No one in the main room noticed the murder that had happened behind closed doors. Life went on as usual, sluggish from being late at night but still filled with a somewhat steady stream of duelists walking in and out of the battle box that was the centerpiece of the room.

  Phil, Jean, and Lumina did not linger. The longer they stayed there, the higher the chance for one of the yakuza on the sidelines to start wondering where the hell Chet was. Who knew how widespread the knowledge of their meeting was? Did Chet keep his cards close to his chest, or was this something even the lowest-level yakuza grunt knew about?

  It wasn’t worth the risk.

  Phil walked as casually as possible, like this was nothing but another night out in the dueling arena. Jean mimicked his posture with practiced ease. Lumina still had an easy smile on her face, any sort of tension or stress having been drained by the few seconds it had taken for her to brutally tear Chet’s throat open, but that hardly mattered due to her general state of invisibility.

  It was not until they made it halfway across the room that Jean paused, his face lighting up in a smile as he spotted Tilla sitting high up in the bleachers. She was quick to notice her boyfriend, though there was some amount of worry in her face as she looked down at them. Jean sped up his pace, climbing up the bleachers two steps at a time with Phil in hot pursuit. He didn’t think their increased speed would be any cause for concern. All the yakuza would see was a passionate, lovesick Frenchman racing toward his lover like they hadn’t met in years.

  “You were attacked!” The words tumbled out of Tilla’s mouth the second Jean arrived. Her hands were shaking, but Phil could easily tell the emotions running through her had nothing to do with fear, and everything to do with anger. Jean gave her a tight yet reassuring hug.

  “We made it.” Phil replied with an easy smile. “That portrait you gave us came in clutch.”

  Tilla responded with a partially guilty look. “About that…”

  But Jean didn’t give her time to finish her sentence, closing her mouth by planting a sloppy kiss on her lips.

  “Ma belle, there is no need for an apology! That formidable duel spirit of yours was simply to keep an eye on us, two roguish bachelors in the big city! How could something like that ever dampen my love for you?”

  Tilla’s only response was a mad blush as Jean hit the nail right on the head. As soon as she regained her usual somber composure, she looked at Jean and Phil each.

  “And Chet? What did you tell him?”

  “We had a difference of opinion.” Phil shrugged. For a second, he hesitated over telling her the real ending, but in the end, rationality won out. Given time, Tilla would get the truth from Jean one way or another. Best to break the news now before it caused any problems between the two lovers.

  “We had to kill him. It was us or him. Bastard pulled a knife.”

  Tilla’s face immediately hardened. “Good.” She spat the word out viciously. “Life is no fairy tale. Killing should never be the first option, but a yakuza scum is better off dead if he tries to threaten my Jean’s life.”

  “Right you are.” Phil let out a surprised smile. Her opinion mirrored his almost exactly. No sense in extending mercy to someone who wanted to hurt or kill your loved ones. Something like that could only be limited to the movies or to people with the sort of overwhelming strength that could permanently neutralize people in ways other than death. He’d learned that lesson well in his last reincarnation.

  Tilla gave a good long look around the room. “What next?”

  Phil jerked his chin toward the elevator. “The boss of their yakuza family was in on it. We’re gonna pay him a visit, make sure he doesn’t try shit like this again.”

  “And I’m coming with you.” Tilla said, a steely glimmer in her eyes. “Not as a Duel Professor, but as a simple lone duelist. They went too far this time. Besides, they might pause at letting you two in, but I should be able to get us past the bouncers with no problems.”

  Jean swept her up in a crushing hug that saw Tilla lifted several inches off the ground, a look of surprise on her face that quickly morphed into a warm smile.

  “Beautiful even in wrath!” Jean crowed out, “Are you sure there is no French blood in your veins? Any woman from my country would find themselves well matched in the face of your passion!”

  As Tilla responded by kissing Jean on the cheek, Phil began sauntering toward the elevators. The two lovebirds could catch up in due time.

  “Aw, they look so cute together.” Lumina chuckled. “Every time Tilla puts on that ‘mournful goth’ expression of hers, Jean finds some way to accidentally shatter it by saying something so sweet that it feels like my blood sugar levels are hitting lethal amounts.”

