Greetings Readers! I apologize for the delay in updating. Life has been a bit crazy over here. Without further ado, here's the next chapter!

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! or any of its characters.

"Téa, are you sure?" Serenity asked worriedly, shifting so that Téa could better see her through the webcam lens.

Joey's shout had been loud enough not only to wake up Ryou and Tristan, who had been sacked out on the couch and armchair, but also to cause the guy living in the apartment below to start hitting the floor with a broom to stop the noise. Once the two other guys had managed to rub the sleep out of their eyes, they'd hurried over to see what had caused Joey to react the way he had. And it was their resultant surprise that had roused Serenity from her sleep.

Even with her long hair tousled and her eyes still heavy with sleep, she was still beautiful, and Tristan could not keep his eyes off her as she came into the room. Joey noticed and, even though he had grudgingly given permission for his friend to date his sister, hit the unsuspecting man upside the back of the head. "Keep your eyes to yourself," the overprotective brother grumbled sleepily, as Tristan shot him a glare and Bakura attempted to stifle his laughter behind his hand.

Téa either didn't see the guys' antics or chose to ignore them. "As sure as I can be," she said determinedly. "I can't say how…I just know."

Serenity nodded gravely, and the boys yawned behind her, looking somewhat less convinced but still concerned.

"So," Joey yawned, "what are we gonna do." He popped his back. "'Cause if out little buddy is in trouble, we gotta get him out of it!"

"Where exactly is he right now?" Ryou queried curiously. Living abroad in England kept him a little separated from the rest of the group. "In Egypt, isn't he?"

"Yes," Téa said, suddenly shuffling around with the papers on her desk before pulling out a postcard with pyramids on the front. "He's in Giza," she read.

Joey frowned. "That's not where the Pharaoh was buried, is it?"

"No," Téa shook her head, "they're a good hundred miles from there.'

"So, it doesn't have anything to do with the Pharaoh?" Tristan asked, chewing at the corner of his mouth in thought. "So it's not any bad things from the past out to get him then, right?"

There was no accusation in the tone, but Ryou cringed imperceptibly anyway.

"I don't know what is going on," Téa becoming a little exasperated. "I just know that he's in trouble."

The rest of the group in Domino all exchanged glances. Serenity's acceptance of woman's intuition withstanding, they didn't have a single piece of proof to verify Téa's fears. At the same time, she'd experienced these feelings multiple times over the years and rarely, if ever, had she been wrong. Then again, they were half a world away from Egypt and couldn't do anything immediately.

"Téa?" Ryou politely ventured, as he watched his friend try and relax herself. "Have you tried to call? Maybe we can talk with him or somebody who knows where he-"

The worried girlfriend's face lit up and she quickly pulled out her phone. Punching in a familiar number on speed dial, she listened to the dial tone before putting the phone on speaker and placing it so that the speakers on her laptop could pick up the sound.

Subconsciously, all leaned forward as the phone continued to ring…

···

Kaslan, one of the errand runners for the expedition, turned in his sleep and hit his face in the rolled up cloth that served as a pillow so to block out the bright rays of the sun. It took some skill to sleep into the late afternoon hours with the sun in one's face, but he managed. That, and he had gone on a late-night trek with some of the others to pick up supplies from the nearest town.

He was in the middle of a delightful dream, surrounded by enormous piles of ice cream, a new treat he had been introduced to by some of the foreign archaeologists, when the closest scoop (chocolate chip cookie dough0 began singing. And singing…And singing…

Kaslan opened his eyes and looked blearily around him, disappointed that he'd woken up before he'd had the chance to sample some of the rare singing ice cream. However, as he blinked into awareness, he noticed that the singing had not disappeared; instead, it had become even louder.

The sound and the realization that the cloth bundle was vibrating led Kaslan to rifle through the pockets of what looked to be one of the coats that the archaeologists wore at night against the cool desert wind. He finally pulled out his hand with a triumphant noise to see a battered, silver phone. The face of a pretty, pale-faced lady spread across the screen and impulsively pressed a button to stop the singing.

"'Alo?" He murmured in what he thought was a debonair tone.

"Hello, Yugi?" The female voice answered through the phone, "Why haven't you called? Are you all right?"

