Author's Note: This idea would NOT leave me alone, and so I bend to the will of the plot bunnies once more. This is my first time writing anything like this, so please go easy on me!

Shadows of Anarchy

Ryou Bakura had just known that leaving his Chicago hotel room in the middle of the night to go and get something to eat had been a bad idea.

He had developed a sixth sense for trouble after receiving the Millennium Ring, and that sense had stayed with him even after the Spirit of the Ring had gone to the afterlife, and it had told him the minute he had left his room to walk right back inside and try to find something besides late night talk shows to watch.

Unfortunately, his growling stomach (he's skipped dinner because of jet lag) had won the battle and so he'd exited the Sunlight* Hotel and walked down the block to the McDonalds to grab a burger and maybe something to drink before going back to his room.

Somehow his plans had been derailed sometime between getting his food and getting back to his hotel room.

He still wasn't entirely sure how he wound up crouched behind a parked mini-van clutching his take-out bag and watching as a woman used some sort of staff to launch fireballs at what seemed to be some type of troll (they actually reminded him of the Giant Orc card, but he didn't take too long to dwell on that comparison).

Instead, he tried to figure out if he should run for his life, stay and watch the fight, or try and help the woman who was obviously getting tired. He was rather embarrassed that he actually had to stop and think about his options, but his sense of self-preservation, honed from years of living with the spirit of a volatile thief who tended to possess his body with no advance warning, wouldn't let him just rush in to try and help some strange woman who could hurl fireballs.

The decision was taken out of his hands, however, when troll reinforcements arrived and noticed him (or just smelled his food, which was rapidly getting cold) hiding behind the mini-van. The aforementioned vehicle didn't escape the resulting mayhem unscathed (actually, it was reduced to something that looked like it came out of a trash compactor) but Ryou was relieved that he had noticed the trolls just a minute before they noticed him, as that gave him enough time to run like all the demons of the underworld were at his heels while the trolls pummeled the mini-van into scrap metal.

For some reason, the troll reinforcements chose to chase after him instead of joining the other trolls in trying to catch the fireball-throwing woman. Maybe they thought that he was there to help her?

In any event, Ryou had to use sheer force of will to keep from screaming like a little girl as he sprinted down the street and headed back to his room. In the back of his mind, it occurred to him that leading the things back to where he was staying probably wasn't the best idea he ever had, but at the moment he didn't care.

And to think, he'd thought the weird occurrences would end after the Ring was buried somewhere in North Africa. Apparently he had been very, very wrong.

The former holder of the Ring of a Thousand Years just barely resisted the urge to shriek as he heard the pounding of the trolls' footsteps getting closer. He spotted his hotel just a few yards away, and he had never thought he would be as glad to see any building as he was to see the Sunlight Hotel right then.

Sadly, his luck chose that moment to run out as the sidewalk in front of him exploded. Quite spectacularly too, he dazedly noted right before a piece of asphalt the size of a golf-ball clocked him in the temple and he fell to the ground, groaning as his vision swam and something wet slid down the side of his face. All things considered, he managed to think through the pain, it was surprising that he was still conscious, let alone aware that the trolls were only a few feet away now…

Ryou really could have done without knowing that last part.

Molly Carpenter hissed a curse that would have made her mother wash her mouth out with soap as she aimed her blasting rod at another troll and sent a ball of fire at it. Unfortunately, her fire spells, not to mention her power, were nowhere near as good as her Master's and so the fire didn't really do much accept give the troll some mild burns that the monster easily ignored.

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor and that she wanted to live to fight another day, the apprentice prepared to turn and run like heck to Harry's office in order to get behind its' magical wards that would hopefully keep the trolls out, only to be pulled up short when she saw a white-haired woman run from behind a mini-van.

'Just what I need, a senior citizen seeing me throwing fire spells around!' And she was pretty sure that that was what the woman had seen, though she also noticed that the other woman was being chased by yet more trolls. Molly groaned, following the whitette's lead and running down the block (for an old woman, she was pretty spry) and away from the pissed off trolls, and she had to wonder wildly exactly why trolls were attacking her in the first place!

Really, she hadn't meant to run into trouble, she had just been woken up by a bad dream that manifested as a sick feeling in her stomach and decided to take a walk to clear her head…a walk that resulted in her flinging mediocre fire spells at a horde of attacking trolls.

She was starting to think that Harry's luck was rubbing off on her.

It finally occurred to her to throw up a veil to try and confuse the trolls enough for her to get some breathing room, but before she could follow thought with action, she tripped and went sprawling. Something that might have just saved her life, Molly decided as a fireball (much stronger than the ones she used, she noted sourly) went flying through where her head had been moments before and impacted with the sidewalk in front of where the white-haired woman had been running.

As she pushed herself to her feet to run over to where the other woman had fallen, still clutching her blasting rod in her hand, the realization that trolls couldn't use fire spells smacked her over the head…which meant that there was a wizard apparently helping the trolls. Just great, she mentally moaned as she urged the burning muscles in her legs to go faster.

She managed to reach the downed woman right before the first troll of the reinforcements, and she did the first thing that came to mind when she saw the troll raise his foot to kick her: she raised her blasting rod and let loose a fireball right into its' ugly face.

The troll staggered back into another of the approaching creatures, creating a kind of domino effect and buying her precious few seconds to encourage the other woman (who, now that Molly was able to get a good look at her, wasn't an old woman at all) to sit up so they could start running again. The bleeding wound on the whitette's temple worried her though, as she pulled the young woman into a sitting position.

Unfortunately the trolls had recovered, and the hidden wizard had decided now would be a good time to hurl another fireball at them.

Molly looked up when the area got suspiciously brighter, and her blue eyes widened at the sight of the incoming flames. She gulped, mentally saying a final prayer before futilely throwing herself over the other woman just before the fire hit.

She had the faint thought that the white-haired woman's chest was oddly flat before everything went black…

* - Just a random name I thought of off the top of my head.

Author's Note: Molly's in for a surprise isn't she? ;) LOL! That seemed like a pretty good place to end the first chapter, and don't worry, you'll find out some of what happened to Ryou and Molly in the next chapter! Just so you're warned, updates on this will probably be few and far between unless inspiration hits me over the head with a two-by-four. Please R&R and tell me what you think! Constructive criticism is welcome!