Disclaimer: All canon-based characters, situations, and plotlines are copyright to their original owners, creators, and designers. I make no profit, nor want any.
Title: Joy In Death
Romance: Kisara x Mana
Word Count: 2,359
Genre: Romance
Rated: PG-13
Status: Complete
Challenge: Yu-Gi-Oh Pairings Challenge, Season Six, Round Eight.
Notes: This takes place in the afterlife. Since the panel in the manga showed Mahaado, among others, waiting there for Atem, I presume that both Mana and Kisara would be there as well. Comments and criticism gratefully accepted.
Summary: Being dead has advantages. The least of those are learning about the return of the games of darkness, pizza, and falling in love.

Kisara rather liked being dead, all things considered. No one was scared of her here. She stayed with the Pharaoh's priests, and they were all very kind to her, especially Isis and Seto. She was always respectful of Seto; he had saved her life, after all, and she would protect him to the best of her abilities.

But there was another reason that she liked not having to worry anymore about where she was going to sleep or if she would be able to find enough to eat. Sleeping and eating were optional here in the Fields of the Blessed. Many people did if only because it reminded them of life, and gave them a way to set the endless days in order. Kisara did it for other reasons.

Or one other reason. The same one as why she liked being dead.

Well, the main reason that she enjoyed being dead. There were several other ones, to go along with that one, and the lack of fear and wandering aimlessly. The weather was always suitable in one aspect or another. It did rain, but when it did, there was always time to get to shelter. Or to stay out in it, if that was what one wanted. The dead couldn't get sick, after all.

At the moment, she was seated on a gloriously green hilltop underneath the spreading branches of a tree. She wasn't sure what kind of a tree it was, but it was tall and shady and that was what she liked about it. She was waiting for someone. Waiting for her best reason.

"Kisara! Kisara!" Mana came charging over the hill, waving something in one hand. She was a bit too far away for Kisara to really see what it was, but the young woman knew that wouldn't last long. She watched, a little amused, as Mana rushed closer, tripped over something (probably air, knowing Mana), and finally collapsed into a heavily breathing heap near her.

"What's got you so excited?" Kisara asked curiously as she reached over to help Mana up. One could be any age that one chose here, whether one had lived through it or not. Kisara chose to be as she had been just prior to her death. Mana, perhaps unsurprisingly, was still as young as she had been in that dark time as well. She had lived much longer after that, and had died peacefully in her sleep at an extreme old age. But ever since arriving here, she'd been a cheerful, bouncing girl. For three thousand years.

"Look. Master's been watching the world of the living again and he was able to make these. They're making them there too." Mana could not always convey everything that was in her mind coherently. Her thoughts just worked too quickly for that.

"I'll look if you let me," Kisara replied with a small smile. Mana was waving whatever it was about far too quickly for Kisara to get a really good look at them. They appeared to be kind of small, and she caught a glimpse of bright paints that reminded her of some of the homes of the rich she'd seen before.

"Oh. Right." Mana curled herself up beside Kisara and held out her hands. In them were several…well, Kisara wasn't certain of what to call them right away. They were indeed small and brightly colored, with writing on it that she didn't recognize, though she was able to read it. Yet another perk of being dead. She'd never been able to read or write while she lived, but anything that she wanted to understand here, she could.

She stared more closely at them, rubbing her fingers across them curiously. "These are something like the tablets that ka are trapped in, aren't they?" she asked. Some of the images looked a little familiar, as if she'd seen them before. Saggi, the Dark Clown. Holy Elf.

"That's right! Master said that someone has been chosen by one of the Millennium Items, and they're going to bring the games of darkness back as a game. People won't need to study and train like I did, or be hurt like other people did." Mana thought more quickly than she spoke, but once in a while she did show something that could've been tact. "They don't have real souls trapped in them, though. It's all just pretend now."

Kisara tilted her head a little. She didn't know much of the Millennium Items, but from what she had overheard on occasion, if someone had been chosen by one to make this, then there had to be a larger purpose behind it. She sorted through the little ka slabs some more, then paused on one of them. It was familiar, to an extent.

"Mana," she said, showing that one. "Is that what I think it is?"

Mana leaned over, then blushed some, nodding a little. "I think they did a very good job on it." Looking back from the not-rock stone was a beautiful miniature portrait of Black Magician Girl, Mana's own ka spirit. In the realm of the dead, people could still summon their ka spirits, and even Kisara had been able to do so without passing out. But she seldom did, as it was seldom needed.

"I think so too." Kisara touched the golden hair of the image lightly, then glanced over at Mana herself. In all of their centuries there, she hadn't ever touched Mana's hair. She'd wanted to, but she had never done it. "You're beautiful."

Perhaps that was it. Perhaps she'd meant to say that the image was. That was as much truth as anything else that the words could've meant. But what she'd said, and what she'd actually meant, was that Mana herself was beautiful. Beautiful, exciting, fun to be around, fun to laugh with.

Mana twisted her head up at Kisara's words, confusion in her bright brown eyes. "Kisara?" They'd spoken together almost every day for centuries. Yet nothing like this had ever come up between them.

I said it. I won't take it back. She had never wanted to take back anything in her life. What she said, she meant. "I said, you're beautiful."

She hadn't ever thought a simple, and true, compliment could have made someone like Mana blush. But those dark-skinned cheeks did indeed redden just a little bit.

"So are you," Mana murmured softly back at her. "I've always thought you were."

Kisara wondered if her own face was turning red now. She looked back at the tiny slabs and began to sort through them again, not sure of what to say or do at the moment. Still staring at them, she murmured, "Would you like to…do something?" Three thousand years of not having a romantic relationship with anyone did not make it any easier when you actually did find someone you wanted to try to have one with.

