Chapter One: Tom
Author's note: Just a silly/stupid thing I jotted down on my lunch break. And yes, I am that sad.
Bakura woke up to an odd, high-pitched sound. Rubbing his eyes, he got out of bed, exited his bedroom, and went to the livingroom/dining room (in the chic underground lair he shared with Marik-there was always debate on whether the small space was one room or two). Sitting on the table was a small child. A little girl of about two eating out of a box of Nilla Wafers. Marik was sitting at said table reading a dirty comic book.
Bakura frowned, still staring at the two of them, and walked around the table and lowered himself down to Marik's level. "Um, Marik? Are you aware that there is a small child atop the diningroom table?"
"What?! A small child atop the diningroom table?" Marik exclaimed, and then laughed good-naturedly. "I'm just kidding. Of course I know." He cleared his throat and turned the page of his comic book.
Bakura's brows furrowed. "Okay...why?"
"Because we are villains, Bakura, and kidnapping is a crime," he replied matter-of-factly, sounding bored. "So while you were sleeping this morning I went to the shopping mall and kidnapped a child."
"What?!" Bakura exploded. "Are you insane?!"
"I was raised underground with no social interaction, received daily doses of snake poison, and killed my father at nine years old-of course I'm insane!"
Bakura ran a hand through his hair, which currently looked a little less spikey than usual, as if it weren't awake enough to be fully angry yet. He sighed/groaned and asked, "I mean, are you stupid? No, wait. Don't answer that."
The little girl stood up and dumped the remaining cookes out onto the table and began to step on them. With each satisfying crunch and small explosion of crumbs, Bakura's spikes began to wake up one by one.
"I call her Tom," Marik said, watching her affectionately. "Remember the movie 3 Men and a Baby?"
"You named her after Tom Selleck?" Bakura asked in a flat voice.
"I thought the little girl was called Tom," Marik said.
"The little girl was called Mary," Bakura told him. "The actor who played the man who got stuck raising her was Tom Selleck."
"Oohhhh..." Marik said, and then shrugged. "I like Tom."
Tom had returned to a sitting position and was now throwing the cookie crumbs into the air like confetti. Just as she was preparing to make her grand finale of rubbing it all in her hair, a distressed look crossed her face, and she began to dance in a more urgent fashion.
"Potty!" She squeaked.
Marik and Bakura stared at her as she hopped from foot to foot, crossing her small legs.
"She's brilliant!" Marik exclaimed. "How did she know that I had to go potty?"
"I think she has to go potty," Bakura growled. "Quick! Get her off the table!"
Marik did so and demaned frantically, "Now what?!"
"Take her to the bloody toilet!"
"But I need to use the toilet!"
"Let her use it first!"
Marik ran Tom to the bathroom and set her down. She struggled to undo the buttons on her shorts. Marik did the same with his own pants. Bakura raced in behind them and growled.
"Marik!" He jerked Tom's shorts down and sat her on the toilet.
"EFF!" Marik whined, hopping up and down. "I need to go!"
When Tom finished, she took about six yards of toilet paper, wiped herself, and then kicked her feet and hummed, looking around. Marik wriggled impatiently.
"Is she finished?" He asked, which almost sounded like begging.
Bakura frowned at Tom. "Are you finished?"
"Ee I ee I oh," Tom said, picking her nose. She showed Bakura a booger on her finger. "Eww."
"Eww, indeed." Bakura plucked her off the toilet, took about six more yards of toilet paper and used it to retrieve the booger and put it in the toilet with the other six yards of paper.
"All done!" Tom chirped, flushing the toilet and Marik couldn't relieve himself fast enough.
Bakura rolled his eyes and picked Tom up so she could reach the sink to was her hands. She found the foam handsoap interesting, and used about half the container.
"You have to take her back, you know," He told Marik.
"What is this, Shiloh? Just because she belongs to her abusive owners means I have to give her back?" Marik barked, zipping up his pants and making his way to the sink.
"As criminal as child abduction is," Bakura said. "We have no use for a small girl."
"But we could teach her so many things!" Marik dried his hands off and squatted down in front of her. "Like how to freak people out by breaking into their house and rearranging all of their furniture, or loitering by 'No Loitering' signs, and how to play a children's card game."
Tom patter Marik's face and honked his nose. He picked her up and told Bakura, "And when she becomes a teenanger we could chase away potential suitors with shot guns."
