((Past IC)) Fic - Two Sides, One Coin
Two Sides
One Coin
“Gah- I shouldn't have used Solemn two turns back.”
“Well, it did cost you a lot of LP,” Seiran admitted as Silent Magician - level eight - destroyed Red-Eyes Wyvern and dropped Jounouchi's points down to a measly five hundred. “But given it was that or Lightning Vortex working, it was a good move.”
“Right, like that stopped you,” Jounouchi snorted, but there was no bitterness to it. A game for fun wasn't something to resent, especially between friends. It was merely practice for his benefit, and she thought he was right after all; he needed to stick in more support if he wanted to keep the Wyverns. But discussing the possibilities would have to wait-
“Hey kids,” the familiar tease drew their attention to the door that joined the hotel's living space - dubbed Jounouchi's room given he'd been forced to the couch as usual - to the bedroom, now propped open by a smirking Kujaku Mai in a bathrobe, hair still dripping over her shoulders as she shivered, likely from leaving the safety of her own space heater. Seiran didn't envy her. It was nice and comfortable under their kotatsu (she really should applaud Jounouchi for insisting they bring it along). “Can you give it a rest before eleven? If we're going to get any sleep-”
“Yeah yeah, we're done already. Don't worry about it.”
They weren't, but Seiran didn't correct her friend. Things went smoother when she didn't go against the iffy calm between her “roommates,” so she gathered her own deck off the tabletop. “Yeah, I was about to go out, anyways.”
“What? We have to be at the stadium by nine.”
“I know, but I promised I'd stop by Anzu-chan's room tonight...”
“Ah,” Mai clearly wasn't convinced it was a smart move, but she didn't try to stop her. Seiran tucked cards into her belt holster, fingers briefly catching on the sole one already inside as a rare silence fell over the room. Not a surprise, really, given they were likely thinking the same thing as her; that their holiday together was over, and come tomorrow it'd likely be another few months before they saw many of their friends.
“Well-” Jounouchi piped up as she stood up and Mai returned to the bedroom, stretching his arms out before twisting around to fall on his back on the couch. Someone looked ready to start snoozing right there. “Tell her to take it easy, will you?”
“Will do,” she half-echoed, curbing the urge to point out Rishid, as her fellow constant New Yorker, had been doing just that for years. Or that's what she'd gathered from passing comments from letters and calls over the last fourteen months. Not that it'd stop her from doing the same, but it made it pretty clear comments like that wouldn't keep the music director from finding time out in her fifty-odd hour work week to worry about them in the new year.
Tails - Piston's Flip
“Hey hey-”
Piston's eyes fell on the coat left on the armchair by the television, but too tired to bother getting up he threw a throw pillow - the harder one he didn't like - in Seiran's direction, making her stop just in the door frame. It toppled at her feet as she pouted back at him, but he just waved in the direction of the trench.
“Take your coat with you.”
“Jounouchi-kun, it's just down the hall. I can-” She tried to say, but he opened one-already-closed-eye to throw her a frown. He didn't have to bring up Tallahassee, did he? Well, at least not aloud, given she didn't make another protest. Instead the teen moved across the room, slipped on the matching blue coat, and threw him a wave as she headed back out the door.
“I'll be back in a few minutes!”
“Eh, fine. Just don't make too much noise...”
“I won't,” still facing the girl, he caught a quick flash of a grin before she shut off the lights, leaving him to stretch out in the dark living space. The sudden silence left him aware of movements in the room beside him, likely Mai getting ready to tuck in, as well as in the hall, but he quickly tuned it all out. He didn't often bother thinking about cards in bed, for one because he usually needed them physically in hand to really consider combos, but he made an exception to consider whether focusing on fusion in his latest deck was a good idea, or if he should go back to regurgitating those dragon cards for the Red-Eyes level-ups...
He came up with no quick answers, yet his mind kept buzzing. Eventually his attention shifted again to the other room, now silent. Whatever her complaints earlier, he knew Mai wouldn't mind him going to her if he couldn't sleep, even if he got an earful at first. But by then Seiran might be back, so what was the point?
He was just considering leaving the secured warmth of his blankets when a quick crack went through the floor, like the building itself had been smacked. Jounouchi jolted upright at the sound, waiting a breath to see if anything else would happen, before jumping up and running for the inside door. But Mai beat him to it, shoving it open just as he reached it. He couldn't see her face in the dark, but her voice painted a clear image when she yelled-
“What was that?!”
“How the hell should I know? I was in here just the same as-”
“Where is Seiran?”