  “I told you,” Phil hummed happily back, glad to be on any other topic than the bloodshed of the night, even if it was only for a moment, “we’re the love gurus putting in the good work.”

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  No incidents happened while they made their way toward the nightclub. That alone had caused Phil to look several times over his shoulders. But, it seemed Chet’s disappearance truly hadn’t been noticed by anyone yet, or if it had, they hadn’t put two and two together yet to connect it with Phil. No yakuza thugs intercepted them, there were no shouts let out into the night sky. There was nothing. This night, despite what had happened behind closed doors, was an ordinary one. It was enough for Phil to finally afford himself a moment of relaxation near the end of their walk.

  Phil’s restored mood did not last long. As soon as the three companions (alongside Lumina) came into view of the nightclub known as ‘Blue Friday’, he was left with a dark feeling in his stomach.

  Something about the entire building felt wrong. Not in a magical sense. Lumina had already given it her expert opinion gathered by a quick look at the outside – either there was no magic here at all, or it was well-hidden.

  No, the sense of wrongness came from the look of the building itself. As Phil stared at the entrance to the yakuza-operated nightclub, all he could think was the first word in the name was strangely fitting. The building was blue, no doubt about that. Blue lights pulsed in the windows to the beat of music that was far too faint in his ears to allow him to make out any notable details of the song. Blue paint was slapped haphazardly over the splintered wooden front door.

  He still had no idea where the word ‘Friday’ in its name came from.

  Phil and Jean shared a look. Phil went first, the door opening with a creak to his touch to reveal some sort of waiting room. The sound of music now came into focus, no longer muffled by the blue door. It was still distant, but the lyrics no longer felt like there was a layer of water between them and his ears. He could hear them well enough.

  The waiting room was full of red velvet. Not the cake, but the cloth. The walls were covered in the stuff, a tasteless sort of wallpaper that left Phil with a vague feeling of disgust in the back of his mouth. A red velvet couch wrapped its way around a large portion of the room, only stopping when it reached a door that he could only assume led deeper into the nightclub itself. Spreading out through the cracks of the door separating the waiting room from the nightclub proper were faint echoes of neon lights that washed out over the room, doubtlessly from the dance floor that was likely on the other side. The lights, even though the door blocked most of it, caused the room to be filled with shades of blue and green that gave it a somewhat ethereal, almost otherworldly look.

  Underneath the usual stale stench of cigarette smoke and booze, there was a faint aroma of mold wafting through the air. It was difficult to see it past the lights from the other room, but Phil could see small patches of black mold growing in the corners, adding to the desolate, broken-down, and overall hopeless undertone of a room that was trying at least on the surface to appear glamorous to the casual observer.

  A table was in the middle of the room, wooden and desolate aside from a half-empty glass of whiskey, two loose cigarettes lying forgotten on a blue paper napkin, and five ragged lines of white powder.

  A woman was sitting on the couch near the corner, the table being right between Phil and her. She looked like she was in her mid-to-late 20s, though her hair, dyed a dull pink, made it hard to tell for sure.

  For a moment, Phil waited expectantly. Was this the doorwoman? Would it be up to her to admit them into the club, or to call over the bouncer if they failed to pass whatever criteria was needed for a shady nightclub like Blue Friday? But soon the realization sunk in. The woman hadn’t acknowledged Phil, Jean, or even Tilla when they first opened the door and walked in accompanied by a blast of cold winter air. In fact, when Phil took a closer look, the woman’s eyes were heavy-lidded and unfocused. Rivulets of blood, thin but still noticeable, trailed from her nostrils and down her neck, where they disappeared under the collar of her otherwise white shirt. Her body was limp as well, causing her back to be slouched deeply into the cushions of the couch.

  Phil stepped further inside the waiting room, with Jean following close behind and Tilla right after him. Jean moved around Phil’s back, closing in on the woman so he could place his index and middle finger on the side of her neck. While Jean stared at the woman with a grave look on his face, Phil tilted his head. It all felt… off. Wrong. That same sense of pervasive wrongness that had been gnawing at his thoughts since he’d been even a block away from the building, where it was nothing more than a few blue-painted walls poking out between lines of shops.

