It Was a Dark And Stormy Night

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Here we are - next chapter! Again, big big thanks to everyone who's taken the time to review so far!!
BTW, I realized I'm losing the formatting of some of the chapters when I upload them. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong (or what my computer is...) I apologize for the last couple being kind of hard to read. Those little spaces between the paragraphs really do help, don't they?
This isn't the end of the story, BTW - they still have a storm to get through, which I hope will be creepy and exciting.....and Yami still has to find a way to thank Yugi (you'll see what I mean.) And BTW, the pharaoh did ask me to tell you he's open to suggestions ;-)
Oh, this is a little off-topic, but for the next story I'm planning - how exactly did Pegasus' girlfriend Cynthia die? I must have seen or heard it somewhere, but I can't remember. If someone could let me know in a review, I'd be most appreciative!
Enough babbling. On with the story!

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"Jump jump jump jump jump jump jump," Mokuba said, skipping a game piece all the way across the board, then harvesting red checkers. "Crown me!" He grinned up at his cousin.

"You have to give me a black checker first," Jada grumbled, then brightened. "Ah, I see you've fallen into my carefully laid trap. Perhaps you'd like to take that move over?"

Mokuba gave her a skeptical look. "Your last checker must have a heck of a battle plan." He and his cousin looked almost alike enough to be twins - they had the same long mop of glossy black hair, the same huge dark eyes and dark olive complexion. Jada was wearing faded jeans with wide sweeping flares and a sleeveless black t-shirt with a very cute pink cartoon bunny on it with the caption YOU SUCK AND THAT'S SAD.

"We certainly know not to call you the Queen of Games," Yami chuckled, watching from the plush velvet sofa.

"Up your nose, pharaoh," Jada retorted amiably as she lost her fifteenth game of checkers in a row. "Just because you invented this dumb game -- hey, by the way, where's Yugi?"

"Upstairs asleep," Yami replied, glancing worriedly in the direction of the huge staircase. "I should go check on him."

It was almost three o'clock. Outside, the clouds had lowered and swollen omniously, threatening to bring down the night two and a half hours early. A few spatters of rain blew against the windows from time to time; advance scouts, the main battalion was still several hours away. The wind was blowing in earnest, whipping aimlessly from all points of the compass. When it came from the south-southest it was as hot and steamy as if it came from a tropical sauna. Yami looked outside worriedly, then started to get up to head upstairs. However, as he did, the phone rang. Mokuba, being closest, scrambled up and grabbed it. "Hello?"

"Mokuba? Hey, it's Tristian. Could you do me a huge favor? The oil light came on in my car and Ribbon and I are kind of stranded." Ribbon was his girlfriend's nickname. "Could you ask your big brother if he could pick us up?"

"Uh-oh. He and Joey just went to the video store," Mokuba said.

"What is it?" Yami said.

"Tristian's stuck. His car broke down," Mokuba said.

"Where is he?" Yami said.

"Where are you?" Mokuba asked into the phone.

"Spring Road by the Galleria. I just picked Ribbon up from work," Tristian said.

"Give me your keys. I'll go get them," Yami said to Jada. The weather was just omnious enough that he didn't want his friend driving.

Jada hesitated, but realized she wasn't going to talk Yami out of it. "Okay. But be careful, will you, pharaoh?" She rummaged in her Hello Kitty purse and handed him the keys to her little silver ragtop convertible.

"Yami's going to be there. He's got my cousin Jada's car," Mokuba told Tristian.

Yami smiled at Jada. "Don't worry about your car, tomodachi."

"I'm worried about you, pharoah. It's looking squicky out there," Jada told him as he left. "Yami, for Isis's sake, be careful!"

"I will," he promised, then looked at her. "Will you go check on my aibou?"

"Of course," Jada said.

~*~

The scene was crystalizing in his mind, coming clear after tormenting him for so long. The wind catching the long bed of the eighteen-wheel dumptruck heading for the quarry, jack-knifing it across the narrow road, the little silver car swerving wildly to avoid it, the driver losing control and plunging into the lake that normally didn't reach the side of the road, but was swollen from a spell of wet late summer weather. The car flipping onto the driver's side, its two other occupants escaping wet but unharmed but the driver trapped......."No, oh Gods---no, please!"

"Yugi!" Someone was shaking him.