“...” Jounouchi gawked at the silhouette of Mai's face as it hit him. That, she was right, the last time something like this happened, it was because something was after-
“Katsuya-” He ignored her call as he turned and bolted for the other door, tearing into the hallway. All he got for his trouble was a blast of - shit!! - cold air and a growing crowd of neighbors, all looking for the cause of that shaking. The difference was they didn't have some idea of what was going on, and he kind of envied them the ignorance. But he ignored a woman from next door glancing at him for answers, and pausing to gawk when she recognized him, looking for his friend. Mai stumbled out as he did, wrapped in a blanket off his couch to cover herself.
A siren suddenly started blaring, getting a renewed confused outcry. He himself covered an ear with a curse, but the sudden revelation that someone must have pulled that made him move again.
“Stay there!” He rounded a corner before Mai could yell back at him, and once he came within a few feet of the elevators he saw the lever on the red fire alarm had been pulled down. Whoever set off the alarm had been here, and there was no smoke to be seen... They just wanted to clear the building.
Jounouchi considered it, then glanced up at the numbers over the elevators. None of them were lighting up, and they were both on the ground floor. So she hadn't taken those- Instead he ran for the nearby door, ramming it open to let him into the stairwell.
Even without the same awareness she had, it was impossible to miss the railing being twisted like a pretzel, which explained the debris cutting into his bare feet, but not the stomping echoing from above. The footsteps suddenly stopped, making him think whoever it was must have left the space. Going up a few flights and opening any door he came by to check for a retreating figure, he was quickly blocked by a small crowd that came from a floor right above his latest checkpoint.
“Hey! Move over- I have to-”
“Sir, we need you to turn around.”
“What?!” Jounouchi glared up at the man at the front - a staff worker by the look of that uniform - who held up a hand to block his path around the pale, wide-eyed group. As if that would stop him from ramming through.
“The building may be on fire, sir. You need to turn and go down to the main floor and-”
“I am not leaving! I need to keep looking-”
“Sir, you are keeping these people from getting to safety. If you continue blocking us-”
He didn't know 'if' what, because he wasn't listening. He was still urgent to get past them, but the man's claim made him realize, even if there wasn't a fire, they were still in danger here. Look what was happening in Egypt! Who knew what the thing here now might do. Reluctantly he stepped back, trying to let them pass. The staff-guy started motioning him on again, and Jounouchi was going to give him a sharp glare for his trouble, when he suddenly remembered his own thought, about how the people really should get out of the building.
And Mai and their friends didn't know.
“Thank you sir, right this- Wait!” Jounouchi turned and ran back the way he'd come, counting the doors down until he came to the one he'd come from, then turning corners so fast his feet slid on the carpet.
“Jounouchi-kun!” Irritation tagged along with relief when a call stalled his turn down his own hallway and made him instead approach the brunette calling him, sitting in her wheelchair just outside her door with a long white coat over her nightgown. He tried to yell at her the second he spotted her, but another, weaker rumble of the floor stalled him, and most his anger died under concern.
“Anzu, what are you still doing up here?”
“We couldn't leave in our nightclothes. We would freeze to death out there.”
The calm answer coming from Bakura as he stepped out his own neighboring door, pulling on a black coat and his glasses even as he shut his door, didn't help Jounouchi's nerves any. He just glowered at the man before looking passed him when he saw Rishid Ishtar coming down the hall. And seeing how he'd been closer to his own room-
“What about the others? Where's everyone else?”
“My brother and Honda-san escorted our sister and Kujaku-san downstairs.”
“Right- Can you two get her down on your own? I need to look for Seiran.”
“You didn't find her?”
Jounouchi shook his head at his longtime friend, and seeing Anzu's face paling, he wondered if Seiran had even seen her before whatever-it-was came. He decided he better rush this even more, before Anzu refused to leave herself. Grant it, Bakura was already offering his service in that area-
“Do you need help? Two can look faster than one.”
“Thanks, but then we'd just have to find each other- You two just make sure she is looked after.”
“Jounouchi-kun!”
He didn't chance looking down at Anzu at that tone, especially after he got the hand he put on her shoulder knocked off. Instead he just threw a thankful grin to the nodding Bakura and turned to return to his search. But it was even more of a mess this time, as more and more people started filling the stairwell, pushing down on him like a tide as he tried to get back to where he'd been before, then climb even higher. And every new door he opened, each new empty or emptying hall raised his anxiety, which irritated him to the point that he slammed the fifteenth - or was it eighteenth - floor's door with a growled huff. Where was she? He knew she must still be up here somewhere. That weak shake before told him whatever was here wasn't gone yet... or at least hadn't been a few minutes ago, when he was with his friends. And she wouldn't have left with it still around. But had he missed her somewhere? Was she on one of the floors below him now, fighting? Or still somewhere above him? He'd already taken so long searching everyone else was gone, and if the staff came looking again, they'd likely not let him by again.
