Chapter One (Hell)
Hello. My name is Ryou Bakura. I am a student at Domino High School. And I am about to die.
You see, right now, I'm falling at a very alarming rate. I have just fallen from the top of a very high overpass. I'm guessing that I have about five seconds before I get to say a painful hello to the hard ground.
How can I be so calm about all of this? Well, truth be told, I'm not. I am screaming like an exceptional coward. Jounouchi might be screaming, too. I can't tell. It's difficult to hear anything over my own screams and the sound of the wind in my ears. I wonder if it will hurt too badly to die. Oh, look. The ground is a lot closer already. I think I might only have four seconds left now.
I suppose I should back up a bit and explain how I got into this distressing situation. Even before I ended up in this predicament, I was not having a pleasant day. That's nothing out of the ordinary for me. When you spend most of your days with a murderous spirit whispering in the back of your head and regularly taking over your consciousness, you're bound to have a few bad days here and there. It's just that this day has been exceptionally unpleasant.
First, I slept through my alarm. By the time I woke up I was so late I had to choose between taking a shower or eating breakfast before making a mad dash to school. I chose to take a shower and discovered a raggedy line of thin scratches on my leg that I was absolutely positive had not been there when I went to sleep the night before. I couldn't tell whether they were cat scratches or whether they had come from some sort of prickly bush. It didn't matter. Either way, it was an almost sure-fire indication that the above-mentioned murderous spirit had decided to take my body for a joyride sometime during the night. (Not that sort of joyride. I may not have the power to read minds, but I'm fairly certain I can guess what you were thinking. Do be considerate enough to keep your mind out of the gutter, please.)
As I buttoned my school uniform over the unwieldy Ring that housed the spirit, I briefly considered turning on the television to check and see if he had done anything too serious. Then I decided not to waste the time. There was no blood under my fingernails, and I decided that was evidence enough he had not killed anything or anybody. I did not even consider taking the Ring off. I'd already learned that no matter how many times I tried to get rid of the foul thing, it always managed to reappear around my neck anyways.
I threw all of my school things into my bag and started my sprint towards school. This may or may not come as a surprise to you, but I can run fast when the occasion calls for it. I can even outrun some of the track team's sprinters if I need to, but nobody would ever dream of asking me to join the team because I am also an astonishing klutz. I can count the number of days I've managed to avoid slipping, tripping, or generally causing myself stupid, unnecessary harm on one hand. So when my shoelace broke, it was only natural that I tripped over it.
Luckily, I managed to avoid tearing any holes in my school uniform. Unluckily, I didn't manage to avoid scraping the skin off my palms. I ended up taking a detour to the bathroom to wash the dirt out of the wounds once I reached school, which ended up making me late anyways.
Even though I tried to sneak into the classroom as quietly as possible, the teacher noticed and she was not happy. I hunched my shoulders against her scolding and offered a meek apology before slinking to my seat.
A few people giggled at my torment as I walked past them. Then I looked down and realized that what they were giggling about was a bit of toilet paper that was stuck to my shoe. I made it to my desk and pulled the tissue off my shoe. Then I wondered what on earth to do with it now that I was already in my seat. The teacher was in the middle of reading the announcements for the day and I knew that she would be angry if I disturbed the class again, even if it was just to throw away some toilet tissue. I decided not to risk the teacher's wrath and shoved it into my desk.
From a desk a few rows to the right, Anzu Mazaki was looking at me with concerned eyes. I had a feeling that all of my other friends were doing the same. They all knew what it usually meant when I arrived to school late. I offered her a small smile to let her know that I was all right, and that I was reasonably sure the spirit hadn't done anything too damaging.
We had a history test which I had not studied for as soon as the teacher finished reading the bulletin. I didn't even remember hearing about the test at all. As I wrote my name at the top of the answer sheet, I wondered whether the spirit had something to do with that.
