Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Deny thy Father ❯ Refuse ( Chapter 5 )

Disclaimer: If I owned Yu-gi-oh, Ryou would get to kick ass.

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Ryou.

I still don't understand the brat. He's the first one who didn't get my Ring from a weird guy in a turban; he got it from his father. Poor consolation prize for ignoring the boy after his mother and sister had died.

I hid my presence from him when I awoke. I don't know why I did that. Curiosity, perhaps?

He didn't have anyone to blame. It was a senseless accident. A snowstorm, a bridge… no one to live for, since his father had abandoned him. Why did he go on?

I always measured strength by rage. My rage had given me the strength to fight, had allowed Diabound to defeat the High Priests' prize creatures, even a God.

He wasn't angry. Not even at the universe, or his father. Both of which deserved it. He refused to be.

He saw that rage would make no difference.

A quiet boy, often ignored. I always had families, cronies: I chose to fight alone, to avoid harm to them.

Monster World. It fascinated me.

Fighting evil, monsters, as a game.

Combat, hardship so removed from real life that an approximation of it was sought after. He longed for adventure. But instead of playing the hero, he allowed others to be.

Being the Dark Master, devising devilish scenarios for their entertainment, was the coin with which he bought companionship.

When what he wanted was to once, just once, be the one to save innocents. To save his family, to win his father's approval.

The ones who used him angered me. I…

He is a weakling. He didn't fight back, stand up for himself. But… even I had been a child once. So I gave him what he wanted.

I made it so they would never leave him again. Would stay in the world they had used their false friendship to have him devise. They had never allowed the little half-breed to pretend to be other than a mediocrity.

The figurine for the White Wizard, the Defender, the Healer, he wished to be collected dust.

Until I played the Dark Master. I, who had been the hero. Or so I had thought.

For some reason, he could not hear me when I wished to tell him what I had done. I had always been able to speak to my hosts before, when I had cared to. What was different about Ryou? Why was part of his name so like my own?

When all his friends fell into comas after playing with him, and he alone awoke with no knowledge of what had happened, he was abandoned.

For once, he did something. He moved.

He found a new gang of players. And the White Mage moved up levels, and he was happy. Until they found out that he had been a Dark Master. And were too lazy to create their own scenarios when they could have the new guy, the one too polite to object, do it and have more fun using their characters to kill monsters.

And so I punished them again.

And he moved again. And in this new school, I found what had escaped my searching these past three thousand years.

The Millennium Puzzle. Hanging around the neck of a boy the spitting image of the Pharaoh.

But it was not him. No, this boy was kind, and innocent, and reached out to Ryou as a friend. He and his friends wanted to play Monster World with him. They had heard of the game, or at least one had. They wanted to play with him not to play for their own amusement, but to be friends with him. But he remembered what I had done.

And then he spotted the Puzzle, and asked about it. He was about to tell them about the Ring, but I stopped him.

He was hauled off by girls, and a teacher told him to get a haircut. I smiled. Some fun before the main event.

He was in pain. I laughed.

He heard me.

The boy with the puzzle and his friends approached him after school to talk about playing.

Ryou wanted to play. He wanted friends. But he told them what had happened before, and refused.

He went home, and wrote his stupid letter to his sister. And I laughed at him again. And he heard me again.

And I told him who I was. And what I had done to his stupid friends.

He told me to get out of his body. His last words, after I hinted that I was going to punish the stupid teacher who had cursed at him, was "Don't…!"

The next day, he stayed home. He tried to take off the Millennium Ring. But I had dug its spikes into his chest. He tried to break the figurines that held his `friends.' But I told him that would kill them.

And then the doorbell rang. And it was that innocent Pharaoh-look-alike and his gang. Friendly people. I meant to let them live on in the game world forever, even the image of my enemy. I had seen before. Ryou looked like me.

What was going on?

Ryou, kind, sweet, forgiving Ryou, couldn't be me. This child, this innocent, bright heart, couldn't be the Pharaoh. I was me! The Pharaoh gained his power from ancient murder!

Ryou told them to go away. Or tried. But I took over. He fought me.

He fought me while I welcomed them in, designed the characters they would spend eternity as (I had made the figurines last night, by magic) set up the scenario on the computer.

He fought me all game. And so I lost. To my ancient enemy. Yugi was not the Pharaoh, as Ryou was not me.

The Pharaoh was the Pharaoh. He had gained life eternal, a parasite in the bodies of my family.

No!!!!!!

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Joey has it much worse than Kaiba. Kaiba got to keep Mokuba, and he is rich. Joey has no money, no grades, a police record, no future. Except possibly tournament dueling, but given what Kaiba set his stats as, no luck getting invited to the big pot ones. Everyone else's troubles are in their past. Joey's may prevent him from having a future.