Kaslan gave a confused grunt. He didn't know any of the words the lady was saying, although he did recognize the name that some of the archaeologists called melekh. Maybe they would know where he was and hopefully wouldn't get too mad that Kaslan had the phone and had just wasted the afternoon sleeping.

Without even pausing to part the flaps of the tent, he tore out into the dimming Egyptian sunlight and towards the sounds of the ground being excavated.

Luckily, the archaeologist who was supervising the excavation was one of the nicer ones. It was a bit frustrating that he didn't have much skill in spoken Arabic, having been born in England, but most of the time he was able to communicate with those who only spoke Arabic.

"Hey!" Kaslan bellowed as he ran up to the archaeologist, his arms pinwheeling in his frenzy, "Call fuh melekh!"

The archaeologist sighed and his brow furrowed in concern. "He's not here."

Kaslan shook the phone in his face. "Fuh melekh!"

"Yugi isn't here." The archaeologist, Buscan, repeated firmly. "And I don't know where he is," he continued as Kaslan, undeterred, tried to force the phone into his hand. "The whole group should have been back by now." He grunted with irritation. "And after that crash – who knows what happened? If I wasn't the only one here, I'd already be there."

There was a faint gasp heard through the phone and Buscan looked down to see a vaguely familiar face. It was when the connection was dropped, that Buscan remembered where he'd seen the face – in a photograph that Mutou put in his tent and described of his girlfriend –

Buscan let out another groan of frustration and panic. Now Mutou's girlfriend was probably going to have a heart attack, and if she called back, he couldn't bring himself to muster up a soothing lie. Where are they?

···

If there was something that Joey hated, it was the smug face that Téa got every time she said, I told you so. It wasn't bad enough that he was wrong, it was that she got such satisfied pleasure from being right. He hated that expression.

But the numb, scared look on her face as the phone lost the connection was a hundred times worse than that.

···

"So," Yugi asked, as he wearily began another round of tapping and shifting stones to see if any of them would budge, "how is the afterlife?"

Yami was perched worriedly in a corner, wishing that he was able to feel things in the land of the living, so that he could help Yugi find the vital weak spot that would free him. Years ago, he might have tried to overpower Yugi's body so as to have hands that could manipulate the environment, but Yugi was no longer his host and it was impossible. Besides, the shock of suddenly being overpowered might cause irreparable damage to his tired mind and dehydrated body. He wanted to do more than talk, but it seemed to be all he could do to ease his friend's burden. "It is…different," he replied, "Very similar to what I can remember from my younger years in Egypt, but the underlying feel seems very different from any place I've been before."

"And your old friends?" Yugi asked with genuine curiosity, although the effect was distinctly muffled by the sheer exhaustion in his tone.

"Very well," Yami smiled at the curiosity, even as his eyes grew worried as Yugi's movements grew increasingly clumsy and sluggish. "Mana asks of you, fondly. You seem to have made quite an impression."

"Eh," Yugi shrugged a shoulder, "it's probably just because I looked like you when you were younger."

Yami shook his head affectionately. Yugi, while not having low self-esteem despite all the negative things that had happened in his childhood, continued to have no clue about how remarkable he was. "I doubt that."

Yugi faltered, much more drastically this time, and Yami shot forward, again inwardly cursing his inability to help. As Yugi steadied himself against the wall, Yami started speaking, in order to keep the dull glaze that had begun to show in Yugi's eyes from spreading. "And of our friends at home?"

"They're fine." Against his better judgment, Yugi slumped against the wall and slid down into a sitting position. "Great, actually. Joey's working with Grandpa, Ryou's enjoying being in England," he yawned, "Tr'stan's f'nally dating Seren'ty…and I was gonna ask," he yawned even more and his eyes were beginning to droop, "gonna ask Téa t'marry me…"

Yami gave a proud but exasperated snort. "At last. It took you long enough, aibou."

It was hard to see the glare through the half-lidded gaze, but Yami managed. Yugi sighed, "It'll take me longer now. I don't see how I'm gonna get out of here." His eyes slid shut. "Maybe it's better I didn't…prob'ly less painful to lose a boyfriend than a fiancée."