  The music was some sort of techno mix. It wasn’t jazz, which was what one might expect at some sort of swanky club. Nor was it the type of pop music common in this era, or even head-pounding rock-n-roll. It was just techno, pulsing constantly to a standard beat, like a human heart was hooked up to a set of speakers.

  Phil pulled the glass of whiskey off the table, dumping the liquid on the ground and holding the side of the glass up to the woman's mouth. It was no mirror, but it followed the same old trick – check the glass for fog to see if the subject is still breathing, no matter how faintly.

  Phil remembered trying that himself once, in a garbage-strewn alleyway in New York City. Only, he’d used a shard of broken glass instead of a mirror or a whiskey glass. It hadn’t worked then. He-

  Phil tightly scrunched his eyes shut, forcing his mind away from that memory and back to its previous train of thought.

  The room was warm as well. In fact, he could even claim it to be hot. The heat wasn’t odd. Not in the winter, when everyone and their mother would have the heating on full blast to ward the chills from their bones. But this was the front entrance to the club. With the door opening and closing to admit and expel customers, the room shouldn’t be this hot. It should only be warm. Perhaps even lukewarm. Phil closed his eyes. The music wasn’t helping. He could feel it sinking into his head like an unpleasant migraine.

  Jean picked up the woman’s hand, moving it slightly with a dispirited air about him, and then letting it go. It dropped slowly, almost stiffly back onto the woman’s lap.

  "She's dead," Jean said with a ragged sigh. Tilla remained silent, watching the proceedings with a grim, almost expectant look. “Rigor mortis is already setting in. Poor girl. Alone out here, without even a hand to hold at the end.”

  Jean moved away from her. His face was tired and he continued to ramble on. Phil got a sense he wasn’t even fully talking about the woman, but instead a personal memory he was sinking deep into like a lake of quicksand.

  “All those people in the club.” Jean jerked his chin toward the door and the mixed buzz of conversation and music past it. “Yet no one cared. Do you think they even knew she’s out here?”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Phil nodded in agreement. The situation was pretty obvious to even the quickest glances. “Either an overdose or she mixed something she shouldn’t have. Shit way to go out.” He waved a dispirited hand toward the powder and the drink. Half his mind still questioned if this was real, if it wasn’t too late to get her an ambulance. The other half laughed mockingly that no more than ten minutes ago, he’d callously signed Chet’s death warrant, and now he was getting mopey over something he couldn’t even help with in the first place.

  Then another voice in his head reminded Phil that maybe this was a good thing. He still was a person, no matter what his body count was by now. He could still feel pity.

  Anyway, the ambulance would be pointless. Jean wasn’t stupid. No pulse at her neck, no breathing, and an obvious overdose. It was too late to help.

  Jean’s next words cemented Phil’s thoughts.

  “Her nose is bleeding without any visible damage to its outside. I’ve seen it happen to cokeheads before. Then there's the alcohol. Those two poisons don't mix well.”

  It was strange. The longer Phil stared at the woman’s lifeless body, the more the music felt like it was intensifying. But at the same time, he knew it was not at all. It felt like the techno beats were causing the whole world to pulse in rhythm to its heartbeat. But a single glance at the door they'd just come through, which was still cracked open, revealed nothing but another calm winter night. It felt like they'd stepped into a whole other world altogether. On one side, calm, muffling snow illuminated with various shades of blue. On the other side, techno beats thudded through the walls.

  It was all so isolated. The club was isolated from the snow-blanketed world outside. The dead woman was isolated from the people partying further inside.

  The more Phil mulled it over in his head, the more his thoughts retreated inwards, to the point that the music sounded muffled once more like there was a thick layer of water between his ears and the speakers. It was all distant echoes. High-energy techno music seemingly losing all of its energy passing through that layer of imaginary water to take away any sort of joy or happiness the music should have brought.

