Title: Virus
Author: daemoninwhite
Summary: Viruses have been around for thousands of years, so has the Ring; and it's almost funny how much they have in common.
Disclaimer: I own the rights to none of the mentioned nor the implied texts. I do, however, own this, and if you see it posted anywhere and the author does not use the handle daemoninwhite, please tell me.
"[Viruses] have been around for thousands of years, yet we know so little about them"
When Ryou's father had first given him the ring, Ryou had immediately begun to almost-obsessively research it, squireling away nuggets of information as though he was preparing for winter. Something that he had always found odd though, was the fact that almost none of the texts he searched mentioned a pendant that looked like his; there were numerous mentions of a Sennen Puzzle but none that he could find of a Sennen Ring. For a while, he had thought that they were referring to his ring whenever they mention the Puzzle, but a dusty old History textbook complete with an artist's interpretation of the completed puzzle soon changed his mind. No, there were multiple Items –seven, as the same textbook mentioned in a frustrating lack of detail- and his Ring seemed to have the least amount of concrete knowledge. It wasn't until he ventured into the more-adult and less censored research journals that he made any real progress as to the origins of the ring. He always gives that title mental capital letters, it makes him giggle, and distracts him from the pitiable, yet universal fact that a young boy with a fanatical interest in the past must be in want of a friend.
He ignores it, just like he ignores so much else these days, and continues to wander around in the non-fiction section under the watchful and slightly sympathetic eye of Mrs Price.
"However, what we do know is frightening in its immensity. If one were to combine the death toll of all infectious diseases from all of time, they have killed more people then any other method. And yet, they are living creatures; could it have been classified as a genocide when we wiped all traces of smallpox from our planet?"
He begins to learn more, and it begins to scare him. Three other people have been documented as obtaining and keeping the Ring, and of that three, one had gone insane and shot half a dozen people before shooting himself, the higher brain functions of another had stopped, leaving her in a coma before eventually the machines that were keeping her alive were taken away, and the final one had just disappeared, vanishing into the mist never to be heard from again. He forces himself to giggle at the tone his thoughts are taking, and looks up to distract him from the clinical notes. It is then that a poster for a new game, Monster World, catches his eyes. More importantly, this is also the moment in which he catches the eye of a brown haired child who calls out that they need one more player to make the teams even, and would he like to play?
He later realises that you do not need even teams in a role-playing games, and smiles softly to himself as he wishes that he could play with his new friends forever.
"The only thing that's stopping [viruses] from taking over the world is the fact that they kill their hosts too quickly"
Ryou wondered, sometimes, absentmindedly as he stared at the slowly flaking wallpaper that barely covered the walls of his soul, just how many hosts the Voice had parasitically attached itself to before it had 'picked' him. Sometimes, when he is thrown into the Shadow Realm for fights or for brief flashes when the Voice is once again banished forever to the darkness, he can see them, half formed ghosts that haunt him with outstretched hands that are covered in blood – just as he knows his are.
The words it had taunted him with often echo in the confines of whatever room he has chosen to take refuge in, whether it be his physical room or he room of his soul. … "I've decided to keep you as my permanent host!….It feels so good here! In you!" followed by psychotic laughter and would not stop echoing and he wants it gone now!
He just wants everything to be like it could have been, how he pictured everything turning out on that first day. He sometimes dwells longingly on the words that Jonouchi spoke to him that day; he wishes that they could be friends with every fibre that is truly his body.
"Once they learn to survive outside of a host, humanity is done for"
AN: Quotes taken from a TV special on viruses; they're strangely appropriate, ne? I only started taking notes about halfway through, so I'm not sure what it was called nor am I sure if the quotes are correctly worded. It's the basic gist of it though. Oh the subject of quotes, yes, that's taken directly from the manga, and how questionable is it? Really Mr. Voice, you should use less innuendo when talking about your landlord next time, kay? And yeah, I paraphrased Pride and Prejudice, well done if you spotted it.