The Spirits: Resurrection

Disclaimer: Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Systems, TV Tokyo and 4Kids Entertainment. The following historical account is ninety percent fact and ten percent unavoidable estimation.

Thief King Bakura: First Phase

"He that boasts of his own knowledge, proclaims his ignorance."
- Inuit Proverb

Why?

It was my favourite question and the first word that came from my mouth as an infant squabbling in his mother's arms. Why? Why was the sky blue and then black? Why was the earth flat? Why did Sedna the Old Woman live beneath the sea with the great gods? Why? Why? Why?

I wanted to know everything – absolutely everything. If I didn't, if I wasn't learning, then there was no point. I had to know, had to see the world because there had to be more than just this snow covered land. It had to be bigger because there had to be more. More to learn. More to experience. More to do and be and live.

I was but a child when I noticed the difference between the others and myself in my tribe. The most obvious difference was my hair. It was white, the same colour as the fur of the bears. The other children mocked me, saying that my mother must have lain with a polar bear for my hair to become that colour. I didn't understand why they would think so – lying next to a woman does not get her with child. My brother and I have lain next to their mother and she didn't get pregnant.

But still they cry, "Bear cub, bear cub."

The children call me bear cub, but I preferred it to what they adults call me: thief.

I didn't think it was fair to call me that. It was only one time that I stole – taking more meat from the hunt than was allowed. My brother was sick and hungry. He needed food, more than any of the others did. Why should I not steal when it was for the betterment of someone else? It wasn't like I was going to eat it myself. Why? Why do people act the way they do?

I wanted to know – no, I needed to know. I needed to know what was going on, how the world worked the way it did. Because if I didn't, I was scared that it will eat me whole.

It is something inside of me. I've always had it, but I didn't think that other people did. It was nothing – absolutely nothing. It was empty space inside of me and it scared me because he didn't want to feel empty, feel as if I wasn't complete.

I was broken and I didn't know why. That bothered me a lot.

But there was something else in me too. It was a flame that was as red as blood and it sat in the middle of the igloo in my mind without melting the walls. It was inviting and warm and nice and I liked this fire a lot. With it, I discovered, I could find the answers to so many other things.

If I used the flame enough, I could tell what things were made of. I could tell that the snow and the ice was merely water – solid water that changed its form because of the temperature. I knew why the coloured lights shine in the sky at night. They weren't the spirits of my ancestors or the ghosts of the dead like the chief told me (I've tried whistling at them a few times and my head is still on my shoulders). Instead the lights are caused by tiny bits of the world, colliding with each other so far up in the sky.

I knew so much more than they do. I was smarter than them. Smarter than any of them, but they didn't recognize it. They didn't recognize me at all, not as anything more than a bear cub or a thief or a thieving bear cub and it wasn't fair! I could lead this tribe into greatness, but they didn't see that at all.

Why?

This tribe was stagnant and boring. And I wanted to get away from it all.

I had recently entered my twelfth year when my life changed forever. My father took me hunting for the first time.

It was an incredibly important turning point in my life. Here, finally, was proof that someone had acknowledge my importance to the tribe. If I could prove that I could hunt on my own, it meant that I could get married, start a family (somehow. I wasn't quite sure on the specifics behind having children just yet), and maybe, one day, challenge the chief for his position.

I gripped the spear that I'd painstakingly made out of a walrus tusk and a rare piece of wood that I'd found. It had taken me forever to make it, but it would be worth it today. If I could complete this hunt, I would be recognized as a man.

My older brother came up from behind me, clamping his hand on my shoulder, grinning and eyes creasing at the corners, "Ready Bakura?"

"Ipiktok, I didn't know that you were coming," I frowned. My brother was supposed to be helping father's widowed sister to move into our home. The man had taken ill over the winter and died, leaving my aunt without anyone to support her. She had no sons of her own to help her, so we'd invited her to stay with our family.

"I…uh, well, Anyu's fine on her own. Besides, I couldn't miss out on your first hunt, right? Finally becoming a man?"

"You're skiving out on your duties again, aren't you?" I rolled my eyes.

"Are you accusing me of lying?" Ipiktok glared, looking down at me.

"You're not making eye contact and you always scratch your nose when you lie," I pointed out. "On top of that, you're getting defensive. Clear signs that you're lying."

He swatted playfully at my head, "Brat. See if I save you again when you whistle at the ancestors."

