NOT Another Yuugiou Vampire AU!
By Ary
Rating: PG, for vampire's obsessive use of the word 'bloody.'
Main characters: Yami Bakura (the immediate introduction of his host, Ryou, should not be taken seriously-he's not a very commonly seen character), Yami Yugi, Kaiba (sorta), Yuugi (sorta), and Malik and Yami Malik, but not in a way that Malik fans would want them.
Pairings: None whatsoever
A/Ns: It should be noted that the yamis and hikaris have separate bodies because this apparently is always the case in AU fantasy. Drat that genre.
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Bakura Ryou was not entirely sure why a terrible, white wolf was standing in front of him, or why he hadn't spotted it sooner. Not that it was a particularly intimidating creature -it was panting loudly, its tongue lolling out of a grinning mouth. Its intelligent eyes seemed to sparkle as it gazed at the poor, frightened lad.
"Er . . . hello, there." Bakura said shakily. The aura the creature was giving off seemed to tell him that the wolf had understood. It spoke in a low, powerful voice as is responded,
"Ruff!"
And, of course, just when their conversation had reached an intellectual climax, the doorbell rang, and Jounochi's Brooklyn dub accent was heard: "Hey, Bakura, you there, man?"
This was a particularly curious incident, as they were in the middle of a forest, miles from the nearest house. Bakura whirled around anyway.
That was distraction enough. When he looked back for the wolf, it was gone.
Actually, that would be a 'he.' He was gone. That 'he' was another Bakura, making the whole business confusing to those who don't know. In Bakura Ryou's case, Bakura was his last name, and in our Bakura's case -the wolf, I mean -it was his only name. So as not to confuse you, we are going to only have one Bakura in here from now on.
So, Bakura Ryou fans, shoo. Get out. There are very few gay wolves out there, and Bakura is definitely not one of them.
Okay, so he isn't really a wolf. He is actually a vampire in disguise. How can a vampire disguise himself as a wolf, you ask? . . . Well, actually, he isn't a vampire either -he just pretends to be, in order to collect information from them that he would most often find useless anyway and forget.
He had always thought them a disgusting lot, those vampires. Their hair was always greasy, their fingernails always dirty, they always wrote in this blotchy, uneven hand and oh, look at us writing with quills because we're so traditional.
And they were plastic quills, too.
So, who exactly is Bakura, you ask? He's a fallen angel -you know, the angel that got bounced out of heaven? At least, he thought it was heaven. The memory had rather faded nastily: There were clouds, and a lot of bright, radiant beings. He supposed those were angels. Then again, angels didn't usually have bright orange beaks. Did they? Oh, and God was there, too. It was either Him or a pelican.
But it had to be God and the angels. He was almost sure that birds couldn't breathe up in the clouds. Wait -did they have shady, run down shops and wingless angels in skimpy swimsuits getting cancer-causing tans in heaven?
He pondered this for a while and then asked himself, what does one call an angel who got bounced out of Manhattan Beach?
And when I say 'bounced,' I really mean bounced. It takes a pretty powerful water balloon catapult to get someone all the way across the Pacific Ocean. But regardless of the methods used, he landed headfirst into the peak of Mt. Fuji and had skidded downwards until he rammed himself headfirst into a tree. A painful method of bringing himself to a stop, but effective nonetheless.
Was he even an angel? he asked himself. His wings were more along the lines of bat wings that had attached themselves on the wrong side of his shoulders. Then again, had they been secured on the right way, he would probably have even worse problem with his arms and shoulders so he didn't push his luck. But 'fallen angel' sounded better than 'fallen person with bat wings that had attached themselves on the wrong sides of his shoulders,' and much better than, 'person with bat wings that had attached themselves on the wrong sides of his shoulders who got bounced from somewhere that he vaguely recalled as the California coastline.' So he simply called himself a fallen angel -just keep in mind that it's not really what he means by it.
