Advance Warning: The following chapter contains some imagery of a somewhat bloody nature. It's not Dead Space material, but... well, you've been warned.

Our Man In Japan, Chapter Two: The Problem With Clones

'DNA replication in other Arcade with small stage biotechnolog model (Maple)'

–The sentence 'Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments (molecular cloning), cells (cell cloning), or organisms', after being put through 35 different internet language translations.

It is believed that this process creates a nigh-unbreakable code, understandable only by someone with a degree in the mysterious and little known language of Engrish.

For a moment, there was a blazing pain in his chest – it was as though every gallon of his blood had turned to boiling acid, and was now eating away at the delicate nerve endings, searing and burning. His vision quickly blazed a dark crimson, his ears popped; he barely heard the sound of the gun, barking out again and again. All he was aware of was how much the corrosive pain increased with every passing second, how his blood was now seeping out through five holes instead of only one.

After some time (a second, a minute, a year, it all felt the same to him in his current state), he heard some far away voice, some shrill noise that reminded him of a somewhat aggressive cockatoo, though he understood that it was not. There was a slight pinprick, almost invisible but for the twitch it forced through his body, and a cool liquid soon dripped lazily into his right arm, its numbing effect so slow, making him spasm in a bizarre combination of pain and pleasure. As soon as he remembered how, he rubbed desperately at his arm to try and spread the numbness to his chest, every part of his fibre wanting nothing more than to be cold, to be without the horrible pain. However, he was soon denied this; he felt someone else gently pry his fingers away from his arm, and move them back across his body and down to his side. The noises came again, high chirpings that annoyed and made him want to slap them away; though of course he couldn't, he was so tired.

Yet he did not sleep, however much he desired the inherent painlessness that horrible feelings racking his body marched slowly on, torturing pleasure and agonizing pain; until he finally remembered to open his mouth if he wished to scream a thousand things, most of them not of a nice nature, the censoring department shivered in fear and it began–

"F..."

–and then there was nothing; a void of emptiness inside him (possibly due to the copious amount of assorted internal liquids which had recently gained an external status), a perfect stillness outside.

Needless to say, the censoring department cheered, and went off to throw an enormous (but politically correct) party.

And his slow, slow mind spat out one last, confused, terrified thought:

Marik...u?

His body finally shut down, jaw hanging slackly open, knees buckling and failing until he knelt, for a second appearing as though an unused marionette, all stiff limbs and drooping joints. He swayed a moment there, before a pitying sneaker hit the small of his back, and he almost gracefully fell onto his face, his skull hitting the polished floor with a sick crunch. The sound was of the sort that made the Egyptian standing over him wince slightly; not that he hadn't seen this before, but seeing someone who trusted him...

...he didn't trust me that's why he died...

...lying on the floor...

...he deserved it he deserved it...

...it didn't seem right...

...because he wasn't dead?

...because people didn't do that to their friends...

...Oops.

The Egyptian, after some more pondering, decided that he didn't like looking at Ryou. The tableau before him was both messy and utterly undignified; and to make matters worse, he wasn't entirely sure why he'd done the deed.

Well, that wasn't technically true – it was The Plan, after all, the plan that no–one could possibly know about, and Ryou knew something about it, and this clearly was not acceptable, it was defying logic, and order had to be restored, would be restored through his silencing. So, he was fairly sure as to why he'd shot his friend five times in the chest.

He just wasn't quite so sure as to why he'd injected Ryou with something to slow his blood flow, keep him alive.

Though, that wasn't technically true either – Ryou's survival was, after all, integral to The Plan.

But there was something else, something he couldn't quite describe, something outside of that logic. It...

...was Ryou. There was something about him, some word that made him closer than acquaintance, but further away than family.

And just for an instant, Marik Ishtar stood quietly, trying to remember the word.

Then his hair spiked back upwards, and he immediately forgot all about that.

The Plan was all that mattered.

