Aye. This is a crossover story that I will be working hard on, so hopefully it shows. I hated the way YGO ended, and I am an avid Kingdom Hearts fan, so I decided to meld my two little obsessions together. The YGO portion of this begins at the end of the Battle City arc, and the Kingdom Hearts portion begins at the end of the second game.

Disclaimer: I don't own squat. Don't bug me about it.

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-Prelude-

It was an overwhelming kind of seduction.

The fact that it didn't come from a living creature wasn't the worst of it, either. If asked at that direct moment, he would have said the worst part was his inability to resist its calling. That wasn't it either, though; it wasn't an inability on his part, but rather an enthused choice to answer its summons.

He did like the darkness, after all.

'What is this place, stranger?'

His lips twisted into a cold smirk. Casting his gaze over the surrounding darkness, he saw nothing amiss to signify a source to the voice. It was bodiless, drifting here and there and changing in volume as erratically as the shadows it spoke from. There were countless souls drifting about in the shadows as well, and he could sense that the voice had terrified them. Their unease flowed through him like an elixir, exciting his senses till he almost trembled with the want to share in the cause of their fear.

What was this presence that had scared them so?

Gazing around again, the spirit narrowed his eyes dangerously. "This is the Shadow Realm," he whispered back, tone as harsh and violent as usual. There was a devious note to it, easily evident of his keenness to figure out his situation. Never before had he ventured into the realm and found another presence as malevolent as himself. It was ... intriguing.

'The Shadow Realm.'

He could tell the voice held no knowledge about it. The words sounded foreign when it spoke them, rolling off its non-existent tongue as alien as its presence in the realm in the first place. Smirk deepening slightly the spirit stepped forward, eyes flicking from shadow to shadow in the pointless hope that the voice would slip and show itself. A chuckle rumbled deep in his throat with his next words.

"Are you lost, voice?" he hissed, spinning around with teeth bared in a cold grin. "You sound quite confused!"

The reprimand was calm, albeit immediate. 'Interested.'

"Is that so?" he shot back, his grin never leaving his face. "This is a realm for lost and wandering souls, not a place for your viewing leisure." At the sound of its resultant chuckling, he simply cocked an eyebrow in amusement. "Funny, is it?"

'Only your pride, stranger. What are you to exist in such a place?'

The spirit smirked. "Me?" he repeated, the word coldly cynical. He spread his arms into a mock gesture of humility, bending his back in the accompanying bow. When he spoke next, it was through his bared smile. "… Why, I am the Darkness." In the silence that followed he slowly straightened back upright, eyes still scanning the shadows here and there as movement caught his eye. More often than not it was just a shift in the darkness, but there seemed to be something a little more corporeal there sometimes. It flitted from point to point, disintegrating the instant his gaze landed upon it and reforming a moment later in the farthest part of his peripherals.

It made focusing on it a difficult task indeed.

'Darkness is not a human form.' The calm voice reverberated through the air, startling the spirit out of his concentrative reverie. He straightened coldly to his full height, only deepening the smirk on his lips into something more vehement. The shadows were shifting now, more rapidly than they were before. To the inexperienced eye it might seem that their frothing was a beginning sign of anger, but the spirit knew better. He had ventured in here time enough to know when the Shadow Realm was provoked.

Right now, it seemed to be eagerly reacting to the banter between him and the nameless voice.

As though their pointless talk had some merit.

"Are you quite sure?" he purred back in answer, suddenly intent on upholding his side of the conversation. He had never seen the Shadow Realm react this way before, and the upsurge of power it was releasing was addicting. He wanted more of it, to feel its excitement as though it were his own, coursing through the very core of his body.

Finally reaching into his own dark essence, he pushed its aura into a powerful emanation from his figure. It was an audacious provocation to the other presence here with him, and a deliberate one at that. No entity ever entered the Shadow Realm with enough control to uphold coherent conversation as this voice was. In fact, the voice seemed to be more interested in its surroundings than actually alarmed.

"You, voice?" he whispered, the slightest hint of a growl in his words. It was not a growl of anger, but rather one of exerted dominance; this realm was his domain, after all, and this other presence was going to learn that fact swiftly. "What are you, exactly, to exist here?"

Cold laughter came before its reply, and not just from the voice of one person; there were several, varying tones and pitches twisted by the shadows as they laughed. 'We?' It was a breathy rush of voices now, tinged as predominantly masculine with a dangerous female undertone to it. 'We are Nothing. Saved from nothing, reborn in nothing.'

"And lacking a purpose to live, apparently." He had noted the emphasis they had placed on the word in the former sentence, and his lack of understanding in their doing so only irked him. The words themselves had not fazed him in the slightest, and he chose to portray that fact in the challenging tone his voice next took. "I'll ask you once more, and only once: what are you doing in the Shadow Realm?"

Laughter was his immediate answer, melded as before with what seemed to be several voices. 'We are unsure.' The shadows flickered around him, forming into tendrils in his peripheral vision but then fading the second he turned to focus on them. Their movement only grew more vehement when the voice spoke again, as though retaliating at its mocking tone. 'Have you something to suggest?'

His lips curled with a sneer. "As a matter of fact, I do," he hissed, his fingers snaking around the cool gold of the ring at his neck. The second his skin made contact with the item, it reacted with a flash of golden light. He didn't cease there, however; he continued to stoke its power, forwarding his own strength through his touch and into the ring. "You dare to mock me, a baron of the darkness?" he continued coolly, turning with his bared sneer towards the shadows. His fingers flexed amusedly in their grip on the ring. "Why not come speak to me face to face?"