"I keep telling you, they're not…I don't even know why I try sometimes," I sighed, moving over to where father was standing. He was a big man with wind beaten skin and a thick, dark beard. Ipitok took after him almost exactly. There was no question about my brother's parents – only mine.

I looked down at where the sleeve of my coat rode up and didn't meet my mittens. My skin was as pale as snow, just like my hair. The only bit of colour on me was in my eyes. They were the same bloody, red colour as the flame that I could use to tell how things worked.

Father glanced down at me for a moment before returning to gazing steadily at the chief. Chief Ignirtoq had grown up with father when they were boys and had been the one to first introduce father to mother. They'd been friends for a very long time, I heard people whispering. They'd only stopped being friends when I was born.

I wondered why.

All the men from the village where here, except the aging and the elderly ones that were too sick to move, let alone hunt. Some had stone knifes and others carried harpoons. One of the older boys who had called me bear cub for years, grinned viciously when he was I was looking, shaking his fist menacingly in my direction. I jumped backwards and nearly stepped on Ipitok's foot.

"Don't let them intimidate you," he whispered. "They don't mean anything. This is your day."

"Yeah. I know. I know," I tried to calm the nerves within me. I had to be focused for this or I would fail.

If only I'd known how things would go later on.

It wasn't uncommon to find myself walking over ice in these lands. As we traveled across the tundra, I heard the familiar cracking of the frozen water beneath my feet. I sent the fire within me to determine the thickness and deemed that the parts that we were walking on would be safe enough to hold such a large group.

"We stop here," the chief called back to the rest of the men. "Spread out and look for breathing holes."

Breathing holes were spots where sea animals would come to the surface take a breath. Sometimes, hunters would wait for hours on end for something to come up for air, sitting still and silent as to not scare the animals away. Normally, they brought home seals from their hunt during the winter months. The women would then get to work skinning the beasts and preserving their meat and hides. It was a practiced pattern that had been perfected throughout the generations that had passed by.

I sat with my brother, holding my spear tightly in my lap. I stared at the hole, almost willing a seal to pop up out so that I could prove that I could be just as strong as any of the other men in the tribe. I'd be better than the chief – I just knew it.

"Well, look at what we've got here," the hood of my parka was pulled off of my head. Then a hand pulled and yanked at my hair, dragging me backwards. "Hello there, bear cub."

"Leave him alone, Krermertok," Ipiktok snarled, standing up in my defense. My eyes stung and my vision blurred as the hand twisting in my hair, pulling on it hard.

Krermertok was one my many tormentors, though he stood out in my childhood as the most brutal. A few years before I discovered the fire inside me, he'd held my head under the sea until I had almost passed out. I honestly thought that he was going to kill me. I tried to tell father and the chief, but they didn't believe me. No one ever believed me. Why didn't they when I was telling the truth?

"Stop your whimpering, cub," he sneered at me, tugging at my hair even more. Ipitok stood, leaping over the air hole in a single bound and pushed him. Krermertok didn't let go and dragged me backwards with him.

"I said, let him go, Krermertok," my brother growled one more time. I could see his hand itching to grab the knife attached to his belt. I couldn't let that happen. Ipitok could not get involved.

I closed my eyes and let my mind whirl into action.

Krermertok was three hand's widths taller than me and currently in a more dominant position, holding me down on my knees. He had friends too, standing just off to the side and ready to spring into action at a moments notice. The ice beneath my feet was strong, sturdy enough to hold up in a fight. I calculated the distance between myself and where my spear lay on the ground. I wouldn't be able to reach it from here.

My eyes opened and I withdrew the flame from its search of the area – but wait, what was that?

A crack. I felt a crack in the ice. And something big was moving underneath.

"Ipiktok, watch out!" I screamed, but it was too late. The whale, larger than anything I'd ever seen or heard of before (how did it get that big?), pushed its body against the ice as it took a breath from the air hole we'd been watching until a few minutes ago. The ice cracked and split beneath our feet. Krermertok lost his balance and slipped, letting go of my hair.

"W-what's happening? What did you do, bear cub?"

The boy scrambled to his feet, shoving me towards and into my brother. The already weakened ice snapped beneath us. Ipitok pushed me away. I slid on the snow-covered ice away from him. I turned just in time to see him disappear into the ocean.

"No!" I screamed, scrambling towards the last place I'd seen my brother. "No! No! NO!"

The ice shook with each of my cries, but I didn't care. I had to find him. I had to – he couldn't die! He just couldn't die! He was my brother. He couldn't die!

