All That Glitters

by Fiver

-contest fic, s8.5, tier 5- Sequel to 'Possessive'. Ryou needs saving, and so Malik enlists some help from the dead, a thief, and six strange gold items. Angst/Bayshipping

Disclaimer: Don't own anything

All That Glitters

By Fiver

It always felt a little weird, watching Ryou talk to thin air. Even though Malik was no longer in any doubt that he was in fact conversing with someone that only he could see, he still couldn't help but cringe on his behalf when his more cynical clients started staring at him, either with the simmering fury of one who suspects they are being conned, or the faint terror of one who believes they are dealing with a lunatic.

Ryou had been called to this particular house by a hysterical mother who claimed she had seen toys belonging to her (distinctly un-hysterical) children moving around on their own. Malik was now standing with the entire bemused family while Ryou scampered around their home, and even though he'd attended a fair number of house-calls over the past few months, he had to admit that he had absolutely no idea what Ryou was doing. He kept stopping and facing the nearest wall and counting to twenty out loud, and then he'd start dashing around the house – up and down the stairs, into every room, even out into the garden. This process had been repeated at least five times. The father of the household, a steadfastly un-superstitious man by nature, was casting his wife accusing glances.

Ryou suddenly stopped at the foot of the stairs, having done about two laps of the premises. He was out of breath but smiling.

"I can't find you," he called. "You'll have to come out."

Of course, to the non-psychic observer, nothing happened and no one came out. Ryou, however, looked up towards the top landing and grinned.

"There you are," he said. "Where were you hiding?"

The silence was positively deafening. The father was now shooting looks at Malik, who just shrugged.

"Since I couldn't find you, that means you win," Ryou declared to the empty staircase. "And that means the game is over. Unless you want to play again?"

The answer he received must have been in the negative, since he nodded understandingly.

"You want to go home now?" Ryou said. "That's probably a good idea. Do you know the way?"

Malik sometimes compared these experiences to hearing one side of a telephone call. By the way Ryou's expression brightened, he surmised that whoever (or whatever) he was talking to had said 'yes'.

"Well, thanks for the fun game," Ryou said cheerily, raising a hand in a farewell wave.

There was no flash of light or orchestral send-off for the spirit, but there was that feeling. Malik had almost got used to it by now. If a spirit left this world of its own accord, feeling content and happy, its departure gave off a strange psychic shockwave – like a ripple passing over your mind. If Malik tried to describe it, the closest word he could think of was 'warm', but even that wasn't quite right. It wasn't a physical sensation, it was just a...feeling.

Luckily, the family seemed to feel it too. The father continued looking at Ryou like he suspected he was an escapee from the funny farm, but he didn't say anything as his wife took out her purse to pay Ryou what they had agreed.

"Wh-what was it?" she asked in a hushed and almost reverent tone.

"...A child," Ryou answered with slight reluctance. He probably knew that no mother liked to hear about a deceased child. "He'd been here a very long time. He only wanted to play, though. That's why...you know, the toys..."

The mother started to look tearful, as Ryou had feared. She tried to give him more than the agreed fee but he politely refused, as always, and he and Malik took their leave.

"A kid, huh?" Malik asked as they walked along.

"Yeah," Ryou said with a sad smile. "I don't know how he died. I didn't ask. He just wanted someone to play with him."

"You were playing hide and seek." Malik shook his head wryly as it fell into place. "I wondered what you were doing."

"Sorry you had to carry the bag," Ryou apologised. "I didn't need anything from it, in the end."

"It's fine. It makes me look like I serve some sort of purpose, at least."

Malik had taken to carrying Ryou's (surprisingly heavy) bag of herbs and charms whenever he accompanied him to a job, because he felt it was marginally better to look like a pack-horse than a bewildered bystander.

"You serve a purpose anyway. I like having you there. It makes me feel braver," Ryou laughed. "But if you find it awkward...and I'm sure it's boring...I mean, you don't need to come..."

"Of course I need to come," Malik snorted.

"...Why?"

"Because," he said decisively, "I have to make sure that no one ever talks to you the way I talked to you when we first met."

Ryou stared at him for an uncomfortably long moment before bursting into a fit of something very close to giggles. Malik couldn't help but bristle – he'd been perfectly serious, thank you very much.

"I feel like a milkshake," Ryou announced with a smile like sunshine. "Do we have time?"

Malik shrugged. "It's not like I have any plans."

He never did, but Ryou always asked anyway. It was his way.

---

Ryou and Malik had never told Ishizu and Rishid exactly what had transpired on the day that they had fought off one demon and bottled another. They'd returned to the Ishtar home, and Ishizu had fussed over Ryou's cut hand and Malik's generally fatigued appearance, but she'd also seemed to know that, whatever had been wrong with her house and her family, it was over now. And if she or Rishid had been surprised by Malik and Ryou's budding friendship, which became very obvious very quickly, they didn't say anything about it.

It just seemed to Malik that they sort of went together. Logically. If you were friendless and just a little bit off the spectrum of 'normal', and you found someone else who was the same, what were you supposed to do besides stick to them like glue? And if that person happened to have saved your life from the clutches of a malevolent demon, that didn't hurt either.

The bottle in which Ryou had captured the demon that had stolen his appearance and even his surname now resided in a small wooden cabinet in the corner of his living room. It was still swathed in dark cloth, and Ryou had put a wax seal over the cork. He inspected the bottle regularly for any cracks, and Malik had been perturbed to notice that the glass had been stained black on the inside, as if something had gone on fire in there. Ryou insisted that it was completely harmless as long as it remained undamaged. Nonetheless, he admitted he couldn't sleep with it in his bedroom.

They hadn't gone about their quest to find the 'Vanquisher' from the old legend with quite as much gusto as Malik might have expected – really, their searching amounted to little more than scouring the niche magazines dedicated to psychic phenomena for anything that seemed to fit. Even Ryou was of the opinion that most of the stuff in those shining examples of modern journalism was utter garbage, but he maintained that every so often something significant turned up. When Malik had asked why they weren't monitoring supernatural occurrences going on in other parts of the world, Ryou had explained that he was of the opinion that the person (or spirit, or...thing) that they were looking for was in the same country as them.

"At least two fragments of Zorc have showed up here in the space of a few years. The Vanquisher would hardly be doing its job if it wasn't here."

This, too, seemed logical.

And now, as August came to an end, they had fallen into something of a comfortable routine. Malik was still studying diligently and Ryou worked part-time in a convenience store when he wasn't battling demons or playing games with unquiet spirits, and whenever Ryou got a call asking him to investigate some paranormal activity, they'd go investigate together. And in-between, they found time to grab a moment or two of normality and just hang out. Get milkshakes, maybe.

Malik had to admit, having a friend was nothing to be sneered at.

---

Ryou wasn't an especially tidy person.

Malik appreciated that his particular line of 'work' required an awful lot of...specialist equipment, but it was an undeniable fact that Ryou's apartment was a complete muddle of books, candles, crystals, bottles of suspicious and possibly dangerous substances, and various other bizarre items of paraphernalia. Ryou coexisted quite peacefully with the chaos, however, and never seemed to struggle to find anything.

And so it was with no shortage of bemusement that Malik sat on the sofa, on what he had assumed was just another day, and watched Ryou whirlwind from room to room, cleaning and tidying like a man possessed. Malik had, in fact, briefly wondered if that was the case.

"My dad is coming," Ryou managed breathlessly as he started scooping a large pile of assorted crystals into what appeared to be a shoebox. "To visit. For a few weeks."

Malik did his best to mask his surprise – since the day they'd briefly exchanged histories, Ryou had never mentioned his remaining family, and Malik had sort of assumed they weren't in the picture. Stupid, of course. Normal families stuck together.

"He's an archaeologist," Ryou explained after a moment. "Never in one place for long. But he's found something big this time, apparently. He's friends with the curator of the museum here so, whatever it is, he's bringing it here for...um...post-excavation analysis...?"

"Sounds complicated," Malik remarked. "So he's staying with you while he's here?"

"Hm? No, he's booked a hotel room. I only have one bed."

"I just figured...y'know, with the intense cleaning and all..."

Ryou gave an embarrassed laugh.

"This is...just in case he's ever here," he said, indicating vaguely to the room. "...He doesn't know."

Malik found he didn't need to ask what he meant by that.

"You mean he doesn't know at all?" he asked.

"He doesn't know anything about it," Ryou said briskly, slotting the lid onto the full shoebox and setting about gathering up some scattered papers covered in runes and their meanings. "I want to keep it that way, too."

"Why?" Malik asked. His personal experience with fathers was limited and very, very negative. Why would Ryou keep such a big secret from the only surviving member of his immediate family...?

Ryou sighed and lost the uncharacteristic curt expression he had adopted. He abandoned his cleaning frenzy for the moment and sat down next to Malik on the sofa.

"This...ability I have is difficult for most people to understand. Or believe in," he started hesitantly, his hands clasped in his lap. "It was easy to overlook when I was very young – almost cute, I guess. But I started getting older, and my parents started to worry. 'Imaginary friends' are meant to fade away as you grow, not multiply. So when I was twelve, they took me to see a psychiatrist."

Malik felt his jaw drop slightly.

"No, no, don't be mad at them," Ryou went on, hastily shooting him a reassuring smile. "They were only thinking of me. They were scared for me, scared they'd done something wrong. I should have been more discreet. If you see your kid talking to people who aren't there, to the point of ignoring the people who are there, you're naturally going to assume there's a problem."