Bakura frowned. "We're not keeping her."
"You're such a stick in the mud, Bakura." Marik pouted. "First my father wouldn't let me keep my backside free of freakish and demonic scarring, then Ishizu wouldn't let me stay in the sun for more than an hour, and now you won't let me keep a child I abducted from its own parents."
"Wait." Bakura stared at him. "You took her from her parents?"
"Well, duh, They were holding her hand and all," Marik said.
Bakura sighed/growled again. "So they know what you look like?"
"I even told them my name," Marik boasted. "I said, 'I, Marik Sebastian Ishtar the third, am now in control of your offspring'."
"Fuck," was all Bakura could say. He walked out of the bathroom muttering, "I need time to figure this all out."
"You do that," Marik told him. To Tom he said, "In the meantime, I'm going to teach you how to be an evil villain. We're going to go to the Pharaoh's house and rearrange all of his furniture while he's gone."
Tom clapped her hands. "Chicken nuggets!"
Bakura sat in his room and tried to figure out how he was going to get Marik and himself out of the current mess they were in. He was used to Marik coming up with stupid ideas, but kidnapping? This made that time he came home with a box of dogs seem almost harmless. No doubt law enforcement would be swarming the area, and even though mere mortals weren't usually an obstacle, everyone would be suspicious as to why Bakura and Marik had aducted a young child from the mall. He condsidered killing her, but then Marik would throw a big fit about it. He wondered if he could get away with just putting her out the front door and trying to convince Marik there had never been a Tom. He scrapped that idea pretty fast. Marik could be dopey sometimes, but he would never buy such a Tristan-esque lie like that. He finally decided on just returning her above ground and putting up with Marik's bitching.
After leaving his room, Bakura went to the livingroom, hoping to find Marik teaching Tom how to move couches and coffee tables, but it was empty, so was the kitchen-so he wasn't teaching her how to make smoothies. He went to Marik's room next, putting on his most stern expression. Marik could whine all he wanted. In the end, Bakura would get his way, because he-
His thoughts were interrupted when he opened the bedroom door. Marik was asleep on his bed-Tom curled up against him with her thumb in her mouth, also asleep. Open and face-down on Marik's rising and falling chest was a copy of the picture book he'd tried to sell, If you give a Snake an Ankle.
Tom yawned and opened her eyes to look at the ancient bandit. She closed them again and went right back to sleep, snuggling against the lanky Egyptian boy, who snored suddenly and kicked his foot, murmuring things about tacos and eyeliner.
"Nnnnrrrrggghhh..." Bakura felt his steam leave him and he quickly and quietly left the room.
That evening, Marik decided to teach Tom how to play a children's card game. Bakura watched from his place on the sofa as they sat on the floor, Marik eagerly and quickly explaining nonsense that only hardcore duelists knew about, pointing and showing her the tiny print on the cards that went along with the rules and strategies. Unfortunately for him, Tom was only interested in chewing on the cards and making them soggy. Bakura watched the scene of her gnawing on Mega Ultra Chicken with fluttering hope that Marik might become impatient with her scenanigans, but instead he fixed her hair up with a gazillion tiny ponytail holders and ancient Egyptian hair ornaments. After about ten different styles (most of them he figured out by simultaneously watching tutorials on Youtube), he took them all out of her hair so he could give her a bath.
Bakura followed him into the bathroom, almost afraid to the leave the pair alone. Marik had already killed a variety of pets-the bird, the goldfish, the replacement goldfish, the hamster, the ferret, the replacement hamster, the bunny, and the pet rock, so Bakura was just the slightest bit unsure of him toting around a human child.
"Marik," he said, hoping to discretly change Marik's mind about keeping her. "You do know that toddlers pee in the bath water, right?"
"Eww!" Marik made a face as he stripped Tom. "That's friggin' gross."
Bakura grinned devilshly. "I know."
"No Bath for you, Tom," Marik said, suddenly pulling his own shirt over his head. "We're going to take a shower."
"Beetlejuice!" Tom squeaked, dancing a little naked jig.
"What?" Bakura frowned. "You're missing the entire point. Children are vile and disgusting."
Marik turned on the shower. "That's why they take showers." He put Tom in and then stepped in himself, yanking the curtain closed.
"Bugger!" Bakura spat.