Even though I didn't study for it, the test was fairly easy. The only person who finished it quicker than me was Seto Kaiba. I know this because as soon as he was finished with it, he took out his laptop and started typing on it, probably to check up on his company's stocks. The clicking was so conspicuous in the otherwise silent room it was impossible to tune it out. I shook my head and thought, Only Seto Kaiba. If it had been any other student that laptop would have been confiscated before it had even made it past its startup cycle.
My stomach started grumbling against my decision to skip breakfast when we reached the tail-end of the class. It was so loud it was impossible to miss, even with the constant click of Kaiba's keyboard. I could feel people glancing up from their test pages to look at me and heard a couple of giggles from the same kids who had laughed at the toilet paper on my shoe. A girl sitting behind me jabbed me in the back to get my attention and slipped a package of crackers to me under her desk. I took the package and put it in my desk next to the wad of toilet paper, absolutely mortified.
By the time lunch came around I was so hungry I could barely concentrate on anything else. When I reached the cafeteria, I realized that I had managed to forget to bring any lunch money with me. My friends all gave me pitying looks as I munched away at the pathetically small bag of crackers the girl had given me in history class.
"Do you want to share my lunch?" Anzu asked.
I considered for a moment before giving an answer. Anzu Mazaki is a strong-willed but kind girl, and a wonderful friend. However, she also has a well-deserved reputation for being a terrible cook, and it looked as though she had brought her lunch with her instead of buying one from the school. I finally decided it was better to chance the girl's dicey cooking skills than to suffer through the rest of the day.
As I took the first bite, I thanked my lucky stars that she had decided to make rice balls. It's almost impossible to ruin rice balls. I didn't detect anything that tasted dangerous, but I still refused when she offered me another because I felt bad for taking away her food. Even though I tried to make it clear that I didn't want to take anybody else's food, I somehow ended up with an apple from Yugi and a handful of French fries from Jounouchi and Honda. I resolved to bake them all a batch of cookies later that night to make up for it.
As I nibbled at the last of the French fries, Jounouchi said, "Hey, Bakura, are we still on for tutoring today?"
"Oh; it's Friday, isn't it?" I answered. I had offered to tutor Jounouchi less than two weeks before when he'd been threatened with being held back a year if his test scores did not show dramatic improvement. I was embarrassed to realize that up until that moment I had completely forgotten not only about the tutoring appointment, but also what day it was.
"Yeah; we're still cool, right?"
"Yes, of course."
He grinned. "Thanks, man."
"So, Jounouchi, you going to beat Yugi on the next test?" Honda asked.
"Who knows? Maybe I will!"
"I don't know Jounouchi," Anzu laughed. "Yugi studied with me all last week. I wouldn't be surprised if he got one of the top five highest scores!"
"Well I don't know about that," Yugi murmured.
"Sure you will, Yug," Jounouchi answered. "You'll be number four or five, and I'll be number three!"
Honda raised an eyebrow. "Three? Why three?"
"Because nobody ever beats moneybags Kaiba and Bakura here is always number two. Ain't that right, Bakura?"
"It's not that big of a deal, really," I said.
"Aw, don't be modest, man! You're like some kind of genius or something."
I shrugged, staring wistfully at the empty bag of crackers and the apple core on the table in front of me. In spite of my friends' generous donations, I wasn't anywhere near feeling full and I spent most of the rest of the lunch period trying not to think about how hungry I was.
I'd like to say that the second half of the school day went better than the first, but I prefer not to lie if I can help it. It's not that I'm a bad liar—quite the opposite, really. Ever since the spirit came along, I've gotten so good at it I scare myself. ("Are you feeling all right, Bakura?" Smash the puzzle and throttle him with that ridiculous chain he keeps it on, landlord. It'll be fun. "Oh, I'm fine, Yugi. I'm just a bit tired. I was up late—"because I discovered a blood-encrusted Millennium Eye under my pillow last night and I have absolutely no idea how it got there but I'm sure I could make a very good guess "—working on the essay that's due tomorrow." And so on.)
