“Name please.” A very bored secretary looked at Phil while chewing on a stick of gum. The look in her eyes wasn’t terribly expectant, like she figured a boy like Phil was just bored on a hot summer day and wanted to pull some idiotic prank. But that look was better than the previous ten minutes in which he had been completely and utterly ignored.
“Phillip Jenson.” Phil smoothly replied. Lumina, standing invisible nearby, half-turned from the magazine rack she was scoping out to look at Phil in shock. The secretary nodded and typed out a few words on her computer while Phil retreated to a nearby chair to wait.
“Phil, I’m surprised. I thought you’d start cursing out that lady with how she was stonewalling you.” Lumina eventually said.
Phil looked at her and let a sneaky grin slide across his face. “This place is just like the DMV, Lumina. And once you’ve sat in the DMV for five hours staring at a wall waiting for your driver’s license to be ready, you gain a sort of skill that can be used in similar situations. I admit I was pretty close to doing that, though.” He whispered the words, careful not to let the secretary hear him.
Lumina’s face fell at the thought. “Ugh. You have a point. I had to go to the spirit world DMV once. It’s controlled by the Gladiator Beast LLC so it takes forever to get anything done there. You wait five hours, finally get to the desk, and it turns out that it’s the end of the battle phase and they’re changing shifts! And when the replacement Gladiator Beast comes out, I have to restart all the paperwork again since it’s a new worker!”
Phil discreetly gave Lumina’s shoulder a comforting pat. “Just the way it is sometimes.”
“Just the way it is…” Lumina sobbed out the words as her repressed trauma escaped the prison she had locked it away in all those years ago. “I just wanted to get my damned driver’s license so I could take my little nephew for a fun drive sometime… It was going to be fun, going along the coast, see the sea, but no. The DMV woke up that day and decided they wanted to hurt me.”
Just like that, Phil and Lumina sat in companionable silence until the dry, bored voice of the secretary lady called out “Phillip, Jenson?” like the name was a question instead of a name.
Even though he was the only other person in the waiting room, Phil jumped up out of his seat instantly.
“Present and accounted for, boss!” He called out cheerfully. The secretary raised an unamused eyebrow and simply pointed towards a set of stairs behind her desk.
“He’s waiting for you.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Phil sat down in a rather expensive and fluffy chair. It was the most difficult task of his life. Not sitting down, of course. No, the most difficult task of his life was suppressing his own trembles of excitement in meeting the Seto Kaiba face to face. One of his damn childhood heroes. The sole rival to Yugi Muto unless you wanted to count Joey. The master of Blue-Eyes White Dragon. The wielder of Obelisk the Tormentor. Yeah, he was a total dick for a good chunk of the first series, but come ‘on! It’s Kaiba! He has a license to be a dick! It adds to the charm!
“Phillip Jenson.” Kaiba’s powerful voice, one that simply glistened with streaks of unbreakable pride and arrogance, shook Phil out of his temporary stunned admiration. “Your five minutes starts now.” As soon as Kaiba spoke that last word, he took out a freaking sand hourglass and sat it on the desk as if to emphasize his point. Just one look at the size of the device allowed Phil a pretty good guess that it actually had exactly five minutes of time in it instead of just being a prop for intimidation purposes.
“Right.” Phil nodded and plastered a serious look on his face. “I’ve got word through a reliable source that the principal of the American branch of your Duel Academy is possessed by an ancient, freaky spirit called Tragoedia. I need you to give me a ride to the states so I can beat him in a duel and make him bugger back off to the spirit world before he starts making nasty stuff happen. I can beat him, but I don’t have any way to cross the ocean by myself. This is no joke, no prank. I think my actions during the Shadow Rider raid speak for my sincerity.”
Kaiba raised an eyebrow. “Quite a tale.”
Phil shrugged. “Yup. But it’s true.
Kaiba fell silent. His eyes bored into Phil’s like a drill going straight through a section of drywall. His searching gaze continued for a minute, two minutes, until finally in the third minute Kaiba opened his mouth once more with a look of slight amusement.