The men around me were shouting, forgetting about the hunt and searching for Ipitok beneath the ice. Father shouted something, pointed to something beneath him. He went down on all fours and started to claw at the ice.

"My son! Someone – someone break the ice!"

I ran over to where he was standing, seeing Ipiktok's blurred face through the ice. He'd grabbed onto something, holding himself against the current. His other hand was attempting to smash his way to freedom before his air ran out.

I had to help him, had to save his life. Tears ran down my face as I tried to force my way through with my spear. The sharped tusk that was its blade chipped as I finally cracked the ice, but it didn't go all the way through. The spear stuck and refused to budge, no matter how much of my weight I tried to throw behind it. No! I refused to give up! No!

I gripped the pole tightly, remembering what I knew about ice. It was solid water, transformed by the low temperatures. And in the summer months, it disappeared because it got warmer. So to get rid of the ice, I just had to heat it up.

Heat was something simple to create with fire, but I didn't have any right now. Just the flame inside of me, the flame that gave me the power to know and answer the question why. I knew that the difference between water and ice was that the tiny bits of existence moved faster in the liquid form. What if…what if I made the ice melt?

I drew upon the flame and, through my spear, shoved it into the ice – into the tiny parts of the world. I forced them to move faster then they were, made them go faster – faster – faster, please, my brother's life depends on it.

My father stepped back, eyes wide and frightened, but I didn't care. I didn't have time to care. My spear sunk deeper and deeper into the ice as it melted, but I didn't stop because I had to save Ipiktok. I had to. I had to.

My brother gave one final shove and his hand burst through the ice. I grabbed it, yanking him through and towards the surface. He took his first breath of fresh air; gasping and sputtering, water spewing from his mouth as he exhaled. His whole body shook, but I kept pulling him away from the new hole in the ice and onto an area that I could sense was much safer.

Ipiktok's lips were blue, his face pale. I stared up at my father, "He needs help. Please!"

The man stared at me like he'd never seen me before. He was scared of what I did. I didn't understand why. Ipitok was as much his son as I was. Why would he fear me? Didn't he have a flame too? Couldn't he see what I'd done was simply use it?

Why? Why was he looking at me like that? Why wasn't he helping Ipitok? Why?

What was going on?

I'd finally learned to control it. It was almost a full year after I'd pulled my brother from the cold waters of the ocean, but I'd done it. I stared up into the sky, staring at the lights that most thought were our ancestors, and controlled them.

"I told you. They aren't ghosts," I pointed upwards, sending the flame into the sky, and made the bits of existence bend to my will. "See, look. I'll make them red."

And red they were. A simple shift in the connections between the bits and the lights were the colour I wanted them to be.

"You need to stop this, Bakura. You – you shouldn't be doing this; it's not right! You can't just control the ancestors like this," Ipiktok didn't dare glance up, afraid of what he'd see. Why was he afraid? There was no one that would hurt him. There were no ancestors or ghosts that would retaliate when you whistled at them.

"That's not the only thing I can do. Watch," and with that said, I pushed my hands out in front of me. I recalled the knowledge that I'd recently obtained about the air and how it moved, shifting the warmer air away and letting the cold air rush in. This caused the snow to move on the ground, revealing the ground that was underneath it. "There's more too. I can –"

"Stop it!" He shouted angrily. "Stop – just stop. Bakura, this is wrong. You shouldn't be able to…no one should be able to do this. You can't just control the world, that's not how it works."

"Why shouldn't it? It's how I am, so why is it wrong?" I frowned, not understanding why he felt so uncomfortable. I didn't feel wrong – if anything, I felt better. The more I used the flame, the more I could ignore it.

But ignoring it didn't make it go away. Ignoring it just made it not as noticeable.

Ipiktok's face tightened, his jaw clenched and his back uncomfortably ridged, "It just is."

And with that my brother walked away, not looking back at me once. He was the first in a long line of people to do that. The sight of his back was the most painful of them all.

It was almost two years before I found her.

"You're going to get in trouble," Tupit scowled, trudging after me. I tried to move faster, tried to get away from him, but he wouldn't leave me alone. Ever since he'd seen me use the fire again, the boy would never leave me alone. I understood why: intrigue was the primary influence on his behaviour. I just felt…uncomfortable with him constantly wanted to follow me around.

I was better off being on my own, I'd discovered. Interaction with other people would disrupt me and my thinking. Besides, even when I wanted to talk to someone, I just seemed to fumble and stammer. Ipiktok's betray had left me almost unable to talk with people.

