Hello readers,
This story is a companion story that I wrote to my story Trifecta. I suggest reading that story first, or at least going to read the chapters mentioned in this story, if don't want to read the whole story. Otherwise confusion might arise. This story doesn't stand alone very well especially after chapter 1, so think of it as more like, deleted scenes. I didn't want to include these scenes in Trifecta, because they would have disrupted the flow of the original story. But my sister who requested the story I wrote, suggested I make these scenes available to help better understand Ryo Bakura's (and the Thief King's) character, which I tried to give some back story and fill in the holes in his story in Trifecta. So much of Yugioh is from Yugi and Atem's perspective, that I had to invent what I thought was occurring on the other end for Trifecta, and here is a sample of some of those thoughts.
Enjoy!
Koumori
If there was one thing that the Spirit that was chained to the Millennium Ring knew, it was that he had never found anyone quite like Ryo Bakura. He had spent thousands of years, taking what he could from various mortals, and leaving them with whatever scraps he didn't need. He was immortal, yes, Zorc had made sure of that. The Evil One claimed he owned the Thief's soul, and death was not an option. The Spirit had tried to off himself many times to free himself from the Ring, but each attempt had usually failed or merely succeeded in killing his host, leaving him in darkness and silence once again. But immortal though he was, he was still dependant on others for survival. And he knew that with the deepest conviction. He had long ago stopped caring about anything, but himself, and he had long since lost any hope of rescuing or redeeming the one thing he cared about.
For thousands of years, he had been forced to continue the search for the other Millennium Items. It was something he had stopped caring about, but felt unnaturally compelled to continue to search for. After all, how do you stop doing the only thing that you have really devoted your life to doing. It would be the ultimate form of death. Death of purpose, of consciousness, of life. You would exist, but would not be worth mentioning. And the mention of himself, by others, was all that remained of the Spirit's life, if you want to call it that.
The Spirit had all but given up, content for the first time in almost 3000 years, no longer existing as a separate, yet compelled individual. Perhaps the talk of the Ammut and the eating of the heart, the ultimate form of death, to no longer exist in all forms, would be ideal.
Yet, just as the Spirit had contented himself with darkness and silence, allowing himself to be slowly eaten away by it, something happened. He was for the first time in decades removed from the stone tablet.
It was by a man, who must have known the power of the Ring, and would only hold it by its string. But his proximity to the the Item at least prodded at the Spirit's mind. What did he want? Couldn't he leave him in peace, the kind that can only come through nothingness? The Spirit knew of the other...power... in the Ring, and was quite content to leave him in the darkness and silence as well.
The Spirit could hear the man talking to the Ring. "You can't keep darkness at bay with darkness. You should know that will not do anything, but condemn you to loss of mind, and loss of heart. It is the way of a coward and a fool, to eliminate the beast inside by eliminating its cage. That will only lead to the beast's freedom."
The Spirit still couldn't see anything, but he could feel the man walking him into the sunlight of the surface world, a world he had stopped trying to experience and control, for decades. And the man's voice sounded familiar to him, though he had trouble placing it. For weeks he sat on a hard wooden surface in the sun, hearing the babble of townsfolk going to and from the market. Why was he sitting here? What was the purpose of this man? How did he know so much about the Ring?
The spirit allowed the Ring to glimmer and catch someone's eye. They approached the stall. The tourist reached for the Ring, and the Spirit could almost feel the lustful pleasure he got from manipulating his newest...landlord. But the man who had brought him here in the hot desert sun, grabbed the Ring back before the tourist could touch it. However, in his haste, he had bumped its surface. In an instant, the Spirit took over, only to his dismay, to find that this man was not a man, but a Khabit. A shadow, of one who had passed that could be seen and interact with the world, but did not have a will to bend, or a body, to control. He was already a blank, slate, following only the commands of the rest of his spirit, which had since, moved into the the great... whatever. He could read the Khabit, but he would gain nothing more then whatever the Khabit could see and hear. His memories were limited, his powers, worse, and his sense of purpose and direction, ancient and steady, not easily bent. And since he possessed another Item, his limited powers, couldn't be manipulated at all.
The Spirit growled like a wounded beast. He at least took the small pleasure of seeing the world once again and hearing its sounds. But it was pale in comparison to what he could have experienced. He could see the young tourist, but was more astounded by the young man standing beside him. He seemed completely unaffected by the power radiating off the Ring.
"Trust me you would be better off without this particular...distraction." The Khabit spoke. "I'm really doing you a favor." The Spirit could not tell however, if the Khabit was speaking to the tourist or the Spirit himself.
The paler young man spoke calmly. "We are just looking for a chess set. My previous one...has gone missing."
His companion, unaware of the danger that he had been rescued from, remarked harshly. "You mean your father broke it, in a fit of rage. Stop being so calm about it."
