Hey there, my fellow writers and readers. I hope you are doing well. :) Here's a brand-new BtVS/Yu-Gi-Oh crossover fanfic that I cooked up one day.
So what happened was that I was listening to the song Summer's Comin' by Clint Black and then reading some Yu-Gi-Oh fanfics with Atem as the Pharaoh, and I got inspired to write a new prompt fanfic with the words ‛summertime', ‛Pharaoh' and library'. In it, Andrew Wells is in the library at an Egyptian palace – and Pharaoh Atem finds him there all by himself. (I also put in a flashback from the Season 2 episode School Hard where Buffy is studying French with Willow in the Bronze.)
Disclaimer: Genius Joss Whedon owns Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Kazuki Takahashi (who is also a genius) owns the anime Yu-Gi-Oh. The lyrics to Summer's Comin' by Clint Black belong to their respective owners. I own the fanfics that I cook up from time to time.
Summer's Comin'
Nothin' on earth that'll get me hummin'
Like a heat wave comin' and I'll come runnin'
With her diggin' that tan in the broad daylight
And every night is a Saturday night
And everything's right with the summer comin'
I'm the first one standin' in line
For my day in the sun I've been workin'
‛Til the sun don't shine
Takin' off my hat, leave it to the boys
Get that old work monkey down off my back
All I want's a little peace and noise
Hit the cruise control
Get me back on track
Let my old Ford treat me like a Cadillac
Nothin' on Earth that'll get me hummin'
Like a heat wave comin' and I'll come runnin'
With her diggin' that tan in the broad daylight
And every night is a Saturday night
And everything's right with the summer comin'
I'm the first one standin' in line
For my day in the sun I've been workin'
‛Til the sun don't shine
~Clint Black, Summer's Comin'
Andrew Wells knew he was alone in the library. Buffy Summers was off training the other Slayers – with some help from her sister Slayer Faith Lehane, and Robin Wood, the former principal of Sunnydale High School (which was now a pile of rubble, along with the rest of Sunnydale).
"Am I interrupting something important, my servant?"
The baritone voice cut through the air in a knifelike fashion.
Andrew was so busy in his quest for a good book to read that he failed to hear the owner of the voice that suddenly entered the room – until it spoke.
Spinning around, his back to the bookcase in the Egyptian palace that he was currently in, Andrew's azure eyes grew wide at the sight of the vision with the tri-colored, lightning bolt-shaped hair and crimson eyes. Andrew then blinked.
He almost never could commit to memory of how handsome the Pharaoh seemed to be.
There he stood – Pharaoh Atem. Dressed in his ancient Egyptian outfit, he looked handsome, as usual. Just the sight of him (or even hearing his voice) would cause Andrew to do either one of two things – going into spasms or mentally heading off into sudden fantasies about himself and Atem unclothed and underneath the bedsheets made from Egyptian cotton.
After all, such was the kind of effect Atem had on people – especially people like Andrew, of course.
As per his habit, Andrew instantly fell to one knee – the right one which was seen from Atem's view as the left – and touched his forehead to the floor. "Your Majesty," he said.
Andrew remembered in ancient times, the pharaohs were respected and revered as much as the Egyptian gods themselves. And there was a reason why, of course.
The statues of the Egyptian guards were carved with the left foot forward, as this was considered to be a symbol of respect. And it was true that the heart was on the left side of the body as well.
Andrew's habit of bowing and addressing the Pharaoh as ‛Your Majesty' was, as usual, his way of showing the Pharaoh respect. And besides, like all powerful people, respect was something that was usually hard to come by. Knowing that, Andrew was determined to make the best of it.
Atem walked over to him, his crimson eyes holding a hint of a smirk. He had had his eyes on Andrew from the moment Andrew had simply appeared in his life (along with the other members of the Scooby Gang, especially Buffy and her sister Dawn, who were the Slayer and the former Key, respectively). The moment he locked eyes with him, Atem knew that Andrew – a boy who had been bullied and stuck with the reputation of ‛nerd' when he was a student at Sunnydale High School, and who knew all about topics belonging to pop culture – was very unique, and would make a fine servant for him.
And why not?
With that, one day (as Buffy looked on with a look of half shock and half confusion), Atem told Andrew that he was now a servant to the Pharaoh, as well as the Pharaoh's advisor. Buffy found that to be quite surprising, as did Dawn and their friends. Besides being a surprise, it was also a puzzlement to them, too. Andrew's reply was a simple bow of acceptance.
When she asked Atem about it, he replied, "Buffy, look at Andrew. He is, without a doubt, my plus fidèle conseiller, or my most trusted advisor, as you say in French."
