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He’d known it was coming, along with all the rest.
Despite every fighting instinct in his body telling him to punch Kaiba into his coma before Death-T was even the slightest speck of a blueprint in his twisted mind, Jonouchi was not as stupid as everyone seemed to think he was. There was magic at play here, a Game he was merely a lucky (or, sometimes, shittily unlucky) pawn in. He’d already made mistakes, and from those mistakes, he’d learned to lay low and keep his nose out of businesses that weren’t his to interfere with.
Death-T was coming — it had to come — and there was nothing he could do about that.
But there was at least one thing that he could control.
Himself.
His memory was filled with all of the fights yet to come, but his younger body hadn’t magically inherited the muscle or the reflexes to match. He noticed that he had more energy than his older self, sure, but he knew that wouldn’t always be enough to save him in a pinch. So, in the short months leading up to Kaiba’s challenge, he trained.
In between his part-time jigs, schoolwork that he legitimately attempted the second time around, and playing Duel Monsters with Yugi — all of which were unique exercises in their own right — Jonouchi ran laps around the park near his apartment complex, did one hundred crunches a day, and convinced his arms through sheer force of will that they could each lift up his entire body weight at least twenty times. He switched out his rented porno tapes for karate and boxing tutorials, drank more tea than even the most traditional Japanese mother would condone — and most importantly, he planned ahead. He replayed the nightmares that Death-T had given him all those years ago over and over again, finding that, after everything that followed, Kaiba’s sick fantasies were surprisingly mundane.
After all, Jonouchi had faced Darkness itself surrounded by blood-soaked sands littered with ancient Egyptian corpses. Nothing could ever be more haunting than that.
And he’d had to watch one of his best, dearest friends walk away from them forever.
Nothing would ever be more painful.
When Yugi asked why he’d started keeping a pair of black, lace-up boots in his locker, Jonouchi had put on a huge smirk and said he was trying to look manlier for the girls walking into school. He didn’t explain how he had bought them through a retired firefighter that lived in his building, nor did he mention that he needed them to be durable and fireproof for a specific reason.
While he would never forget all of the pain and bullshit that Kaiba had put them through, he was quite annoyed with himself when he realized he couldn’t remember the exact date that Death-T had taken place. After a minor breakdown, which may or may not have involved him slamming his head against the nearest wall cursing his own stupidity, he’d decided to just watch the news carefully and wear the boots every day, just in case. It took a few weeks, and a few other misadventures, before his reluctant patience was rewarded.
Three days — that much he remembered clearly.
Death-T was three days before the official grand opening of Kaiba Land. So when he saw the date plastered on the front of one of his newspapers, surrounded by bright colors and illustrations of smiling children, Jonouchi prepared for war. He wore his new boots, filled his head with what little, yet powerful good would eventually come from all of this, and watched for the limousine that would transport them to the beginning of Yugi’s destiny.
Yugi, who was just as cheerful and innocent as ever, and who Jonouchi wished with all of his soul didn’t have to have his beautiful heart broken so many times over.
“Master Yugi and his friend, I presume?” the high-pitched, almost robotic voice of the driver said. “Master Seto cordially requests your presence at his house!”
‘Let the games begin,’ Jonouchi thought bitterly.
Mokuba’s poison was hard to swallow, but it wasn’t as disgusting as Seto’s joy of seeing so many children gathering around to watch his attempts at first-degree murder.
“Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Grand Opening of Kaiba Land!”
‘I wonder if Atem would let me borrow his dark shadowy powers to rip Kaiba a new asshole?’ Jonouchi thought with a glare. It wouldn’t hurt too much, right? He would still come out better for it, right?
“This is amazing!” Yugi shouted with a smile as they wandered the park, and even knowing what was to come, Jonouchi had to chuckle at his enthusiasm.
‘Just you wait, pal! These holograms are garbage compared to what I’ve seen!’ he thought. It was actually really impressive, to see a direct comparison of how far Kaiba’s technology progressed in the short time between this and Battle City. For all of the anger and hate that rotted away Seto Kaiba’s young soul, Jonouchi had never denied that the man was smarter than a chump like him could ever hope to become.
Which was why, despite everything, it genuinely made him sad to see all that brilliance go towards something so cruel and horrible.
Jonouchi forced himself to watch in silence as Yugi’s grandpa was beaten into submission by Kaiba’s deck, stealthily ordering a nearby security guard to call an ambulance when he drew his lone Blue-Eyes White Dragon. Yugi’s screams were unbearable in the aftermath, bringing Jonouchi’s eyes to genuine tears as he banged his small fists against the glass and Kaiba’s vicious taunts washed over them. He forced the familiar declarations of friendship and support out of his mouth with as much conviction as he could muster, all while a single plea echoed through his chaotic mind.