"Still," Malik said, scandalised. "To send you to the nuthouse..."

"They didn't have me locked up or anything. I just had to attend counselling. I hated it, though. When I was a kid, I thought adults were always right. So even though I was sure that the people I saw were real...well, here was this very clever adult telling me that they weren't." Ryou paused and bit his lip. "For a while I really started to think I was crazy."

"Well, you're not," Malik said with a stubborn frown. There was a swarm of guilt-bugs gnawing on his insides, though, since he knew he'd accused Ryou of exactly that more than once in the beginning.

"...Then after mom and Amane died..." Ryou said softly, eyes on the floor, "it was a really hard time for me and my dad. I was all he had left. He needed me to be ok. So one way or another, I convinced everyone that I was all better. No more imaginary friends. It was the least I could do."

"And then he left you to go dig for treasure?" Malik questioned. He still wasn't sure he wanted to like this man.

"I encouraged him to go back to his work," Ryou told him. "I miss him, but if we live mostly apart, it's a lot easier for him to think I'm normal, right?"

"...You could tell him now," Malik said suddenly. "You're older, and he could talk to some of the people you've helped..."

Ryou was shaking his head.

"I'd rather just keep the peace for now," he said. "It's fine. It's better." A small smile crept over his face. "I hope you get to meet him. I'm so happy we're friends. I can finally seem completely normal."

"Glad to be of service."

"Aw..." Ryou went pink. "I didn't mean it like that."

"I know," Malik snorted. "God, you had a really bad time growing up, didn't you? How did you turn out so nice?"

Ryou laughed, his face darkening to a deep scarlet. He turned his head, as if he'd heard something, and after a moment he laughed again.

"Cyndia says you're very sweet," he relayed. "Noah says we should get a room."

Malik found himself fighting down a blush of his own – he always forgot about Ryou's ghostly tenants. And they had a bad habit of reminding him of their existence right after very personal and moving conversations like the one they'd just had.

"Well, Noah shouldn't eavesdrop if he's going to be a brat about it," he retorted.

Ryou was still giggling, but whether he was amused by what Malik had said or by some retort Noah had made was fated to remain a mystery.

"Come on," Ryou said at length, gesturing to the remaining clutter. "Help me make this disappear."

---

Malik's first impression of Ryou's father was that he wasn't anything like Ryou. Which wasn't necessarily a good thing, since Malik had realised quite a while ago that he liked Ryou.

However, his second impression of Mr Bakura Senior was that he wasn't anythinglike his own father, either, and that was definitely a good thing.

The man sure did like to talk. He was loud and jovial, with clear laughter lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes. Despite this, though, the faint shadow of grief still hung around him – a strange sadness that tinged his every word and action. Losing a wife and daughter was something that never really left you, Malik supposed.

Furthermore, he was every bit as thrilled to meet Malik as Ryou had anticipated. It seemed that Ryou' s perpetual lack of friends had always been a cause of great concern for his father, and he greeted Malik so enthusiastically that he felt sort of like the new fiancé of the daughter the man had started to fear would never marry.

"And Ryou, you have to see what the team and I found in Egypt," he said excitedly over coffee in Ryou's strangely tidy apartment. Malik wondered where he'd put the mountains of debris. "It's the most enormous cache of treasure I've ever seen. We definitely unearthed a tomb, and a wealthy one at that, but it was miles from the Valley of the Kings, or any other tomb sites that have been discovered. It's such a mystery, we didn't find anything that would identify who the tomb belonged to."

"But there was a...body?" Ryou asked.

"There was a sarcophagus, yes. It hasn't been opened yet, though. They have equipment at the museum that allows them to see the contents without having to risk damaging them by prying the lid off. Like a giant x-ray machine, I suppose."

"Do you think it could be someone important?" Ryou asked eagerly. "Someone for the history books?"

His father laughed heartily.

"Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves," he chuckled. "But whoever it was, they had wealth and standing. The 'centrepiece' of our findings is really something. Six items, set in a stone tablet. Official analysis hasn't come back yet, but they sure look like gold to me. And they're like nothing anyone has ever seen before. They could shed light on a whole part of Egypt's history that's never been explored before."

"When can we go see them?" Ryou said, leaning forward so far that he looked to be at risk of toppling off the sofa. Malik realised that he had a genuine and wholehearted interest in the subject, and wasn't just feigning curiosity for his father's sake.

"Any time you like." Ryou's father grinned. "But I hope we're not boring you, Malik. I know ancient history isn't everybody's idea of a scintillating conversation."

"It's pretty interesting, actually," Malik said with a half-shrug. "I wouldn't mind seeing what you found sometime too."

"Well, in that case, we could go right now," Ryou's father said. (He'd told Malik to call him by his first name, but he was doomed to forever remain 'Ryou's father' in his mind.) "If you boys don't have any other plans."

"I don't...think we do...?" Ryou said hesitantly, casting a questioning glance in Malik's direction. His eyes were hopeful. Malik had been certain that both father and son would have wanted to spend some time alone together, but they both really seemed to want him to stick around. It was slightly disconcerting.

"Sure, let's go now," he said, and was rewarded with twin delighted smiles.

---

Malik wasn't a frequent visitor to the local museum, but Ryou seemed to know every inch of it as well as he knew his own home. He pointed out a few of his favourite exhibits as his father led them through endless rooms and corridors, until they came to a door marked 'Private'. Mr Bakura flashed some form of ID to the suited man in front of this door and they were permitted entry without any argument. After one more corridor and one more door, they found themselves in a large room filled with the spoils of Ryou's father's latest trip to Egypt.

"Wow..." Ryou said in awe, staring around with wide eyes. The whole room seemed to glitter.

"Let me give you the grand tour," Mr Bakura said with a definite note of pride in his voice.

He started to lead them around the artefacts one by one. Many of them were objects fairly typical of any Ancient Egypt exhibit, but Malik could see the gold items he had described out of the corner of his eye, and suspected he was saving his 'centrepiece' for last.

However, when Mr Bakura started to talk in great detail about a carved ebony jackal, Malik suddenly noticed that Ryou was no longer standing with them. Glancing around as surreptitiously as he could, he saw that he had wandered over to those six gold items, which had been removed from their stone tablet (it was on another table) and laid out in a row, nestled in a protective sponge-like material that had clearly been custom-moulded to fit each of them. Malik's immediate thought was that Ryou was just impatient to see these exciting finds, even if sneaking off while his father was mid-sentence did seem a little out of character.

Then he noticed Ryou's rapidly-moving lips, and the anxious looks he kept shooting towards his father. Malik groaned internally as he realised that either the museum or one of the objects in this room was haunted or possessed or whatever, and Ryou was talking to someone. Someone dead.

Since Malik didn't have the power of foresight, at that point he assumed that the biggest problem would simply be preventing Mr Bakura from noticing that his son had regressed to talking to imaginary friends. And so he took it upon himself to make sure he didn't notice. He turned back to Ryou's father and opened his mouth to ask a question about that incredibly interesting ebony jackal.

His stomach gave a sickening lurch when he heard the thump.

"Ryou," he found himself saying before he'd even had time to turn around – after all, there was no one else in the room (no one alive, no one else capable of a sound like that). And he felt like he was trying to move through treacle, it felt like forever before he could turn and see what he already knew he'd see-

Ryou was crumpled on the floor. His eyes were closed, and he wasn't moving.

The treacle in the air abruptly vanished, and Malik was kneeling next to Ryou's clearly unconscious form before he'd even properly thought about moving. He could hear two voices calling Ryou's name and was mildly surprised to realise that one was his own. His hands hovered uselessly over his friend's prone body – he'd never had any first aid training, what were you supposed to do when something just collapsed? He eventually settled on checking for a pulse at Ryou's throat. When he felt a steady beat under his fingers, a tiny amount of his panic subsided. The more paranoid corners of his mind had wasted no time suggesting that maybe Ryou had just decided to go off and join the dead people he spent so much time talking to.

Malik suddenly wondered why Ryou's father wasn't doing anything and looked up to snap at him to call an ambulance, only to see that the man was already on the phone. He'd gone pasty white and all cheer and spark had drained from his face (and why not? His wife and daughter had been snatched away from him in the blink of an eye, to see his only son lying as still as death on the floor for no discernable reason must have been a scenario he'd had nightmares about on a regular basis) but he was doing an admirable job of keeping it together. Malik turned his attention back to Ryou, only registering a selection of the words Mr Bakura was saying.

"Yes, my son...I don't know...he's just...no...please, I..."

Malik glanced uneasily up at the innocent-looking gold items, gleaming on their tilted display shelf. He noticed for the first time that each of them sported a staring Wadjet eye, and he got the most unpleasant feeling that they were looking at him. Did whoever Ryou had been talking to have something to do with one of them? And did they know what had just happened...?

"Ryou," he whispered, hearing the fear in his voice and hating it. "What did you do?"

It wasn't long before he heard the scream of an ambulance's siren, and then paramedics were piling into the room, and Malik was pushed out of the way while they poked and prodded at Ryou and shone lights into his eyes, presumably trying to ascertain that he was, in fact, alive and likely to remain so for the journey to the hospital. At length they loaded him onto a collapsible gurney and wheeled him out of there. His father followed without a word, and Malik did too. He didn't know what else he was supposed to do.