A young man came hurtling down the stairs and into the hotel lobby, carrying an unconscious teenager in his arms, chest covered with the former's denim jacket. He was absolutely hysterical, yelling that his friend had collapsed in the room during his visit, and he knew that poor Kajiki (1) had diabetes, and why hadn't anyone made sure that there were jelly beans in the place?

The staff, concerned and apologetic, assured the young man – who eventually introduced himself as Namu – that they would have jelly beans placed in every hotel room from now on. They helped him as best they could, lending him a phone so that he could call an ambulance. Even when no ambulance actually appeared (a pizza parlour received a rather intriguing call), and Namu began to fret that it might never arrive, they continued to try and help him – the manager even lent the Egyptian his car keys, so that Namu could drive his friend to the hospital...

...though of course, he would later regret that.

Not only did he never get the car back, but a horde of suited men claiming to be from the CIA broke down his door and raided his house, utterly spoiling the romantic dinner he had been hoping to have with his secretary.

Ryou Bakura was dead, or at least that was what he assumed himself to be. After all, he'd been shot in the chest five times by a psychopath. His body was numb yet freezing cold somehow, his hearing gone, his view of the world a black void–

–though that bit was probably because he hadn't opened his eyes.

Silly me.

After some chiding himself, he soon found that colours still swirled in his vision (though his eyelids felt ever so heavy, and he could only open his eyes a little as a result). And from the way his world continuously detonated in a kaleidoscope of reds and yellows, dots of black peppering the boy's hallucinations, Ryou could only conclude that he was not, as previously thought, dead.

Drifting through the haze, he wondered why he had ever thought that he was deceased; his most recent memories did not indicate why. There had been a dear little crimson rectangle, then some barking, a bit like a dog, only more of a metal – ah, a machine–dog! After that, he remembered some acid in his chest – then more barking, and a cockatoo screaming, and a really cold feeling, and a... a word, if he thought long and hard about it, there had been a word – ah, his mouth remembered it...

"Ma... r..."

Marik.

And there was something else at the end, but he wasn't quite sure what. Therefore, he simply curled around that word, it was something familiar at least. And it had a nice sort of sound to it, a lovely warm 'rrrrr', even if the purr was cut off a little by the 'k'...

Marik!

His thoughts suddenly swam together, organized, memories flooding into his addled brain in a sweet moment of clarity.

Why did you kill... not kill... try to kill... capture... whatever you were doing... why...

It didn't matter, he already knew the answer.

A hundred thousand dollars.

All his fault. It might have been Marik who had shot him, but it was Ryou who had pried; he shouldn't have, he knew better than that. It had been his fault that Marik had turned on him, his fault that the Egyptian had stopped trusting him.

He didn't deserve a friend after this. He didn't even deserve to have a psychopathic criminal as a frien–

–that wasn't Marik. He told himself that a few times – Mariku is not Marik, Mariku is not Marik, Mariku is not Marik – but he couldn't quite believe it. After all, if Mariku wasn't Marik, then just who was Marik? And who was Mariku? And...

Something hit him around then: He wasn't dead. Of course, he already knew this, but now was only when his jumpy thoughts actually took hold of the matter, and they were certainly not amused by what they found.

The issue he had with this was that this declaration made little sense; he'd been shot in the chest multiple times. Marik hadn't wanted him alive, and he really shouldn't have been after taking an injury like that–

Wait.

Mariku hadn't wanted him alive.

Marik... possibly. Hope rose; surely it hadn't been Marik who had shot him. And he remembered the cool numbness, some sort of an injection; so someone had to have jabbed him with the needle.

His hope withered just as quickly as it had come; what if Mariku simply wanted Ryou alive? Did he wish to torture Ryou for information on the CIA? Or was he some sort of scientist in addition to his hacking skills; perhaps he wished to perform some sort of test? An experiment? The pale boy shivered; his very first movement to register in the outside world. The colours were getting lighter and brighter now, the sedatives must have been wearing off – he wondered if maybe he was looking at a ceiling, tried to open his eyes further–

Someone pushed his eyelids back down. And then there was a rough feeling at his shoulder, perhaps a strap tightening, and then a hot pinprick and a liquid coolness, and he was falling back into nothingness.

