Chapter one:
The Game Begins
Her heart beat faster then she could even begin a breath, a thought. All that processed, was that she was to run. And fast. Her life depended on it;
And so she ran for all her life was worth. Which to anyone else who didn't know her, might have thought it to have been a whole lot to run for, but she'd argue against that: Her's wasn't worth much. She'd never really done anything, never really completed anything, and really, was nothing. But that didn't hurt her, no, not at all, she knew her place well enough not to care about what others thought or said, and mostly not care about others at all. She'd ignored everyone, and they'd ignored her.
That was, until tonight.
She could hear their heavy footsteps, trotting just behind hers, anxious and lusted after the one thing running, the prey. The men were laughing, wheezing, yelling. Taunting. She was the object of choice, object of target. She was their target to kill.
But why, you ask?
The one time this question would be easy, she was a nobody, so no one would notice her gone, no one would notice her 'missing'. Not even the so called guardian she had.
And with her parents who just up and left, why should she care? She was just a burden, like a dog you forgot to bring in or feed, and would only be reminded with a phone call from school that they were there. And then her guardian would try to 'talk' to her. Why did she beat that kid? Why was she like this? Why would you cut your teacher with the scissors?
Why?Why? Why? That was all she was ever asked, and when she would give 'sassy' and 'disrespectful' answers or not answer at all, she'd be sent away.
But this, this was something entirely different.
She had first started out to run away, while stealing only some of her belongings, she didn't have time for money, have time for a note, or a goodbye, she just had to leave. It was her time, she felt it inside her bones, inside her non existent heart.
She had to leave.
And then, they came. The brothers, uncles, friends, and father of the kid she beat in school. The cocky little punk deserved it, she thought over and over and over. Just like the teacher, just like all the people she's ever hurt. They deserved it. Asked and pleaded for it, with their eyes, their actions, but if it wasn't from their words, it was considered wrong. A crime, a heinous act of malicious anger. Merciless, evil, justified anger.
But when asked the only thing they ever did ask, she'd answer truthfully one time. With the same explanation she told herself.
And when asked one more time, how and why they deserved it, she gave up. She didn't know why, if anything, they should know why. Because they did this to themselves. They asked for this.
One day, she was told she wasn't the justified person to bring these people who 'deserved' this pain and hurt. She didn't believe that one bit, she knew she wasn't. They asked her though, and she blamed them.
Her guardian had tried shrinks, therapists, doctors, everything in the book. But no one could get her talking, no one could muster up an answer other then she was insane. A danger. A hazard.
Maybe she was.
But that kid, the kid she wanted to see blood pouring from, wanted at her feet, begging for mercy...That kid had been the last straw with everyone.
And she'd just gone and done her best.
With his blood she spelled 'out law' in the cement, as he whimpered and cried. She spoke dry words:
"Even the most brave and strongest of men fall, everyone feels pain." She said to him, and as his lips quivered in fear, as he mustered up the word she hated the most, and he spoke it in pain:
"Why?"
She lost it.
And after the aftermath of her horror, she fled, the all hate army behind her.
She didn't dare ask herself the same question everyone had been asking her this whole time, but she couldn't help but wonder.
Why?
She stumbled through the dark forest, running with each drop of hate for that word in her body.
And pretty soon, she ran across a run down building, or what looked like a down science lab.
She ran into and through it, stopping inside a dark room with a door with many locks at the other end, and found a cash register. Her hands were swift with shuffling out the money into her bag, and the voices weren't so hard to hear anymore, the yelling, the shouting.
She was thankful that this was a run down lab, otherwise, they'd have woken all the employes up by now. Or so she thought.
"Play time." Some dark voice appeared from shadows, and a cackle, a chuckle, no, an evil laughter broke out, a growl and dark figure pouncing towards her. Had thieves come with animals? She didn't have time to think, and went to instinct.
She quickly ran out of the building , running to the woods again. Whatever was running after her, chasing her, was fast, but somehow, despite how clumsy she was outside of running for her life, now she had the agility, the balance, and timing of an acrobat. She jumped into trees, twirling and swinging for life, and by some dim light she caught a glimpse of what was chasing her.
A demon.
She didn't let herself be stupid and gape, she kept on the move, and dodge the demons final pounce to lunge at her. As the demon went down into a field of over grown flowers and weeds, bushes and thorn pickers, she went up into more woods. She heard the demon growl and fight it's way out, and knew she had to get away quickly. She went further up into what looked like her old town.
Sighing, she ran towards the city lights, hearing the demons growl and paws hit the ground in pursuit.
Prey once again.
Into the city, she lunged herself, right into the crowd of towns people after her. She heard the demon stop at the edge of the woods, and knew it'd be waiting for her, its silent growl only known to her ears. But it all was washed out soon as the towns people started shouting at her.
