∞~ Memoirs of the Millennium ~∞

By: xXxJazzy B. RealxXx

Publish Date: 2004

The sky was auburn, the weather was warm, and the heat waves were scorching. Time always felt useless to pay attention to during the September climate, but the season seemed to be perfect enough for one person.

"I'm just going to take a walk around, so I should be back soon, Grandpa!"

Idly appreciating his front row view of the sunset, Mr. Mutou saluted his grandson's departure and continued to thumb through his newspaper.

"And what's this~?" He planted his face in the headlines. "...Now how could anything like this be? If my memory does any right by me, then I would be absolutely certain that there were only…"

A sense of coldness that was similar to a December morning arrested him. As the old man's eyes ran over the top of the paper, they widened at the sight of a girl peering back at them from the shop's window.

Standing just outside the door of the game shop, Yugi Mutou caressed his Millennium Puzzle.

"…I wonder why it's been so darn hot lately..." The duelist champion wiped his forehead with his sleeve. "It's really no way to start the first semester of school!"

The Egyptian phantom departed from the Puzzle and appeared next to him, "The deserts of Egypt were hardly ever showered with rain, I'm sure…"

Yami was mindful enough to assort his sentence as an assumption, because in retrospect, he had no memory of his golden ages to act like he could call upon old memories of Egypt's weather. It ate him from the inside more than he liked to share with Yugi, but in himself was where he was going to keep it.

Yugi watched the ginger clouds pass over Yami's eyes. "That reminds me, Pharaoh...we still haven't figured out the rest of your past, now have we?"

Ha! Pure futility. There was no hiding from the boy.

"There is time for that." The Pharaoh chuckled at his comrade, admiring his keenness. "Nothing is in the blue yet, but do not worry yourself so much, Yugi. We will eventually piece together all of our given clues in the exact same way you managed to piece together a puzzle that took a king his lifetime to complete. After all that's happened, you must rest for now."

The Pharaoh's vessel did agree with this observation. It would be unrealistic to boast that his psyche was able to endure those mind-raping cataclysms he experienced during the Battle City Tournament without losing a sip of his sanity. He only had a grain of that left, and they both planned to get back on track with the life they had left behind. 'Rejuvenation,' the Pharaoh had pressed. 'Rejuvenation is vital.'

His vessel still gave him a worried pout, and thought about voicing the source of his feelings. The Pharaoh, a mature figure who was usually painted in sage-like illustrations, retaliated with a playfully immature wink. Before Yugi could point out that paradox, the Pharaoh's spirit vanished when he passed the girl peeking in front of his grandfather's shop window. Yugi wouldn't have taken notice of her, had it not been for where she was poking her business.

One hand was holding a Tristan and Isolde novel behind her back, and the other was cupping the face that was pressed against the glass. The hair hanging over her shoulders looked thinner than blonde lace, while her two improperly braided sidelocks rested on her breasts―or where breasts should have been. Her neck was long like a unicorn's, but her face was very elfin. In spite of her frilly dress and pretty bow, she was dry-scalped, pasty and bony―all ankles and elbows. Being generally plain to look at because of this, the only compelling feature was the position she had fixed herself in.

"…It would be funny if he forgot…" Yugi heard her say, and the smile on her face didn't quite fit the sadness in the rest of it. "That would be very funny, wouldn't it?"

When the girl felt eyes on her, curious amber met staring amethyst, and an invasive honing of enegry entered his body. He frowned with forced focus as it pulerized his spine, constraining his spirit to feel alienated from its own skeleton. The sensation was kindred to being linked to an astral plane that intercrossed two different timelines. A streetlight flickered out, breaking Yugi's connection. The current world returned to his conscience the second she cut the corner, and reality was back to the way it'd been.

What was that just now? The traumatized boy groped his sweaty chest, making sure every part of himself was in its rightful place. What was that just now? Yugi's book-bag fell to the floor.

Yami materialized behind him. "Is...there something wrong, Yugi?"

The vessel tripped over his feet to face his alter-ego. "You mean you...you didn't...?"

He hadn't experienced it! He hadn't felt, sensed, or seen his soul being ripped from its seams or splintered in two! No, like an innocently ignorant child, Yami just blinked.

Yugi dismissed his alter-ego's expression and projected his melancholy into two words, "It's...nothing."