Glancing up at the spirals of stairs still over him, going up a few more turns, he glared until he noticed water dripping down between the metal steps, just a ways from him. Was that- it was going too fast for a regular leak. Looking back up, he squinted but couldn't tell if it was coming from just above, or from farther up. Abandoning the idea of check every floor in order, he sprinted up the steps two at a time, nearly slipping on the wet spot where the water had gathered a flight above, indeed from a drip even farther up. But eventually the source of the water chain was uncovered, at the very top of the flight, and as he ran up to it Jounouchi had to fight the urge to let his teeth clatter when he saw. The door to the roof was standing open, and the water was from snow that had blown in and melted across the floor.
So that's why I didn't hear a door close after her. The thought was as numb as his fingers already felt, and trying to listen for anything outside over the wind, all he heard was the distant honk of horns from the road. Still, ignoring the sting in his feet, he stepped into the water and then the unmelted snow, using the painful chill to strengthen his resolve to blink against the night and look outside.
It didn't take long for him to spot the mass of blue huddled on the ground, sprinkled in a light layer of white.
“Seiran?!”
No answer, he sprinted across the snow like it was hot coals to kneel beside the girl, turning her face up to get a look at her. The sight of blood on her face froze him, but after a few seconds of staring he forced his shaking fingers into the snow to pry her off the ground and into his grip.
“C-come on, we can't stay out here-” He mumbled near her ear, but he had the strange, but painful feeling that he was just talking to himself as he pushed himself into the safety of the building. He was in such a rush he didn't even notice the dip in the roof off to the side, as if a wrecking ball had dropped on it. But the sting of the cold combined with his exhaustion from running up and down the building, so he couldn't bring himself to do more than slouch just inside the building, the wind still trickling inside from the door. He ignored it the best he could, leaning against the rail to catch his breath, with his friend's body clutched to his chest.
“W-what happened, huh? Why were you out there?” He mumbled, too quiet for her to possibly hear him, even if she could. Tilting her in his arms, he glanced over her stained face, lightly rubbing the blood from her nose and lips with the side of a hand that couldn't even feel it. She didn't even twitch.
“Hey- Seiran.”
Nothing. The only movement he saw was from the shaking of his own body. And as his heartbeat and own breathing slowed to a normal rate, he went quiet, first to listen, then stare, then start shaking again as he clutched her close, refusing to let himself think it, that he should be getting help, but his legs wouldn't move. Even if his brain didn't let him think it, his body had already caught on to the facts, that there was no reason to push himself anymore. But he kept hold of her, thinking maybe, maybe he just couldn't sense it. Maybe he was just too numb to feel her chest moving, and the wind covered her breath. It wasn't until later, when the paramedics came to pry her from his arms, he finally admitted she was dead.
Heads - Memory's Flip
“I'll be back in a few minutes!”
“Eh, fine. Just don't make too much noise...”
“I won't,” seeing the man rolling into the couch already, buried under a mountain of covers, Seiran shut off the light with an unseen grin as she went out. It wasn't until she was out in the freezing hall - you would think a four-star hotel would make sure not to let their heating go out for two days straight - that she realized she should have brought her coat. She was only a few steps away from the door, and the card was in her pocket, but she didn't want to go back in just after Jounouchi turned in, not when she wasn't even leaving this floor. So she just rubbed the goosebumps on her uncovered arms away and started the trek across the building, ignoring the usual inkling she always got walking around certain hotels alone, making her think she was somewhere else entirely, about to visit other friends, long out of reach.
But two turns away pressure jabbed at her senses, poking in the back of her neck. She fell to a slow trudge at the familiar ache, waiting for it to pass. A low thrum of shadows was not unusual. The teen wasn't sure what caused it, but she ran into it now and then, at the strangest times, and she could only guess they were sources she'd never come across. Surely not every spike of magic was from the spirits; her time in the hotel had given her a peek of untapped possibilities. And surely not every source was bad. Though sometimes they were. Sometimes they were a threat, and that in mind made the hair on the back of her neck rise. Either that, or that distant spike driving into her brain.
Pain racing down her neck into her chest made her near keel over from the intensity. The force was closing in, and she reached for her deck holster, mind racing for what to use. But, there was nothing to use in that deck! Not for a sneak attack like this! And that just left only one thing, and that pushed her to move. Move before it became too much. Move before she lost her breath and her legs went numb and she couldn't think straight. Move before it-
Too late.
