Thrice Be Damned

Yugi had been shot three times in his life.

---

The first time had been on the first day of class at the dueling academy.

He had been introducing the excited students to basic deck building strategies in a fairly small auditorium when someone knocked on the door.

Quickly taking a head count, the young man found no missing students from the expected roster. There might have been some students added at the last minute, so the door was opened anyway in curiosity.

A woman stood there. Her eyes were cast to the ground and she had a white-knuckled grip on her small purse.

His eyes softened when he saw how anxious she looked, so after asking his class to entertain themselves quietly for a few moments, he stepped outside.

It turned out that the woman was in fact part of a small terrorist organization. He had been one of the targets, as he was indelibly connected to Kaiba Corporation and was an influential person in his own right. She had slipped in through an open window in one the bathrooms not far from his class.

Of course, Kaiba was paranoid enough to install sensors on the windows in cases of delinquency, and a silent alarm had been triggered. The CEO was personally coming with a small detachment of security guards for the first breach of the day, but in the mere moments it had taken from him greeting the woman and Kaiba storming around the corner, the small pistol had already been taken out of the woman's purse and fired.

There was no silencer on the end, and the wet thunk of a bullet piercing flesh was deafening.

A surprised cry escaped him as he clutched his stomach, blood pouring around his hand and soaking both him and the floor. He sunk to his knees and gasped for breath, vision going white as he struggled to comprehend the blinding, acute pain.

Infinite moments later, life lurched back and sounds filtered into his ear. Shouting, the sound of a body hitting the floor, the panicked screams of both children and teachers.

Someone was carrying him, causing him to whimper in pain before darkness stole him from consciousness.

He was in the hospital for two weeks in a comatose state. Luckily for him, the bullet was small and had only made a small puncture hole in his stomach and exited through one of his ribs - narrowly avoiding any damage to his lung.

The doctors operated on him for most of that day and the following night, working frantically to stitch up his stomach and clean off the contents of his stomach that had leaked into the body cavity. He had only lost a moderate amount of blood during the entire ordeal, and that aspect was not much of a worry.

Anzu had fainted when she saw him in the post-op room, abdomen covered in gauze and wrappings, various IV, breathing, and monitoring systems in a confusing tangle around his body. The twenty-some odd centimeters he had gained since high school was negated here, dwarfed by all of the equipment and "get well soon" paraphernalia on the nightstand.

Kaiba visited every day, stubbornly keeping him updated on the substitute teacher who had to keep calming crying children and various other events, to the investigation and trial of his shooter.

At one point during his brief stay, a woman came to visit him. Because of the circumstances of his hospitalization, security was tight and the woman was extensively interviewed and checked for weapons before she was even let into the corridor of his room. It turned out that she was dating him - a fact that surprised everyone, as they knew how secretive he could be about his life.

It was only a few days after the woman started visiting (she managed to find his hand in the tangle of life-support, and grasped it gently the entire time she visited as she talked to him), when he started crying.

Neither his vitals nor his expression changed, much to the astonishment of the nurses, but a steady stream of tears coursed down his cheeks regardless. The woman continued to hold his hand and talk to him, keeping her voice calm and wiping his face with a tissue during the entire twenty minute ordeal.

A scant day after that, he awoke from his coma. Anzu was visiting at the time, and was just leaving, when she heard the heart monitor pick up from its previous slow rate. She hurried back to his bedside, and had to lean down to catch the whisper that she now recognized as the name of his girlfriend.

After a flurry of activity searching for and calling the appropriate number, the woman arrived in less than ten minutes. It took another few minutes of direction to retrieve the small black box from his pants on one of the spare chairs and place it in his hand, where he struggled to sit up.

It turned out that the day of the shooting was when he was planning on proposing to her, since they had been dating for nearly a year. After the woman, now fiancée, tearily agreed, she navigated the expanse of wires and enveloped him a gentle hug.

Anzu had stood by the door, smiling at the laughing couple before turning to leave. The rest of their friends needed to be alerted of the good news.

---

The second time was by accident.

It was only a few years after the first incident, and was out with his friends at Burger World during one of the rare occasions that they all found the time to be together.