Buffy was quite surprised at how well the French phrases just slid smoothly off Atem's tongue the way they did. Had he simply picked up an English-French dictionary and began reading it for pleasure? Or had he simply taught himself the language with a little assistance from her friend Willow Rosenberg? She wasn't sure... yet.
But there was one thing she did know – apparently Atem's knowledge of the French language surpassed even her own, it seemed. She had tried studying the French language with some help from Willow while Xander was out on the dance floor of the Bronze one night back when they attended Sunnydale High, and she couldn't even get the grasp on how to speak it well – not one bit at all.
"La vache… doit me… touché… de la… jeudi," Buffy said. She looked expectantly at Willow, who just furrowed her brow and shook her head.
"Oh, je stink," Buffy said after Willow told her she had said "The cow should touch me from Thursday" in French – and had said it incorrectly. She wasn't exactly getting the hang of the French language – which was viewed as the ‛language of love' by others – at all.
But as for Atem, he was fluent in French, which Andrew seemed to like for reasons only he could explain. Whenever he spoke it in front of Andrew, Andrew felt he had to fight off a desire to kiss his way up and down Atem's arm (which was similar to how Gomez Addams would act whenever his wife Morticia would speak French on the TV shows The Addams Family and The New Addams Family).
Andrew then shook his head, as though remembering something important.
In his mind, it was such a shame Warren Mears and Jonathan Levinson weren't able to see this. They would've either plotzed or plotted to try to get Andrew back and away from Atem – or maybe they would've done both. But Andrew felt that they would've failed at doing that anyway. He couldn't help but smile at the mental picture he saw – himself dressed in the robes of an advisor, turning his back on Warren and Jonathan and heading over to Atem's side before sitting on a stool placed next to Atem's throne.
After all, Andrew thought, smiling, what's the point of being an advisor to a Pharaoh if you can't turn your back on those who called themselves your former friends and yet didn't act as such, anyway?
Atem, however, would've done something different when it came to either changing Warren and Jonathan for good so that they forgot about being super-villains, or changing Andrew so that he forgot about Warren and Jonathan and listened to Atem instead.
For one thing, Warren would not have been so lucky if Atem had gotten him in his clutches. Atem would've gotten a hold on the Cerebral Dampener (thus stopping Warren from using it on his ex-girlfriend Katrina Silber). Atem would've transported Warren to his palace after knocking him out.
When Warren woke up to find himself with Atem in the Pharaoh's bedroom... well, it would be impossible to put it into words – at least from Warren's point of view, that is...
Well, as these mortals would say, Warren could've been knocked over with a feather, especially if he ever got the chance to see the interior of my bedroom, Atem thought with a mental smirk.
Even the bed itself would've been a thing of beauty: black sheets and a deep red bedspread, along with pillows of a deep burgundy color.
Atem would've been protected from the flash of light coming from the Cerebral Dampener, thanks to his Shadow Magic.
But as for Warren... a different story. Unlike Atem, Warren, being a human, didn't have any Shadow powers.
So he would've gotten caught in the Cerebral Dampener's spell and gotten his free will taken away, thus making him submissive to suggestions from the caster – which, in this case, happened to be none other than Pharaoh Atem himself.
As Warren took a closer look at the object in Atem's hand, he realized it was none other than the Cerebral Dampener. His eyes widened at the realization of the kind of trouble he was currently in.
Warren quickly searched his pockets for the sunglasses he usually wore, knowing they were able to block the power of the Cerebral Dampener. But they weren't there.
"Looking for these, hmm?" Atem's baritone voice purred in a seductive manner. In his tanned hand was the pair of sunglasses Warren had been looking for. Warren's eyes widened in shock as he searched his pockets a second time.
This wasn't his lucky day at all.
Now, the way he figured it, Warren had two choices. He would either be grateful to Atem for finding the sunglasses, or puzzled as he didn't know how Atem got them.
Warren decided to vote for the latter. "Hey, where did you get those?"
Atem simply smirked. "What do you think, Warren? I simply snatched them from your pocket when you were knocked unconscious – which, of course, was by me."
Warren was about to reach out and grasp the sunglasses, but then a whimper escaped his throat when he saw them begin fading in and out. With that, he knew the type of trouble he was in. Deep trouble at that. Without his sunglasses, he was vulnerable. Very much so.
Warren was suddenly reminded of the scene from the 1995 film Vampire in Brooklyn where Rita Veder (played by Angela Bassett) saw her reflection begin to fade in and out – one of the signs of becoming a vampire (or ‛nosferatu' in Romanian). Warren knew vampires usually didn't appear in mirrors or anything that cast a reflection.
Casting a longing glance at the sunglasses before they disappeared into thin air, Warren sighed.
