Chapter 2
The newly-christened "Yami Green" (who had, on the spur of the moment, taken his nome de guerre from the t-shirt Yugi Mutou had been wearing: it was green and had the words Yami no Matsuei emblazoned on the front) exited the Kame Game Shop Number 2 with a tiny smile on his face.
That had gone better than he had expected. It was good fortune that he had spotted the "help wanted" sign in the shop window and formulated his plan on the spot. It was an even greater stroke of luck that the proprietor had not insisted on references, or even an accounting of Yami's qualifications for the handyman position, as Yami had no real work experience - at least, not the kind that required him to get his hands dirty. He found the prospect of venturing into such unknown territory oddly exhilarating.
He had barely made it halfway down the block before a sleek black automobile pulled alongside him and slowed to match his pace. One of the tinted windows lowered and a brusque voice growled, "I let you go in the damned shop alone. I am not letting you walk back to the hotel unescorted. Get in the car."
Yami sighed, but decided not to argue. He opened the rear door and slid into the back of the car, which pulled smoothly away from the curb. "Fine, I'm in. Happy?"
"Ecstatic." The other passenger glowered at him through a fall of white-blond bangs. "Well? Was it the right place? Please tell me I did not just spend the last fifteen minutes elevating my blood pressure into the stratosphere for no reason."
"I was perfectly safe, you know-"
"Don't even start!"
Yami narrowed his eyes. "Sometimes I wonder if you remember who's supposed to be the one in charge here, Bakura."
"Oh, please." Bakura rolled his eyes. "The fact that I refuse to kowtow to you is why you made me your personal guard, and you know it."
That much was true. It was nice to have someone around who wasn't afraid to look him in the eye - or to argue with him, though there were times when Yami would have preferred less arguing and more letting him do what he wanted, no matter how "dangerous" Bakura judged it to be. He was good at his job, but sometimes he took the whole protection thing too far. It had taken Yami almost ten minutes to convince his guard that he was unlikely to be assassinated in the time it took him to walk the five feet from the car to the shop's entrance, and Bakura had only given in because Yami had threatened to summon a certain Dark Clown to do his arguing for him.
"Besides," Bakura continued with a smirk, "when it comes to your safety, I'm the only one whose opinion matters."
"You're lucky Isis isn't here to hear you say that."
Bakura snorted. "I'm not afraid of you, what makes you think your sister scares me? Now, stop stalling and tell me if the blasted Item was in that stupid game shop or not."
"It wasn't." Before Bakura could start on the rant Yami could clearly see brewing on the horizon, he hastened to add, "But I could sense a strong magical trace centered there. Someone who frequents the place has had repeated contact with at least one of the Items, maybe more."
"So, what do we do now? Hang around the game shop and stalk whoever stinks of shadow magic? That might appear a bit suspicious to the locals, and we have limited influence here."
"I've taken care of it."
"Oh, really?" Bakura studied him for a moment, then crossed his arms and scowled. "Why do I get the feeling you've done something that is going to make your sister attempt to murder me in my sleep for dereliction of duty?"
"I thought you weren't afraid of her?" It was Yami's turn to smirk.
"Healthy paranoia is not the same thing as fear. Now tell me what idiotic thing you've done, Your Majesty, so I'll know if I have to learn to sleep with one eye open or two."
"You don't already know how? Bakura-" Yami shook his head in mock disappointment. "-You're shattering my image of you as a cunning, invincible warrior."
"What. Did. You. Do?"
"I got a job."
Bakura boggled at him. Yami enjoyed the satisfaction of having rendered his opinionated bodyguard speechless for almost a full minute before Bakura finally recovered enough to respond.
"A job."
Yami nodded.
"You got a job."
Another nod.
"You got a job at the shopping center."
This time Yami's nod was a tad uncertain. