Yuugi, why he played the Dark Game in the first place, why in such a state of almost sleeping.
“Aibou? What’s happened to you?” There was no answer as the sleeping phantom Yuugi simply inserted another Puzzle piece, the number placed per turn dwindling with the amount of pieces remaining on the floor.
“Are you awake? Can you hear me?” No response, and the darker Yuugi nearly missed his turn, but hastily slid in a single piece to prevent his forfeit. He tried to reach out to his partner, but his hand merely passed through the other, and the spirit did not react to any of his words, no matter how desperate.
“I’m so sorry, aibou. So, so sorry…” he whispered finally, gazing down. There were only four pieces of the Puzzle left between them, and the dark Yuugi’s heart chilled over. Yuugi had been setting nearly six pieces every turn. The Game would end.
The phantom Yuugi easily picked up the forty-sixth piece and slid it into place, and the forty-seventh. On the forty-eighth, the phantom Yuugi did something unexpected. He hesitated.
“I asked you to not do this thing,” whispered a voice the dark Yuugi almost didn’t recognize. The sheer emptiness of the tone – it held no familiarity, no emotion, just a request from a dignified stranger – stabbed a dagger of ice through him clean to the core. “Please. Do not do this.”
The phantom Yuugi flickered as he slid in his piece, and at the snapping click! he vanished completely. The dark Yuugi’s sudden and outstretched hand passed only through air, not even the echo of touch indicating the second presence on the cold tile floor. With shaking fingers, he retrieved the final piece from the floor, the ring of gold sliding easily over his fingers, even with the ripped leather cord trailing from it still.
His thoughts were a jumbled and torn mess, like so many strings knotted together, their cuts and damage hidden in the fray. He did not want to… to disregard a request from Yuugi, especially one as clear and as forceful as don’t, but… something had happened to Yuugi, something terrible had befallen him, and the dark Yuugi could not – would not! – break the oaths he had sworn.
“I am your shadow,” he whispered, sliding the final piece into place, slotting it with a resounding click! through the tiled room, “and I will protect you.”
._._.
Without hesitation, the dark Yuugi plunged himself into the inner chamber of Yuugi’s heart’s room, following that already familiar path they had traveled only… only that day? The day before? The dark Yuugi followed, his eyes clenched shut, and though it took concentration almost no time passed between the moment he slipped in the final piece of the Puzzle and when his body slumped limp, protective over the gold, his mind no longer connected to that outside world. Holding tight to the Puzzle, the dark Yuugi opened his eyes in what he aimed to be Yuugi’s heart’s room.
It was.
It was all wrong.
The room still contained all the same dimensions and objects, but it was all wrong. The bed was against the wrong wall, the toys that had been scattered on the floor were now organized in little stacks around the room, the lights were muted, and it was all wrong. And yet… it felt right, somehow, this way. It felt more welcoming to the dark Yuugi, and everything was where he thought it should go.
His hand tightened on the leather cord of the Puzzle. The room was organized in a way that felt natural to the dark Yuugi, true, but it was not the way Yuugi would have done it, and this realization frightened him.
Shaking his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts, the dark Yuugi wrapped the cord of the Puzzle more tightly around his hand and a bit on his raw but healing wrist. At his touch, the door swung into the room easily, and this gave him a small measure of comfort: this way, if necessary, he could barricade the door against intruders. But hadn’t Yuugi said the door swung out? The dark Yuugi shook his head once more, walking out of the room and pulling the door shut behind him.
“The place outside the room is frighteningly dark,” said Yuugi, recounting the place with closed eyes and hushed tones at Kaiba’s mansion weeks before. “At first I could see the opposite wall, but as I walked everything became dark, and cold, and to find you…”
The place outside the room was very, very well-lit, and it was worrisome. To his right was a dead end, so the dark Yuugi turned left down the long, obscenely illuminated hallway. He did not know why this place was so different for him than it was for Yuugi – was it the explorer who changed the maze, or the way the Puzzle had been solved? The Pyramid knocked against his leg as he walked, but he did not try to mend the cord to replace the Item around his neck; holding onto the cord of a familiar object comforted him.
At the end of the hallway was an open and spacious atrium, and even as well lit as it was, the dark Yuugi could not see the height of the ceiling, or determine accurately the length of the cavernous chamber. All along the walls were strange and repetitive markings, and though the dark Yuugi did not know if it was even meant to be language or art it sent a chill through his not-body. Across the expansive atrium was a solitary door, emblazoned upon which was a solitary eye, open and staring like the eye upon Yuugi’s crown, and on the God Pyramid.