It was sweeping behind her, and as she rounded a corner a blast of something behind her flared with noise, made the walls crack in contact as doors open and confused neighbors looked out with questions and yelled complaints. But no one but her and a handful of others would see it, and even if it could hurt anyone, it was focused on her.
So she didn't stop. She led the creature she didn't dare stall to turn and look at on, skidded right past Anzu's door, then Honda's, Bakura's, and others for the door at the end. Coming to it Seiran slammed into the metal bar and forced it open by her weight in one lunge, stumbling into the stairway beyond.
Why had they taken rooms on the eighth floor again?
She only had a moment to stare at the long-stretch down and realize that, whatever she did, she wasn't going to make it outside, where she could deal with this properly. Maybe if she went up instead? Then the door slammed back open, the force pushing her as much as the scattered energy.
“W-” There was nothing to do but grapple for the railing before she fell right over it, but she curled from the magic surging through her. The fight to keep her balance lost, she twisted as she slipped. Instead her shoulder hit the bar, causing a wince even as she fell a step, then another, taking a broken roll down the full flight.
The sting in her shoulder multiplied across her body as she landed at a turn with a sickening crack on the limb she landed on. The pain and the wind knocked out of her kept her down, dizzy, until the floor shaking from the weight of crashing footsteps dragged her head up to see a giant, thorny violet hand grabbing the railing she was just at, snapping it like a twig as the thing contorted its body into the cramped space.
A blackened, horned head ducked through the door, and Despair from the Dark pulled himself into the narrow length of the stairwell, the door snapping closed behind him with poof of black dust. She wasn't going to make it to the roof. She couldn't move her left arm - much less rise and start running again - and the face of embers grinning among the clinging shadows pushed her to stretch her good hand around, open her holster, and pull out one card at the tingle of a spirit begging to be released.
“Silent-” She didn't even finish the name. She didn't have to- he came at his nickname alone. A flickering outline of a small boy showed, but she had skipped that card, and he quickly grew to match the highest form shown on the one in her hand. And with the summons and growth the power she'd called on wafted back through her. The shadows rippled in her veins, mixing like boiling water to thin her blood and scald her brain.
If was a good thing Silent Swordsman could support himself, given the duelist dropped her card seconds after he appeared, giving her only a moment to watch him charge the looming beast before her vision swam, and she had focus all her attention on dragging herself up by the wall with one hand, every shake of the building threatening to stop her vertical crawl to her feet.
All she would later recall was a blurred collision of sword and hardened skin, and distant yells of people that were near but didn't come into the stairs, or simply couldn't. But eventually an unearthly growl vibrating through her leaning side, drawing her gaze up again to watch her guardian pry his sword out of the blackened shoulder, only to be hit by an enraged swipe in the chest and thrown into the opposite wall, falling feet from his grim master.
They were evenly matched. She remembered the zombie card to know at his best level, Silent Swordsman shared the same attack points with Despair from the Dark. There had to be something she could do. Considering the issue with a fogged mind, it took dragging a handful of cards out and squint over them for Seiran to even consider- could she use cards other than monsters? If she tried United We Stand, would-
She was near trying, no matter what the success or cost might be, when the low, constant burn of power she always felt near the spirits expanded and warped above her, drawing her face up. And she was left to stare at a ball of coursing purple forming in the grasp of a claw.
“Silent, don't let that hit you!” Her yell - pushed out after she swallowed the metallic tang in her mouth - drew the fallen soldier off the floor, but instead of flying to avoid an incoming hit, he jumped in front of her, sword raised in the mimic of a shield. “No- If you defend you'll lower-”
But warnings about the realities of defense points weren't needed. The zombie wasn't aiming for them. Instead it dropped the sphere, the close pass casting a wave of nausea over her from the accumulating overload before it slipped right on, nicking rails and warping steps with the clang of bent metal before it disappeared from view. Silent Swordsman jumped to attack the drained yet grinning zombie, finally managing to wipe it away in a blast of black wisps, but the chill in Seiran's gut didn't ebb, and not just from the lightheadedness linked to red dripping from her nose. Why had it sacrificed itself to do that? What was it-
The light shakes from the dropping energy suddenly erupted into a ear-wrenching crash as her feet gave out from under her, allowing her to crash to a quickly tilting floor. What was- The thing had attacked the building? She didn't have the focus or time to work it out before she was pulled into a one-armed grip. The sudden shuffle of the spirit crashing through a door before they were buried alive - not to mention the new wave of pain from her arm - knocked what will she had to left keep the black from creeping in on her vision. She only managed to fight it a second when the sight of scared, confused people they raced passed shot fear through her. She would be fine- she trusted him to keep her safe, no matter what that spirit had done. But who would help them?