The pale young man spoke calmly still, but it was clear his companion was testing his patience. "Returning the anger back to him, or complaining about it, will just spread the anger around. And goodness knows, I would rather face the blunt of it now, then the sharpness of new, refreshed anger, repeatedly. Best to let a sleeping beast, lie." Then he blushed slightly, aware of how much he was disclosing in front of a random stranger. "Sorry, to be bothering you." He turned and his friend reluctantly followed him.
The Spirit knew what he wanted. He wanted the pale boy, who looked meek and mild, like a girl, but whose eyes were alight with fire. Tight reined, but passionate. He could break that, and he knew he would enjoy it. Very much.
The Khabit put the Ring back down and he lost the sights and sounds.
This process was repeated week after week. Sometimes a few people looked at the Ring, but the Khabit didn't offer it to anyone. And occasionally the pale boy's voice, could be heard in the crowd, and it excited the Spirit every time. The more he heard it, the more he wanted to control it, to crush it, to destroy it. He could sense a challenge, and he liked a challenge. He wasn't sure why he felt so passionately about this, but perhaps it was because he sensed a kindred spirit. Only this brethren, had yet to be crushed, despite numerous obstacles, as the Spirit had been crushed. Or perhaps he could sense, his strength and he longed to share in that, which he had lost thousands of years ago, that which he had sold away for revenge and bloodlust.
He listened for weeks, and it was weeks, before out of boredom, he attempted to attract the young man's attention again. The ring glistened, but it did not attract the pale man's attention, but rather a gruff angry man. When the Khabit attempted to pull the ring away, the man punched him.
Grabbing the Ring, he ran. With renewed sight, the Spirit surveyed the market around him. The man found himself running towards the young pale skinned man. "You shouldn't take what doesn't belong to you." the young pale man remarked when the gruff man holding the Ring came towards him. Emboldened by the dark powers of the item he was holding, the man took a swing at this obstacle. The young boy, ducked remarkably quickly, like he had great practice at this sort of thing. The man, continued to throw a few punches, without interference from the Spirit. The young boy, ducked every one of them. But then what shocked the Spirit of the Ring, was the that he seemed to be calculating something. He backed himself into a corner and then ducked causing the man's fist to hit a stone wall. He dove down and grabbed the rope holding the Ring from the man as he cringed in pain. The Spirit swore, so close, yet so far. He lost sight again. He could hear the boy walk calmly and return the item to the Khabit. "This belongs to you," he remarked.
The Khabit took the string. "For now."
This process continued a few more weeks. The hot Egyptian summer, turned into the hot Egyptian fall, and the only reason one could tell anything had changed was the sounds of school age children were heard only as they walked to and from school every day. School had been in session for weeks, before the Spirit felt that something was going to change.
A man walked up to the stall where the Ring was sitting and approached the Khabit. "I'm just looking for something for my son," the man commented. The Khabit responded. "This is an Egyptian artifact that was used to play Duel Monsters in ancient times." He gestured to the Ring, coming close to touching it, just to awaken the Spirit.
"Really? I was fairly certain that the game was invented by Maximillion Pegasus." The man replied, sounding polite, but harsh and steely. "Yes, but nothing invented is without inspiration, is it? All artists must borrow from the world around them," the Khabit replied. The man gave a hmm noise, showing he was already loosing interest. "However, I will give this to you, for free."
"Nothing is free." The man replied with a tone that implied that he had learned this lesson the hard way.
"Ah, true, but this was once stolen from me, and a certain young man returned it to me. A great feat indeed. I know your son and I would...entrust...this to no one else, but him. He isn't getting this for free, he earned it." The Khabit solemnly replied.
The man sighed. "That sounds like my son." He accepted the Ring, staring at it intently. He stroked it gently with the touch of someone inspecting its authenticity. The Spirit rejoiced, opening his way into the man's mind. Taking one last look at the Khabit who had controlled his location for weeks, he moved the man away from the stall. Free! The spirit began to probe the man's mind, looking for anything worth stealing. He combed through images of the tombs, of museums, of boring business meetings, of nights with beautiful women, a rotating circle of them. This man was a classic manipulator, a scared boy, who had grown up into a man, without becoming one. Who controlled the world around him, with power, money, words, or force. He could crush this man easy. The Ring would definitely be, of the two of them, the strongest, darkest, most powerful force, and the bully would become the bullied. But something stopped him from doing so. He continued to scan the man's memories. Some of the women were seen more then once, especially this white haired one. She looked almost like, the pale boy from the market. Other then gender differences, they look almost identical. The boy however, had his father's brown eyes, not the white haired woman's green eyes. Then he saw the boy playing cards with a younger sister, playing chess in the parks of another greener country, protecting his sister, from his father's rages, purposefully taking the blows with the least amount of damage.
Soon the boy was standing beside his father at a funeral. So it was just the boy and his father.
Leaving the father in peace, for now, the Ring allowed itself to be packed, descended once again into darkness. For the Spirit knew what awaited it, when the box was reopened. The son, the pale boy. The fun was just beginning.