In another part of town, a glass bottle cracked.

---

Malik wasn't hugely surprised when, after what felt like an eternity of more poking and prodding and tests and scans, the doctors admitted that they had no idea what was wrong with Ryou. They'd put an oxygen mask over his face in the ambulance but it had now been removed, because Ryou was having no trouble breathing on his own. In fact, his body was doing everything that it was meant to do just fine, with the exception of waking up. Unfortunately, the medical professionals were now delicately informing his father that this wasn't exactly a good sign. It suggested that the problem was in the brain, apparently. Basic function was going on, business as usual, but higher function had ceased. They were talking about CAT scans, brainwave monitors, all sorts of complicated things – if his condition didn't improve in the next twenty four to forty eight hours.

While Ryou's father nodded and looked more and more scared with every word they said, Malik absorbed it all with a sense of despondency. He was willing to bet all the money in the world that there was nothing wrong with Ryou's brain. Hell, he'd bet his life that the problem wasn't physical at all. Ryou had been talking to someone or something, and it had done something to him, or something had gone wrong, and now these doctors were going to do all kinds of crazy things to him because they couldn't possibly understand that.

It was with mounting horror that Malik realised he was the only one who could fix this.

This epiphany struck him when they had finally been allowed a moment of quiet, to collect their thoughts or perhaps slip into shock. Ryou was lying in his allotted hospital bed, hooked up to a merrily beeping heart monitor and an IV, looking doll-like and fragile among the stark white bed sheets. Ryou's father occupied the one chair, staring unblinkingly into his son's pale face. Malik guessed he'd gone for the shock option. He cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Mr Bakura?" he started tentatively. The man looked up at him, expression blank. He didn't bother reiterating that Malik was meant to call him by his first name. "I wondered if I could go back to Ryou's apartment. To get some of his things. Y'know, for when he wakes up."

He made sure to say 'when' and not 'if', but something dark shifted minutely in Ryou's father's eyes. He didn't argue with the request, though – he looked like he couldn't really have cared less what Malik felt like doing just then. He'd been given Ryou's clothes after they'd changed him into a papery hospital gown, and he fished a set of keys out of the jacket pocket and handed them to Malik without a word.

Malik took them and left the hospital in a hurry. He didn't know exactly what he was planning to do, but he knew that the only place he'd find the things he needed to solve a supernatural debacle like this was Ryou's home.

---

"Holy shit."

Malik stared around him in stunned confusion. He was almost glad that Ryou wasn't here with him – he'd probably cry if he could see the state his apartment was in, especially after all the cleaning he'd done.

The living room looked like a reasonable-sized war had recently been waged in it. Not one single object or item of furniture hadn't been overturned – including the sofa. The TV was lying face-down on the carpet, making the occasional odd fizzling sound. Malik suspected Ryou wouldn't be watching any more ghost-hunting documentaries on that thing.

"What the hell happened?" he demanded, whirling around as if he expected someone to answer. No one did, of course. The only people who were here (that he knew of, anyway) were Noah and Cyndia, and he couldn't see or hear them.

A cold shiver ran down his spine.

Actually, there was one other...entity here, right?

With dread in the pit of his stomach, he turned towards the furthest corner of the room.

The door of the cabinet there had been blown clean off its hinges, and from what Malik could see, what remained of its interior was charred and black. Creeping closer, his fears were confirmed when he saw the jagged, splintered remains of a glass bottle. Blackened rose petals and thorns littered the floor around the cabinet.

"Oh, God," Malik said, feeling hysterical laughter bubbling at the back of his throat. "Here's the million dollar question. Did Ryou collapse because that thing got out, or did it get out because Ryou collapsed...?"

He had no way of knowing. He supposed that, for now, all he could do was hope that Bakura had left the building.

"...Listen," he started, feeling like a prized idiot. It was one thing watching Ryou talk to thin air; it was quite another to do it himself. "Noah, Cyndia, if you two are still here...Something happened to Ryou. I don't know what, exactly, but I don't think it's anything that the doctors can fix, if you know what I mean. He collapsed. But...I don't know what to do. I'm going to need some help."

The silence felt like it was mocking him. He swore loudly and kicked the overturned sofa.

"This is hopeless," he snarled. "I can't see you. Only Ryou can see you, and he's comatose. Fuck, I don't even know where he put all his crazy ghost-fighting stuff-!"

He stopped his ranting abruptly when he heard an unmistakeable creaking sound. Sticking his head cautiously around the living room doorframe, he saw that the door to Ryou's bedroom had inched open slightly.

He hesitated. The wind? Or...?

"Whatever," he muttered, crossing the hallway and pushing the door fully open.

Despite the unpleasant situation he was in, he couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"You sure know how to clean, Ryou," he said, shaking his head.

The bedroom had been transformed into the least-organised mini-warehouse the world had ever seen. Clearly Ryou had seen no reason for his father to ever look in his bedroom, and so had taken all the supernatural gear from every other room in the apartment and piled it up in here. Even his window boxes of plants and herbs were crowding the area under the single small window. The only part of the room not currently drowning in clutter was the bed and a very narrow path between it and the door.

Malik took a few steps and found himself in the midst of the maelstrom, staring around him helplessly. Ok, great, now he knew where all the stuff was. Now what?

A book fell from a precarious pile behind him and thumped him soundly on the head. He yelped furiously and glared at the offending object as a bright flare of pain blossomed on the crown of his skull.

His glare softened when he noticed that the book had fallen open upon landing. The page currently on display was the first in a chapter entitled 'Possession Pacts'. Malik narrowed his eyes and picked the book up and scanned a page or two.

"...You are kidding, right?" he said acidly, looking up and scowling at a spot where he could only hope Noah or Cyndia was floating. "This is your idea? For your information, I've been possessed once before and I really have no wish to relive the experience."

Of course, no one answered or argued. Or maybe they did. It wasn't as if he'd hear.

He wanted nothing more than to dismiss the idea out of hand, but he couldn't help but pause. Ryou was in trouble, most likely of the paranormal variety and possibly on a life-threatening level. And he had no idea how to help. He'd only recently come to accept that ghosts and spirits and demons actually existed – he hadn't had time to start learning much about Ryou's trade since then. But Noah and Cyndia lived here (well, resided here) with Ryou. They must have picked up a thing or two by osmosis. So...their assistance couldn't hurt...

"...Don't pull any of that creepy shit," he said nervously. "Making me hallucinate and stuff. Any of that and I'm out."

Silence.

He sighed and looked back to the book. He supposed he'd better start hunting through the mountains of junk for the things this ritual demanded.

---

It took Malik over an hour to find all the things he needed. He had the strangest feeling that the two ghosts knew where most of the stuff was, and had been watching him impatiently the whole time.

"Ok..." he said uncertainly, peering at the book and feeling like he was following the weirdest recipe in the world. He drew a chalk circle around him on the floor, like he'd seen Ryou do many times. He knew Ryou had some little incantation he liked to chant while doing this, but he couldn't remember it word for word and, rather than risk saying something wrong and causing a catastrophe, he decided just to leave that part out and hope the circle would still perform its function. Whatever that was.

The spell had asked for an altar, but Malik hadn't been able to find anything that he thought looked altar-like amongst Ryou's extensive collection of weird and wonderful stuff, and in the end he had just dragged a large cardboard box full of books over to use for this purpose. He had successfully found everything else detailed in the 'ingredients' list, though – a white candle, some spring water, a piece of brown paper, a drawstring bag and some plant called 'Dittany of Crete'. (Luckily for him, Ryou labelled all of his bottles and jars meticulously.) He'd thought he might struggle to obtain graveyard dirt and seven coffin nails, but even those had been (disturbingly) available.

"I won't ask what you use this stuff for, Ryou," he mumbled, using a match to light first the candle, and then the dried, shrivelled petals of the Dittany of Crete. The resulting smoke made him cough and splutter for a while.

When he recovered, he took the piece of brown paper out of his pocket. The instructions had said to write a brief but concise description of the problem and the assistance you required on it. He hadn't wasted any words. Ryou's in trouble. HELP.

He placed the slip of paper inside the bag, which already contained the grave dirt and the nails, and set it on top of his 'altar'. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"...I'm calling on the spirits of the dead for help," he started. There was an unmistakeable note of resentment in his voice. The original text in the book was old and involved a lot of 'thee's' and 'thou's' and other stuff he considered quite unnecessary to make his request. Surely paraphrasing wouldn't do any harm. "I...summon you to my side to assist me. We will work together until the situation is resolved, and then we will part ways. This is our pact."

For a moment Malik thought it hadn't worked – then boom, something was flooding into his mind. He panicked briefly, thinking that his head was just going to pop because it really felt like something (his mind, his brain, his soul?) was swelling up and pressing against the inside of his skull like an inflating balloon. It passed, though – everything seemed to re-shuffle and settle down and he felt almost normal again. Except he suddenly...wasn't alone.

"Wow, this'll take some getting used to," he heard himself say in amazement.

Except he hadn't said anything. And he certainly wasn't the one holding his hands in front of his face and flexing his fingers like they were the most fascinating things he'd ever encountered.

"W-what...?" he started to say, but his mouth didn't move. His voice resounded in his mind only. His body wasn't responding to any of his commands. He started to panic again. "What the hell have you done?"