Her concern didn't matter. She could do nothing now. By the time Silent Swordsman had her out in the safety of the chilled air, she was out cold.
OOC Notes:
This is a fanfic with alternate endings, because Two Sides, One Coin outlines the point where Piston and Memory's worlds deviate, and the immediate results of that. And yes, it was all based around whether or not Seiran took her coat, because it changes which cards she has to deal with Despair from the Dark.
In terms of Piston's world, this happened roughly a year ago. And for anyone wondering what Seiran did when she had her coat, she summoned Marshmallon from her coat-pocket to block and nullify Despair from the Dark's attack, then used the stall to taunt him into following her up the stairs to the roof. On the way up she pulled the fire alarm, as shown from Piston's point of view, and once there she overused her powers to summon a level eight Silent Magician. Seiran was too injured from the excessive summoning and a direct blast she took on the way up. She had a heart attack from the shock and died near instantly. From there is shown via Piston's Flip. On the larger front the god war grew worse. Horus considered the assassination a cheat and called on Sekhmet's help to subdue Set, and Egypt was pretty much wiped out, due to Sekhmet's bloodthirstiness and how beyond subduing Set she started murdering innocent people, too. Eventually the other gods stopped her, but the reason they avoided letting her loose in the first place was clear, given the death tolls that no one in the normal world could understand. As for Jounouchi, burying his best friend for the second time killed his motivation to compete, but not his love of the game. As such, he's been helping Kaiba dealing with illegal dueling issues, in particular the counterfeit card selling that goes on in tandem with the underground dueling world.
In terms of Memory's world, this happened one week before arrival. After carrying her to a stabler part of the building, Silent Swordsman didn't risk helping anyone else since he was draining Seiran of life by staying active. Seiran wakes up in a few days in the hospital with bruises, some internal bleeding, and a broken arm, only to be told by Honda that Jounouchi, Isis, and fourteen other people were crushed when the fight damaged the building. Later on she learned Mai had disappeared as soon as Jounouchi was pronounced dead. Eventually she decided to do something, as in go to Luxor and face the gods still fighting, and get it over with before someone else died from Set chasing her. Anzu fought her on this, yelling at her for being reckless with her life and worrying them further, so Seiran had to check herself out without telling anyone, except Marik, who she passed The Winged Dragon of Ra on to, in keeping with her want to separate the three cards. A day later she was in an airport in Alexandria, when the DR pulled her back in.
As to any other things of note for this fic, that I'm not sure I outline on their journals:
¤ This was taking place in Tokyo the same week as a national dueling tag tournament, sometime in mid-January 2017.
¤ As to who was there, Piston, Seiran, Mai, Honda, Rishid, Marik, and Isis were in one hall sharing rooms or near each other, while Anzu and Bakura were down another. The Kaiba brothers were off dealing with work and planning to come to the tournament in a couple days, so they weren't present.
¤ While I didn't focus on it too strongly here, Piston is pretty much involved with his Mai here. It's just at an iffy, no talk of commitment or what they want from it stage, and they're being pretty casual about it given Seiran's living with them, and they've got such a history that they aren't going to push a good thing. In the world he survives it doesn't stick, and he's broken romantic ties again before coming back to the DR. But this brief get-back-together does result in their son Tomoya.
¤ A misleading thing here on the “only card already in her holster” part in the One Coin opening is the card is not Osiris. At this point, the card Seiran is carrying is actually the Winged Dragon of Ra, as she'd passed on Obelisk to Kaiba and Osiris to Jounouchi. In the world she lives, she switches Ra for Osiris, and instead gives the Winged Dragon to Marik. On Piston's side, the cards have been locked away by Kaiba.
¤ I chose to use Despair from the Dark because he seems a fitting minion for Set, his name is just fun irony, and the odd quirk that though his card is shown a few times in GX, it's always discarded or just drawn. He's never shown actually summoned in the show, and I thought he's too good a card not to showcase somewhere.
¤ As to what the thinking is behind the attack, Set's been sending different dark duel spirits at Seiran for months. The past ones were either weak enough for her to handle without much trouble, or they weren't intelligent enough to use creative tactics similar to the one Despair from the Dark here did.
¤ As to why Seiran and her friends aren't long dead by now, and him sending just one spirit at a time, Set may be a god, but he's also been busy fighting a virtual war against Horus back in Egypt, which involves constantly summoning spirits against each other. He's not going to send too much force after one mortal girl with a twinge of power while he's holding his own against someone of his own caliber.
If any of that mess is confusing, just say so. It'll help me smooth it out.