"Oh gods!" Yugi started awake sitting up and flinging himself into the other's arms, knocking them both flat.

"Ooof! Damn, Yugi, you're turning into a little chunk. What the heck is Yami feeding you?" Jada said breathlessly, then added. "Don't answer that, okay?" She had just realized how that could go----

Yugi was too freaked out to notice. "Jada, oh gods, Jada, I saw it this time, I saw it!"

"Saw it? Saw what?" Yami had told her about his aibou's anxiety attacks of late.

"What happens! I saw what happens! Jada, don't go out, something's going to happen to you!" Yugi was panicking, hyperventilating and sobbing all at the same time.

"Shhh, koneko tenshi---" Jada murmured, hugging him close, stroking his tousled hair. "Shhh, it's all right now, it's all right ----" All at once, she broke off, her eyes going very wide. "Holy shit, Yugi, what did you dream?!" She pushed him back enough to look at him.

"Oh gods---" Somehow, Yugi managed to get the story out between sobs and wheezes. When he finished, Jada was very pale. "Oh shit, Yugi. I just gave Yami my keys so he could go pick up Tristian and whatshername. At the mall----"

"Spring Road---" Yugi whispered.

Jada let loose a string of curses in either French and/or Arabic that Yugi didn't care to have translated. "Come on!" She grabbed his wrist, pulling him off the bed and almost completely off his feet. At the staircase, she dispensed with the steps entirely and simply slid down the bannister, leaping off just before she would have hit the huge ornamental knob at the end.

As luck would have it, Joey and Seto arrived back at the house just as Jada ran out the door, Yugi trying to keep up with his short little legs. Of course, Jada's legs weren't much longer.

"What the---?" Seto exclaimed as Jada grabbed the keys from his hand, pushed him aside and jumped in the dark-blue Cherokee.

"Shut up, Seahorse. This is a life or death emergency!" she said as Yugi scrambled in the passenger side.

"It's Yami! We have to rescue him!" Yugi added, yelling out the window as he fastened his seatbelt. "Jada, hurry! Go!"

"Jada, don't ride the clutch this time!" Seto yelled after her, to no avail, of course. He looked at Mokuba as the Cherokee roared to life and took off with a screech of tires, Jada, as always, riding the clutch like --- okay, scratch that thought.

Joey laughed. "It's not every day you're carjacked by your own cousin!"

"My own bubblegum-wielding cousin," Seto added, than lookd at Mokuba. "What the heck was that all about?"

"I don't know," Mokuba shrugged, just as bewildered as his big brother. "She took your car 'cause she gave her keys to Yami so he could go pick up Tristian."

"Pick him up? Where?" Joey said.

"The mall. His car died," Mokuba said. "Then she went up to check on Yugi 'cause she heard him scream and then she came running down with him just as you came in."

Somehow that didn't do much to clear matters up any.

"Hey, Dragon? I think we outght to go after them, don't you?" Joey said.

Seto nodded. "Yeah. We'll take the Mercedes. Come on." It was a good thing that Kaiba's mansion was less than ten minutes from the Domino City Galleria.

~*~

The tow truck had arrived a few minutes before Yami. By the time the former pharaoh drove up, the Tristian's disabled Trans Am was already loaded on a flatbed.

"Yami, man, I thought you were Jada for a minute," Tristian said, relieved to see him. "Thanks so much for doing this."

"No problem. You're coming over, aren't you?" Yami said.

"Heck yeah," Tristian said, getting in the back with Ribbon. "Soon as we drive Ribbon home."

Yami turned the small silver car around and started back down Spring Road. As he rounded the first sharp curve, a huge dumptruck started around the other way, forcing him to edge to the side. As he did, a sharp gust of wind howled through the trees, shaking the little convertible and slamming into the long bed of the truck, causing it to fishtail sharply. Ribbon screamed as Yami swerved to try to avoid it, only to have the two left wheels slide off the loose gravel at the side and plunge into the water, piling up against a fallen tree. The car heeled over at an angle, nose down and to the left. Tristian and his girlfriend were able to scramble free from the back, but Yami was trapped underwater by a tree branch, unable to free himself --- despite the seat belt, he'd hit his head on the steering wheel, not hard, but just enough to leave him too dazed to simply dematerialize and escape. He was drowning----

The truck driver managed to right the huge bed and, after a moment's pause, drove on, anxiously pretending he hadn't seen the carnage, not realizing someone else had.