"Happy New Year, sir. My greeting comes five days late, of course, but it is customary to wish such a thing when the recipient is conscious."

"Spare me the theatrics." The young man pushed himself upwards as best he could against the soft seat of the taxi, ignoring the pain in his legs in order to look at the driver with an expression that could have curdled a sickly sweet strawberry milkshake. A slight flicker of amusement passed over Rishid's face; then it was gone, the older man seemingly knowing better than to snicker at the latter's misfortune.

"I take it that you were looking for Master Mariku, sir."

"And I take it that you are his slave," the young man replied, his voice perfectly even.

The driver barely flinched at the insult, his stare unblinking. "You would know much about slavery. You are from the CIA, are you not?"

A short silence, during which the young man glared accusingly at his bandages.

"I have your possessions here with me, sir. Master Mariku has shown me your record – taken directly from the database. You are indeed an accomplished agent... 'Dark' Bakura." (2)

Bakura smiled for the first time since their meeting, though it was really more of a baring of teeth than anything else. "Your master hacked into the Central Intelligence Agency?"

He needed no answer, of course, and Rishid made this known with a raised eyebrow and a slight nod. The pale teen grinned even wider.

"You're done. I'm their best agent; they've been keeping me under close watch. And trust me, they are more powerful than anything you can possibly handle. They will track me down – actually, they likely already have. Now I've heard it from you, I'm all the evidence they'll need – alive or dead."

Rishid's gaze went almost pitying. "Do you honestly believe that they will come to look for you?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "They hold you in high regard, but they now have you confused with another. Someone who looks just like you. Someone who is you. A better you. A you who will tell the CIA nothing, only what he's read in those spy books he likes so much. A you who will be so bad at missions that the agency will relegate him to a job at their offices. A you who will tell us everything."

Brown eyes narrowed, as the young man searched the hitman's body language to see if he told the truth. "The chances of that are–"

"A hundred percent, Mr. Bakura. A hundred percent, with the right technology." Knowing that he had effectively won this battle of wits, Rishid turned back to the wheel of the taxi, almost dismissively flicking a wallet over his shoulder. Twenty different photographs spilled out onto the seat, and Bakura stared in shock. There he was, indistinguishable from the agent but for the lack of hair gel in his teenage years, and the fact that he was smiling happily in every picture.

With a sigh, the agent dragged himself into a sitting position as the taxi began to move, grunting each time he moved his legs. "I take it that you're planning on eliminating me, so that your precious Wonderboy will never be found out?"

"Then I take it that you plan to escape, Mr. Bakura."

"First opportunity I get."

"You will not get one. I think you will instead find that Master Mariku has his own plans concerning you and Ryou–"

"Ryou?! You called that wimp Ryou?"

"Ryou Bakura. In Japan, most answer to their last name; so he will answer properly to Bakura. For reasons of clarity, my master and I have called him Ryou."

Bakura seethed. "Ryou... is the least American name I have ever heard in my life."

"You're hardly American yourself, Mr. Bakura. A semi–permanent visa which forces you into spying to stay in America hardly counts."

The young man opened his mouth, then closed it again.

And they drove on in silence.

Notes:

1. This only makes sense if you're familiar with either the YGO manga or the Japanese anime. Mako Tsunami (the freaky fish guy) in the anime is commonly known as Kajiki in the manga – but his full name is Ryouta Kajiki.

2. 'Dark Bakura' is a literal translation of Yami Bakura.

UAB

Silly fact: There's a large number of very deliberate references to the manga canon in this mini-series, some more obscure than others. Marik's Winged Dragon of Ra card being key to his hacking of the WINGEDRA missile would be a good example of an obvious one, whilst the small detail of Ryou being shot in the chest region five times is a not-so-obvious reference to his stabbing by the Millennium Ring (which has five spikes).

On another note... I've no bloody clue where to categorize this thing. There's just too many categories which fit it - Adventure, Crime, Suspense, Mystery, Angst, Friendship, the list goes on - and I honestly don't know which fit this one best. Little outside advice here, anyone?