‘Don’t hate me for this, Yugi. Please don’t hate me.’
How long would it take before Yugi remembered that he knew things he shouldn’t? How much betrayal would his eyes hold when he realized his best friend had stood by and done nothing to save his beloved grandfather this pain?
‘Worrying will do nothin'!’ he scolded himself, and once Honda, Anzu, and that perverted mutant of an infant Johji joined their ranks, he followed Yugi’s determined stride through the first door of Death.
It felt good to kick that goon in the face again. It felt even better to see that all his training paid off when he took the other two out using his bare hands — even if he did feel a little guilty stealing Honda’s thunder as a result. He’d managed to dodge the electric blasts enough not to get hit directly, while still having legitimate proof that the games they faced were rigged as shit.
The second level was trickier.
He was still afraid of ghosts and the supernatural — partially because Atem’s very existence proved that they were very, very, very real.
‘Which reminds me! O, great and powerful Egyptian God of Luck — whatever your name is I’m sorry I don’t remember — please let me and my friends get through this in one piece!’ he prayed as they were strapped into their individual electric chairs. At first, he tried to distract himself by thinking of other things, like Kaiba’s ridiculous Blue-Eyes jet that hadn’t been invented yet and other Duel Monsters related nonsense. He quickly realized this wasn’t enough when the grabby hands started molesting his face.
‘SHIT! Zorc! Corpses! Egyptian Kaiba in a dress!’ he shouted internally. ‘You’ve seen worse! YOU’VE SEEN WORSE!!!’
…at least he didn’t faint this time.
The Murderer’s Mansion was just as imposing and musty as he remembered, with no visible exits and a riddle written in splotchy red paint — at least, Jonouchi hoped that’s what it was. He followed the others through the motions and pretended the floating hologram of Kaiba was at all surprising. He supposed it was a natural progression of sorts, from full body life-size projections to the billionaire’s giant ugly mug on every television screen in Domino City.
“Let me explain why I call this the Murderer’s Mansion…do you remember what happened last summer at the camp near Domino Lake? Those terrible murders that had all of Domino City cowering in fear…Ten Boy Scouts staying at the camp were murdered…” Kaiba said, a sickening smile on his face all the while. “All in one night. Not even a master of puzzles would have been able to assemble those body parts back into a human form. Those boys were mincemeat!”
And that, that soul-searing disregard for justice and innocent human lives, that solidified Jonouchi's determination for what he knew awaited him in the basement beneath their feet. He glared up at the shadow of a man — not even that, when he really thought about it — of a spoiled boy with all of the disdain and pity he could muster as Kaiba continued his theatrical speech about the dreaded Chopman.
Because honestly, how could something like this even happen?
What had Gozaburo Kaiba done to him to suck all possible empathy from his soul?
“Heh. You seem to enjoy glaring at me like that, Jonouchi,” the projected Kaiba said with a smile that was all teeth. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to pull my pigtails on the playground — if you catch my drift.”
Oh.
Now he was just pissed.
“Ugh, just ignore him, man,” Honda growled from beside him, but Jonouchi could barely hear him over the roar in his ears.
Because there was a lot he could take — the dog comments, the contempt for his dueling skills, the attitude. Even though Kaiba drove Jonouchi up the wall every time they were within ten feet of one another, even though all of that anger and contempt was unnecessary, Jonouchi could at least find something about the Seto Kaiba of the future to admire (even if he would never admit it out loud).
But then there was this asshole!
‘I swore I wouldn’t do this kind of stuff, but you’ve asked for it!’ Jonouchi growled mentally.
He cleared his face of all emotion, stuffed his hands deep into his pant pockets, and stared the hologram of his mortal enemy right in the eye.
“Alcatraz.”
The shift was instantaneous, and Jonouchi enjoyed every second of it before the guilt and regret settled deep in the pit of his stomach. Kaiba’s smile snapped out of existence, his eyes widening as every muscle in his face tightened into a thinly-veiled mask of revulsion and fear. Had the rays of light projecting the hologram into the air not continued to flicker and fritz as they worked, he would have assumed the image had malfunctioned based on how still Kaiba’s entire body became in just a matter of seconds.
‘Yeah. That shut you up good.’
The fear was the most intriguing part, if Jonouchi was completely honest, because it was unheard of for Kaiba to ever aim that sort of emotion in his direction. It was just plain weird.
“...Damn, man, what did you do?” Honda whispered unnervingly.
“Jonouchi?” Yugi touched his elbow lightly, the worried tilt to his voice asking another, secret question that was only understood between them. Jonouchi glanced down at his friend with sad eyes, shaking his head slightly to let him know that now was not the time for time-traveling revelations.