"Really, you're going to get in a lot of trouble. Dad's not going to be happy that you ran off again during a hunt…hey, are you even listening to me? Why don't you ever say anything? I know you're not mute," he grumbled, nearly tripping over his own feet to keep up with my quick pace. I glanced back, tried to tell him to leave me alone, but I couldn't. I was too scared that if I did, he'd run, just like all the others.

Tupit was Chief Ignirtoq's son. He was named after his paternal grandfather, as was tradition for the children who cried often in their infancy. According to those who believed in that spiritual nonsense, it meant that Ignirtoq's father's spirit was inhabiting the body of his son and wanted to be called by his true name. And so Tupit was named correctly – or so his parents thought. Personally, I didn't understand it all.

There's never been a Bakura before. The name I carried sounded like nothing like anything I'd ever heard before. Some took it as proof that my mother had lain with a bear and that I was named after my true father. I clenched my hands, fingers curling tightly around my spear.

I kept moving, walking through the snow and heating the interior of my parka to keep me warm as I moved with my flame. Something shifted in the distance, before it disappeared into the snow.

I frowned, "Did you…see that?"

"Hey! You spoke! And what? See what?" Tupit stared at the lands directly ahead of us.

And then something happened. Something amazing. Something terrifying. Something that I couldn't explain.

I heard a voice in the back of my head, shouting and screaming and it was more than a single voice – so many people all at once yelling, "Go!"

For a single moment, I honestly believed that the ancestors had finally come for my head after all the years I'd spent controlling them and whistling at them in the dead of night. Instead, by feet seemed to move on their own towards where I'd seen the figure fall over.

I didn't walk there, though. No. Instead, I brought out in a sprint, needing to get towards that thing as fast as physically possible. I felt the fire race into my legs and I sent it out into the ground before me to melt the snow, clearing a path for me as I ran full tilt towards it and –

It was a body. A person. An actual person from outside my tribe. And…it was a woman.

She was like no woman I'd ever seen before. Instead of being dressed in the furs and parkas of the winter months, she wore the animal skins that were more appropriate for that of the summers. Her feet were bare and bright red from the cold, her skin an earthy tone that was a shade darker than those of my tribe. And then there was her hair.

It was long, almost ridiculously so, and loose, pooling over her back and touching the backs of her knees. It was wind blown and tangled, like she'd been running.

I rolled her over onto her back. My heart skipped in my chest, making my hands shake. Whoever this woman was…she was beautiful.

Her face showed that she was older than I, old enough to be married but for some reason I didn't think that she was. I didn't know what I based that inference on, it just popped into my head.

And then it decided to make itself know. Except, this time, it was different. It made me reach out and stroke her face, smiling softly.

"Hello," I whispered. "Hello. Who are you? Why are you here? Hello."

Tupit finally caught up to me, "How did you move that fast – who's that?"

"I don't…I don't know," I couldn't take my eyes off of her. It wouldn't let me. For some reason, she was important to it. And that meant something.

"Is she dead?" He asked, reaching forwards to touch her. The flame in me jumped and I clutched her to me, unwilling to let him near her. Tupit pulled his hand back, startled, "Is something wrong?"

I shook my head, gathering the woman up in my arms and stood. Turning around, I began my trek back to the tribe. She was so small, light, and cold. Her skin was dull and colourless – sickly, even. Her breath was barely showing in the cold air. But for some reason I didn't worry.

She'd live. And then I'd find out why she was so important to it.

The Chief wasn't happy. Neither was father or mother or Ipitok. No one was really happy about the woman – no one except me. She was another mouth to feed, another body to clothe. Our tribe was stretched thin as it was.

Krermertok had been the first to see me after I'd come out of the meeting with the woman still in my arms. He'd thought her to be a corpse that I'd brought back, in some disturbed version of an attempt to care like an actual human being. He'd never come back to torment me after I'd saved my brother, but he'd been quick to throw a hurtful word or phrase at me when my back was turned.

This was the first time in years that he'd said something to my face. It stung.

I pulled a blanket of furs farther up her body. It had been two days since I'd found her in the snow. During those days, I'd used the flame to create a new igloo (my parent's refused to house the woman in their own) and found – stole, and the words 'thief, thief, thief' rang in my mind but I didn't care because this was the right thing to do – some clothing for her to wear that would keep her warm.