Hesitant to do so, he looked around the corner and spotted the girl's back shrinking into the sunset. She truly did not blend into the city's backdrop, because even her transcendental attire was better suited for the Victorian ages. Now classifying her as the newest obstructive element in his life, Yugi gripped the chain of his Millennium Puzzle, and would pretend to remember how gleaming white her throat was.

Wait...! A familiar glint of gold caught his eye as he was thinking about these things. Is that...? No, it was just a bracelet under the sleeve of her dress. "Drats," was on the tip of his tongue. If she was wearing a Millennium item, an explanation to his astral projection would've been much easier to convey.

The quick opening of the shop's door was enough to scare Yugi out of his wits as he stumbled off to the side.

"Hnn! Saw that girl as well, didja now?" Mr. Mutou tightened his head-wrap. "Was she a friend of yours?" The look on Yugi's face said it all. "Then whoever she was, she certainly left as quickly as she came." He slugged back into the shop to retire for the night, but not without chiding, "Don't stand there brooding for too long or else you'll catch a cold, Yugi."

"I―I won't, Grandpa."

The line didn't sell Yugi. Still feeling that he needed to probe, he stepped into the spot the girl had been standing in before, sneakers facing something on the pavement.

It's...a Duel Monster's card! Reaching down to retrieve it, he read aloud: "...Bastet of...Femi...?"

Yugi turned to Yami for identification, but he too was trying to decode the card's context.

"It's...written in Egyptian." Yami closed his eyes and turned away with his arms still crossed. "I can not read it."

Lingering on the fact that he could not read in his own language, Yami's dejection caused him to not invest any more into it, but Yugi had more conclusive thoughts on his mind.

"Actually, this is Egyptian colloquial language, and it looks like it's not ours to read, Pharaoh," reminded Yugi, hinting at a steeplechase.

Yami evidently switched his focus. "Yugi, what was that a few moments ago?"

"Well...which 'that,' exactly?" There were many strange details to draw from his encounter with the girl.

"The first time we saw the girl, you were troubled, and I could not reach you. Was she the reason? Had you felt something?"

"Well...when we made eye contact, everything felt slanted, like I was off my own axis and half-thrown into another time-loop." Yugi looked at his hand. "It was a very nauseating feeling...like I was being separated from you and the Puzzle, yet merged at the same time."

Yami's face went solemn, eyes holding superiority over Yugi's. "I've been feeling a sense of familiarity tremble in my heart when I look at this card..." He narrowed his eyes.

Yugi held his head. "Though I've never seen this card in my life!"

The monster on the card resembled a black cat with an Egyptian crown. The hireoglyphics burned into her fur were similar to the ones under her special abilities category. Her mane of human hair streamed to her ankles in white light, and her wings were of sunbird feathers. The duel monster also appeared to be wearing a bracelet that was identical to the designs often found on Millennium items.

Yugi bore the expression of a Scandinavian Viking. "…Pharaoh…?"

...Yami nodded knowingly. "We may have just discovered our latest lead."

The dramatic music did not come. Contrariwise, alter-ego and vessel could only hear the depressing wind in their ears, because there was no feeling of shock on either's party.

Polar to the softness in his expression, Yami's voice confronted Yugi with all seriousness, "...It would be wrong of me to not share my honesty with you, Yugi...so I say this now: are you certain that you are ready for another possible matter of life or death?"

Yugi regarded the nurturing hand that was clamped over his. He tried to blink the potential, "I don't know..." out of his eyes, but there was no ridding it.

"There's no time for thoughts like that, Pharaoh." His smile was small and apologetic, but it was successful in reaching Yami's heart. "We're fighting for your destiny, because that same destiny has become my own."

If decoded accurately, the answer translated that he was not ready, but whether Yugi was prepared for this or not had always been of minor importance in fate's eyes.

Disclaimer:

Howdy! This was the first YGO (Kids WB) fan story I authored in middle school, which was clearly waaayy~ before the series disclosed the Pharaoh's past. Although I did revise it, acknowledge that there will be fan-ficcy, cornfed material and banal shortcomings, so the plot may feel "very over-used, but it eventually takes a stimulating direction." If the blood content becomes too much, I'll change the rating. Changes have not been made to chapters three-seventeen just yet.

I only own the obvious insertions. Yami will be called Atemu when his name is revealed (turns out Atemu means in Egyptian, "great god of Annu") but when I write his name, it'll sometimes be Yami Atemu at that point since he is still Yugi's "dark (yami)" side.

And no, this is not Yami x Yugi.