They all glared down, throwing hard kicks, punches, making her cough up blood, breaking skin and bones.
They took her bag, full of nothing much but the cash she took from the freak show, and left her there on the outskirts of the woods to die.
She heard the demons paws approach her, along with a pair of boots. Her head dizzy, she forced her eyes to look up, and someone hold on to what little life she had left.
There was a man with white hair,a red jacket with gold stripe near the bottom and dark blue jeans and black boots. He wore no shirt, and had tan skin, with gray eyes. He 'tsked' at her, and looked to his pet, what looked like a mutation of a man and a demon. She groaned, and the man spoke up.
"You've caused too much trouble for me to just let you go, and now they have the money you took...What do you think Melvin?" He turned to the demon, who looked up from his sitting pose near her head and shrugged.
"Right, well. All's well that ends well." She gave up as his words were mustered, holding on wasn't worth it anymore, and she fell to blackness willingly.
She asked for this.
Why?
She awoke in a room that seemed dark, Gothic. Everything was black
Hadn't she died?
She quickly sprang up, knowing everything was out of place and feeling eyes one her. Defense/offense mode.
"Hold still, the bandages..." A teenage boy with white slightly long hair said, reaching out the her feral body.
"Don't touch me." She hissed, and someone came in. The same man from last night looked at the boy, and then to her, not amused. Bored even. He sighed, going to her other side, and speaking.
"Lay down. He's got to patch you up. Since the towns people nearly killed you." His words had acid in them, annoyance, but she didn't listen.
"Why didn't you just let me die?" She yelled at him, her voice horse and aching, but she ignored it.
"You really don't have a threat or authority here, lay down." The man responded, placing hands on her weak and bruised body, pushing her back down, restraining her. Her body whined in pain, and her face scrunched up.
The boy hurriedly put bandages over her newly bleeding wounds, and bit his lip in concentration.
"Here, take this." The boy handed her two small blue and yellow pills, and she gave him a spiteful look, filled with just as much anger as she could muster up in pain.
"No." The man in the red jacket huffed, and put his hand out for the boy's, who quickly put the pills in his hand.
"Bakura! I'm going to need help in here!" He called out to someone, and a man in a black trench coat, pants and boots came in, observing the situation. He had the same shirt the boy had, a blue and white striped one, but looked older then the boy, but like an older version of him.
"Hold her." The man commanded the one called Bakura. He nodded, and once the man in the red jacket. removed his hands, Bakura's placed them. The man in the red jacket forcefully opened her mouth, shoving the pills in and immediately putting a tube down her throat.
Water flooded in her mouth, along with the pills, and forced her to swallow. After she did, he removed the tube, he looked down at her.
"What's your name?" His voice was dry, and bored, but angry.
"No." She said, matching his tone.
"Bakura, take her to my office. She'll be alright in the head, right?" He looked to the boy, who nodded.
"From the looks, they didn't damage her brain."
"Good." He went out the tent, the man called Bakura dragging her behind him and following the man in red.
He tied her up in a chair, her arms crossed and behind her back, her ankles tied to the legs of the chair that was nailed to the floor. He stood behind the chair, and the man in red looked down at her.
"Leave us." Bakura left, and the man in red circled around her.
"What's your name?" He tried again, and she laughed once, sneering. He came in front of her, and grabbed a handful of her brown hair, forcing her head up.
"Answer me." She laughed once again, and he pulled her hair, throwing her head backwards.
"Nothing you can do to me will ever match up to the pains I've had." She answered, and this time, it was his turn to laugh.
"I can do much worse." He circled her again, looking her up and down.
"Go ahead and try." She shrugged, and watched him watch her. She kept an indifferent face, but on the inside, she wasn't sure what would happen.
"What were you doing here last night?"
"Didn't you see me? Running for my life." She snorted, but told him what was true to the eye. He looked at her sideways, his hand rubbing his bare chin.
"Why?" She bust out in laughter, like a mad woman.
"I hate that word."
"Why?"He pressed, and she lowered her eyelids to slits.
"Because I've been asked that my whole life."
"Why were you running?"
"Because I killed a kid." She rolled her eyes. He wasn't dead, but he didn't know that.
"No, he's still very much alive." He said, indifferent. She scowled.
"Why did you let me live?" She tried, her turn for a question, and he snorted.
"You took my money."
"Then why not just let me die?"
"I'm in charge here, I ask the questions. No turns. You escaped Melvin...How?"
"Running for your life will do magic." She laughed, and he rolled his eyes.
"You ran like you had something to live for."