But besides trying to remember his shady and often nonsensical past, he often found very few things to do in the forest. The constantly roaming vampires generally meant that he had to keep a low profile. After all, there were only so many times you could coax a groggy vampire into the sunlight and watch them writhe in pure agony before it got old. Plus, some of them were violently jumpy when woken up in the middle of the day and started slashing at him, hence Bakura's motto of, "It's all fun and games until I get hurt."
Indeed, in the end several things that Bakura did were very much a spur-of-the-moment business. Which would certainly explain the certain lack of Millennium Items in his possession.
For instance, one day he decided to become a shapeshifter. Just for kicks.
He liked turning himself into a wolf, mainly because people don't really mind if you grin like an idiot with your tongue hanging out. But they had a better digestive system for raw meat. As a human he mainly had to stick to Shabu-shabu.
He never stayed very long as a wolf, though. Walking on all fours gave him back problems. But then there was the issue of what to do when he was a fallen angel-type person. Tonight the entertainment of choice was a short, teenage boy's possession -a rectangular prism he had come to know as a video cassette. On it were written, in large, blunt Katakana: "Porun."
Porun? he thought, staring at it. He knew of only two uses for Katakana: to emphasize something or to write words from a different language, usually English. It usually came out difficult to read as the Japanese writing system, for the most part, prevents two constantans from appearing together. And he wasn't prepared to decipher what the word meant now.
Mutely taking on a wolf form, he snatched up the video in his teeth and trotted off with it, making sure that the boy who owned it saw him do it. The boy yelled and ran after him into the forest. Bakura pranced off to his usual clearing and waited. Now, it should be known that he found it almost impossible to wait patiently -he needed something to do with his paws. So, after giving the tape a thorough sniff-down, he began to unravel the shiny film from within and stretch and twist it about.
He noticed that this was a completely stupid-looking act about the same time he realized that the boy he had stolen the thing from had yet to arrive. Vampires, he thought darkly. He thought the same thing after almost every slightly misfortunate incident, whatever the severity.
So he gingerly picked up what remained of the video and stormed off in the direction of the at least partially infamous vampire clan.
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A silent circle of hooded figures stood around a small camp fire. The moon was clouded by dark thunderclouds, lightning flashed, the gods in heaven looked as if they were trying desperately to convince the devil that this whole rebel angel thing just wasn't working out and that he should just give it up and catch up with the times.
Those gathered were silently cheering Lucifer on. They didn't actually have anything to back him up with, but it was common knowledge that if a group of such powerful, undead beings concentrated all their willpower on succeeding, they usually succeeded.
Unfortunately, not everyone in the group was helping the ol' symbol of all evil.
One of their number's willpower was centered on roasting two small, white marshmallows on the end of a stick he had found while getting there. Cheerfully he hummed the tune to a song from "Flower Drum Song". What was it again? "Chop Suey", it probably was. It was a good song.
Turn back to the other vampires: "Dammit," muttered the one at the front of the circle, as a final lightning bolt signified the official ass kicking of the Ultimate Evil. Yami Yugi directed his attention to the rest of the circle. "We have failed." he said gravely.
"Again." chimed the figure in the middle, somehow managing to work the word into the song melody. Tentatively he sniffed his food and was halfway through chomping through a marshmallow when he noticed the accusative stare of the others and stopped. "What?" he asked, jaw slightly sticky.
"You are not of our clan." said the vampire prince majestically, rising to his full height, his mad hair springing above his head. It reminded the marshmallow eater of daisies for no particular reason at all.
"Ay, about time you noticed, too." the newcomer bit his lip. He had really been expecting a question from the vampire. Statements were harder to reply to. "In fact, I find it quite insulting that you dirty-blooded scoundrels" -He was getting increasingly nasty looks from the circle, accompanied by muddled whispers. -"might even think for a minute that I'm one of your little mates. I may as well have your heads for considering it just for a moment. Not that you'd be able to tell the difference. Ay, you lot even got brains up there, or what?" -Now a few were moving in for a direct attack.
