Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Lethally Hot ❯ A Stranger Opens the Way ( Chapter 2 )

Notes://…// is Yami to Yugi while /…/ is Yugi to Yami.

Disclaimer: I don’t nor ever will own YGO or The Hot Zone. All quotes from The Hot Zone come from:
Preston, Richard. The Hot Zone. New York: Anchor Books, 1994.

Quotes will be italicized.

See, there will be no plagiarizing here…anyway, onto the fic!

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Chapter 2: A Stranger Opens The Way

Ebola virus…a lethal hot virus, living within him. The book described it as a Level 4 hot agent.

There aren’t any vaccines for Level 4 hot agents. A Level 4 hot agent is a lethal virus for which there is no vaccine and no cure.

Yugi slumped on his bed. Okay, so he was now infected with a killer virus that would most likely kill him soon, and painfully. He looked out the window, where the stars and moon were coming out. He would never see them again, never talk to Yami again…

//Yugi, don’t think like that.//

/Yami, it’s hopeless. I’m doomed./

Yami scoffed. //Yugi, no one is doomed. Stop whining about doom and start figuring out how to defeat this virus.//

/Like what? Ebola has a mortality rate of 90%./ Yugi pointed out a quote.

The kill rate in humans infected with Ebola Zaire is nine out of ten. Ninety percent of the people who come down with Ebola Zaire die of it. Ebola Zaire is a slate wiper in humans.

Yami paused. //Well, Yugi, I will not leave you alone. I promise, we’ll fight this thing together.//

For a few moments, they said nothing, simply enjoying the comfort of being together. Then Yami looked up in his semi-transparent form.

//Yugi, someone is coming.//

/Who?/

//Well, I believe we have met him, once. He is-- //

But before Yami could tell Yugi exactly who was coming, a strange, shadowy portal appeared in the middle of the room. Yugi and Yami looked at it in surprise. They had seen this before…

And like the previous time, a tall, mysterious, Egyptian-clothed man stepped out. It was Shadi.

"Disturbances in the mystical alignment brought me here again. Tell me, Chosen One, what has happened? Why was I urged to come here?"

//Let me take care of this, Yugi.// To protect Yugi, Yami took control.

Yami sat up straight, a sad reminder of the proud King he once was. Now he was bed-ridden, infected with a killer virus, and unable to stop the invasion that was happening in his aibou’s body. "The boy which I share this body with has become infected with Ebola virus. There is no cure."

Shadi stared at the King of Games. "And you can do nothing."

Yami bowed his head. "No. I can do naught. I have failed my duties as his protector…"

Shadi slowly shook his head. "It has been five long millennia since you have ruled. It is no surprise that you have forgotten." Shadi looked straight into Yami’s eyes. "In ancient times, you have faced this enemy and won. It is locked within your hidden memories. The invader can be destroyed."

"So. There is a way to save my hikari."

"Yes. The cure is there, if you can unlock your past. But be warned, you may very well die of it."

"So be it. Whatever the risk, I have to take it. For Yugi’s sake."

Shadi took out his Millenium Ankh. "And so it shall be. The Ankh will unlock your mind and begin the search." And the Ankh came to the King of Game’s forehead, and turned the lock.

* * * * *

[The outside world]

Tea placed the phone back down. She had just called Ryou and Kaiba and told them the awful news. Ryou simply said, "Oh, my." Kaiba, on the other hand, expressed his concerns in a very distanced, Kaiba-like and business-like behavior. Some people were just so cold-hearted…

Tea looked out her window. Perhaps those were the last stars Yugi would ever see…would she ever see him again?

Suddenly the room swirled and Tea felt herself being transported to a different place…

Tristan found himself not in his bed, napping, but in a separate world…

Joey, instead of pacing back and forth in his room worrying about his bud, saw himself pacing in a completely different environment…

After Ryou put down the phone and had heard the terrible news from Tea, he saw his Ring glow and then his mind was whisked away…

Seto Kaiba, sitting in his lonely office, saw his laptop disappear and fade away, while he appeared somewhere else…

* * * * *

"WHAT JUST HAPPENED???" Joey yelled.

"Well, dog, it appears that we have been transported to some place different, probably by some bogus hocus pocus."

That was Kaiba, answering Joey’s question. In fact, the entire YGO gang was together – Tea, Tristan, Joey, Ryou and Kaiba. (If you can call it the YGO gang…) The thing that surprised the group was that Yugi was also with them, apparently whole and healthy. And another person was also there, a stranger that none of them had met before…

"And who are you?" Joey pointedly asked the stranger.

"My name is Shadi. It appears that the Chosen One has bonds with close friends."

Dead silence.

"Ummm…explanation please? Like who is the Chosen One? And why is Yugi here?" Joey asked.

"Ah. It appears that I will need to enlighten you." Kaiba smirked at this while Shadi continued. "Yugi is the Chosen One. He is destined to unlock secrets and memories hidden in time. As for you all being here, it is the bond of friendship that brought you here. When I used the Millenium Ankh to unlock Yami’s mind in order to begin the search for the cure that will heal Yugi, your faithfulness to your friend allowed you come here with me."

