The Others: The First Year

Disclaimer: Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Systems, TV Tokyo and 4Kids Entertainment. All names were changed to the characters of this fandom in order to protect the real people involved in the following incidents.

Chapter 1: I Can Talk To Dead People

I don't know what made you decide to click on the little blue link that led you to this page. Morbid curiosity, or maybe a distinct lack of self-preservation. Either way, I believe that you should be warned ahead of time.

If you're reading this hoping for an explanation about all the weird things that have been happening lately, then I have one piece of advice for you: hit the back button now. Turn off your computer, go outside, and believe whatever bullshit story the media is feeding you today. Live a Normal life.

If you are a Normal reading this because you're incredibly bored…well, I have to say that I'm a bit jealous of you. You'll probably ignore this warning and go about your life, believing that all of this is a plot line that somebody made up in their head. That this is fiction. As in not real.

That there are no such things as Others.

Being an Other sounds cool when you first hear about it. It will probably be after you take sort of standardized test that is given to all high school students in your country. You're a teenager with your whole life ahead of you, and you get chosen to learn something that your classmates wouldn't come up with in their wildest dreams. It's an explanation for all the freaky things that have been happening in your life, and for once, it actually makes sense.

But the world of the Others has broken people, driven them insane. It can curse you, bind you in darkness, and then leave you alone to rot. It can be the worst thing that ever happens to you and the most amazing thing in the world at the same time.

Trust me, I know.

It's almost like an addiction. You know that it's dangerous as hell, but the power you wield…the things you can do…You keep coming back for more because being a Normal is so boring in comparison.

But I digress. I've gotten completely off topic.

So this is your last chance. Back out now, remain ignorant of the truth, live as a Normal. Or you can read on. I mean, it's a pretty good story, if you want to look at it like that.

But seriously, hit the back button. It's for the best.

…

…

Still here?

Oh, well. Can't say I didn't warn you.

High school was supposed to be the best four years of your life. It was the place that defined you, that brought out your best qualities and showed you the path that you wanted to take for the rest of your life. It was a coming of age tale filled with love, rebellion, and friendships that last a lifetime.

Obviously, Domino High never got the message.

Seriously, it was like I was stuck in a teen movie, only I was one of those overworked and underpaid extras that got about three and a half seconds of screen time.

So instead of a coming of age tale, my high school experience was plagued with alienation, teen angst, occasional moments of nudity, and watching my sister drag herself home from all-night parties.

Yeah.

You could say that my life sucked a bit.

Since we're on the topic of comparing things to films, I might as well drag out the old bucket of stereotypes.

So, you have your jock. The popular muscle-bound thug with enough brains to fill about half a soda can. If you were lucky. At Domino, his name was Joey Wheeler. He was our star football player.

And by football, I meant American football. Not European football, which they call soccer here. I kind of missed calling it football. I didn't really get what was so great about sports. Wheeler was most likely going to go profession once he hit college, break his knee, and then never play again. No more money and fame for him.

Then, you had the school princess/head cheerleader/alpha female/I-can-make-your-life-a-living-hell-with-the-right-words-in-the-right-place girl. Enter Tea Gardner. And while I admit she could be pretty tidy at times, she is a real bitch. The corridors was her personal catwalk. Girls wanted to be her girlfriend. Boys wanted to be her boyfriend. But she didn't have any time for them. She never seemed to be in a hurry, because nothing in the universe would ever dare upset her, lest they face her wrath.

Tristan Taylor was our resident wannabe. He was an average kid from an average background that Wheeler picked up along the way and didn't let go of. He clung to Wheeler, because that was where he got his power and authority. Without him, Taylor would be lost in the chaotic world that was high school. It was kind of sad, really.

Duke Devlin was the hunk, the laddish that had half the school wrapped around his finger. He had a different girl hanging off his arm whenever I saw him. He seemed to have the notion stuck in his head that the world revolved around him and everyone else lived to serve him. A true narcissist, that one was.

Miho Nosaka was the smart Asian girl that was top of the class in everything - and I mean everything. I swore that this girl was averaging over ninety five percent over all. The problem was that she barely spoke a word of English after immigrating from Japan last year. Seriously, getting his girl to string a few words together was almost impossible.

Serenity Wheeler was Wheeler's girl next door younger sister, the average female with looks that aren't particularly striking but not horrendously ugly either. She wasn't much of anything, for that matter. Not smart, not stupid, not rich, not poor. Not outspoken or shy. She was just boring, in my opinion.

And finally, you have my sister.