  Phil shook his head violently to dislodge the thoughts making their sludge-like way through his brain. If Jean had looked like his thoughts were struggling through quicksand, Phil’s own mind felt like it was wading through a pool of molasses in January. He needed to focus on what was actually possible to deal with at this moment. The woman was already gone. He, Jean, and Tilla could deal with the yakuza inside, ending this once and for all if they managed the situation correctly from the start.

  “This is the kind of people we’re dealing with. Let’s be done with this.” It felt to Phil like his voice was covered in rust, like he hadn’t spoken in years even though his latest words were said only a few moments ago.

  Jean held Phil’s gaze in his eyes. The normally flamboyant Frenchman’s eyes were humorless and almost entirely readable. One of his hands was tightly held in Tilla’s grip. Jean moved forward, brushing his free hand against the handle of the door leading further into the club.

  “Shall we?”

  The three duelists did not speak another word between themselves as the door creaked open, bringing the throbbing techno music into a sort of sharpness that only served to drill further into Phil’s ears with an irritating intensity. Before their eyes was a floor covered in multicolored tiles and swarming with dancers partying the night away. By now, Phil knew the isolation he’d felt in the waiting room should have been gone, banished to far-off lands now that the frantic energy of the dance floor was all around them. So, why did that sense of isolation feel more intense than ever? It was as if he, Jean, and Tilla were the last people alive in the world, and everyone else in the club were mere ghosts reliving past lives.

  There was truly something terribly wrong with Blue Friday.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  Mac N' Cheese's head hurt. It burned like his flesh and bone were immersed within a raging, unquenchable bonfire. No matter how vigorously he washed his noggin' off in the sink, no matter how much water he gulped up from the toilet bowl, the agonizing feeling never faded.

  Worse than that were the shouts. Once naught but whispers, the voices in his head had become far too loud for any man to ignore. They chattered, yammered, screamed, and hollered for his attention.

  Mac N’ Cheese paused at one of the only two sinks left intact in the men’s bathroom, gripping the chilly porcelain sides of the object with his burning hands, squeezing them so hard that the sink itself began to decorate itself with cracks. He had 99 problems, and the demons in his head made up most of them. The final problem of the 99, being less of a voice and more of a memory playing on an infinite repeating loop in his mind was by no means any less than the voices. It was Cathy, his beloved Cathy, on the other side of the divorce court staring at him like she didn’t even recognize her husband… or perhaps to be more specific, her ex-husband. She’d left him and taken the kids with her.

  It was her fault. She'd known from the start that there were demons in his head he wrestled with on a daily basis. Mac N’ Cheese let out an animalistic growl at the thought of it, as if he could intimidate his reflection in the mirror to do… he wasn’t sure what he wanted to intimidate his reflection into doing, but through his long life of 32 years, 5 months, 23 days, 10 hours, 50 minutes, and 43 seconds, Mac N’ Cheese had learned through many hard-won lessons that his reflection was a pussy and should be intimidated at every given opportunity.

  “Mac… I don’t know you anymore. I want to believe the sweetheart I used to love is still buried deep within your heart, but I can’t let our daughter grow up in a household like this. You… scare her when you wrestle with your demons in the dark hours of the night. Frankly, you also scare me.” Cathy had said from the other side of the courtroom. There were twenty police officers between him and Cathy, each armed to the teeth and with radios at their belts ready to call the SWAT team waiting outside. It was pointless, of course, but only he knew that for sure. Only he knew that Cathy had nothing to fear from his presence.

  “Cathy!” Mac N’ Cheese had screamed out with such force that the police in front of him had recoiled in their boots and reflexively drawn their weapons. “You chose to be with a demon! You knew what that entailed!”

  But she did not answer other than to sadly shake her head and cover their daughter’s ears with her hands.

  “Ah! AH!” Mac N’ Cheese let out a primal scream into the air, but even that did not fully vent his sorrow.

  Movement came from his left as a man in a long overcoat walked up to the only other intact sink in the men’s restroom.

  “Tough night, huh buddy?” The man said conversationally. He was well-groomed, from his combed-over hair to his straight pencil mustache.