Joey still looked dumbfounded. Kaiba, seeing the confusion, decided to explain, ever so reluctantly. "Look, dog, this…person…has used his…magic…to presumably get into Yugi’s other self’s mind, because this other self supposedly has the cure to Ebola." Kaiba scoffed at this. "And we are here because since we are all…friends…of Yugi, the…magic…of Shadi’s took us along."

Kaiba wondered at this. He certainly wasn’t Yugi’s friend; he was his main rival. Why in the world was he here?!?

Ryou was gazing around him. Here was a very interesting place. Everything was red… "Umm…Sir? Where exactly are we?"

Shadi looked around also. Billions of small, red spheres were whizzing by them. A few, larger, white balls also passed them by, with tiny golden ovals tagging along. Crystals were also floating by. In the far distance, an ominous looking object also appeared. "We are inside Yugi’s body."

"WHAT?!?" everyone exclaimed. That stuff only happened in movies and books…

"But how can I be in my own body? I’m right here…" Yugi questioned.

"That is because Yami is currently controlling your body. Usually, you would be in your soul room. But by the magic of my Millenium Ankh, you are also here, observing. If you would switch minds," Shadi nodded towards Yugi; "Yami would be here instead."

Yami would be here? To Yugi, that seemed like a good thing. This was all too confusing…

/Um, Yami?/

//Yes, Yugi? Where are you? I cannot sense you in your soul room. Are you all right?//

/Umm, yeah…actually, I’m inside my own body, along with Joey and the rest. I think things will be clearer if we switch…/

There was a slight pause, then //I trust you, Yugi.// A little blaze of light and Yami appeared before the group.

"Huh. So, I guess this is for real…" Joey said.

Yami looked around at the inner world. So this is what Yugi’s body looked like. They were most likely inside one of the many veins within the body. For a while, they simply looked around them in wonder. Cells around them were constantly moving, working together to keep Yugi alive. It truly was amazing to see this on the microscopic level.

The ominous looking object was coming closer. "Hey guys, look at that thing." Tristan pointed.

"It’s not a sick monkey again, this time?" Tea wryly asked.

"I don’t think so."

They simply watched the object. It was a thin, twisted thread, and it seemed to be looking for something. Something like a perfect victim. The thread paused in front of a red, innocent blood cell and tapped the cell wall, like a smiling salesman offering something wonderful. But in reality, it was an assassin holding explosives behind its back.

The cell accepted the thread like Snow White took in the Witch. The thread entered the cell, and there was a slight pause where supposedly nothing was happening. But an assassin always enters quietly.

Then the cell budged and strained. It became swollen and fat, like it had too much on the inside. Perhaps it had bought a lot of things from the salesman…or perhaps it had bought something else, something that was trying to get out.

Black crystalloids were forming in the center of the cell. They resembled bricks – hard, solid objects that hurt if thrown. And those bricks looked like they were being pushed, no, hurled into the cell’s wall. Once a brick hit the barrier, the brick broke apart – into hundreds of threads.

Eventually the cell could take no more of the beating. The cell burst open, letting bricks and threads fly by. Hundreds of them. They drifted, and then began to search for more unsuspecting cells to murder. The assassins were replicating themselves in order to kill more.

The threads break away from the cell and drift into the bloodstream of the host, multiplying and taking over more cells and forming bricks and bursting the cells.

Nobody said anything. What they had seen was horrifying. In just little more than a minute, a healthy red blood cell had been blown to bits by a strand of thread.

Shadi said the thing that no one wanted to hear. "Yes. That is the Ebola virus."

This was the virus that was killing Yugi. With their own eyes, they had seen a thread turn into a predator in little less than a minute. Its prey: anything.

They resemble no other virus on earth. While most viruses are ball-shaped particles that look like peppercorns, the thread viruses have been compared to strands of tangled rope, to hair, to worms, to snakes. When they appear in a great flooding mess, as they so often do when they have destroyed a victim, they look like a tub of spaghetti that has been dumped on the floor.

Each person feared the monster before them. A monster was ravaging inside Yugi’s body. The reason they were brought here was to destroy the monster. They had to find the cure that was residing inside an ancient, 5000 year old pharaoh. But the monster looked too powerful, too vicious to be destroyed.

Unless you include the feeling generated by gazing into the eyes of a waving confrontational cobra, "fascination" is not what I feel about Ebola. How about shit scared?

How could they stop the Beast?

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Toboe LoneWolf: Yeah, the last chapter I said I was going to make it freakier…but from what I’m writing, this chapter doesn’t seem that much scarier…*sighs* Why do I write so slow?!?

Um, liquefying organs will have to wait. That only comes in the death throes…But I can assure you that "extreme amplification" will be in the next chappie…that’s going to be fun…lots of blowing up…

As always, review, and catch you later!