I struggled to come up with a stereotype for Amane. At school she was the party animal; the must-have person at almost every off-campus, semi-illegal drinking event planned by anyone who was anyone in our school. At home she was the perfect daughter. She helped with the chores, did her homework, and helped little old ladies cross the street.

I didn't know how anybody could keep up that kind of double life. I had enough trouble with just one.

But, of course, what mind-numbing high school drama was complete without the loser. The outcast that was shunned by the entire student body because their existence was just so wrong. The guy that you spread rumours about ("I hear he fucks dead bodies" is a favourite) until he snapped and punched somebody in the face.

The kid you knocked out during your third wee and tie to a pole starkers just for the hell of it.

I was that guy.

My name is Ryou Bakura, but don't call me Ryou. If you call me by my first name and you're dead. Only my family called me Ryou, and that was when they decided to acknowledge my existence at all. Which was, like, twice a year. Maybe.

I was born in Cardith, Wales to Andrew and Natsuki Bakura. I was seventeen years old and 'suffering' from albinism. That meant that I burnt really easily, couldn't stand bright lights, and had no pigmentation in my hair, eyes, or skin. At least, that was what Wikipedia said; I had never gotten official diagnosed. And even though I was her twin brother, Amane received none of my problems.

We moved to America three years ago because my mother got a job working as a secretary for some bloke in a big company. Now we lived in Domino City, located in the great state of New York. The divine effect that the high rise buildings create wore off after about five days.

So I was the freak. The loser. The outcast in this story. The kid that got their clothes dumped in the toilet after gym class and slammed into lockers. I didn't take their shite, though. After all, violence didn't have to be obvious and out in the open. It can be cold, slow and sneaky. And sometimes…sometimes if I just wanted it enough…

…oh…

…I didn't…

…

I wondered there was something wrong with me. Aside from the obvious, of course. It was just…

I ran away once, when I was eleven and still living in the UK. I was gone for about a week before I ran out of money. I was so hungry and cold and scared and I just wanted to go home even though my parents had forgotten my birthday for the second year in a row in favour of my sister's and –

I woke up in my bed the next morning. My parents hadn't even realized I was gone.

And shortly after I moved here, I got mugged in an alley. Hey, it was six against one. I probably could have taken two of them, but I was outnumbered and I was a weedy little teenager. At some point I just lashed out and then the next thing I knew they were all lying on the ground, screaming about demons and monsters.

I heard that they were all locked up in an asylum somewhere now. I didn't know what I did, but I knew it was my fault.

And…well, there was this other thing I could do. And it was constant, so I knew that it wasn't just my imagination. I can…I…

I can talk to dead people.

It was true. I could see them as clearly as I saw this crude imitation of food that the cafeteria gives out. There was a cemetery about a block away from school, so I usually went there during lunch or if I was skiving. There were lots of old people, a couple of families, and a four year old girl named Rebecca in the back. She died in a car accident the year before I came here and she said I was her hero.

It figured that the only friends I would have only make me seem barmy if I ever mentioned them in public.

I didn't know if it was all in my head or if it was real but…when Rebecca told me that, for the first time in my life I actually felt proud of being me.

I hope that I wasn't mad. I didn't know if I could handle being mad on top of being the freak. I wished that someone would tell me what was going on with me, that it's all some delusion or something puberty decided to throw at me.

Oh well. Time to enjoy my daily dose of nuclear waste – I mean, cafeteria food.

Yeah. Food. That's what I meant.

Saturday, October 8th, 2016

"Mr. Bakura! Mr. Bakura!" The childish voice of Rebecca filled my ears and my ears alone. Even though I was alone in the cemetery, no one would have ever known she existed.

Rebecca was four years old when she died. Her grandfather had fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed into a tree. He survived with only minor injures while Rebecca's chest cavity had caved in.

Funny how life works that way.

"Hey sproglet," I replied as I sat down underneath the tree near her grave. "Anything new happen today?"

Rebecca bit her lip as a frown passed over her freckled face, "Grandpa came to visit at lunch time. He didn't see me again."

I sighed sadly. The spirit-girl had yet to come to terms with the fact that she was dead. But then again, four year-olds didn't usually have a great concept of death in the first place and Rebecca didn't seem to age, either physically or mentally.

"Don't fret about it, Rebecca," I said, trying to reassure her of something that probably wouldn't happen. "I'm sure he'll see you next time."

The girl smiled happily; even her blonde pigtails seemed to glow at the idea of being able to speak to her grandfather again.

She sat down beside me and rested her head against my shoulder. There was no temperature change: Rebecca wasn't warm like a living person, but she wasn't corpse-cold either. There was weight and feeling behind her actions, but nothing to indicate that she had a body.