It was the last class of the day. The sun was out in full force and it was so warm it was hard to believe that it was only April. Some of the other students in the class had folded their old pages of notes into fans for a bit of relief from the sweltering heat. Between the heat and the lack of rest my body had received the night before, I found myself having a hard time keeping my eyes open.
I didn't realize I was dreaming until I heard Amane's voice singing the national anthem. She'd learned it in her music class earlier that day and she was so excited to show our mother she'd started singing as soon as we'd gotten into the car.
She was almost halfway through when she stopped to poke my arm and say, "Come on, big brother, sing it with me. You learned it last year, didn't you?"
Truth be told, I would have preferred to listen rather than sing. Even at eight years old, I knew that she was a much better singer than I was. There was something in her voice that drew you to it and made you want to listen. No matter how much I tried to imitate that quality, all I was able to produce was a childish whine that didn't seem to suit something as solemn as the national anthem. The look on her face—lip jutted out on the edge of a pout—prompted me to open my mouth and stumble through it anyways.
The car stopped at a red light as we reached the end of the song, she singing the final notes with confident energy and me barely mumbling them out at all. Our mother didn't turn around, but I could see her looking back at us in the rearview mirror with smiling eyes. "That was great, kids," she said.
A tight coil of fear began to gnaw at the pit of my stomach. I knew what was coming next, although I never understood why. It hadn't happened this way in real life. We'd been much older in real life. I'd been studying for my high school entrance exams, and she'd established herself as the best soprano in the middle school choir. More importantly, I hadn't been there when it happened. The dream never seemed to take any of this into consideration.
Beside me, Amane giggled and clapped her hands at the compliment. "Let's sing it again! And sing louder this time, like I do."
I wanted to tell them both to get out of the car right now, but when I opened my mouth all that came out was the first line of the national anthem. The light turned green while I struggled to choke out a warning around the melody that was pouring from my lips. The car started forward.
Then—WHAM! The force of the semi truck was enough to send our minivan careening into a drunken spin on two wheels. I caught a fleeting glimpse of the area it had hit as we flew through the air—a twisted mess of metal and broken glass where the driver's seat used to be.
There was a horrible noise which might have been the scream of twisting metal. Or maybe it was Amane who was screaming. Amane! I tried to turn my head to look at her, but the impact had snapped my head around to look in the opposite direction—Out the window, I thought; It's always out the window—and my neck didn't seem to want to turn that way. Instead I had an excellent view of the car that was about to smash into my side of the van.
The driver was a middle-aged lady who probably had a child or two of her own. She looked like the sort of woman who knew how to bake cookies without looking at a recipe and always remembered to cut the crusts off a kid's sandwiches. At least, that's how I imagine she would have looked if her face wasn't contorted into a look of outright terror.
The lady was frantically twisting the wheel in a desperate effort to avoid the pile of wreckage that used to be our car, but it was too little too late. I had a glimpse of the car's headlights looming into the window like a pair of glowing monster's eyes. Then there was a deafening crunch of metal on metal and I was being tossed around like a rag doll and I was sure Amane was screaming again—or was it me now?—and a sickening lurch told me that we were flipping, even though I couldn't see it because there was blood in my eyes and I was going to be sick; I was going to be sick; I was—
I woke up with a shriek that ensured all of my classmates saw me tumble out of my seat. I laid there in a disoriented heap with my heart racing and the crunch of metal still ringing in my ears. The voice of our teacher floated to my ears over the muffled laughter of my classmates and the not-so-muffled laughter of the spirit in the back of my head: "If you're going to react that poorly whenever I announce a test, I'll be sure to give you a warning next time, Bakura."
Between the continued cackling of the spirit and my own embarrassment, it was difficult to think of the proper thing to say in my predicament. I mumbled something I hoped was a passable apology to the teacher and got back into my seat.