  Mac N’ Cheese responded by covering his face with his hands and sobbing violently. Behind his hands, Mac N’ Cheese’s eyes were wide.

  He recognized this man.

  This man, this well-groomed man in a long overcoat with a pencil mustache and a combover was known to Mac N’ Cheese. This man had been present in the courtroom. This man was a policeman.

  The man continued to speak, practically bulldozing through the awkwardness brought by Mac N’ Cheese’s howling sobs as if they were two vague acquaintances meeting one another at a bar after 27.36 years of not seeing each other. He didn’t seem to recognize Mac N’ Cheese from the courtroom. How could he? It was likely one of a couple thousand cases he’d assisted with each year.

  “Say, you’re a duelist around here, right? I think I’ve seen you in the battle box before.” The man in the long overcoat and the pencil mustache oh so neatly groomed asked.

  Between violent sobs, Mac N’ Cheese answered an affirmative.

  “I see…” The man turned off the water to the sink he was washing his hands at. He turned to look at Mac N’ Cheese, a grave expression across his face. Then he spoke with a lowered voice, as if he was worried someone else in the otherwise-empty men’s restroom was listening in. “I’m looking for a man by the name of ‘Taka’. Around 60 years of age, an old worn-down salaryman type of gentleman. We were supposed to meet here. He was scared, wanted protection in return for some information. I’m… don’t tell anyone this, but I’m a cop, you see. Undercover.”

  Mac N’ Cheese removed his hands from his face to look at the well-groomed character in front of him. He already knew that, the cop bit, not the Taka bit. The Taka bit was new. Now that he looked upon the man with fresh eyes, he could see a metallic object poking out slightly from under the man’s long overcoat, around his waist.

  It was a gun. From the looks of it, a snub-nosed six-shooter revolver. Smith & Wesson Model 36 to be precise. Standard police issue.

  The looping memory of Cathy leaving him, taking the kids and half of his life savings vanished in a flash, replaced by the cold voice of one of his demons. It was a familiar demon, one that often spoke with a creaky voice like every word from its fiery mouth was covered in rust.

  Do it. Take his gun. Take the cop’s gun. DO IT TAKE IT DO IT TAKE IT.

  Mac N’ Cheese’s breathing rapidly increased to a level that would have caused any ordinary man to hyperventilate and pass out on the spot.

  “Oooohhhh…” He groaned, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. His eyeballs felt pressured, like his eyelids were not flaps of skin, but instead great weights intent on popping his eyeballs like grapes.

  Do it take the cop’s gun take it take it do it do it you have a job to do LET NONE SURVIVE!

  Each word from the demon in its creaky voice speaking directly in his brain was like the thundering peal of a gong the size of a skyscraper being struck. Over and over again!

  GONG!

  Take the gun take his gun DO IT!

  GONG!

  DO IT!

  GONG!

  Mac N’ Cheese smashed his head through the sink in front of him, causing the undercover cop to back away with an uncertain, almost fearful expression on his face as a stream of water shot up from the broken pipes.

  TAKE THE GUN LEAVE NONE ALIVE!

  GONG!

  “I don’t recognize you anymore Mac! You’re going to hurt Kaori one of these days, and I can’t allow that!”

  GONG!

  TAKE THE COP’S GUN!

  One final GONG smashed through Mac N’ Cheese’s head. Then, there was silence. The silence was worse than anything before. Worse than the demons, worse than the memories of his beloved Cathy and Kaori, worse than the ‘gong’ sounds.

  Mac N’ Cheese snapped and let the demons take the wheel. Whooping and hollering, he whirled around and snaked his hands around the well-groomed man’s waist before he could react, plucking the snub-nosed revolver from his belt in a single smooth motion.

  “No!” Was the only word the well-groomed man could utter before Mac N’ Cheese pressed the barrel of the gun against the man’s head and squeezed the trigger. An explosion of noise filled the men’s bathroom of the underground duel arena, but Mac N’ Cheese only felt the most pleasurable feeling, eliciting a groan of happiness from his lips. His body was moving without his consent, but he didn’t mind. The mirrors in the bathroom reflected countless glowing tattoos of strange Egyptian hieroglyphs, but he didn’t pay attention. The room was now filled with the pungent scent of gunpowder. The explosion of the revolver discharging filled the ears of Mac N' Cheese with an infuriating ringing sound which he shoved to the back of his mind.