“Fine. I have business to attend to in California. Sacramento, to be precise. The American branch of Duel Academy is in New York City. I will allow your presence on my airplane. You’ve shown me that you have some ability in dueling through your performance in my tournament and your actions in defeating the fools who trespassed on my island. Heh heh. Perhaps if you can get to New York through your own abilities, you may actually have some amount of potential. If not, then I will know that you’d be too worthless to use anyways.”
Phil stared back at Kaiba, who was looking at him with a smug, domineering grin that screamed ‘yeah, I know I’m an asshole, what are you gonna do about it?’
“Okay.” He stood and offered his hand to Kaiba.
Kaiba’s dark grin widened to nearly Cheshire Cat proportions. At that moment it felt to Phil like he was being studied under a magnifying glass by someone who thought that while Phil’s existence was largely worthless, there could still be some entertainment to be found if he poked Phil with a stick and sat back to see what would happen. And if Phil solved a problem that may or may not exist for him along the way? A win-win. “Determined and quick-thinking. If you can make it to my Duel Academy in New York in one piece, I think you might be useful after all.” After another bout of near-maniacal laughter, Kaiba shot to his feet and gripped Phil’s hand in a crushing handshake.
“Be at the airport tomorrow at noon. Oh, and your five minutes are up. Get the hell out of my office, kid, before I have Roland send you out the express route normally reserved for lawyers – through the window.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Roland silently walked in the door that Phil had just left out of. A pair of pitch-black sunglasses concealed his eyes perfectly, and the bulge of a gun poked out from the side of his suit jacket.
“Was it as you expected, Mr. Kaiba?”
Kaiba smirked and waggled his hand in a ‘so-so’ gesture. “Partially. If the kid doesn’t turn out to be worthless trash, then it should prove to be interesting. Have you made the preparations?”
Roland nodded solemnly. “Ben’s loading his gear as we speak, and he’s already reached out to his contacts in the states. If the worst happens, he’ll be ready to respond within seconds. As for the other one… still no news from the police. Not even this long after the murders. It’s like the perpetrator vanished into thin air. There isn’t even a sketch to go off of since that person left not a single witness alive.”
“Magic.” Kaiba said the word like a foul curse.
“Magic.” Roland agreed in a voice filled with awe.
Then Kaiba abruptly switched topics. “What about the cards?”
“They slotted directly into the reactor. Exactly as expected.” Roland reported in crisp tones. “Raviel showed some signs of activity on the journey there, but as you ordered, we made a quick stop by Kame Game and it calmed down.”
“As expected.” Kaiba muttered. Leaned back into his chair in contemplation. “A strong dueling presence is the key. And the energy increase?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Roland gave a slight bow while his posture filled with excitement. “It was enough to bring forward the project timeline at least five years.”
“Acceptable.” Kaiba nodded. “What about the rest of the children from my Duel Academy?”
“Sheppard reports that Zane was seen fighting off a large bird roughly the size of a semi-truck in one of the mountain ranges catercorner to his dojo. He expects the boy will come to challenge him in a month at the latest. He hardly seemed to think that Zane was in any sort of serious danger. Eisenstein has accepted Misawa’s internship with an unexpected lack of resistance. I’ve posted a man nearby to keep watch on him just in case.”
Roland then removed his sunglasses and used his free hand to massage the bridge of his nose. His voice gained a slight undercurrent of stress. “I had to intercept Slade on the way to the Princeton boy’s summer accommodations. He was intending to… teach his younger brother a lesson in a physical manner due to his displeasure towards the boy’s choice in friends.”
Kaiba’s gaze sharpened. “I assume you made the idiot reconsider his life choices?”
“I had Mark take Slade away for re-education. Once he gets the message through, the experience should serve as a good reminder that neither he nor Jagger are allowed any amount of influence on their younger brother anymore, as per your latest set of instructions.”