"You performed the spell, idiot," whoever was operating the controls snorted. "And don't freak out, jeez. We made a deal; this is safe. I could have just possessed you by force, but I knew you'd pee your pants so I thought we'd go for a more cooperative method. Not so bad, is it? You can see out and everything."

Indeed, Malik could still see through his own eyes – he just couldn't control where they looked.

"Noah...?" he said suspiciously. From what he knew of Cyndia, she was far too nice to pull a stunt like this.

"Yeah," Noah replied, sounding quite bored, as if this wasn't remotely out of the ordinary. "Don't say you'd prefer Cyndia. She'd be embarrassed to possess a boy's body."

"I don't like the idea of possession at all, actually,"a soft female voice said. "We are dead. We have no business controlling a living body..."

"But in this case it's for the greater good," Noah said brightly in Malik's voice. He turned around and there was a very pretty young woman just behind him. Pretty, but transparent and with her feet not quite touching the ground.

"...I can see her!" Malik spluttered, staring in astonishment. Noah snorted again.

"Of course you can," he replied. "You can see everything I can see. And being a ghost would be pretty dismal if you couldn't see other ghosts. Though it's pretty dismal anyway."

"Don't waste time, you two,"Cyndia chided gently. "This is to help Ryou. Please go and help him."

"Wait!" Malik said when Noah started to walk towards the door. "Bakura escaped, didn't he? Is that why Ryou collapsed? Do you know?"

"...The spell keeping Bakura sealed in that bottle was cast by Ryou. His power, his spirit, gave it strength,"Cyndia said quietly. "It is more likely that the seal was weakened due to...Ryou being weakened."

"Let's not worry about Bakura for now," Noah said, pulling Malik's face into a frown. It was possibly the strangest sensation Malik had ever experienced. "He's skulked off somewhere to recharge. We've got bigger problems right now."

"Where are we going?" Malik asked as his legs started marching for the door again.

"To see Ryou. Duh."

---

Malik managed to convince Noah to grab a few of Ryou's things – his iPod, a book, a change of clothes – before they returned to the hospital, so that it would appear to Ryou's father that he had achieved his false objective. However, they didn't have to make much effort to maintain the pretence – when they reached Ryou's room, his father was slumped forward in his seat, fast asleep. Even sleeping, he managed to look haggard and stressed. The last few hours seemed to have taken about ten years off his life.

Noah dumped the bag next to the bed and leaned over Ryou's unmoving form, scrutinising him closely as if searching for something. After a moment he stood up straight again and shook his (Malik's) head.

"Nothing we can do here," he announced.

"What do you mean?" Malik demanded.

"I mean Ryou isn't here," Noah replied shortly.

"What are you talking about, he's right there-"

"His body is there, yeah," Noah drawled. "But that's all. Ryou is AWOL. His spirit, soul, essence, whatever. He's not here."

"Then..." Malik tried desperately to make sense of this. "Then, where is he...?"

"You should know better than me. Where were you guys when he passed out?"

"The museum. His father's an archaeologist and-"

"I know, moron, I was there for that conversation. The museum's our next stop then."

"But the room we were in, it was private. Y'know, authorised persons only. We only got in because Ryou's dad has access."

"He has a pass?"

"Some sort of ID card, yeah."

"Well, that's not such a big problem," Noah said with a shrug, going over to Ryou's sleeping father and starting to casually go through his pockets.

"What are you doing?" Malik almost screeched, staring in indignant fury as his body was used for nefarious pick-pocketing purposes.

"Getting us a pass," Noah said simply, locating Mr Bakura's wallet and rifling through it until he found what he wanted. "There we go. Easy."

"That's stealing!"

"We'll bring it back."

"I'm not getting arrested because of something you do! This is as far as it goes! Nothing more illegal than this!"

"And here I thought you'd do anything to save your friend," Noah shot back at him.

Malik was silent for a long moment.

"He's your friend too," he muttered finally.

"Yeah," Noah agreed. "He is."

---

Malik felt it was a good thing he wasn't in charge of his body when they reached the museum. If he had been, he was sure his stomach would have been rolling with nerves. He was convinced that the security guard at that door marked 'Private' would just know they'd stolen the pass, and then Ryou's father would find out, and then he'd see the state of Ryou's apartment and assume that had been Malik too-!

As it happened, they got in without a hitch. Malik still refused to relax.

"So where was Ryou when he collapsed?" Noah asked, hooking his thumbs casually in his belt-loops. Malik thought he was getting far too laid-back with a body that didn't belong to him.

"He was standing over there, next to those gold items," he answered. He wanted to point but...well, couldn't. He thought he was adjusting pretty well to being a passenger in his own body, but that didn't mean it wasn't annoying.

Noah approached the display, looking at each of the items in turn.

"Was he looking at any one in particular?" he questioned.

"I don't know..." Malik said uncertainly. "Oh. But he was standing further to the right."

Noah shuffled obligingly to the right. The last two items at this end were one that looked like a golden eyeball, and one that looked almost like an ornate golden axe.

"He was looking at one of these two, then..." Noah mused aloud.

"He was definitely talking to someone, too."

"Well, then," Noah said, reaching out and closing Malik's hand around the handle of the axe-like object. "I guess that means someone's here."

"Don't touch those!" Malik yelped, waiting for an alarm to start blaring. Nothing happened.

"You need to calm down," Noah remarked.

"You're not the one who'll probably go to prison if we get caught!"

"Hm. True." Noah lifted the strange object out of its spongy surroundings and turned it over in his hands, looking at it from every angle. "This one seems harmless enough."

"Put it back, then!"

Noah rolled his eyes (another not-entirely-pleasant sensation) but obeyed before reaching for the shiny fake eyeball.

"I wouldn't touch that if I were you."

Malik's hand froze in mid-air. Because that voice didn't belong to either Malik or Noah.

"Who's there?" Noah demanded, taking a step back and looking around suspiciously.

The axe-like object began to radiate a golden light that became progressively brighter until it was almost blinding.

"Harmless? That one seems harmless?" Malik managed to hiss. For once, Noah had no snappy come-back.

The light faded so suddenly that it took Malik's eyes a moment to adjust. When both parties using said eyes could see clearly once again, Noah took another few steps backwards when they saw a figure standing almost exactly where Ryou had been when he'd fallen. Not a living figure, certainly – his lack of opacity immediately gave him away as a spirit of some kind. But he appeared to be human, at least – he lacked the feral, dangerous edge that the demons like Bakura had. His skin was dark, like Malik's own, and his clothing was...more than a little outlandish. Flowing robes in ivory and blue, with an impressively tall hat to match, and what appeared to be a golden cobra mounted just over his brow.

"...Who are you?" Noah tried again after staring for a while.

"My name is Set," the apparition told them, inclining his head slightly. "I am a priest in the service of the Pharaoh."

"I think that might have been a while ago," Noah said. Set nodded.

"I have been sealed within the Rod for over three thousand years," he said mildly, as if things could have been a lot worse. "I thank you for releasing me."

"It was an accident," Noah said bluntly. "I didn't even do anything."

"When someone with great spiritual energy touches a Millennium Item, they awaken the spirit sealed within," Set explained before tilting his head and frowning faintly in their direction. Malik got the oddest feeling that he was looking right through them. "But this is unusual. Two spirits in the same body."

"How can he tell?" Malik gaped.

"How should I know?" Noah asked irritably. "And you can come out, you know."

"I...can?"

Noah gave an exasperated sigh, and then suddenly Malik was in control of his own body again, while Noah's transparent form floated next to him, a young boy in short trousers once again.

"Wait, you mean you could have been the passenger this whole time?" Malik said with a furious glare. Noah shrugged, appearing unmoved by his anger.

"Give me a break, I've been dead ten years," he said. "It's not often I get to play at having a body."

Malik seethed a moment longer before remembering that they had more pertinent things to deal with just now. He turned back to face the ghostly priest, who was regarding them with quiet amazement.

"You," Malik snapped. "Are you the one that hurt Ryou? Where is he?"

"...Ryou?" Set repeated. "I do not know that name."

"He just said that we released him from the rod-axe-thing," Noah said impatiently. "It wasn't him."

"...So all of these items have spirits sealed in them?" Malik asked, sweeping his arm in the direction of the six golden objects.

"Yes," Set confirmed. He paused. "What has happened that caused you to make a pact with one of the dead?"

"My friend collapsed here today," Malik said darkly. "And apparently his soul is now strangely absent from his body."

"And before you ask, Ryou oozes 'spiritual energy'," Noah put in. "He could have woken up any of these things just by looking at them."

"I see," Set said quietly, glancing over his shoulder at the gold eye.

"...You told us not to touch that," Malik said in realisation.

"Yes. I did not want this particular item to be awakened." Set closed his eyes and gave a frown of concentration, holding one outstretched hand over the eye. "But it seems I was too late. I can feel it stirring."

"That would have been Ryou," Noah said with annoyance.

"He was talking to someone too," Malik added. One corner of his mind was wondering what his life had become, since he'd clearly got to a stage where the appearance of an Ancient Egyptian spirit was a fairly normal occurrence.

"...Your friend is in a lot of danger," Set informed them with regret. "The man sealed within the Eye is barely human anymore. He became a monster."

"Who is he?" Malik demanded. "And what's he done with Ryou?"