I'd changed her into them, her old clothing so worn that it practically fell off of her. It had been embarrassing at first, but I'd kept my gaze from straying anywhere that might offend her in the future. Then I'd combed her hair, removing all the knots and the bits of dirt that had wandered into it. Now I just had to wait for her to wake up.

"You're taking care of a dead body, you know that right?" I jumped at the voice. It was one that, in the last two years, I'd only heard from a distance. I tried to say something, but only caused my jaw to move uselessly as Ipiktok frowned behind me.

"She's not going to wake up. She's dead. And you're crazy. You're crazy, bringing a body back and treating it like it's alive. The girl is dead!" He shouted.

"She's alive," I half mumbled, half whispered. "I swear it."

And then the impossible happens. The woman's eyes snap open and her whole body jerks as she sits up. I let out a started yelp in tandem with my brother as her neck cranked around to face us.

A look made its way onto her face when she looked at me. It was a look because I had no idea what it was. No one had ever looked at me like she was now, tears flowing from her eyes as a smile graced her features and –

"Bakura."

My name is the first thing I heard come from her lips and I couldn't move because I simply couldn't understand what was happening. Nothing seemed to make sense. How did she know my name? Why was she giving me that look? Why was she moving forwards? What was she doing - ?

The woman pressed her lips to mine and my mind went blank. Completely and utterly blank. For a full moment of time, absolutely nothing passed through my thoughts. And then I realized just what she was doing.

The woman was attempting to eat me.

Her mouth was making the same motions used to bite and chew food, so that had to be the only possible explanation for this. So I did the only possible thing I could in such a situation like this.

I screamed, throwing myself from her and scrambling on all fours in my attempt to get as far away from the crazy woman who wanted to bite my mouth off.

I didn't return to the igloo until the end of the day and even then I stayed just outside of its opening. Through the blocks of snow and ice, I could hear her sobs. They lasted until the moon was high in the sky and the earth a deathly quiet.

"Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly."
- Inuit Proverb

Hello all!

I'd like to thank ilovemanicures for her review for The Abnormal: Amane's Tale. May you continue to be awesome, my dear lady!

So this is the first chapter of Resurrection and the first phase of Thief King. I'm not going to be overly original on the chapter titles this time around as all of the spirits will have their tales in this story. The 'phase' part will refer to a specific section in their lives.

As for the other characters besides Bakura (which ever version of him I may be writing about) and Atem, they are all going to be OCs. Long story short, there are not a lot of character to work with in Yugioh canon and none of them have a name that would be compatible with someone living in each specific time zone. I'm not going to give an Inuit the name Jesse Anderson, especially when they're living in 1000 CE, as my inner and outer history nerd would have a fit. So to compensate, I'm going to give you the meanings of each of the names I chose. They'll be listed in a section after this author's note.

Also, if I may put in a request for you guys to do. In The Abnormal, a reviewer came up with a name for the pairing of AmanexMagic, calling it AbnormalGodshipping. I was wondering if you guys could help me come up with a name for the pairings in this story. Let's start off with Thief King and Atem.

One more thing: I've been thinking lately about the wiki sites that can be found on the internet. For those of you who don't know, wiki's are like wikipedia, but for a more specific topic. There's a bacon wiki, a Doctor Who wiki, a Star Wars wiki, a Yu-gi-oh wiki, and loads of others. Just google them and you'll find loads of examples.

So my question is: would you guys get some use out of a wiki for The Others? I'm going to create a pole for you to cast your vote and at the end of the month, I'm going to see what you guys think. I'm not going to promise one, even if the pole says that 'yes' to it (as I have no idea how easy or difficult it will be to maintain one, let alone if it will cost anything to set it up), but I will definitely try if that is the answer. So cast your vote, if only for the reason that I love to hear from you guys and like to hear your feedback.

If you have any questions about some of the Inuit urban myths and legends that were mentioned in this chapter, don't hesitate to ask. I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Until next time, my friends,

AlcatrazOutpatient

Etymoloy:

Ipiktok: a unisex Inuit name meaning "keen" and "sharp". Those with this name have the potential to become leaders and desire responsibility.

Anyu: a unisex Inuit name meaning "snow". Those with this name have the potential to become specialists and desire stability.

Ignirtoq: a male Inuit name meaning "god of light and truth". Those with this name have the potential to become leaders and desire responsibility.

Krermertok: a unisex Inuit name meaning "black". Those with this name have the potential to be helpers and desire solitude.

Tupit: a unisex Inuit name meaning "tattoo lines on face." Those with this name have the potential to be marketers and desire expression.