However, his sigh was quite a different kind. It was the sigh of one that had accepted his or her fate. In his mind this was, he knew, something that was unavoidable – or at least, it seemed to be.
Seeing this, Atem reached over and held Warren's chin in a grip that was possibly a vise. As he looked into the dark brown eyes that belonged to Warren Mears, the smirk that was Atem's trademark made its appearance. Placing a tanned index finger to Warren's forehead, Atem looked into his mind, and his smirk grew bigger at what he saw.
They were memories of the boy that was said to be a nerd by almost all his peers back when he was a student at Sunnydale High School. Pushed into lockers before and after gym class. Being hit with the balls during a game of dodgeball. Tripped in the halls some of the time by a jock named Frankie. Being called a ‛nerd', ‛geek' and ‛loser' at every opportunity.
And last, but definitely not least, there was the ‛underwear incident' – which Warren never fully explained, and which Atem found to be intriguing... at least for his own personal reasons.
However, Andrew and Jonathan were the only two people who never referred to Warren as a nerd. The reason why was that they knew him and understood him. They knew how it felt to be teased, bullied and picked on, so at least Warren felt he wasn't alone there.
He knew that was, of course, very true...
Before Warren knew what was happening, Atem's smirk disappeared, having been replaced by a pretend look of puzzlement, as he asked, "Are you sure about this, my young friend?"
Narrowing his dark eyes, Warren replied, "Yes. Goshdarnit, yes, I'm sure", not knowing that those words would've been almost similar to what his ex Katrina would have said to him (except in a different situation, however).
That was all Atem needed. Opening his tanned palm, he held out the Cerebral Dampener, which emitted a flash of light. Warren was caught off guard at first, a look of shock on his face. Then he looked up at Atem and said the words he knew he wanted to say. The words Atem had waited for him to come up with all along.
"I love you, Master."
A smirk replaced the puzzled look from moments before as Atem reached over and placed a hand on Warren's shoulder. Just as he'd hoped, Warren had no clue about his past, or his plans for trying to take over Sunnydale either. His hand moved up to cup Warren's cheek.
"Of course you do, my slave." He paused, considering Warren's appearance for a moment. "Yes... from my perspective, you are quite handsome – whereas the women you've met refer to you as a ‛nerd' or a ‛geek'."
He paused again for a little bit. "But like the gods from my hometown of Egypt, both arms should be bare."
With those words, Atem waved his hand, and before Warren knew what was happening, a blue light with sparkles surrounded him for only a few moments. The light made Warren blink. When he finally looked down at himself, Warren's eyes widened in shock. The black Levis were gone, replaced by a pair of black breezy harem pants. Warren's black leather jacket and matching muscle shirt had also disappeared, which left his chest bare to Atem's gaze. A golden bracelet in the form of a snake wrapped itself around Warren's right upper arm.
"Oh... oh, I look so... so..."
Warren paused, unable to think of how to finish the sentence.
"Handsome? Yes indeed, you do look handsome – for an advisor of mine, that is," replied Atem.
He then took Warren's pale hand in his own tanned one. "Come, my advisor. There's a lot of work for you to get done."
Warren bowed his head. "Yes, Master," he replied as they headed out of the room and down the hall...
Atem and Andrew gave each other secret smiles.
But then Andrew cast his eyes downward, and a sigh came from his throat.
"Is something wrong, Andrew?" asked Atem. Of course, Atem would notice things – even little things such as a change of emotions in a person. Those crimson eyes never missed anything. Even Andrew could testify to that.
Andrew was about to take refuge in a lie – any lie would do.
But this time, the truth would be better. It usually was when it came to Atem.
"Well, you see, Your Majesty," he began, "I sometimes wonder what could have happened if Warren and Jonathan could see me now – an advisor, giving you advice."
"Ah, I see" was Atem's reply. Andrew blinked. Sometimes Atem was quite short and sweet with his replies.
"From my perspective," Andrew added after a moment, "I think they would get quite the shock of their lives, of course."
Atem nodded. "Indeed, they would, Andrew. And, from my point of view, so would those mortals that called themselves ‛jocks' and picked on you, Jonathan and Warren back when you attended Sunnydale High School, too." He caught sight of Andrew's shocked expression and laughed a little. "Of course, if they could see you now, those jocks would probably be throwing fits."
Andrew replied to Atem's words with a nod of his own. From Andrew's point of view, Atem was quite the guy.
One of his many talents was his way with words. Atem was not only an expert at putting things into words – and in a superb way at that – he also knew how to say the right things and be erudite (which was another way of saying "scholarly"), too.
Well, I hope you liked reading this as much as I did writing it. Plus, nice feedback is very much appreciated, please... :)