When he turned back to the holograms above them, it was back to the same falsely calm Kaiba he had seen multiple times over the years.
“If you’re done taunting us, Kaiba, could you please point us to the exit?” he asked politely, taking just a little more ill-advised schadenfreude in the small twitch of the billionaire’s eye.
Yugi begged him silently for the answer to the riddle when the guillotine appeared above them. His large violet eyes grew to the size of dinner plates as he pulled out the piece of paper covered in misspelled blood, and for a moment, Jonouchi thought he saw Atem’s vengeful, judgmental glare peeking through when he shook his head in response.
“You can do it, Yugi,” he says encouragingly instead. “Just focus on the clue and think.”
“How can you be so calm?!” Honda demanded with a glare, while Anzu bravely backed him up with a smile.
“Jonouchi is right! You solved the Millennium Puzzle, Yugi! You can do it!”
He can do it, of that much Jonouchi was sure. But more than that, this is something that Yugi needed to do on his own. From Yugi, the ancient pharaoh learned kindness and compassion, but from the trials placed in his path by Destiny’s cruel hand, Yugi learned about the strength that he had inside of him all along. If traveling back in time and altering the events of their lives by accident had taught Jonouchi anything, it was that there were some things that he couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t rescue his friend from.
No matter how much he wanted to.
And so Yugi stared at the piece of paper with all of his might, the numbers flying through his brilliant mind at rapid speed as the minutes ticked by.
And even though he knew it was coming, Jonouchi still clenched his eyes shut in fear when the blade began to fall.
“It’s Anzu’s ‘11’! Push your switch, Anzu!”
‘Oh, thank you, God! Gods! Whatever!’ Jonouchi sighed with relief. He yanked his hand out of the death trap as Yugi explained his methods with a wide smile, his pride and excitement at his friend’s personal achievement dimming when the trap door appeared behind Johji’s back.
The Chopman was awake, but this time, Jonouchi was ready.
He dashed forward as soon as the door appeared, snatching up Johji and throwing him into Honda's arms before anyone else could react. The trapdoor creaked open to reveal a pair of bloodthirsty eyes hiding among the shadows, and for a few tense moments, nobody made a sound. Their small group unconsciously moved to stand closer together, their latent survival instincts shifting them into a larger, more intimidating target.
Not that the Chopman cared.
“HURGHH…”
Nope. Not a bit.
The eyes retreated back into the darkness, taking all of the air in the room along with them.
“We have to go down there?” Anzu gasped. Jonouchi saw her and Yugi shiver out of the corner of his eye, and gathered every ounce of courage left in his body before reaching down and yanking the exit open the rest of the way.
“We don’t have a choice,” he reminded them. At first, nobody responded or moved an inch, but then Yugi took a bold step forward and began the slow descent into the dungeon of terror. The stairs led to a sickeningly familiar cobblestone tunnel, a round brick podium glaring at them from the center of a black hole of oil and steel.
And then Kaiba made it all impossibly worse by showing his face on a television screen across the room.
“I certainly hope you’re all enjoying Kaiba Land’s Games of Death! Are you ready for the next one?” the television screen said with a smile, although Jonouchi noticed that those murky blue eyes never once wandered even close to his direction. “You’ll play it in here, with the Chopman!”
“Kaiba, you’ve gone too far! This is…” Yugi protested weakly, and the grin before them grew almost giddy with glee at the sight of such distress.
“You swore you would face Death-T until the end, Yugi. Or have you forgotten already?”
Jonouchi reached over to place a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder, not once taking his eyes off the oppressive darkness beyond the doorway.
“Now, the rules are simple,” Kaiba continued, his face barely moving despite the apparent enthusiasm in his voice. “You will select one person to enter this room and face the Chopman. Refuse, and he will come after all of you indiscriminately — and I don’t think I need to elaborate on what happens then.”
Before any of the others could react or complain, Jonouchi took a deep breath and bent down to address Yugi eye-to-eye.
This was what he had prepared for. What he’d been waiting for all these tortuous weeks.
And no, he wasn’t ready for it at all!
“Hey, Yugi? Will you trust me on this one?” he asked, trying to convey every future declaration of trust and devotion into his eyes into a single moment. Yugi blinked up at him, hesitating, before visibly swallowing his fear and nodding his consent. “Thanks, man. Now, no matter what happens — no matter what I do — I want you to stay out of it and let me do this my way, okay?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Jonouchi?” Honda snapped. “That psycho is gonna kill you!”
“Time’s up! Who’s it going to be?” Kaiba practically sang in the distance.