“Good.” Kaiba replied. His unconcerned tone was as if the two men were talking about the day’s weather instead of having a man kidnapped and beaten.
Roland slid his sunglasses back onto his face as Kaiba’s words, or lack thereof, tacitly showed his approval of Roland’s actions.
“The rest of the kids are simply enjoying a regular summer break from schoolwork.” Roland concluded his report. “Oh, and I should also mention that Crowler has expressed some amount of interest towards participating in this summer’s national championship. I’m unsure of the details, other than he was muttering about ‘regaining his pride’ and ‘giving the students a role model to look up to’.”
Kaiba nodded and stood. “So the man finally found a spine. I was beginning to wonder when that would happen. Anyways, I have business to attend to. Breaking into the afterlife isn’t easy, after all. Keep an eye on the kid, make sure no one murders him in my city. Oh, and tell the police that if they don’t make progress soon, their chief will be begging for money in the train station before the year is out.”
“Most excellent sir.” Roland smoothly replied after tapping out a quick threat on his phone.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
“How in the everliving hell are you going to manage to travel across an entire country by yourself!” Lumina exclaimed in shock while Phil examined a map attached to a tourist kiosk just outside Kaiba’s office building.
“I have my ideas.” Phil hummed in thought. “Besides. That guy wouldn’t give me an impossible task. This is him tentatively recognizing me as a fellow duelist instead of just some random kid. In his mind, a duelist should have the iron will and self-sufficiency to achieve their own goals through their own power. That’s how he was in the manga after he resolved Yugi’s mind crush. A decent guy at heart, but pretty fond of people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Besides, the dude just screams ‘when I was your age I tore this company away from my father with my bare hands’ vibes.”
Lumina rolled her eyes. “Right… but what about food? I can order meals for myself from the spirit world, but you would combust into flames if you tried to eat that food. You don’t even have any money.”
Phil shrugged. His eyes lit up as he spotted what he was looking for on the map. “You’d be surprised. It won’t be party time during the trip, but that’s the part that worries me the least. And if I do go down the fun road of starvation, I can’t imagine Kaiba letting things go that way. While this is a test to see if I count as a fellow duelist, to him I’m still a kid. More likely one of his henchmen will be stalking me the entire trip, ready to pull me out if things get to ‘certain death’ levels of bad.”
“I guess. Still, I can’t believe that you didn’t try to get anything else from that man. He’s filthy rich.”
“I thought about that.” Phil muttered. He started to walk down the street towards a distant building. “But the key with guys like Kaiba, time is money and he looked busy as hell. You’ve gotta make your case and make it quick. State exactly what you want from them and give them a quick why. I also have to show self-sufficiency and make him think that this would barely be an inconvenience if it weren’t for an entire ocean separating me from the states. If I impress him with my resourcefulness and decisiveness, then he might be willing to lend me more of a hand in the future. Maybe for the Light of Destruction, since I still have no clue what to do about that thing. I wonder if he can nuke it?”
Lumina nodded, only somewhat convinced while Phil opened the door to the Domino City Public Library.
“So what now? What’s your big plan?”
A maniacal grin grew across Phil’s face as he worked his way around clumps of people find a seat at an unused public computer.
“Have you ever gone train hopping before?”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Lumina sipped on a comforting thermos of tea while Phil busied himself with the computer. Chamomile tea. There was little better (in Lumina’s opinion) for calming the mind. It also helped that her invisibility prevented people from looking at her weirdly whenever Phil’s antics caused her to start drinking tea like it was the end of the world. Well, it wasn’t quite that bad anymore, not after they had found common ground and the guy had started to grow on her like mold on the locker room floor.
Calming. Chamomile. Calmomile. Calm Chalmomile. The Chamomile that calms.
Such a loving, soothing mantra that Ehren, Lightsworn Monk, had taught her in order to prevent Lumina from taking an axe to that sexist pig Judgment Dragon’s head.
“So. Train hopping.” Lumina spoke after the tea had begun to work its magic. “How does that go?”