"His name is Akunadin. He is the creator of these six Millennium Items," Set said quietly. "He forged each one himself. They hold exceptional power, and each gives its wielder a certain ability..." He gestured to the gold objects, listing them from left to right. "The Necklace, the power of foresight. The Key, the power to see into people's very souls. The Scales, the power to pass judgement on souls. The Ring, the power to manipulate and seal souls away. The Eye, the power to look into people's thoughts. And the Rod, the power to control those thoughts."

"...They're not just for decoration, then," Noah said.

"He bestowed each Item upon a chosen priest," Set went on. "But what we did not know was that he created them out of dark magic. Terrible magic. A ritual requiring murder and sacrifice. There is blood mixed with the gold of these trinkets."

Malik felt cold suddenly. He stared at the six Items, seeing them in a whole new light.

"He wanted to use the power of the Items to overthrow our Pharaoh," Set said, narrowing his eyes at the clearly unpleasant memory. "When we, the priests, refused, he flew into a rage and sealed us all within our respective Item. Each soul offered to an Item increases its power, you see."

Malik swallowed hard and Noah grimaced as the pieces fell into place.

"So then Ryou..." Malik started nervously.

"His soul has been taken into the Eye," Set confirmed flatly. "Akunadin was defeated by our Pharaoh and sealed within his own Item – he is weak. He will prey on the souls of the living until he is strong enough to stage his own resurrection."

"Oh great," Noah groaned. "Ryou's soul is a powerhouse, it could be enough on its own-!"

"Maybe, but we're not going to let some dead guy eat Ryou's soul," Malik interjected, appalled. He turned to Set. "How can we save him?"

"...Someone would have to go into the Eye themselves to bring him back," Set told him. "He will be too weak to escape on his own. Living souls do not last when separated from the body. You don't have long."

"Ok, great. So we just have to touch the thing and we'll get sucked in, right-?" Malik asked, reaching out for the Eye again.

"Hold up," Noah hissed, seizing control briefly to stop him. "What if we do get him out of there? Where's his soul going to go, huh?"

"He is right," Set said gravely. "The Eye must be very close to your friend's body when his soul is released. He would not survive a long journey."

"...Well that's just fantastic," Malik spat. "How are we supposed to get Ryou's comatose body and these extremely well-guarded artefacts to be in the same place at the same time?"

"I'd say we have to steal them," Noah said plainly, in the same sort of way that a normal person would remark that they have to go to the supermarket to buy bread.

"Do I look like a master thief to you?" Malik snapped angrily, not caring that he must have looked like a complete lunatic on the inevitable surveillance cameras monitoring this room. "And I told you, we're not doing anything illegal-!"

"Relax," Noah retorted with a long-suffering roll of his eyes. "I never said we'd be the ones doing the stealing."

---

Noah had resumed control of Malik's body, because apparently Malik would only slow them down for the next part of their plan. Sometimes Malik really wished Noah had a body of his own, if only so he could hit him.

They had briefly returned to Ryou's apartment, where Noah had used Malik's fingers to expertly thumb through Ryou's address book that he kept next to his telephone. There had been a small white card with a number scrawled on it sandwiched between two pages, and Noah had plucked this into the open and proceeded to make an extremely cryptic phone-call to the number in question.

They were now sitting in a less-than-classy cafe (the same one, Malik realised dimly, where he and Ryou had talked just before demonic hell had broken loose), waiting for...something. Noah was doing a good job of excluding Malik from the 'plan'.

Set had tagged along too, for no discernible reason. Malik supposed being cooped up in a magic gold axe for five thousand years must have got boring pretty quickly, and maybe now any company at all seemed fascinating.

"I hope you two know the difficulty of the task ahead of you," the priest said. In all his grandeur, he looked ridiculously out of place in this seedy little joint. "Neither of you possess particularly powerful souls. You only succeeded in awakening me due to your combined spiritual energy."

"Don't rub it in our faces," Malik muttered. He'd eventually managed to extract himself from his own mind and was now drifting along quite comfortably. He couldn't move far from his body but that didn't really bother him. He had no intention of letting it out of his sight.

"You plan to try anyway?" Set asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Of course!" Malik said exasperatedly. "What, have you never had someone you'd want to save?"

He was surprised (and faintly guilt-stricken) when Set visibly flinched.

"...I understand," the priest said quietly with a nod.

A bell jingled as someone else entered the cafe. Noah glanced over his borrowed shoulder and smirked.

"Showtime," he whispered, getting to his feet.

The stranger was standing at the counter making his order. When the single waitress hurried off to prepare it, Noah sidled up behind him.

"Nice of you to show up," he said under his breath. "It's time for you to pay back that favour you owe."

The man hardly blinked. He turned his head slowly and Malik, floating unseen nearby, was startled to see the pale, jagged scar that sliced down the right-hand side of his face.

"That so?" the man drawled, just as his order was handed to him. "In that case, I do prefer to discuss business over coffee. Shall we sit down?"

They returned to the booth that Noah had claimed earlier. The man stirred his coffee indolently for what felt like hours. Malik peered at him, totally un-self-conscious about it since he knew he couldn't be seen. His hair was an odd greyish-white, despite his obvious youth (though it was no stranger than Ryou's hair, Malik supposed), and his skin was dark, save for that attention-grabbing scar. His eyes were the colour of slate, and at length they graced Noah with their gaze.

"You're not Ryou," he stated redundantly. "How did you get that number?"

"I'm a friend of Ryou's," Noah replied. The man snorted.

"Doesn't mean you can cash in on a favour I owe him," he pointed out.

"Ryou's in some trouble," Noah said flatly. "And, as fate would have it, your...'skills' are just what we need to get him out of trouble."

"Trouble?" the man repeated. "What sort of trouble? Don't try and tell me he owes money to a gangster or something, because that's just horse-shit-"

"He's in trouble of the supernatural sort, obviously," Noah said impatiently. "Go visit the hospital if you don't believe me. He's lying there confusing the hell out of the doctors, because they have no experience of dealing with people who've had their souls snatched away."

The man sucked in a sharp breath.

"...Alright, say I did believe you," he said casually, looking back to his coffee. "How exactly does someone in my line of work fix such a situation?"

"It just happens that the things we need to save him are in a high-security room at the museum," Noah informed him. "I assume you've heard about these exciting, newly-discovered treasures of Ancient Egypt?"

"I may have."

"Good. Because we need-"

"He has to get all of them," Set interjected suddenly. "Not just the Eye. All six."

"We need the six golden items," Noah went on without missing a beat. "The 'centrepiece' of the eventual exhibit."

"Really?" the man said, a smirk gracing his features. "I never thought that repaying Ryou would be so...relevant to my interests."

"Lucky for you," Noah said. "Can you do it?"

"Of course I can."

"Alright, will you?"

"I'll take a little walk to the hospital when we're done here," the man said with a smile that was pleasant enough but still somehow shark-like. "If your story checks out, I'll be at your service."

"Good. Because we really need you to get them tonight."

"Tonight?" the man repeated scathingly. "Don't you understand that these things require planning-?"

"We really don't have much time," Noah cut him off.

"You keep saying 'we'," the man said, glancing around him. "Are some other 'friends of Ryou's' hiding around here...?"

Noah chuckled.

"You've met Ryou," he said. "Aren't you surprised that he even has one living friend? Surely you don't expect him to have more than that."

"...That is true," the man conceded. "So you can see them too?"

"It's a little bit more complicated than that," Noah smirked. "So? Tonight?"

"It's a challenge, I suppose," the man said with faint irritation.

"He can't touch them," Set warned suddenly. "His soul is strong. He would awaken any one of them."

"You need to stop looking at people's souls," Malik told him, shaking his head. "I'm pretty sure it's rude."

"Added complication," Noah piped up, shooting a mild couldn't you have said so sooner? glare in Set's direction. "You can't touch any of the Items. Not directly."

"Or I'll upset the restless dead, I suppose?" the man drawled.

"Something like that."

"Fantastic." The man crumpled his empty coffee cup in one hand and got to his feet. "I think I'll go before you add any further conditions."

"I think we're done here. I'll phone tomorrow to arrange a time to meet at the hospital," Noah said before pausing. "What do I call you, anyway?"

"Anything you like," the man chuckled. "A name, in the legal sense, isn't such a great thing for the King of Thieves."

"...Well, I'm not calling you that," Noah said bluntly. The man laughed loudly.

"Then I guess you don't get to call me anything," he said, exiting the cafe without a backwards glance.

---

The rest of the day seemed to drag on into eternity.

Malik knew that there was nothing else they could do for Ryou until they had those Items, but it still felt so wrong to be going around and doing normal things (as normal as possible, anyway, with one spirit following him around and another lodged in his head) while his friend was lying in a hospital bed.

"Do you think we should have told that guy that he'll have to put the Items back too?" Noah wondered aloud as they walked down the street towards Malik's home. He was still in control of Malik's body, and was eating a hotdog he'd bought from a vendor with incredible concentration. Malik supposed he'd savour food, too, if he only got to experience eating once every ten years or so.

"I think we'll leave that up to Ryou," Malik replied. "How does Ryou even know a guy like that anyway? Does he have mafia contacts too?"

"Don't be dumb," Noah snorted. "Everyone Ryou knows, he knows through his work. That guy needed a seriously extreme exorcism. Worse than yours. Wasn't pretty."

"For real?" Malik asked in surprise – mainly because he hadn't been aware that it was possible for an exorcism to be any more traumatic than his had been, but also because the thief had seemed far too... strong to fall prey to a malevolent spirit.