Realizing there was nowhere else to go, the dark Yuugi clenched in determination; Yuugi must be somewhere beyond that door. Without hesitation he ran, ignoring the pain in his bare feet against the coarse stone, his sense of disquiet building into mild terror, and there was a loud CRACK! Sudden and deafening in the silence, the noise startled him, knocking him off-balance. With a cry he tumbled forward, landing heavily on the rough stone floor, skinning his arms and knees in a quick burning skid. He was momentarily grateful that the Puzzle was around his hand and not his neck, for the impact might otherwise have broken one of his ribs. Pushing himself up, he looked for the source of the noise, and his eyes widened in dismay.
Had he not been running, and had he not fallen forward, the large and dark pit that had opened up behind him would have consumed him. Peering over the ledge, the dark Yuugi saw several shining, curved hooks pointing towards the imperceptible ceiling, and in his solitude the dark Yuugi’s body quaked. Just a moment longer on that patch of stone and he would have fallen, and every second of his descent would have painfully ripped the flesh from his body until he was caught to die, feeling each ounce of blood leak from his numerous and violent injuries. He did not doubt that he could die in this place – and what would happen to Yuugi if he did? Trapped in the Puzzle with no one the wiser, and his body out there would… would it simply sleep, or would it die altogether?
Although it was his haste that had saved him from the fall, the dark Yuugi felt sickened. In his thoughtless attempt at rescue, he’d almost killed them both.
“Aibou,” he whispered, ignoring the tears in his eyes, his fist clenching still the cord of the Puzzle, holding still to the God-forsaken Pyramid. He raised his arm sharply, glaring at the Item in fury. “I do not understand you,” he growled to the Puzzle as it swung from his wrist, digging painfully into the already chaffed ring of skin, “how you can be here, within yourself. I do not understand how you can seal me from aibou, or aibou from me—”
He was shouting now, his tears ignored even as they rolled down his cheeks in slow and heavy drops, “—but I swear upon the forgotten names of the ancient gods that if you do not lead me to him I will destroy you in such a fashion that all the world will feel pity for the pain you will suffer, for the wrath you have incurred!”
The flash of light was intense, and considering its position and proximity from the dark Yuugi’s face it was also painful, and blinding. He cried out and jerked backwards, but since he had not been standing he did not fall. Blinking away the salt and the stars in his eyes, the dark Yuugi snarled and made to smash the bloodied Puzzle against the equal dark stains on the stone, curved and textured like a kidney. The dark Yuugi halted instantly. He, very slowly, placed his left hand over the mark, the curves of his palm matching perfectly with the dried curve of blood.
He had Yuugi’s hands, after all.
Turning his attention to the floor all around him, the dark Yuugi saw countless similar blood prints, though they made no distinct pattern. He saw prints cut in half, or only the bloody circle of a knee and a hand of one side of the body and not the other. Yuugi had crawled through the darkness, and left his own trail for the dark Yuugi to follow. With a hiccup, he bowed his head.
“So much suffering,” he whispered, wrapping the cord around his hand another time, “so much you suffer… for me. I refuse to… to…” With a calming breath the dark Yuugi stood, analyzing the floor. He had to assume that any place Yuugi had not traveled was a trap, another pit of failure; this was a maze without walls. Carefully he traced pathways to that solitary door, the floor like a game board now. Yes, that was the way; he started blocking off the floor with spaces in his mind, and knew he would not be able to jump over an entire square, but to a diagonal?
He was grateful to the bright lighting that Yuugi had lacked in his own journey, for the dark Yuugi could see the spots of blood even near the door. From there he started tracing the winding and jerking path back to his own feet, following it back and forth again to be sure. With a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves and the shaking feeling of sorrow that he was following a trail of Yuugi’s blood, the dark Yuugi began his morbid game of hopscotch.
._._.
The sarcophagus was dark, and still he could not sleep. After that strange half-dream, he could not rest for the noise. The sound, the sound, it should not reach him here. Was his sarcophagus still open? Or had— No! He had warned the man against this, why had he not listened? Was he too enamored of the power to see the suffering that would befall him? Not again, not again! If he— he had! The fool, trespassing! He had to go – he had to stop him; he could enter this chamber, no, no, he could not! He tried to push at the lid, but the moment his hands touched that lightless surface, wave after wave of fatigue assailed his limbs, and his mind.
“No, please,” he did not whisper as sleep finally came to seize him, “he must be stopped! Before…”
._._.