"So," she began. "How was it?"

"How was what?" I answered.

"The test!" She huffed and her form went translucent for a second before returning to its original pastel existence, "The one you've been doing all that reading for. The sitting test!"

"What the bloody hell is a sitting test?" I almost asked, before realizing what Rebecca was referring to. "You mean my SATs?"

She gave me a look, "I don't know why you keep spelling it out. I know how to read."

I had to smile at that, "It was tough."

"How tough?"

"Really tough."

Three hours. Two hundred and fifty questions. Yeah, I'd call that tough.

Except, there was one thing that was still bugging me. On that bubble sheet where you fill out your name so they know who was writing the test, there was something really odd. An option that said: If you can see this, fill in the bubble to the left.

What the hell was that about anyways? Some sort of vision test? I didn't understand why the geniuses who design SATs for a living decided to put something like that on the test. Obviously they had nothing better to do with some empty space.

Rebecca was going on about one of the other spirits in the cemetery, but I was only half-listening. The rest of me was focused on the two people walking up the tombstones and grave markers towards me. I spotted shaggy blonde hair and spiked brown and instantly knew who they were.

Joey Wheeler and Tristan Taylor. Those two were attached at the hip, I swear.

"Fuck," I muttered.

Rebecca gasped, "Mr. Bakura! You said a bad word!"

"Rebecca," the sound came out harsher than I wanted it to. "Go hide. Don't come out until I come get you, no matter what you hear."

She tried to argue, but one of the other spirits (a woman in her mid-forties) took her away and gave me a withering look.

"Who ya talken to, freak?" Wheeler's Brooklyn accent always became more pronounced when he was angry, and by the looks of it he was down right pissed off.

"Probably a ghost." Oh Taylor, you had no idea how right you were. "Didn't you hear? The she-male here is into all that occult stuff. Dances with the devil in the pale moonlight, and all that."

Bloody hell, couldn't they come up with new insults? The she-male thing was something that my primary school classmates made up after I started growing my hair out. Somehow my eight year-old brain had come to the conclusion that my parents ignored me because I was a boy and making myself look like a girl would turn me into one. Afterwards, I kept the look because I liked it.

As for the occult thing, that was my sister's doing. She liked to make up these crazy lies about me. I swore that Amane had half Domino High believing that I hung torture equipment on my walls and sacrificed animals to a bunch of pagan gods in there.

For your information, my room was painted light blue. I had a bed in the corner, a desk, and a book shelf stacked with a variety of science-fiction novels that the librarian I worked for let me keep or that I stole from stores over the years.

"I've gotta bone to pick with ya, freak," Wheeler grabbed me by my shirt and hauled me to my feet. "I saw ya looking at ma sister today."

This is complete bollocks, by the way. Serenity Wheeler was two years younger than me and therefore we didn't share any classes. We sat on opposite sides of the cafeteria and didn't even have lockers on the same floor. Wheeler most likely just saw Duke Devlin staring at his sister again (Devlin fancies her, of all people) and decided to take it out on me.

However, right now we weren't surrounded by teachers who will look the other way when these two prats wanted to beat someone into a pulp. And I'd decided to get creative.

"Wheeler, you've got five seconds to get your hands off of me," I tried to make my voice sound as menacing as possible, which wasn't really that hard. My voice is deep and scratchy, enough to do the trick.

"Tryin' to be all tough now, limey-boy." Oh, that one was new. "Give me one reason why I should."

I sneered, "Look around, mate. You're in my arena now. And this graveyard…it's full of restless spirits."

The real, non-restless, and mostly subdued spirits in the nearby graves had all stopped what they had been doing and started to look at me. An elderly couple who must have died in the late 50's turned their heads. The spirit-woman from before was trying to keep one eye on me and another on Rebecca, who kept popping up to watch. A teenaged boy, lanky and fifteen, leaned against his gravestone.

What felt like a drop of water rolled down my arm. Which was odd, considering that it was sunny out and it hadn't rained in a week.

"I'll let you in on a little secret," I continued. "All those things going around school about my…hobbies. They're true." It was time for my sister's lies to start helping me, "But lately I've realized that animal blood isn't enough to quench my appetite anymore. I need something…bigger."

I smiled a demented smile, "Something like you."

Wheeler had gone white, shaking in his shoes like a kid after he'd heard his first ghost story. Surprisingly, Taylor was holding his ground better. But there was something in both their eyes, something that I'd only ever seen in glimpses before. And now it was clear as day.

Fear.

Sweet, delicious fear.