Even though it was pointless, Yami attempted to grab Yugi's shoulders to shake him into his senses. "Snap out of it, Yugi!" he barked in his most pharaoh-like manner, "We've been in darker times than this!"

"Dark," Yugi gave a weary chuckle, "Yami…dark." And then suddenly his eyes shot open. "Dark!"

Yami frowned. "Yugi?"

Yugi straightened up, his eyes suddenly alert as they skimmed across the room intently. As the day had worn on, it had been getting darker in the chamber. It wasn't a darkening of his vision or his senses, it was the darkening of the room. That meant –

Yugi jumped up, and Yami leapt forward to keep his friend's unsteady frame, but Yugi's legs steadied themselves as he walked as quickly as he could over to his canteen. He pulled a tuft of fibers from the frayed end of the canteen strap, making sure that the strands weren't stiff. He then began a slow trek around the walls of the room, moving his hand with the fibers meticulously along every groove and crack of the mud bricks. Yami hovered behind him perplexedly, wishing they still had their mindlink so he would know what Yugi was thinking. He had a momentary fear that his hikari had finally cracked in the heat and lack of water, but the fear had been quickly dismissed at the look of determination in his eyes. Yugi was on to something, and he didn't know what.

It probably had only been a few minutes, but it seemed like an eternity before Yugi gave a triumphant shout. Yami rushed over and saw that the fibers were steadily fluttering in his hand. Yugi looked up with a grin. "Got it."

Yami stared at Yugi, and then at the moving fibers. Then it clicked. Only one thing could be making the fibers move like that. "Wind."

Yugi nodded. "Which means not only that the wall is on the outside of the pyramid, but that it's got an opening somewhere." He pushed on the brick. "But it's too hard to remove without help." He began scratching the top of his head in though, the sweaty, tangled locks catching on his fingers. "But how do I let them know where the spot is?"

"We've simply got to use our heads, aibou."

Creasing his eyebrows in thought, Yugi stood still for a moment before he realized what he had to do.. he groaned. This is going to hurt.

···

It had been a long time since Mutou had contacted them, and Tosen could no longer restrain the growing fear and panic. Mutou couldn't have died…he was young, in good shape, and one of the nicest guys he'd ever run across…not him.

Tosen was perfectly aware and fascinated by the fact that the pyramids were tombs for the pharaohs…but the concept of it being a tomb for Yugi was appalling. The mummies were now tight cloth and bone – nothing could hurt or be hurt by them. But if Yugi died, this would not be a pleasant way to go, and he would leave behind so many people that would be hurt by his loss…

The first taps were almost completely swallowed up by the fervent squabbling and conferring behind him, but Tosen heard just enough to jerk him out of his increasingly macabre thoughts. He stared intently at the wall. "Shut up!" He barked, and the rest of the group fell silent at the urgency and volume of his tone. Then they all heard the tapping.

"Found hole in wall. Marked spot. Go outside to see." Tosen translated quickly. He knocked out a reply. On it.

"Let's move!" He barked and, nearly sprinting in his haste, tore out of the room towards the opening of the tomb. What had taken several hours seemed to pass by in breathless, agonizing minutes as the entire expedition rushed out through the tomb and into the bright sunlight. Several paused to catch their breath, but Tosen continued to run around the perimeter of the pyramid, often nearly tripping on the shifting sand.

The adrenaline was beginning to pulse out of his body as Tosen rounded the final corner…and then he stopped. And then began roaring with laughter.

The others began running, worried that the heat and panic had gotten to their leader at last, and made it to where he was standing. The air rang with confused questions and inquiries, but all they got in return was a renewed bout of laughter. And then Tosen pointed.

They looked. And began grinning.

Sticking out of a crack in the side of the pyramid was a tuft of bright, multicolored, and sweat-slicked hair.

"Couldn't miss that hair in a blackout," Tosen huffed through his laughter, "Go get the dynamite!"

A/N: Bet you expected a cliffhanger here, didn't you? I didn't here for two reasons: (1) I haven't updated in so long, and you don't deserve to be kept hanging too much longer. (2) I wanted to feel clever by my solution, and wanted to feel like no one would have guessed it. If you did, though, that's fine! Let me know! :)

Next chapter is the last chapter!

Thanks for reading and please review! They make me happy! :)