"Yeah," Noah confirmed. His tone became dark. "...That's how Ryou ended up with Bakura. He came from that guy."

Malik was sure that, had he been in a more corporeal form at that moment, his breath would have caught in his throat.

"...That so?" he managed at length. "He sure owes Ryou this much, then."

"Sure does," Noah agreed with a snigger. "Y'know, he had plenty of money to pay Ryou at the time. But Ryou wouldn't take it because it was stolen. Looks like his annoying morals are finally paying off."

"...Ok, let me back into the driving seat now," Malik said as they reached his home. "No way are you parading around and doing crazy stuff in front of my family."

"Hm? Don't you think I make a good Malik?"

"Get out," Malik growled lowly, and Noah grumbled but complied. The first thing Malik did once he was back in control of his body was throw the remains of Noah's hotdog in the nearest trash can. "I don't usually eat meat, you know. You've probably made me sick with that thing."

"Why would anyone not eat meat?" Noah asked, clearly appalled. "For as long as you're alive, you should eat everything you can get your hands on."

"Right," Malik said dryly. He at least looked around to check for passersby before speaking out loud to his ghostly companion. Noah wasn't quite so considerate, so a whole lot of people now probably thought he was some kind of hotdog-loving schizophrenic. "Do you have to follow me home? Ryou says my sister can sense spirits, and I don't want her freaking out and thinking I've brought another demon into the house."

"You could always just tell her the truth?" Noah suggested.

"That I signed myself up for another possession? After what happened last time? No, thanks." Malik shook his head vehemently before looking over his shoulder to frown at his other tag-along. "And don't you have priest-stuff to do?"

"Hardly," Set replied, mouth twisting in annoyance. "In any case, you won't be able to save your friend without my help. It's best if I remain close to you."

"...Why are you helping us, anyway?" Malik asked. "Are you just that bored after three thousand years of being cooped up?"

"Your friend has come to harm because of the Millennium Items. As the chosen wielder of the Millennium Rod, I see it as my responsibility to ensure that he is returned safely to you," Set said promptly. "Furthermore, saving your friend will require defeating Akunadin once and for all. I've waited far too long to bring that man to justice."

"Oh yeah, he was the one who cooped you up in the first place," Malik mumbled. "I keep forgetting."

"He committed worse crimes than that," Set said darkly. His expression became thundery as he apparently recalled some of these more heinous crimes. Malik was sure he felt the air around him drop a few degrees in temperature.

He decided not to ask Set exactly what Akunadin had done to make him that angry.

---

Although Malik opted not to tell his siblings the exact ins and outs of the ongoing situation, he knew it would be unfair to hide Ryou's condition from them. They had both grown rather fond of Ryou, after all – saving their brother from hell-spawn had been a great first impression to make, and the fact that he had successfully befriended aforementioned antisocial brother had only further cemented their glowing opinion of him.

Ishizu and Rishid were, therefore, horrified to hear about what had transpired at the museum earlier that day. (Malik was shocked to realise that it really had only been earlier today – it felt like forever had passed since then.) They asked him a hundred and one questions he didn't know the answers to. On the plus side, though, they at least suspected what Malik already knew to be true.

"Do you think it's possible that the problem is...supernatural rather than physical?" Ishizu said worriedly.

"Of course that's possible. This is Ryou we're talking about," Malik replied before pasting on his best optimistic smile. "But if it is something weird and creepy, I'm sure he can deal with it. He'll be back to normal in no time. I know he will."

Luckily, neither of his siblings seemed to suspect that he'd brought invisible guests into the house, though Ishizu kept frowning and turning her head, as if hearing something faint and indiscernible. It made Malik nervous, and he excused himself early, claiming that he was tired. Conveniently, this wasn't a lie.

"I feel like I could sleep for a year," he groaned, flopping face-first onto his bed without even changing his clothes. "This has been one stressful day..."

"...Yeah," Noah said, looking uncharacteristically awkward as he floated in the corner. "Also, I may have failed to mention this, but that deal we made? Yeah, that's sort of...draining your energy. So, y'know, you should get plenty of sleep."

Malik paused a moment to allow this to sink in before raising his head slowly.

"Say that again?" he hissed.

"Don't freak out. It's not like I had any way of telling you before it was too late!" Noah protested, throwing up his transparent hands. "You're not a natural clairvoyant, so maintaining a link with a spirit like this is going to take its toll on you. It's not a big deal, ok?"

"Actually, maintaining the pact for too long would have serious detrimental effects on both your body and soul," Set put in from where he was standing gazing out the window. "In fact, an unpleasantly common outcome of 'deals' such as this one is the living soul fading away entirely, leaving the body to moulder slowly in the possession of the dead one."

"...Aren't you just a little ray of sunshine?" Noah muttered to combat the ensuing deathly silence.

"You didn't plan on telling me that?" Malik exploded, springing to his feet despite his exhaustion – especially now he knew the cause of it. "You're practically chewing on my soul-!"

"I am not!" Noah snapped. "And do you want the whole neighbourhood to hear you?"

Malik shut his mouth and glared at him, silently demanding an explanation.

"I didn't see the point in telling you, since it's not going to come to that," Noah ground out. "You might have flipped the finger to half the instructions in that ritual, but you did remember to state an end-point for the pact. The second Ryou's safe, the bond will be broken and everything goes back to normal."

Malik glowered at him and turned to Set for confirmation of this.

"It's true," the priest said mildly. "It would take weeks for any lasting damage to be inflicted. If we successfully save your friend tomorrow and the pact comes to a natural conclusion, then you won't be in any danger."

"...But if we can't save Ryou...?" Malik questioned with mounting dread.

"Well," Set said, his tone never changing, "suffice to say, you and he won't be parted for too long."

---

Malik couldn't help but be wary of sleeping after Set's less-than-encouraging explanations, but in the end exhaustion emerged victorious and he fell into a fitful slumber.

"Did you really have to spook him like that?" Noah asked irritably. "Things will only be more difficult if he's jumpy and distracted."

"He deserves to know what he's got himself into," Set answered him.

"All you did was scare the crap out of him. Malik's not a huge optimist, you know. He's probably pretty convinced that his days are numbered now."

"...And yet he didn't even think about trying to break the deal," Set murmured. "Isn't that interesting?"

"Interesting? How?"

"I'm always interested in the lengths that someone is willing to go to for another person's sake," Set elaborated. "It says a lot about their character. This friend of his...Ryou. He must be very important to him."

"Ugh, you have no idea." Noah grimaced and rolled his eyes. "They only met a few months ago, but already it's like...I dunno. It's like they've just been waiting to bump into each other their whole lives."

"I see," Set said, coming close to a smile for the first time since they'd met. "Some people just share a bond like that, don't they?"

"I wouldn't know," Noah replied haughtily. "I died when I was ten. I hardly had time to encounter love-at-first-sight or any special 'bond'."

"Of course. I apologise."

"...Did you?" Noah asked at length. It was hard not to be curious. All he had these days was other people's experiences. What's it like to fall in love? How does it feel to kiss a girl...?

"There was a woman I cared for very deeply," Set informed him in oddly clipped tones.

"You don't sound too happy about that," Noah remarked dubiously.

"She was killed by Akunadin," Set said. His filmy hands curled into fists. "For that, not for sealing me away for three millennia, I will destroy him."

"...We'll help," Noah told him with a smile.

---

When Malik awoke the next morning, he wasn't enormously surprised to turn on the TV and find that the big local news headline was that the museum had been robbed. Official sources were refusing to specify what exactly had been stolen, but there was a lot of speculation floating around about artefacts newly-arrived from Egypt. Of course.

"Alright, now what?" he asked, quickly turning the television off again. There was something massively uncomfortable about seeing a crime you were implicated in being investigated on live TV.

"Now we get to the hospital," Noah said. "I'll call Mr. King of Thieves when we arrive, but I'm willing to bet he's already there. He seems like that kind of smart-ass."

"...We don't have a plan, do we?" Malik sighed dejectedly.

"Sure we do. The plan is to save Ryou."

"...I'll get my shoes."

---

Noah left Malik in control for the journey to the hospital, though Malik couldn't help but hope that he'd take over once they found their hired thief.

"Do you see him anywhere?" Noah asked, peering around the crowded waiting room.

"No," Malik muttered lowly, conscious of the endless stream of people bustling past him.

"Bastard better not have given us the slip," Noah growled, flitting from place to place agitatedly. "If he's run off with those Items, we are so screwed..."

"The Items are inside this building," Set put in calmly.

"Yeah, well do you see them? Because I don't-!"

Malik refrained from screaming at them to shut up, but only just.

He blinked when he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. He brought it out and glanced at the screen and saw he had a new text message.

Boo, it read. It was from an unknown number.

"...The hell?" Malik mumbled, just as another message came through.

Behind you, this one said.

Malik turned around slowly, and there was the thief, smirking indolently at him from just inside the automatic doors. He had a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

"How do you have my number?" Malik demanded as he approached.

"That's really the most important question you have for me?" the thief asked, looking amused. "Not whether I was successful?"

"Shouldn't I assume you were? I didn't know you considered failure a possibility."

"I don't. Asking is still the done thing, though, last I heard."

"Ugh, we don't have time for this!" Noah snapped. "Come on, Malik, get the Items and we'll go get Ryou."

"I'm being told to hurry things along," Malik said, holding out one hand for the bag.