"Maybe I do." Her spiteful answers brought a smile to his face, but he had to keep a straight face with her rash and similar behavior to some female he knew long ago. Yes, she acted just like her, rash, irrational, and childish.
"And what would that be? A little no one in a town full of people who'd have plenty to live for, and out of all of them, you run like you have something to run for. A dream? A wish?" He hated to sound so peppy, but this was one of his last chances at cracking her, other then turning himself around to spin her head. He would love to mess with her mind right now, but he had a show soon;
He didn't want to waste the fun he felt interrogating her. He needed another source of entertainment before he grew bored of this one. But no one knew this about him, and he thought it to himself.
She looked at him with a hateful look, and shrugged, playing it off.
"Your guess is as good as mine." He sighed, looking to his desk for the time.
Almost time.
He walked around her once more, and saw an open option to taunt her, stepping out side, he put it in play.
"Bakura, when Melvin's ready, bring her out." He said to no one and left it at that.
She panicked, he couldn't put her in that danger...He couldn't! The boy...He had said not to move too much, the bandages...She wouldn't be able to run from the demon again. She could barely move enough as it was.
And he knew this. That was his plan. He was going to end her life for her. Tonight. She took a breath, and tried to think this through. He was just messing with her...Wasn't he?
She quickly struggled with the ropes, somehow managing to get her arms free, but finding the ropes and ties impossible around her ankles. She looked to the desk, searching for something, anything.
On the desk, there was a pencil sharpener, a few pens and pencils, a letter opener, and lots of drawers holding who knew what.
She reached for the letter opener, but the bastard had nailed the chair to the floor, and her fingers just barely grasped the letter opener. She got a hold of it, slightly cutting her fingertips, and tried at the ropes.
They were too thick. She sighed, and then thought of the sharpener, grabbing it and unscrewing the blade with the letter opener and cutting through the ropes.
Where could she run? He might have this whole place under surveillance. She panicked, and went out the back of the trailer, seeing no one around in this dark of a night, she bolted.
She ran quicker then quick could even be counted as, faster then a humming bird could fly. Or at least, she felt that way. She was getting closer to the edge of it all, that was until she saw someone there.
"I thought you'd try to run." He said, arms folded and coming out of the shadows.
The one called Bakura. He looked at her with brown eyes, and she stopped dead in her tracks.
"I just want to leave..."
"Leave? You can't leave. No one can."
"But he's going to kill me..." She expressed, and he laughed.
"Right. I hardly believe that, considering he hasn't killed you yet. I don't know what he has planned for you, but if it was death, he'd of killed you by now. He would've blown the experiments he's to watch over and torture you." He said, his eyes annoyed and angry. Her face scrunched up in a distressed form, and she looked around her, running back to where she was, but took a turn to another end.
A growl came from the shadows, and the demon stepped forward, black wings that were like that of a bat's, but the demon featured looks of a gargoyle. It barred it's teeth, and backed her out of that exit as she turned to run, but fell and landed on her ankle, hearing it snap like a twig.
"Oh, just great...Melvin, go get Ryo." The man called Bakura came to her, as she tried to crawl away, and he shook his head, speaking again as the demon pounced off and up into the sky.
"He's not going to be happy about this...He's going to kill me...You just had to run, didn't you?" He bent down next to her, bending his knees. She bit her tongue, glaring at him.
"Don't give me that look. You're the one who took the money..." He spat, and she heard foot steps come closer, and Bakura looked behind him.
"What happened?" The man in the red jacket asked, annoyed.
"She escaped, and I caught her, she tried to run again, but then Melvin caught her, so she tried to run and snapped her weak ankle." Bakura responded.
"Shit. How did you escape?" He looked down at her, and she smirked as he glared, standing over her.
"Wouldn't you just love to know?"
"That's it. Take her to MY office." He commanded, and turned away.
"I'd prepare yourself for the world of pain you're going to face when I get back." He looked over his shoulder to her, adding the comment as she was dragged back to another building. The same boy from before came, an indifferent look as he wound her ankle in gauze.
"You shouldn't have run away..."He said, finishing up his work.
"And why's that? Because I have nothing to run for?" She laughed at him, and he shook his head, getting up.
"Don't assume so." With that, he turned and left. She scuffed to herself, mumbling how they were all crazy, lunatics.
Not too long after that, the man in the red jacket came, angrily slamming the door after he reached the inside of the office.
"You're an idiot." He started off, and she sighed. Nothing she hadn't heard before. Just like all the lectures she had before, all the time's she was asked:
Why?
He glared at her, almost projecting anger into her.
"Well, let's hear it." She rolled her eyes and relaxed a bit, trying to play it cool, ignoring the extreme pain her ankle was experiencing. Not to mention her body ached like it was about to just deflate. All this, she ignored, and kept her uncaring face.