Phil shifted in his chair and gestured to a map he had pulled up on the flickering CRT computer monitor in front of him.
“Right.” He whispered discreetly to prevent anyone nearby from questioning his sanity. “So this is a map of freight train lines in America. Super easy to access because of train enthusiasts. That’s one of the certainties of life, right next to death and taxes. If the Internet exists, no matter in what form, then people who like trains will gather to plot. Even with an old box computer like this, all I have to do is search around a bit to find a group.”
Phil pointed to the western edge of the map. “Now, this map is specifically from the Union Pacific company. It has lines stretching from California all the way to the Mississippi River. Kaiba already gave me a nice chunk of info in our short talk. His plane touches down in Sacramento. The capital of California. Our goal is New York City. I guess that’s where the American branch is. The manga never really specified.” Phil specified to answer Lumina’s confused look.
“Union Pacific has freight lines operating out of Sacramento since it’s a damn big city. In the best-case scenario, I can take UP lines all the way to St. Louis or Kansas City. That puts me roughly in the middle of the states. Then I hop onto a Norfolk Southern or CSX Transportation Line that will either take me right into New York or close enough that I can walk there in a reasonable amount of time. So, I need to find the train yard, figure out the times and dates they leave, the destinations, and get an idea of what cargo they most likely carry. If it’s carrying liquids like oil or something, I can’t hop it since there won’t be anywhere to hide. If it’s carrying coal, cattle, or something else like that, then it’s a go since that means there’s a bin or a cattle car for me to hide in.”
“And they just let you do this?”
“Eh not really.” Phil laughed. A distant look formed in his eyes for a second as he remembered something, but that soon passed. “If I fuck up and someone sees me, I get thrown off at best and arrested at worst. If I get arrested, that means mucho problems since I’m not an American citizen in this world. No ID, no passport, nothing. If I fuck up my timing on boarding, I might get hurt.”
Phil lightheartedly shrugged. “But I don’t have cash for a bus ticket, I doubt Kaiba will let me jack his plane, and walking would take about half a year if I’m lucky. No car or drivers license for this body, either. So, train hopping. At least this isn’t in the 70s or something. I can look up maps on the computer now, even with Internet as crappy as this. In the 70s? I would have to wait until I found a train station and pray that it had maps for freight trains.”
Lumina sat back with a ‘huff’. “I see.” She took another sip of tea. “How do you know all this will work?”
Phil shrugged helplessly. “I don’t. Not for sure, at least. But I’ve done a little bit of train hopping once. A little bit meaning maybe five minutes out of teenage curiosity before I got seen and booted. But it’s a topic that’s always interested me, and historically it’s a time-honored tradition in America. It used to be a great way to travel the country if you didn’t have a car, a very long time ago before I was even born.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
More ships, more waves. Puke off the side of the vessel. Watch the stars. Were they in that same position last night? Or are they different now?
Move waves, more ships. Dimitri’s eyes closed more and more frequently. Closed and then opened. Was this the same ship? Or was he even still on a ship? Beautiful songs filtered across the waters in the dead of night… or was it the middle of the afternoon, in the bright glaring sun? His skin felt sunburned, but when he remembered to look at his arms, the flesh looked normal. Pale, even. But itchy. He scratched and he scratched, but nothing felt better after. The only change that would happen is that he would usually fall asleep after doing that. Yet he was never tired enough to warrant doing that. Odd.
During one of his rare moments of being able to think, unlike the usual feeling of his mind being as slow as molasses in winter, it kind of felt like his head was contained in a VHS tape. A really well-watched one with cool scenes that the watcher would constantly rewind to see again. And again. And again.
His eyes closed. They opened. His hands were covered in blood, and then they were not. The VHS tape was rewound unexpectedly. When Dimitri remembered, he felt almost grateful that it had variety at least. Sometimes he could remember things in color, other times it was a grainy black and white. Like the films his mother used to like.
Try as he might, Dimitri couldn’t remember her name.