'If you gave us the means, stranger ..?'

His grin deepened into a lethal smirk. "... With pleasure," he whispered, closing his eyes in answer to their suggestion. It was no simple task, achieving solidity in the Shadow Realm. Then again, he was not without experience in manipulating the shadows to his will. He had sent so many souls to this realm now; there was no reason for him not to know how to accomplish a simple task such as this.

Centering his focus, he kept his eyes closed and instead began to seek out the source of the voice with his senses. The human ones of his body were useless in the Shadow Realm, but there were others of a darker nature available to him. He was not a spirit himself for nothing, after all. Locating other beings, spiritual or not, was not a difficult task even in the mortal world. Here in the Shadow Realm, it was practically effortless.

... There.

He could not see it, but he could feel it; the presence of the other entity here in the realm with him, seemingly existing around him everywhere and not just in one place. It was like the rest of the wandering souls, present in every shadow and encompassing the realm as a whole. The difference was this entity gave off an aura far more powerful than any of the other souls, and it spoke to him coherently.

Like an equal.

He chuckled, the sound rising with feral malevolence deep in his throat. "You ask," he hissed, eyes opening to just mere slits. The ring at his neck was glowing brightly, its power swirling both around it and his body as he focused it into his other hand. There was a hiatus around him as he worked, every shadow, every soul, stilled as his power became manifest. He reached his hand out in front of him as his expression darkened, smirk deepening to a sinister level. "I answer."

The hiatus exploded.

Everything sped up for a moment; the shadows around him twisted in on themselves as his power escalated to a dangerously high level. And then not but a few seconds later, it stopped. The lapse of his technique had not exceeded even half the time its establishment had required . He was left to stand in its wake, breathing efforts more laboured than he would ever admit and his millennium ring glowing faintly. The only significant change to his appearance was what was now held in the fingers of his now powerless, outstretched left hand.

Cards. Four of them.

Breathing in slowly to steady his chest pace, the spirit stared down at the cards in his hand, feeling the elation from the shadow magic still tingling in his blood. It was several seconds later when he finally turned the cards around, eyes lingering interestedly on their faces. He was not surprised to see four human ones staring back at him, though the black robes that each figure wore did throw him off slightly. All four figures were men, appearing age-wise to have a good several years on the age of the body of his vessel.

"I see you weren't lying."

The voice came from behind him. He turned around, eyes narrowing amusedly. When he saw what it was that had spoken, his amusement only deepened. Four pairs of eyes stared directly back at him, varying degrees of interest in each of their gazes. It wasn't difficult to tell which of them had spoken, either; only the tanned, long-haired man at the forefront held expectancy in his stare, one eyebrow cocked in a manner that commanded answer.

Pity he didn't consider himself much one for obeying commands.

Remaining silent, he simply allowed his smirk to deepen as he continued staring down the four robed men. They were not the kind of soul forms he expected to come across in the Shadow Realm. They held themselves differently, for one; not one of them cowered or recoiled from the darkness around them. Their figures were taut and upright, completely at ease and even casual as they gazed at the surrounding shadows.

The spirit tilted his head to the side, a sneer twisting across his lips. How bold of them, not to fear the darkness. If their audacity continued for very much longer, he would have to take it upon himself to show them exactly how foolish their lack of fear was ...

"Who are you, stranger?" It was the deep steady voice again, the same one that had been speaking to him from the shadows all this time. The only difference to it now was that it no longer carried the echo of the other voices with it. The spirit turned his eyes back towards its long-haired speaker, smirking.

"I already told you that," he whispered, words laced with mockery. "I am everything you see around you. The shadows, the lost souls, the pain and fear of those condemned here; ... everything." He bared his teeth in a sneered grin, extending his arms in a cruel gesture of welcome. He even bent his back in a bow, though the mirth scratched through his expression was easy evidence of his lack of real respect. "I am darkness."

The other man didn't answer right away. The only sign he gave that he had even heard the spirit's answer was the slight smile that had appeared on his lips. If the ring spirit didn't know any better, he would have judged the action as a sign of senseless stupidity; who smiled, after all, when confronted by the terrors of the Shadow Realm?

"Very well," said the man eventually, his words holding the same trace of amusement that his lips did. He dipped his head, eyes closing. His hand rose in gesture at his chest, gloved fingers touching the material of his black robe. "My name ... is Xemnas." His hand moved to his right next, acknowledging the second man standing there. "Xigbar," he continued, voice still calm and melodiously low. "Saix, Luxord ..." His hand gestured respectively to each of the two figures standing on his right side.

A few seconds of silence passed before he raised his head again, eyes slowly opening to once more meet those of the ring spirit's. "You, stranger?" he continued, words barely above a whisper. His lips quirked slightly, the faintest trace of a smile appearing again upon them. "Does the ... darkness, have a name?"

The spirit's smirk deepened, taking much amusement from the leisurely tone with which the other man addressed him. His eyes lingered on the second figure on the man's right, taking note of the smirk on the scarred man's lips and the black patch that covered his left eye. His gaze then flickered to the two men on the left, noting the similar amusement in the blonde-bearded smile of the second and the unimpressed frown on the lips of the first.

He turned his eyes on the one called Xemnas last, and it was several more seconds before he actually answered. "... Bakura." His tone was quiet; quieter, even, than the one that Xemnas had taken in addressing him. He raised his hand to his own chest in a mocking gesture of the tanned man's earlier action, dipping his head in similar scorn.

"My name ... is Bakura."

-

TBC.