He then had an idea. A cruel, evil idea, but one that could technically not be considered his fault. Slinking out of the bathroom-though he really didn't have to slink because Marik was singing a Ke$ha song at the top of his lungs, Bakura grabbed his cellphone and dialed his old roommate's number.
"Hello? Slender Man? How would you like to come over for...um...S'mores?"
He wondered if there were actually any S'mores fixings in the apartment, but he decided it didn't matter. Once Slender Man ate Tom, he'd probably be pretty full.
"Sure!" Slender Man said. "I love S'mores. The marshmallow is my favorite part."
When Marik and Tom exited the bathroom clean, dried, and dressed (Tom was wearing a pillow case with a head and armholes cut out until Marik could aquire pajamas for her), they walked into the livingroom to see Bakura digging around in the pantry with the Slender Man looming over him.
"So you're telling me you don't have any S'mores?" The faceless man asked.
"Hey!" Marik snapped, and aimed his rod accusingly. "What the EFF are you doing here?"
"Bakura invited me over for S'mores," Slender Man replied. "But he seems to have been mistaken about the S'mores."
He looked from Marik to Tom, and licked his lips. "Mmm...Children. The entrails are my favorite part."
Tom was suddenly grabbed by one of his long tentacles and hoisted into the air. She shrieked and then began to cry.
"Tom!" Marik stomped his foot. "Frig you, Slender Man! Put her down!"
Tom looked at Marik, and then at Bakura. The look was pitiful. It was the same look, Bakura realized, Marik made when he couldn't get popcorn and a soda and junior mints at the movies. Bakura looked back at her, then at Marik, and then a possum who had found its way in and was eating out of the garbage.
"Bloody Hell..." he muttered. "Put her down."
"Or else what?" Slender Man replied.
"I didn't say 'or else'," Bakura said. "Now put her down, you nincompoop."
Slender Man used his free to tentacle to rub his non-existant chin. "You should add an 'or else'."
"Or else..." Bakura faltered. "I'll tell everyone in our old fraternity that you pooped your pants after Geoffrey's birthday party."
"Here's your S'more." Slender Man passed her over to Bakura. "Bye, guys!"
He ate the possum on the way out and said, "That's going straight to my thighs."
After he left, Marik put his hands on hips and screeched, "Bakura! What the EFF were you thinking inviting Slender Man into our home?"
"You mean when we have a child here and he likes to eat children?" Bakura passed Tom to Marik.
"No, I meant in general, but yes. Also because we have a child here and he likes to eat children."
Bakura sighed and massaged his eyes with his fingertips. "Marik, for her own safety, you need to take her back. We're always being put in bizarre and dangerous situations."
"No!" Marik sounded like a petulant child being forced to release a ladybug from a shoe box. "Tom doesn't want to go back to her family. They were cruel to her!"
"How do you know?" Bakura scoffed. "You only saw them long enough to yank her out of their grasps."
"Because they were in line to see Warm Bodies," Marik said.
"They were taking their young child to see something so horrifying?" Bakura raised one eyebrow.
"Yes," Marik said. "Don't you get it, Bakura? I saved Tom from a fate worse than death. A zombie Twilight movie. It's like Twilight, but with zombies!"
"Mooooo!" Tom cooed like a cow, and then wriggled out of Marik's grasp.
"I had no idea," Bakura said. "Are you sure they weren't going to see a Disney film? Maybe Dreamworks?"
"I will not subject anymore children to necrophiliac teen sex films," Marik said.
Tom skipped over to Bakura and held out her arms, standing on her tiptoes. Bakura stared down at her.
"I don't know, Marik," he said. "What if she's already infected?"
"She's not," Marik said. "Watch."
He grabbed Tom and stared into her eyes. "Ttttttttttwwwwwwwwiiiiiiilll lllliiiiiigggggghhhhhtttttt..."
"Poop!" Tom replied.
"See? She's fine." Marik set her down again and she ran back to Bakura.
Bakura picked her up, but held her before him like somebody might hold their dog to carry it inside after it had rolled around in the garbage. Tom wriggled around in his grasp and said, "Hug!"
"Aww, you want to hug the kitty?" Marik asked, sauntering the short distance between them. "You heard her, Fluffy. Embrace her."
"You sound like Melvin," Bakura muttered. He frowned at Tom, who smiled at him.
"Marik?" He couldn't believe he was getting worse at this putting his foot down thing. "Are you sure about this?"
To Be Continued...or not. It all depends on if YOU want it to be continued.