"Oh, no," the thief said, moving it just out of his reach. "I'll be accompanying you on this little rescue mission, I think. Just because Ryou is indeed lying unconscious in a room upstairs doesn't mean that you're not planning on just taking off with these pretty things and cashing in on the black market."

"You're a professional thief, what right do you have to be suspicious of me?" Malik hissed.

"None, really," he replied. "But stealing these things was a bitch, so I'm not just handing them over. Besides, this seems like it could get interesting."

"Whatever," Malik groaned, turning on his heel and heading for the nearest elevator.

"...Call me crazy," the thief said as they waited to reach the correct floor. "But I don't think you're the same kid I talked to yesterday."

"Not...exactly," Malik said. He was starting to feel tired, and could only hope that it was due to the general overwhelming nature of this situation and not some sort of deterioration of his soul.

"I won't ask for details," the thief laughed easily. "I get the impression that things related to Ryou can get pretty complicated."

It was only after they'd stepped out of the elevator and started striding purposefully down the corridor that another complication occurred to Malik.

"Shit," he said. "What are we going to do about Ryou's father? Even if he's heard about the Items being stolen, I doubt he's left the room."

"...Take the Rod from the bag," Set said quietly.

"Why?" Malik asked.

"I told you that each of the Items grants a certain power," Set said. "The Rod will allow you to control the minds of others. It will be necessary in any case, since we can't have people wandering in while we rescue your friend."

"You want me to screw with Ryou's dad's brain?" Malik questioned.

"We will need him to leave the room."

"Oh God, this whole thing is illegal on so many levels..." Malik mumbled before turning to the thief. "I need the Rod."

"The what?"

"...The shiny axe thing."

"What for?"

"Apparently," Malik said wearily, "it will give me the power of mind-control."

"...Complicated doesn't even begin to cover it, does it?" the thief chuckled, shaking his head as he reached into his bag. "Are you ok to touch this thing?"

Malik noticed that he was wearing gloves.

"The Rod is safe," he said, taking it and feeling horribly aware that his fingerprints were now all over it. "We already upset its restless dead."

As expected, Ryou's father was once again sitting at his son's bedside. Malik's heart sank when he saw that Ryou was, of course, still completely unmoving. He was sure he looked paler than he had yesterday, too.

Mr Bakura glanced up when Malik pushed the door open. His eyes were tired and bloodshot.

"Malik?" he said in surprise, frowning when he saw the thief at his back. "And who's this...?"

"Um. You should go get a coffee?" Malik said uncertainly, bringing the Rod out from behind his back and pointing it in his direction. For a horrible moment he was sure it wouldn't work and that Set had just been messing with him, but then the Wadjet eye glowed faintly and Ryou's father's face suddenly became disturbingly blank. Without another word he rose stiffly to his feet and left the room.

"...That was weird," Malik said.

"That was pretty awesome," the thief remarked, sticking his head out the door and watching the man's retreating back.

"Close the door," Set ordered.

"Close the door," Malik relayed. The thief obeyed.

Malik noticed that Set was staring very fixedly at Ryou. He had a strange, unreadable look in his eyes.

"What is it?" Malik asked uneasily. Set blinked, seemingly startled out of some reverie.

"...White hair," he said softly. "Unusual, isn't it?"

"You can gawk at him later," Noah said impatiently. "We need to get started."

"Of course," Set said. "Lay the Items out on the bed."

Malik repeated this instruction to the thief, and soon the six gold Items were arranged in a rough semi-circle on the crisp white bed-sheets.

"So how is this going to work?" Malik asked.

"Before we do anything else, I need you to awaken the spirits sealed within the remaining four Items," Set told him. "If I am to defeat Akunadin, I will need the help of my fellow priests."

"You're sure none of them will try and eat us?"

"Quite sure."

Malik hesitated only a moment, understanding that they really didn't have much time. He reached out and pressed his fingertips to the cool metal of the Necklace, Scales, Key and Ring in turn. He watched (with minimal surprise, which showed how accustomed he was becoming to these things) as four more ghostly figures appeared in the room – three male and one female. They didn't speak; just looked towards Set, who nodded at them. They seemed to have some kind of understanding, and Malik was rather more concerned with saving Ryou than with their three thousand year reunion.

"What now?" he asked. "We need to go into the Eye, right?"

"...I'll go," Noah said. "You need to stay here."

"What? No, I-"

"Look, I'm already dead," Noah snapped. "What's the worst this guy can do to me? And besides, our pact anchors me to you. It'll be easier for me to get back out."

Malik glowered at him, feeling oddly betrayed. He hadn't come this far just to be a useless bystander now. He did that often enough when Ryou was attending house-calls. Now that Ryou was the one in danger, he was determined to play his part.

"You have too much to lose," Noah persisted.

"He is right," Set spoke up. "And your soul is already weakened from sustaining the bond between you two."

"I can't just do nothing-!" Malik started to protest.

"Of course not," Set said calmly. "You need to make sure nothing is disturbed while we are within the Eye. If anyone attempts to enter the room, use the Rod."

"...You better bring Ryou back safe," Malik said moodily, fixing Noah with a challenging glare.

"I got us this far, didn't I?" Noah smirked before turning to Set. "Shall we?"

"After you."

The Eye flashed gold, and they vanished.

---

Noah couldn't normally register physical sensation when he was in spirit-form, but the inside of the Eye was definitely cold. Freezing, in fact. And dark.

He supposed Akunadin was going out of his way to be unwelcoming.

"Set?" he called into the darkness. "You here?"

"Yes," came the priest's composed voice as he materialised next to him. "Come. We don't have long."

"Ryou's not in such good shape, huh?"

"I can sense a living soul here," Set replied, "but it is weak."

They began to walk (which in itself was odd – Noah wasn't accustomed to having his feet on the ground when he wasn't possessing someone else) and it seemed that they were just walking along an endless stretch of what looked like black stone. Except none of this was real, so it wasn't black stone. Just blackness. Cold blackness.

Just when it started to feel like they'd been walking forever and had made no progress, Noah saw a pinprick of brightness in the distance. They increased their pace, and as they neared, Noah saw that the speck of white was in fact Ryou's unconscious form, sprawled on his side on the dark not-ground.

"Ryou!" he called out, hurrying towards him. He stopped short in horror when he saw that the floor had sprouted creeping, wispy tendrils of blackness, and that these had twined themselves, snake-like, around Ryou's limbs and torso. As he stared, one slid smoothly around his pale throat...and started to squeeze.

"Hey!" Noah cried, falling to his knees and grabbing at it. It was so cold that it seemed to burn his skin, even though he knew that was stupid because he didn't have any skin-

"Ryou, wake up!" he ordered. He could hear the desperation in his own voice. He succeeded in breaking the tendril attempting to strangle Ryou's very soul, but it was quickly replaced by others and, seeming to realise that they were under attack, these ones moved a lot faster. They struck out at Noah's hands like cobras.

"Release him!" Set's voice boomed in the endless darkness. There was a flash of blinding light, and the creeping darkness recoiled and retreated. Noah whipped around to see Set wielding a ghostly replica of the Millennium Rod.

"...Got one built-in, huh?" he questioned with a wry smile.

"I am bound to the Rod," Set replied shortly. "I am never without its power."

Noah heard a soft moan and, hardly daring to believe it, turned just in time to see Ryou's blue eyes flutter open.

"Ryou?" he said excitedly. He moaned again.

"...Noah?" he mumbled, blinking a few times and frowning. "Where are we...?"

"Long story, no time," Noah said, fighting down a grin at just seeing him conscious. "Can you stand? I don't know how helpful standing is here, but it seems a good place to start..."

"I-I don't know...I don't feel so great. What's going on?"

"Everything can be explained later," Set said, crouching down next to them. "For now, you need to be strong."

"...Hello," Ryou said dazedly. "Who are you?"

"His name's Set, he's a priest, he's a pretty cool guy," Noah told him quickly, getting to his feet and tugging on one of Ryou's hands to encourage him to do the same. "And like he said, we'll explain later."

Ryou and Set were still looking at each other. The priest was shaking his head ruefully.

"White hair and blue eyes," he murmured. "Who would have thought it...?"

"...I remind you of someone?" Ryou said softly.

"Guys, seriously, now is not the time," Noah howled – just as an awful shriek cut through the still cold air. "...What was that?"

Before anyone could hazard a guess, something dark and fiery and terrible came blazing towards them. A monster of a man, just like Set had told them – a man with masses of wild, billowing grey hair, skin that seemed to glow red like a dying ember, and a gaping hole in his face where his left eye should have been. When it (surely an 'it' and not a 'he'?) prepared to scream at them again, its jaw seemed to unhinge and then cease to exist completely – its mouth opened wide enough to swallow a man's head whole.

"Noah, take Ryou and go," Set commanded, as calm as ever.

"What about you?" Noah asked, devoting every last drop of his willpower to ignoring the orders from his brain to run the hell away from that thing.

"I'm coming too," the priest stated evenly. "And I'll be bringing Akunadin."

"What? You can't take that thing into a hospital-!"

"It's the only way. Now go," Set said sternly. His gaze softened when his eyes drifted to Ryou, who had managed to sit up but still looked more than a little lost. "And you really must be strong, Ryou. There's a young man who'll be extremely cross if we don't get you back safely."

Ryou blinked confusedly before a small smile broke out on his ashen face.

"Malik," he stated simply.