The teacher seemed to be satisfied by my dazed apology, but I could feel my classmates' eyes on my back long after she went back to her lecture. I wished then that I sat at one of the desks in the back of the room. At least then they couldn't have stared at me without attracting the teacher's attention. Sitting at the front of the class, the only defense I had against their staring was to slouch in my seat and try to make myself as uninteresting as possible.
All I wanted to do by the time the final bell rang was sneak out of the room before anybody—friend or bully—said anything to me about the incident. But of course, that wasn't an option with Jounouchi's tutoring session to attend to, so I packed my things into my bag and crossed the crowded room to his desk with as much dignity as I could muster.
Yugi, Anzu, and Honda were already gathered around his desk, discussing plans to meet at the Game Shop later that afternoon. They invited me to join them. I politely refused. Despite my in-class nap, I was still worn out from whatever the spirit had made me do the night before and I didn't feel up to a whole afternoon of worrying that the spirit would decide that today was the day he would execute whatever horrible plan he'd been cooking up in the months after Duelist Kingdom. They didn't ask about the dream, although I could tell they wanted to. I was grateful. Instead we all parted ways with cheerful goodbyes—Anzu to her dance class, Yugi to the Game Shop, Honda to a meeting of the school beautification committee, and Jounouchi and me off to our tutoring session.
Neither of us gave the school library a second glance as we left the building. It had taken only one tutoring session for me to discover that being surrounded by that much book paste seemed to have a narcotic effect on Jounouchi. (He had managed to fall asleep before I'd even finished taking my books out of my bag.)
That was enough to convince both of us to find a different place to study. Since both of our homes were out of the question—his because his home life was a touchy subject, mine because God knows what the spirit would do to one of Yugi's friends in the privacy of my apartment—we decided on a nearby fast food restaurant. It was a popular place for students to gather after school, and the constant chatter was enough to ensure that Jounouchi would at least stay awake.
The fast food restaurant is only about a ten minute walk from our school campus if you stick to the main roads, but if you cut down a small side road you can avoid most of the crosswalks and get there in half the time. It's a narrow street that gets very little traffic and most of the scattered shops along it were shut down years ago. There were rumors that thugs liked to hang around that area because it was so deserted. Still, it was a popular shortcut with the students at our school, so I didn't even think twice before going that way once we were off school grounds.
We were crossing an overpass that marked the halfway point when there was a shout behind us: "Hey, you! Jounouchi!"
Jounouchi sucked a sharp breath of air in through his teeth with a quiet hiss but didn't turn around. Instead, he started walking just a little quicker, keeping his attention on the road ahead.
I followed his lead, keeping my eyes ahead and matching my pace to his. I hadn't been told much about what Jounouchi's life had been like before he met Yugi, but it was enough for me to know better than to question his motives for ignoring the person behind us.
A second voice yelled, "Hey, where're your manners? We're talking to you, Jounouchi!"
Jounouchi sped his pace from a fast walk to a trot. I had to jog to keep up with him.
"Hmph. I guess the rumors are true then," the first voice sniffed. "Jounouchi's gone soft."
"Yeah," snorted voice number two. "Look at him going off on a date with his boyfriend!"
Jounouchi came to a dead halt at the remark. He had stiffened out of his usual slouch into something dangerous. His hands were balled into fists and his jaw was clenched so tight I could see the sinews in his neck stand out.
I was no happier with the insult than he was. My less than rugged features have made me the target of more than a couple of bullies, and that particular subject seemed to be an especially popular one. Still, I didn't want this to devolve into a physical fight, more for the thugs' sake than for ours. I didn't want to think about what the spirit would do to them if they managed to damage the body he possessed. "It's fine," I muttered. "Come on; let's go."
He gave me a sharp nod and we kept moving, neither of us looking back. Then, from right behind us, voice number one said, "What's the matter, Jounouchi? This little pansy got you whipped?"
There was a yank on my hair that snapped my head back and made me stumble back a step. It was painful, but the clipped yelp that jumped from my mouth was more from surprise than pain.
"Ha!" barked voice number two. "Even squeals like a girl. What a fag!"