Jonouchi stood and quickly removed his school jacket, determined not to waste any more time talking himself out of what was going to happen next.
“Hold this for me, will ya?” he said, tossing it into Honda’s face before marching across the threshold and hearing the door thud closed behind him.
“Jonouchi!”
It was a surreal experience, having déjà vu overcome him while knowing with 100% certainty that he had seen every brick of this room before. The Chopman was just as terrifying as he remembered, covered in scars and sutured attire the Frankenstein’s monster would be jealous of. He towered over the podium in the center of the room and dwarfed Jonouchi almost by half, the overhanging instruments of death creaking as they swayed against their chains in anticipation.
Kaiba’s smirking face continued to glare up at him from the center of his henchman’s chest piece in a blatant challenge.
‘Joke’s on you, asshole,” Jonouchi thought angrily. ‘I’ve been trapped by you before.’
“So kind of you to volunteer, Jonouchi,” Kaiba said. Even with his cold-blooded mask firmly in place, there was just enough fury in his dark eyes to show that Jonouchi’s earlier comment had not been forgotten. “Now, the rules of the game are simple. After the signal to begin, you each pick a weapon and fight to the death! Your choices are hung from the ceiling. Stand on the podium in the middle to reach them. Be careful not to slip on the oil on the floor.”
“…just one thing before we start, Kaiba,” he spoke up. He tried not to flinch at the sudden surge of annoyance — most likely at the interruption and/or for Jonouchi’s lack of fear — that came and went from the billionaire’s expression. “I don’t trust ya within an inch of your life —”
“That’s not how that—”
“— but I’d like to at least try to appeal to what little honor you have as a duelist and a gamer for a minute.”
Ah, now that appeared to intrigue the bastard.
But would it be enough?
“I want your word that if I somehow manage to take this muscle-brained dickhead down fair and square, that door will open for me,” he said, jabbing his thumb behind him to the door Honda and Yugi were hovering nervously around. “That sound like something you can deliver on?”
Kaiba’s smile turned haughty, and he paused dramatically before responding.
“Your distrust wounds me, Jonouchi, but fine. You have my word. Now...”
Well, it didn’t sound very convincing, but he supposed it was as good as he was going to get.
“Game Start!”
Before the Chopman could take a single step forward, Jonouchi had already turned on his heel, easy to do in the slick oil beneath his boots, and stalked over to the door keeping him from freedom. He ignored the worried, fearful looks he knew his friends were sending his way, silently plucking the flickering candle from its holder and holding it aloft as he returned to his starting point. The Chopman paused in his approach to the podium, staring in horror at the flickering flame behind his crumpled paper mask as Kaiba’s digital eyes widened.
“What?!”
“Jonouchi, what are you doing?!” Yugi screamed.
“You imbecile! What are you trying to pull?!” Honda demanded.
Jonouchi smiled and ignored them all.
“You said I could use any weapon in the room, right? I choose this one,” he explained. He was actually quite proud when his voice remained steady despite the overwhelming sense of terror thrumming through his veins. “Not the smartest move, putting all this oil in a room lit by candlelight.”
“You fool! Are you trying to kill yourself?” Kaiba gasped. Jonouchi had stumped him, if his uncomprehending expression was anything to go by — it almost made it all worth it. “If you light the oil, you’ll burn, too!”
Burn?
No, this would be nothing.
He knew what burning felt like.
The pain of burning walls licking at his clothes and melting his skin as he waited for Yugi to finish solving a Puzzle that had taken him eight, long, lonely years to complete. The brunt of his Red-Eyes' attack as Yugi willingly waited to be pulled down into the depths of the ocean, the dragon's ferocity a pitiful sting compared to the guilt eating away at his weak, tired mind. The infernal wrath of God raining down and tearing him apart from the inside out, all while Malik's unhinged laughter rang in his ears and he screamed in agony.
No, this wouldn’t burn.
Burning was an old friend.
He glared at Kaiba’s horrified face, refusing to break eye contact for a single moment, as he tossed the candle to the side and prayed that his boots would hold.
“JONOUCHI!”
The tiny flame devoured the oil with a ravenous hunger the likes of which Jonouchi had seen a thousand times in his few short years as a duelist. The boots protecting his feet and ankles did indeed hold strong, and he stood calmly in the raging inferno as the Chopman’s body burst into flailing, screaming flames before him. He held his breath as best he could as billows of black smoke wafted through the air into the hanging ornaments of murder from above.
Kaiba’s eyes never left his, all sense of bravado and confidence lost beneath uncompromised terror as the Chopman thrashed against the flames consuming his flesh.
“You call this burning?” Jonouchi asked, not concerned in the slightest if he was heard over his dying opponent's screams or not. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”