"What the hell are you people talking about?" demanded one of the circle, Kaiba by name, wringing his hands out. "Yam- excuse me, I mean, 'Your Majesty,' this bloke's been in the clan for ages, we all know that. And, Yami Malik, do-"
His speech was interrupted by a loud, obnoxious, "A-hem."
One of Kaiba's partners tapped him on the shoulder and whispered into his pointed ear: "He only responds to 'Marik' now. Something about conserving syllable usage on names. Some new environmentalist fad."
A vein pulsed in Kaiba's temple, which, considering the numbingly-bloodlust-invoking nature of the vampire's blood, was nearly enough to bring on a migraine. ". . . 'Marik,' be reasonable. You make this bloody speech every meeting. Trust me, no one here really gives a damn whether or not you're a- a pure-blooded vampire, or whatever you say you are-"
"A pedigree Eastern Longfang, thank you very much." Yami Malik prompted.
There was a general groan from the crowd. Last week the story had been that he had been drafted to the vampire ranks by some underground tomb-guarding clan.
"Well," said Yami Yugi briskly, clapping his hands together. "I think it best to get right into the reason that we are all gathered here tonight -I mean, er, besides aiding the Great Dark Powers of the Universe in regaining dictatorship over the world and all-"
"I hate you." interrupted a voice. It was quiet, soaked in venom yet flowed through the air as though it were newly christened ship in calm water, or perhaps like a kid in socks across a newly waxed floor.
The vampire prince glanced momentarily at the newly-bitten vampire before returning to his royal high horse. "As I was saying, our current predicament is-"
"I . . . hate you." said the new vampire, even more slowly, even more venom in his voice, even more kids sliding across even more newly waxed floors in even more slippery socks. He also added traumatic shakiness for effect this time.
"That's nice, Malik. Now, as you all can see, we currently have a shortage of-"
"I. Hate. You." Venom ran freely through the air. The squeals of gleeful children grew louder as they slid across the floor without rhyme or reason in the slightest.
"Malik," Yami Yugi chimed, his teeth gritted. "Would you please-"
"I-"
A dark shadow from the bushes rephrased. "He said, 'shut your howling screamer.'"
It was Yami Bakura.
Malik stopped reiterating with miraculous timing. He was suddenly staring at Yami Bakura fixedly. His hair, so pearly white, his eyes, so dark and powerful, his-
The shapeshifter/not-a-vampire/not-really-a-fallen-angel cocked an eyebrow. "What's wrong with him, eh?"
Yami Yugi snorted. "Don't mind him. He's been like that ever since we found him. Anyway, our current situation is that of something to extract blood from."
"But that's always our situation!" burst out Yami Malik/Marik. "What else are we supposed to worry about? We're vampires, for badness sake! It's not like we're particular about these things. It's dark out, already. Just go out in the bloody down and seduce someone!"
"Marik!" Kaiba snapped, "Your input is not requested at this time." He paused. "Your . . . Majesty, what did I tell you about ending your sentences with prepositions, hmm?"
Yami Yugi sighed and cast a wayward look to somewhere beyond the circle. His eyes wavered there for a moment, his concentration becoming more acute, and widened. They then swivelled up to stare at the sky as he sighed. "Who was watching the food?"
Several vampires pointed accusing, sharp fingernails at one another, but none raised a hand.
"Well," the prince continued, "I hope you gentlemen are up to food on the go." He waited, but his colleagues didn't get the drift. His voice rose as he jabbed his index finger threateningly into the forest. "I MEAN, get out there and catch that human before I have you all beheaded!"
"Oh," was the general reply, followed by the rustle of feet.
"Honestly," Yami Yugi muttered, hand to his forehead, "It's impossible to find good help these days."
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I hope you can all guess what the mysterious 'Porun' really is.