I think that's where things passed the point of no return.
My eyes were still watering with the unexpected pain when Jounouchi yelled, "Hey; get off him, you son of a bitch! You got a problem with me you leave my friend out of it, ya hear?"
"Aw, ain't that sweet? He's defending his little bitch. How cute."
A hard shove from behind knocked me face first into the ground. I heard Jounouchi shout something at the guy who had pushed me. Then there was a meaty smack, a grunt, shuffling feet….
I already knew what I was going to see when I sat up, but it didn't take away any of the shock. There were two guys. They were both wearing uniforms from a different high school, but they looked too old to be normal students. And they were big—both of them over six feet tall and built with thick, bullish muscle. Jounouchi was dodging most of their punches and taking advantage of any opening they left to throw in a few of his own. But there were two of them and one of him, and I could tell that even though he was a good fighter, he was at a disadvantage.
I didn't stop to think about what I was going to do when I got to my feet. I never considered the fact that one of those brutes probably weighed about twice as much as me, or that the only experience I had with fighting like this was limited to the occasional button-mashing video game. One second I was on the ground. The next second I was grabbing one of the thugs' arms to prevent him from smashing his fist into Jounouchi's face.
It worked—Jounouchi ducked out of the way in time, and even managed to hit the guy hard enough to get him to stagger back—but before he could get away, the other thug grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and landed a hit to his jaw from behind. That was all I saw before the guy I'd grabbed recovered enough to turn around and pound a fist into my chest.
It was a sloppy punch, and didn't hurt as much as it would have if I'd have taken it in the gut, but he was strong, and the force behind the hit sent me stumbling into the railing that bordered the edge of the overpass. I hit the old metal hard—and then there was nothing there to support me and I kept tipping back into empty space.
I flailed my arms to catch my balance, to grab onto another piece of the railing, to do anything to stop myself from falling. Jounouchi yelled my name, and I don't know how he managed to get away from the two thugs, but he was running towards me. He made a wild dive with his arms stretched in front of him to cover the last few feet between us. Our fingertips brushed, and then there was a terrible instant where I looked into his eyes and we both realized that it wasn't enough because even by the time he made another desperate grab, I was already too far away and freefalling.
I saw his lips moving as I tumbled out of reach, and I'm pretty sure he was screaming my name. I couldn't hear him—I was busy screaming myself.
And now here I am with only three seconds left before I hit the ground. I can't see Jounouchi anymore. I wonder if the thugs are still beating him up. I hear screaming, but I don't know if it's me or Jounouchi or the spirit.
Two seconds.
This is going to hurt so much I don't think I can—
…
…
…
Dark. It was dark. Warm. Am I dead yet?
There was a voice:
"Ryou. Ryou?"
"Ngh…." It was a vaguely familiar voice. I knew it. Why did I know that voice?
"Wake up, Ryou."
"Tired…." It was a woman's voice. Anzu?
"Come on, honey, you're going to be late for school."
"Mmm…." Not Anzu…too mature for Anzu. That blonde-haired woman from Duelist Kingdom, then?
"Amane's already left."
Amane…AMANE?
My eyes snapped open. I was in a bed—not a sterile, white hospital bed, but a real, soft bed with a green comforter and matching sheets. The room—a bedroom, I realized; MY bedroom—was filled with morning sunlight even though the curtains were closed. And hovering over me was a woman I had never expected to see ever again.
She was looking at me with a mix of irritation and concern in her soft brown eyes. "You slept through your alarm. How late were you up last night?" she said.
For several seconds, all I could do was stare with my mouth gopping open. The edges of her mouth pulled into a frown. She looked as though she was about to say something else, but then I finally managed to stammer out the only word that was screaming through my head: "M—MOTHER?"
Author's Notes: This is my first Yu-gi-oh! story in a long time, and my first to center on Bakura. Hope it's not too awful. Let me know what you think, and expect the next part to be up in a couple of days.