Painful Memories: Part IV: The Stranger

A Dangerous Weapon

The only person who could think to act when the Thief darted off toward that black gate was Kaiba. He sprinted at full speed, faster than Yugi had ever seen him move before, but he wasn't quite fast enough. As soon as the Thief touched the handle, his entire body went limp and he fell to the ground. From beside him, Ryou screamed and became a blur of white hair as he ran up to meet his spiritual half. Everyone followed, though Yugi was mindful to stay close to the Pharoah. If that door could bring down the Thief with such ease, there was no telling what it could do to the Pharoah.

The Thief's body was motionless, but his eyes were wide. The color in him seemed muted, as though a dark shadow had fallen over him, but there was no sunlight here to cause shadows. By the time Yugi had caught up, Ryou had turned him over onto his back. The Ring around his neck looked completely inactive.

"What happened to him?" Ryou asked, his voice breaking.

Yugi stared at the Thief's face, his distant expression. It didn't look the same as when Pegasus or Dartz had been stealing souls. Those bodies were empty of sense, almost like a zombie. It was also different from when Marik enacted penalties during Battle City and sent his enemies to the Shadow Realm. The Thief's eyes were not closed, but wide and his entire body was trembling with fear. He wasn't in some distant place. His soul was here, but somehow his consciousness or whatever made up his mind was elsewhere. Yugi looked down to the Ring again.

"What could it have done with him? This is his soul, so it hasn't been trapped or anything." Yugi said as he furrowed his brows.

Ishizu and Ryou had pulled the Thief into a sitting position, though his limbs were stiff and difficult to move.

"I don't know," the Pharoah whispered. "You would think that the Ring would have protected him. Even when he was running he still had that protective shield up."

"Yeah, but when he touched that door..." Yugi wasn't sure how to finish his thoughts.

"Speaking of that shield," Kaiba said as he looked over his shoulder towards where they came from. "Without it, we're going to have a difficult time avoiding those tar monsters."

Yugi turned to look, and yes, he could see in the distance the swarm of shadows moving closer. Perhaps that was why it had targeted the Thief first, to keep him from shielding them. If only he or the Pharoah knew how to make the Puzzle shield them. He was pretty sure it could, especially with the way their combined energy made it glow so brightly earlier.

Kaiba was looking at each of them with annoyance, "Where can we go? If we try to go in, we could end up comatose like him."

"If we stay here, the Stranger will eventually wear us down," the Pharoah said. "Either way it is herding us."

Yugi turned to Ishizu, "Can your Necklace tell us where to go?"

She shook her head, a pitiful expression on her face. "I cannot. I've already tried. The future that the Necklace shows me is just as dark and cloudy as this place."

The Pharoah turned to her, his eyes wide. "So it is able to interfere with your Necklace?"

She nodded, and added, "We thought that if we had the Items, we would be able to protect ourselves. The Thief thought that was all we would need to defeat it."

Kaiba scoffed, "That's obviously not enough, is it?" He stared down at the Thief sitting in a hunched cross-legged position at their feet. His limbs tensed in odd ways and he shuddered every few seconds. Occasionally you could hear the catch in his throat at a quick gasp of air. "One or two Items isn't going to be enough. Earlier when I held up the Rod, I could feel your energies moving toward me. I could feel you helping me." He paused, grappling for the words. Yugi forgot that this was Kaiba's first time at using an Item. Oddly enough it was comforting to see that even a genius like him, someone who introduced tournaments on grand stages surrounded by thousands of people, would have a hard time finding the right words.