The door swung open under his touch, and the dark Yuugi would have dropped the Puzzle had it not been wound around his wrist. That Yuugi had not seen this place was a mercy. Excluding the mind-numbing number of doors, and staircases, and pits, and hallways, this inner chamber that made no sense in architectural structure was covered in dark murals filled with blood. Everywhere, everywhere the dark Yuugi looked was another image, another story of death, of anguish, of carnage and so much war, so, so much suffering. Fire, swords, beasts of the land, people killing one another with their bare hands, blood staining their flesh and the ground soaked through with it.
The Dark Games, he knew, were a terrible punishment, but not like this. No, not like this.
Oddly, the blood prints here seemed to multiply, leading to every door, up every staircase. From sight alone he could not determine the true path, and when he tried to reach Yuugi through those familiar channels of communication he still received no answer. Closing his eyes, the dark Yuugi inhaled sharply and deeply.
“Guide me,” he whispered, his fingers white in the tightness of his grip, “as you have guided aibou. Please. ”
At that, the Puzzle began glowing a muted yellow-orange-red, as though the sun were a scarab trapped in amber but still dirty with blood, and of its own volition began swinging like a pendulum from his arm, forward and back, painfully rubbing his wrist. The dark Yuugi lifted the Pyramid, the beam emitting from its eye was as pure as sunlight, and with cautious steps he moved forward, placing his feet firmly upon the irradiated trail. Each of his bare footsteps landed on a small stain of blood, and each left a new one behind. The path was long, and winding, but even on sharp turns the Pyramid’s light remained constant upon the trail of blood, and the dark Yuugi had to very consciously not think about just how much Yuugi had left behind or how much he was adding to it with his feet cut and torn upon the unforgiving stone.
When the trail stopped over an open pit filled with a dark and undulating ocean, the dark Yuugi did pause, even though the Puzzle was tugging fiercely at his arm in the force of its motion. Struggling to keep his balance, the dark Yuugi yanked his arm back as the Pyramid swung forward, and at the sudden release of force he stumbled backwards.
While the Puzzle, having ripped clean through the leather cord, continued sailing forward over the dark waters. Not again! He thought as he surged forward, but the Puzzle was long out of his reach when he halted at the edge of the pit, swaying forward dangerously, and he also thought why didn’t we think to put it on something stronger? His heart crumbling in despair, the dark Yuugi watched his only guide in this realm fall, fall into that dark and angry sea.
Until it stopped.
The Pyramid skidded forward, and to a stop, as though it had encountered solid ground and was not at all suspended with no support over empty air and raging waters. Tentative and confused, the dark Yuugi went to his knees and placed his hand over the opening of the pit and, his breath held fast behind his clenched teeth, he pressed down. His hand did not meet solid ground, like the stone upon which he knelt that dug painfully into his bloodied knees, but there was resistance enough to prevent his hand from descending further. It was like a sealed bag of air, but not feeling the bag itself.
Quavering in his nervous exhalation, the dark Yuugi began with aching hesitation to crawl across the solid air to the stationary, still glowing Pyramid. A long and terrifying minute later the dark Yuugi reached the Puzzle, and after another minute of crawling with two of his fingers jammed into the ring, the dark Yuugi reached the opposite ledge, and once upon solid ground he quaked, and shuddered under waves of compressed panic, shaking for fear of this terrible, terrible place.
How had aibou faced these same trials so easily?
Not remembering his second imprisonment within the Puzzle (or his first, at that), the dark Yuugi had been grateful that Yuugi had gone to such lengths to retrieve him, but to see, to know such trials! To crawl to the point of bleeding, to have so much faith as to walk on air, and all this in such a sinister place, not even knowing for sure that the journey would not destroy him, not knowing!
With his grip tight on the Pyramid, the dark Yuugi continued on, gritting his teeth even as he crawled under swinging pendulum blades, over the piercing pain of fire and ice, and with each trial his heart was trembling in awe, and fear, and so much remorse. He had not – could not have! – appreciated the lengths to which Yuugi had gone for him, but why, why had he done so? The dark Yuugi had done nothing to deserve such loyalty, had done nothing to earn such devotion, so why?
“There is nothing and no one more precious to me than you,” whispered Yuugi in their afterglow, and only moments later calling the dark Yuugi foolish for saying he felt the same.
Now he knew better: nothing and no one could ever be as precious as Yuugi, and he would prove it no matter the cost. With his heart afire with fierce resolution, he pressed on.
._._.