"Sure!" Mana grinned at her, and some of Kisara's nervousness eased just a little. "I wonder if we could find one of those places I've seen when I've been watching. What do they call them…" She thought, her brow wrinkling cutely. "I think it's…p..pisa…or something like that."

"Pisa?" That didn't sound quite like what Mana had said, but Kisara wasn't sure how to say it herself, or even what the sorceress had meant. She didn't spend much of her time watching the living, unlike Mana, who tended to spend at least half of her free time staring at them.

"I think that's what it's called. It looks really good, anyway. They make some kind of a dough and put mashed up vegetables and meats on it and put it on an oven for a few minutes and eat it when it comes out." Mana shrugged some; it did look interesting, and she'd really been wanting an excuse to try it for a while.

Kisara considered for a few moments, then nodded a little. "All right. Where do you think we can find some…pisa?" The word still tasted strange on her tongue, but she was willing to try something new. It wouldn't kill her, after all.

"I don't know. Let's look around and find out." Even if they couldn't find a place that could do that for them, there were plenty of food stalls in the city that surrounded the palace. One of the many good facts about the afterlife was that in many ways, it was just like Egypt itself had been, only better. There were still shopkeepers and vendors, because there were people who enjoyed nothing more than helping others in some fashion in their afterlives.

Kisara handed the small items back to Mana, who put them away in a magical pocket, and hesitated for a moment, not entirely certain of what might be appropriate right now. She'd learned a great deal about the priests and their ways in the three eons she'd been among them, but no one had ever addressed the proper ways of courting. If this counted as courting. They'd mentioned the other was beautiful and they were going to find something to eat together. What did you call something like that?

Don't worry about it, she decided at last. She reached out and wrapped one hand around Mana's carefully, a bit surprised that she herself was being so daring. Mana smiled back at her and tightened her hand around Kisara's before they started down the hill together.

There was yet another perk to being dead. If someone really, truly wanted something, and it wasn't wrong to want it, they somehow or other, it tended to turn up in some fashion. Maybe it wouldn't be there when you turned a corner, but there was some way for you to come across it. When Kisara had mentioned that, Mana had attributed it to the Gods. They were in the realm of the Gods, after all, and granting harmless desires was easily within their power. Kisara didn't have any better explanations.

Regardless, they'd only been wandering around for a couple of hours, passing many stalls and taverns that offered incredible meals of every type one could imagine and several that could not be imagined, before a particular scent began to catch at Kisara's nostrils.

"What's that? It's…it's like bread somehow, but different." There was cheese in the scent as well, and something that she thought was meat. Even here, she hadn't eaten enough meat to be certain of the scent of it. It wasn't a meat she recognized regardless.

"I think that's it! That's pisa!" Mana grinned, her grip tightening a bit on Kisara's hand, and pulled her to where the scent appeared to be coming from. That turned out to be a food stall, but not one that either of them had ever seen before. Nor had they ever seen the woman who was in charge of it, and Mana had always thought she knew just about everyone who lived in the city.

"Hello," the white-haired woman said, a small, sweet smile touching her lips. "Is there something that I can do for you?"

"Is that pisa?" Mana asked, looking at the stacks of her wares on display. Steam wafted up as the vendor turned to peer into the baking oven behind her. It looked like a normal oven, heated by sticks, and not one of those strange ones like people used now, but it had something in it that bore a remarkable resemblance to the food Mana had seen people eating.

"It's pizza." The strange woman brushed back a strand of hair from her forehead before she pulled out another one of them. "Would you like some? I haven't had many customers, but I haven't been here that long, either."

Kisara nodded a little. There hadn't been many people she'd ever met, other than herself, who had hair like this woman's. "It smells wonderful."

"This is pepperoni," she said, gesturing to one of the round dishes, "and this is sausage. You can each have one if you like."

Mana picked up the one called 'pepperoni', while Kisara chose the sausage one. If this really was good, they could come back for more. Mana sniffed some at it, grinning, before she looked at the other. "I didn't think I'd seen you around here before. What's your name?"

"Amane." The pizza maker smiled some. "I'm very new, really, especially compared to so many people here. But I always loved the stories I've read about your country, so I guess that helped me come here."

"Glad to have you around. Maybe we can see you later?" Mana asked, and Amane nodded briefly.

"Enjoy your pizzas." She waved a little as Kisara and Mana headed away, their hot treats held lightly in their hands. A quick spell from Mana made certain they wouldn't burn themselves as they headed back up to the tree to eat.

Kisara bit into the 'sausage pizza' and chewed carefully. It was really an interesting taste. She wasn't sure if she liked it right away, but it was different. Maybe it was a taste that one had to grow accustomed to? Regardless, she finished it, licking her fingers clean once she was done. Even if she'd hated it, she would have eaten it, really. She might be dead, but she remembered being hungry when she was alive far too well to ever waste food.

Mana finished hers as well, and Kisara smiled to see a little dab of red on her chin. She reached over to wipe it off. "This is very messy food," she commented, especially as Mana waved her hand and got rid of some stains on Kisara's own gown. "But I think I liked it."

"So did I. We're going to have to get some more. There's all kinds of food I've seen the living people eat, too. They eat a lot more meat than we ever did," Mana observed. Kisara just nodded; Mana could've suggested they do nothing at all, and she might well have agreed. Spending time with her was one of the high points of Kisara's afterlife, after all.

Mana was the real reason she enjoyed being dead.

The End