A few young teenagers were playing around across the street at the park with some play guns. Unfortunately, one of them had made the mistake of bringing a real one.

Now, ever since the shooting, his friends were warier and had safely sequestered him between Honda and Otogi, keeping him firmly out of view from the window and the entrance.

He had joked one time that they were his personal entourage of bodyguards, and they had laughed while throwing glances at each other in reassurance. As far as they were concerned, he was the most important person in their group of friends, and a few extra moments of making sure he was safe were a nonissue.

However, for all their unconscious maneuvering in an effort to protect the wild-haired young man, they could never predict coincidence. He had reached out to grab some more fries from Jounouchi's plate when the bullet from the child's ill-attained gun smashed through the window.

If his arm had extended only a few moments later, then all that would have happened would be a violent scare and some ruined food.

As it were, the bullet tore its way across his bicep before making a rather anticlimactic end buried in the floor by an empty table.

There was a moment of shocked silence before he yanked his arm back close to his chest with a cry and pressed his hand to the bleeding gash. After that, everyone snapped into action. Otogi yelled for a first aid kit while Honda took over attempting to stop the bleeding with a handful of hastily-gathered napkins. Anzu called the police, and Jounouchi went over to make sure the group of boys didn't run away in fear, a disturbingly calm expression on his face.

Luckily, it turned out to be only a graze, and nothing major was hit. The teenager responsible for hurting him was fined and sentenced for three years in jail, but he had shown up and - surprising the prosecutor - cut the sentence down to only two weeks and five months of community service, as well as taking a class in firearm education.

That night, his wife said amusedly that now nobody would mess with him because he looked too intimidating with a scar on his arm. He only shook his head in amusement and kissed her goodnight before turning off the nightstand light.

---

The third time was decades later.

He and Jounouchi were at the bank so that they could cash the latest cheque from Kaiba Corp over a promotional appearance when they were teenagers. The two were joking that, with all the money they made from reruns of their duels sixty years ago, they should have retired ages ago.

As they shuffled forward in line, they chatted about various subjects as it caught their attention. Amusing stories of their respective grandchildren were being swapped when they noticed the young man in front of them fidget nervously and reach into his jacket. Alarm bells were just going off in their minds when the man took out a rifle and shouted that no one was to move or risk getting shot.

Everyone was made to sit down where they were, but they refused to do as he demanded.

The man was bewildered that two old men were standing there glaring at them with fire in their eyes, alternately ordering him to set the gun down or asking why he was doing such a heinous act.

When the man decided to point the rifle at a shaking mother and her child, he had moved in front of them, too quickly for either the robber or Jounouchi to react. The man became flustered, and demanded that he quiet down and let him rob the place.

He had refused. If anyone was going to be shot, he would have no hesitations taking their place.

This unnerved the robber, not only because of the words but also the quiet determination in which he stated it.

In this stand-off, the atmosphere in the bank was tense, quiet. A steadily growing blare of police alarms was heard, and it had seemed to signal action.

The deafening silence was broken with a gunshot. He stayed standing for a few seconds, not registering the bullet that had dug itself into his chest.

Each moment seemed excruciatingly slow as he collapsed on the floor, a disbelieving hush having fallen as everyone watched in a detached manner. Time returned in a rush as Jounouchi shoved the robber aside to reach him, disregarding the complaints of his arthritic joints as he fell into a kneel and gathered him up into his arms.

Because of the proximity and the caliber of the bullet, a sizeable hole was blown into his right lung, shattering a few ribs at its entrance and exit. Jounouchi had yelled for a jacket, and several had been donated and bunched up to staunch the bleeding and provide some comfort from the cold marble flooring.

He had passed in and out of consciousness for a few minutes, only coming back because of his friend's frantic pleads to stay alive. Despite all of the attempts, he could feel himself fading away from the blood loss.

Jounouchi had seen him smile gently, and whisper the name of their friend - the one that had left them when they were all but gangly and unsure teenagers. His best friend of almost seventy years paled in understanding, but nodded anyway, giving him a tight hug.

He was dead by the time Jounouchi let go.