They were scared shit of me, always have been and probably always will be. And like the big lads they were, they had to prove that they were not afraid by fighting the dragon. Or by shoving him into the lockers, whatever works.

And then it happened.

The teenager from before tackled Taylor into the ground, slamming into him with the force of an invisible SUV. But that was impossible: up until now, the only person the spirits had been able to touch was me.

The kid ripped something from Taylor's hand, flinging it in a random direction with a flash of silver. He then turned to Wheeler and said, "Get out."

If it were possible, the football player's face lost a few more shades of colour. And I knew in an instant he had heard those words.

The two nightmares of my secondary school life ran off screaming like pre-pubescent girls.

For a moment, everything became very still as I tried to process what just happened. Which was a very hard thing to do, considering that my brain had stopped working.

"He was going for his gun, man" the kid, who I vaguely remembered was named Rick, said. "I had to do something."

"How did you do that?" My mouth had started working again.

"Do what?"

"That!" I said, pointing to the ground, "Right now. How did you…"

This was impossible. It couldn't have happened…it shouldn't have…

It…it…

It did happen, and fuck, what was I going to do?

"Oh," smiled Rick, finally catching on. "That. That was you."

"What?"

What? What?

"Yeah. I don't really know how to describe it but that power definitely came from you."

No…no way…no fucking way, that was impossible. These spirits, they couldn't be real. There was no way, no way that they were real. Just some sick fantasy that my mind made up to deal with my loneliness.

"Hey," Rich said, moving forward in concern. "You alright? You look a bit-"

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" I screamed, "You're not real! You can't be real!"

Fake things don't knock people down, boss, a voice hissed in the back of my mind. Fake things don't save people's lives.

Besides, another voice this time, and for some reason I thought of the desert. They were real to you a minute ago.

I backed up against the tree, grabbing at the bark behind me for some semblance of normal. I was scared…so scared for the first time since I saw my grandfather at his own funeral.

The spirits – no, they weren't spirits, not real, just my mind and, oh god, get me out of here – were moving closer. All of them. I wanted…I just wanted…

I wanted out. I wanted to get out of here and go home and I wanted to stay there even though Amane got all the attention and my parents had forgotten me, but it was safe there and please I'd never wanted anything this much before –

Everything's gone black. It's dark, so maybe I've closed my eyes or maybe I haven't. I don't know. And I'm falling. Why am I falling? I just –

I landed face first into something soft and familiar. I took a few minutes to calm myself down, because right now I was safe. I was safe because this was my bed and my room was my sanctuary where no one ever enters and –

Wait.

I opened my eyes and looked around.

Blue walls. Check.

Bed. Check.

Desk. Check.

Book shelf and accompanying sci-fi books. Check.

This was my room. Yep, definitely my room. My home, my sanctuary, my little space in the world where I didn't have to worry about anything.

A room located in a building five blocks west of the cemetery, which I had traveled to in less then ten seconds.

I shoved my fist in my mouth to keep myself from screaming.

This couldn't be happening. I couldn't have done what I think I just did. Normal people didn't teleport. And I was pretty sure I hadn't said "Beam me up, Scotty" or randomly turned into Nightcrawler.

Grabbing the sheet that covered my bed, I crawled beneath the desk in the corner and wrapped them around myself. I felt ten years-old and vulnerable as hell again.

"What's happening to me?" I asked.

No one answered.

When I look back on these memories now, my first thoughts are usually about how stupid I was not to realize what I was.

But stupid is the wrong word.

Stupid implies that I had all the facts and had simply refused to acknowledge them. But the thing is, I didn't have all the facts. The stuff that was happening to me seemed to be right out of one of my science-fiction novels. The key word here being fiction.

And even as firm as I was to deny it, I knew something was different about me. That I wasn't a Normal. That I was something else.

So I wouldn't say I was stupid.

I wasn't stupid enough not to realize what was happening to me.

I was just naïve enough to think that I was the only one.

Hey.

Just wanted to put this out as a pilot chapter for something that I'm working on right now. Tell me what you think.

Just to warn you for the near future, this fic is not only a Darkshipping story, but a genderbent Darkshipping story. You read that right: Atem will be a girl. Why? I can't tell you that; it would be a spoiler!

I seem to be giving out a lot of warnings...

Anyways, please read and review. I love your feed back,

AlcatrazOutpatient

PS: I have nothing against Tea, Tristan, or Joey. I just needed someone to fill those roles. Also, Ryou Bakura is really Yami Bakura here. I'm not going to use a name like Touzuko or Thief King or whatever because...well...they show up later...