A/N: Written for the GX bingo - the non-flash version, #136 - Trueman/O'brien/Juudai. And this prompt has been the bane of everyone who's gotten it, just so you're warned. XD

O'brien's Faces

Any of his friends would have sent him rushing out to meet them. He was sure of it, almost sure of it, and yet -

'I'm glad you've come.'

There's something odd in the tone. Something odd in the eyes as well, but a different kind of odd. The "something's wrong with O'brien" or "this might not even be O'brien" sort of wrong. The tone, however, was more decripitating. As though Juudai could have even thought of abandoning his friends.

Which he had, but not like this. And he'd learnt from his deaf ears, his blind eyes. He'd learnt, and he'd paid a hefty price for his lesson as well.

So of course he came. If it had been someone else who had called him so frantically - even one of those classmates he barely knew, and there were a good number of those in a school as big as Duel Academia - he would have come.

And he said as much. 'Of course I came. You needed -'

He broke off. That wrong-looking face stretched into a smile that looked equally wrong. And it wasn't that he'd never seen O'brien smile. He had. In nightmares maybe, but he'd seen that true smile - that smile of accomplishment and relief - when he brought Haou to his knees.

The smile in front of him, though, was almost predatory.

Especially when he took a careful, measured, step forward. 'Yes,' he whispered. 'We are glad you came.'

Juudai frowned. 'We?' They were alone in the street - another oddity, because it was Domino City, the centre of Duel Monsters itself. Site of Kaiba Corp headquarters. Site of Kaibaland Amusement Part. Site of Kaibadome. And, of course, site of Kame Game: the gameshop owned by Mutou Sugurou and where the king of games himself had grown up. A place like that pretty much never slept. And yet it was definitely sleeping now. Sleeping or dead. 'Where is everyone, anyway?'

'We're right here.'

And he called Yubel's powers to him before turning, because that voice was also O'brien's - the same as the O'brien's before him. And the words echoed: to his left, to his right, in shops, from around corners. And yet none of them were the real O'brien. He didn't even need to see their true faces with Yubel's dichromatic eyes to know who they really were. 'Trueman,' he hissed. 'Where's O'brien?'

'We're right here,' the dopplegangers replied, coming closer and not slowing their pace, even when they seemed to overlay each other, and their surrounds. As though they existed on an entirely separate plane - and they did. He'd seen Trueman walk through folds in space and it was the same thing. Except these O'brien dopplegangers seemed to appear from the streets, their little tears in space hidden by corners and twisting roads.

'We should get out of here,' said Yubel's voice, echoing in his mind. 'This is getting dangerous.'

Juudai gritted his teeth and scanned them all. All O'brien, wearing that skin, their clothes, and yet not. All Trueman.

Where was the real O'brien? He had to escape this lot, and find him as well. Assuming he was still in the city. Assuming he was still in this world.

And everyone else. Where were they? The friends he'd made on his field trip. An entire city's worth of people to fill in this ghost town. He ran. He ducked. He dodged. He backed away from those dopplegangers wearing a friend's face and attempting to tarnish that very memory - but he knew O'brien, and O'brien was a soldier, not a hunter and that was a fine enough distinction, even if he wasn't essentially as close a friend as one got.

'Juudai!' The voices called to him. 'Juudai! You wound us!'

He closed his eyes, breathed, and opened them as Yubel's again. Trueman, shivering in the effort to maintain that illusion still. As though he'd crack. As though he'd allow himself to think of such fakes as his true friend. Their words were hollow too, hollow gaping mouths attempting to swallow him hole...

'Juudai!'

And that was true: crisp and sharp and belonging to someone he hadn't expected to see in Domino City, but with the help of Yubel's eyes he knew it was real. Unlike the illusions that reached for him, hammering on the dark walls as he tried to put a face to that last voice, and a name.

Because O'brien's face, and Trueman's, had been drowning him.