"Yeah, yeah, click your heels three times and think of Malik, you sap," Noah said, rolling his eyes. He tightened his grip on Ryou's hand. "Ready?"

"Ready."

"I better see you back there, priest!" Noah called just before they disappeared.

---

"Nothing to see here," Malik said dully, waving the Rod in front of him as the same nurse attempted to enter the room for the third time. Once again, her eyes took on a flat, faraway look and she drifted back out into the corridor.

"You should have some fun with that thing. Tell that one good-looking nurse to go do a strip-show in the geriatric ward," the thief piped up from the seat Ryou's father had vacated. "Or at the very least make someone bring us up some coffee."

"Don't you have something you could be stealing right now?" Malik hissed irritably.

He was doomed never to know the answer to that question, because just then the Millennium Eye decided to start putting on some kind of riotous light-show. In the midst of it all, Malik saw Noah leap back into existence. The fact that he could still see him didn't strike him as a good thing.

"You didn't bring Ryou," he said weakly.

"What?" Noah's eyes flicked to Ryou's body, still lying with eyes shut. "No, I...he was..."

Next to reappear was Set – closely followed by the only thing Malik had ever seen that might have been more terrifying than the demon that had possessed him. The priests and lone priestess, who had stood in reverent silence this whole time, stood to attention.

"Akunadin!" Set called out. "You will be judged and punished by your own chosen priests for your crimes!"

Malik didn't know for whose benefit he was speaking, because the thing he'd brought out of the Eye with him didn't seem to possess an iota of human intelligence or understanding. It was roaring unintelligibly, staring at all of the spirits in the room hungrily.

"Priests Shaada and Kalim," Set went on. "Pass judgement on his soul."

The two he had addressed, wielders of the Key and Scales respectively, nodded and closed their eyes for a long moment.

"Darkness has consumed him," Shaada said at length.

"His soul is not pure," Kalim affirmed. "It cannot pass into the peaceful afterlife."

"Then he must be destroyed," Set said coolly.

Without another word, the priests raised their ghostly hands towards the ceiling. Their five Items began to glow in tandem, and then bright beams of light (the precise opposite of those creepy black snakes, in Noah's opinion) shot out and pierced the snarling creature. Its shrieks intensified, and Malik could only hope that meant that whatever the priests were doing was working.

When the light faded, the monster was gone. In its place there was just a frail old man – and as they watched, he began to shrivel and shrink. Set knelt before him.

"Before you fade away entirely," he said lowly, staring into the man's single pained eye, "where is she?"

"...My son..." Akunadin moaned weakly. "Forgive me, my son..."

"Where is she?" Set roared suddenly, eyes blazing. "Where is Kisara, what did you do with her-?"

The old man gave something between a chuckle and a whimper.

"She...escaped," he rasped. "Not even I...could cage...a dragon."

With that, he promptly turned to dust. Which just as promptly vanished.

"Of course," Malik found himself saying out loud. "Why not...?"

"I get the strangest feeling I just missed something very dramatic," the thief commented.

"...Oh, nothing, really," Malik said. He could feel that hysterical laughter making a comeback and wondered if he'd finally cracked. The idea that the thief had been unable to see that entire fiasco was just...bizarre. Malik turned to Noah, suddenly wanting to talk to someone who had seen what had just transpired and could confirm he hadn't just imagined it.

But Noah wasn't there.

Malik blinked. The room, which had really been starting to get rather crowded with spirits, was now empty apart from himself, the thief, and-

"Ryou?" he said hopefully, hurrying over to the bed.

Ryou's face twitched into a slight frown, then – oh, and Malik could have jumped for joy and sheer relief – his eyes opened. He looked disorientated for a moment, understandably, and then his gaze came into focus and he smiled.

"Malik," he said. "I'm back. I don't know where I was, but I'm back."

"Great," Malik found himself saying quite stupidly. "That's great."

Ryou laughed happily to himself before a surprised look crossed his face.

"Oh, wow," he said, blinking. "Who are all these people?"

Malik looked around the room which, to him, was empty of all strangers except the thief.

"Well, he calls himself the King of Thieves," he said, jabbing his thumb in his direction. "As for the others, you'll really have to ask them yourself."

---

It was almost a week before Ryou was given the all-clear and released from the hospital. His father and the doctors had been delighted and mystified in equal measures by his miracle recovery, but had insisted that he undergo all manner of crazy tests to make sure that everything really was alright now. Even though Ryou had now received a lengthy explanation from Malik, Noah and Set about what exactly had happened, he went along with the doctors' orders amicably enough.

While he was busy baffling every medical professional who could get his hands on him, Ryou had trusted (rather foolishly, Malik thought) the thief with the Millennium Items. Although Malik suspected they would be showing up on eBay any time now, he wasn't exactly complaining. He had no wish to be the person who got caught red-handed with those things.

On the day that Ryou was allowed to go home (and after he had convinced his father to return to his hotel room), he called the thief and asked him to bring the Items to his apartment. Malik had made the most of the time Ryou had been kept prisoner and had fixed up the apartment as best as he could, so that at the very least Ryou wasn't coming home to a bomb-site. He had been horrified to hear about Bakura's escape, but had resolved to kit himself and Malik out with enough protective charms to keep him at bay should he try to come back and haunt them.

"What exactly are you doing?" Malik asked as Ryou laid the Millennium Items out on his living room floor.

"The spirits bonded to these Items asked if I would be able to free them," Ryou explained. He had filled one of his many shallow earthenware dishes with the dried remains of a plant – Malik was very proud that he was able to identify it as Dittany of Crete. Ryou touched it gently with a glowing taper and it began to smoke. "I said I'd do my best."

Malik couldn't see the long-dead priests and priestess anymore – which made him sort of sad, strangely enough. It had been something of an eye-opened to see things the way Ryou saw them for a while. But nonetheless, he felt that oddly comforting psychic ripple across his mind as Ryou released them one by one, and they moved on without difficulty. He supposed they'd been waiting three thousand years to do just that.

There was one exception, however.

"Oh..." Ryou said uncertainly. He had successfully severed the link between Set and the Millennium Rod, but the priest had not passed on like the others. "I'm sorry, I..."

"It is not your fault," Set told him. "I am not yet finished with this world."

"...Is it something to do with 'her'?" Noah asked curiously. He'd been watching the proceedings with interest and, as a ghost stuck on this plane, no small amount of envy. "The woman that Akunadin...y'know..."

"Her name is Kisara," Set stated. "I believe her spirit may still be here somewhere. I will not go on without her."

"...You must love her very much," Ryou said softly.

"Everyone has someone they'd do anything to save," Set replied, casting a pointed glance at Malik, who was hovering nearby and feeling very excluded from this conversation.

"Well, we've always got room for one more around here, right, Ryou?" Noah said.

"Of course," Ryou laughed.

To Malik's unending surprised, Ryou packed up the six gold Items and handed them back to the thief.

"You need to make these disappear," he said sadly. "They're...dangerous. They can't be put in a museum."

"Making things disappear is one of my many talents," the thief said with a grin and a shrug, shouldering the bag. "I'll even lay a false trail so that the police think they've been sent to Bangkok, if you like."

"You're the expert," Ryou said, smiling. "Don't make too good a job of hiding them, though – we might need them back one day."

"I'll see what I can do," the thief said. "I'm glad we're finally even, Ryou."

"You were the only one who thought you owed me anything," Ryou reminded him, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. "But thank you for helping me."

"...What do you mean, we might need the Items back one day?" Malik couldn't help but ask once the thief was gone. "Why would we?"

"Because," Ryou started, rummaging through the nearest box of books and finally extracting a rather familiar volume, "don't you think they looked sort of familiar?"

"I never really took the time to think about it."

"Set," Ryou called. "You said that Akunadin created the Millennium Items in order to overthrow your Pharaoh?"

"Yes, that was his intention," Set confirmed with a grimace.

"Tell me," Ryou said, opening his book to the page with the illustration of the golden pyramid with the Wadjet eye that Horakhty had supposedly made as a little house for the alleged Vanquisher, "did your Pharaoh own anything that looked like this?"

"...Yes. My Pharaoh wielded that precise item," Set confirmed, staring at the page in surprise. "Akunadin created the Millennium Items in its image."

Ryou almost giggled in glee.

"It's real," he informed Malik, pointing to the picture. "Set's seen it. It belonged to the Pharaoh he served!"

"...No way," Malik gaped. "That's...it's like everything is connected to that thing..."

"Yeah," Ryou agreed.

There was a long moment of comfortable silence, and then Ryou surprised Malik with a tight hug.

"Ryou?" Malik said in surprise.

"Thank you so much for saving me," Ryou mumbled into his shoulder.

"Oh, I didn't really..."

"Yes, you did. You even made a possession pact! That was dangerous, Malik!" Ryou scolded him before quietening again. "Thank you."

"Any time, I guess," Malik replied, awkwardly returning the impromptu embrace.

Temporarily forgotten, Noah and Set watched from a short distance. Noah pulled a face.

"See?" he said. "I told you they were nauseating. You'd better get used to it, though, if you're planning on staying here."

"...I think I could put up with it," Set said simply.

---

...I can only apologise for how long this is. This universe just seems to demand convoluted plots xD;

I feel like I forgot to tie up some crucial plot-threads, but...hm.

And so ends my run of contest fics! I'm happy but I'm also sad xD At least my WIPs can get some attention now~

Fiver x