  Euphoria. Absolute overflowing euphoria.

  The demons had taken the wheel, and they were spinning his body into the joyride of a lifetime. Mac N’ Cheese moved quickly. Stooping to a kneel next to the dead cop’s body, he held the gun in one hand and moved his other hand to scoop chunks of blood, bone, and grey matter up in his palm. Once an acceptable amount pooled in his palm, he raised his hand to begin painting his cheeks with the delicious mixture. Then he stood. The demons still screamed in his head, but he no longer had to listen. Not now, when he had purposely given them control.

  “DEATH IS HERE!” Mac N’ Cheese howled, sprinting out of the bathroom with his gun raised high. He was frothing at the mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and his right eye was nearly bugged out of his skull.

  On Mac N’ Cheese’s hairy back, the serpent tattoo glowed with a dark red light. No longer simply an ink decoration, it twisted across his back like it was alive. Over and over it spun, moving in a pattern that made it look as if it was forming two infinity symbols, one stacked above the other.

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  In a street five blocks away from the duel parlor, Pink Winter moved through the snow with a look of pure undiluted purpose in his eyes. His mind was preoccupied, half of it focused on influencing the asset he'd cultivated in the underground arena, and one half focused on guiding his unfamiliar legs toward a nightclub known as Blue Friday. It had taken weeks. Months. Years. All of that and more.

  All of that time spent carefully driving the schizophrenic man so utterly insane that not even the best experts could help, if he’d even let them do so in the first place. Painstakingly inscribing the symbol of Apophis on the lunatic’s back so that even without Pink Winter’s influence, the mere chaotic symbolism the tattoo provided would gnaw away at the man’s brain to provide the final push. Now his labors were finally providing fruit. Mac N’ Cheese would do his duty to clean the loose ends in the arena, whether he knew it or not.

  Now it would be Pink Winter’s job to take care of the rest of the Mori Family before any details of their operations in Domino City could be leaked to someone who could piece the mystery together.

  That was the key. The Mori Family were nothing but greedy starving hounds begging for scraps falling from the table of their betters. They held no knowledge of mysticism. They had no way of knowing the true purpose of what Pink Winter had done in the freezer room. How could they? The simplistic thugs thought the bodies were some new method to mule drugs past police checkpoints, when in reality it was nothing even close to that.

  It was more, much more than that. Something far greater than those mortals could ever hope to understand. Even if the attempt failed, there was still some amount of information that could be gathered. The location of the eye was already known. That flamboyant fog Maximillion Pegasus did not even bother to hide it, foolishly believing in the strength of his magic to be ample enough protection. To be fair to the man, it ordinarily would have been, if not for the auguries of Red Summer revealing a most auspicious chance lying in wait in the coming summer.

  The Key and Scale had been observed leaving Domino City under the protection of the spirit Shadi. An attempt to collect those could be made later, but any such attempt would necessitate the presence of all four seasons, along with the other 95 brothers and sisters, for there to be any reasonable chance of success. Such was the power of a spirit that could make use of two of the seven items, along with possessing the formidable backing of the Gravekeepers.

  No matter. The eye would be the first domino to fall. So sayith the wise Red Summer.

  As for the rest of the items, they now knew for sure that the anti-scrying protections were still strong, even after the countless hundreds of years since the original creation of the seven Millenium Items. Nothing about those protections had degraded by even an inch.

  Perhaps it was to be expected. The blood sacrifice of the 99 villagers of Kul Elna was a powerful piece of magic, after all, made even more so that the items were still tied in a way to the vile and repulsive Zorc Necrophades.

  It mattered little. The one constant followed by every era, even as the times ceaselessly changed, was that the holders of the seven would inevitably show themselves within the tides of history. Pegasus and Shadi had already unknowingly followed that trend. The holders of the other four would reveal themselves given time.

  So sayith the wise Red Summer.

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