~*~

"Ohmigod, get the plate number!" Jada cried, screeching to a stop and grabbing a pen from the dashboard, writing it on her arm as she spoke.

Yugi had already lept out of the Cherokee. "Yami!"

"Yugi! He's trapped! Help me!" Tristian was trying to pull the branch aside, to no avail. His girlfriend was hysterical, no help at all.

"Hold it!" Jada jumped into the water without the slightest hesitation, grabbing the branch as well. "Okay, pull!"

Yugi, meanwhile, had dove under to try to extricate Yami, only to find the former pharaoh unconscious. Quickly, Yugi forced his darker half's mouth open, clamping his mouth over Yami's and blowing air into his lungs before popping up for a breath. "Hurry! He can't hold out much longer!"

"All right, one two three PULL!" Jada yelled, pulling back on the branch with all her strength. Tristian followed suit as Yugi ducked back under. It was no good; the tree didn't budge.

"Guys, wait!" It was Seto's voice. "Here, tie this to it! We'll use the Jeep!" He threw them a rope, the other end of which was attached to the Cherokee's bumper.

"Great!" Tristian started knotting it around the branch.

"Guys, hurry!" Yugi yelled again. He ducked under, blowing air into Yami's lungs again - and this time feeling his darker half's hands move, grasping weakly at him. /Yami!/

Yami's eyes were dazed, barely conscious. //Aibou?//

/Don't try to breathe, Yami. We'll get you out. Just hold on--/ Yugi surfaced again, then ducked under, clamping his mouth over Yami's and blowing gently. /Breathe only when I do, Yami. I'll help you./

//Aibou, I'm trapped--!//

/They're working on that./ Yugi ducked under again, blowing air into his lover's mouth. /We'll get you out, Yami. And I'm not leaving you./

Meanwhile, Seto had started the Jeep - only to have the rope slip off the branch.

"Didn't they teach you anything in the Boy Scouts?!" Jada yelled at Tristian, grabbing the rope and tying it around the branch herself. "Seto, go! Gogogogogogogoooooooo!!!"

This time, the knot held. Underwater, Yami felt the branch lift and struggled to squirm free, finally doing so with a lot of help from Yugi. He managed to flounder ashore, where he collapsed, leaning heavily on his hands and coughing up water. Yugi tried to follow, but exhaustion and relief had left so wso weak that Tristian had to pick him up and set him on dry ground.

"Yami, Yugi, are you guys all right?" Jada knelt by them.

Yugi nodded. /Yami?/

//I'm fine, aibou. Just let me catch my breath.//

"He's okay," Yugi said shakily.

After a few minutes, Yami looked up. He wasn't seriously hurt, just some bruises. Seto, meanwhile, was on his cellphone making arrangements for someone to come get his cousin's car out of the water - and for someone to track down the truck that had fled the scene.

"Jada, your car--" he started.

"Oh, fuck the car, Yami. Just so you're all right--" Jada hugged him.

"How did you guys get here so fast, anyway?" Tristian said.

"That nightmare Yugi's been having," Jada said. "He woke up and remembered it this time and told me we had to get over here like, right away."

Yami looked at his little aibou. "Was that -- what it was, koi?"

Yugi nodded. "That was what I've been so scared of. I knew something was going to happen, but I didn't know what or to who---" He looked sheepishly at them from underneath his dripping plumes of hair.

"Oh aibou, sweet aibou---" Yami hugged him as tightly as he could, unable to come up with words to express how he was feeling. How could anyone dare think his koibito weak or cowardly? His beloved had the heart of a lion and the soul of a true king. It was a mark of true bravery that he had no need to boast or flaunt it. "I am forever in your debt, my beloved."

Yugi kissed his darker half softly. "No, Yami koi, after everything you've done for me, maybe we're - no, we're not even yet. I'd have to save your life about a million times more for that. Not that I want to have to, though. I don't even want to think I might lose you. Oh Yami koi, I love you so much---" They ended up in another long kiss.

"It's okay," Seto said after a couple of minutes. "Everything's taken care of." Sometimes having money came in handy. "Let's get out of here before the storm really hits."