"Oh, you're going to hear it, fell it, experience it. You're going to wish you were dead. First, you take my money, second, YOU TRY TO RUN AWAY WHEN I WASN'T GOING TO KILL YOU? ARE YOU INSANE? AND EVEN THEN, YOU GO AND JUST BREAK YOUR ANKLE AGAIN! NOW YOU'RE ON THE VERGE OF JUST KILLING YOURSELF! YOU'RE PATHETIC, YOU'RE USELESS, YOU'RE AN IDIOT, YOU'RE JUST A PLAIN DUMBASS!" He yelled at her, and she shrugged.
"And if I am? Then what?" She challenged, making the man in red nearly spit out fire with his foul vulgar words, steam pouring out of his ears and nose, acid out of his mouth, and daggers out of his eyes. She huffed through it all, she had heard it all before, many a times. And when he was all vented out, settled down, he paced and spoke quietly.
He wasn't finished, this time, he just got serious.
"What's your name?"
"Something you don't need to know."
"Tell me." He said, grabbing something on a table.
"No." He turned around, a knife at her throat.
"I SAID TELL ME." She breathed, and raised an eyebrow.
"Go ahead and end the game here then, take away my meaningless life. DO IT. KILL ME!" She screamed at him and he put his face close to hers, eye level and staring into her eyes intensely, angry, annoyed. He couldn't end it, they both knew it, something about this female was different then the others he'd run into, the others that failed to pull through, the others that had died along the way didn't have to spark she did.
He had found a diamond in rubbish.
She glared back, and he laughed, throwing his head back and grabbing a handful of her brown hair.
"Tell me your name." He said, knife in one hand, her hair being tugged in his other.
"Why?" She pat that hated word, and he smirked.
"It needs to be said, I need to know it. Just go ahead and tell me your name."
"It's a name I was given, not a name I chose."
"No one creates their own their name. So say it. Tell me." He said, loving this thrill, this spark and energy he got playing with her. She challenged right back with every threat, she was almost the same as the one before, except the last encounter with the female, didn't last. She didn't have this spark. She didn't burn back, she broke quick. This female didn't give in. This one fought, and fought hard, but for what?
Something he'd find out later in the game.
"No." He laughed, angry, but enjoying this.
"Fine." He let go of her hair and removed the knife, walking out.
She huffed, and rolled her eyes. He'd be back, she could see it. He enjoyed this game, he wouldn't just quit. Unless he was the master of self control. How many people had lasted this long? She say it in his eyes, this was somewhere not many had gotten, but it looked as if even fewer had made it past here. Breaking people, hurting people. She needed to be one of the ones who made it through, but what was he going to do? She didn't want to think about it, considering the look in his eyes left him capable of really anything.
She breathed, and cleared her head. What ever he was going to do, she could deal with. She could pull through, no matter what was next, something told her she could, not just that she could, but something called for her, so near.
She would make it.
He walked with that crazy walk, that everyone knew meant he was fulfilled. No one would stop him, this was what made their corporation, what made them. They'd all been knew he was under some sense of control half the time.
Bakura stopped him on his way to the lab, knowing this crazy eyed look all to well.
"Stop. Hold up. She's giving you game, isn't she?"
"What do you mean?" He asked, twirling his words like sugar coated candy. He was in a bubbly mood, his game was being played, and played just the way he liked it, this mind game. She twisted his mind just as much as he twisted hers.
"Don't tell me you picked her just because the fact she-"
"No, she took my money."
"If anyone else took your money they'd be dead. What's the difference?"
"In the beginning, she was a test. But now..." He laughed, and Bakura pulled back a bit. He surely was crazy, he'd possibly gone mad.
"Now what?"
"She's playing the game."
"That's why?"
"Won't you ever believe in my choices?"
"And when the game ends?" Bakura asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I have a feeling...This game won't..." He laughed, and continued on.
A/N: So, decided to start this story after a bit of inspiration, couldn't go with the idea I got from some of that inspiration, due to problems with the creator (sort of). It's fine, I like this one better actually. Maybe because this one is actually me...You know? Like, my style of writing.
The girl goes nameless, but I think you can tell the other four. Ryo, Bakura, Akefia, and Melvin. But where's Marik? 0.o ….oops... He'll be in soon folks! ':D
I do not own the yu-gi-oh characters (who I must admire the creator for, they are so fun to write with and put in the most random situations) belong to whomever owns yu-gi-oh. I own the OC, and more that which I cannot mention currently. ^^
don't forget to please, please, please, PLEASE READ AND REVIEW! R&R PLEASE!
Ah, whatever, you don't have to.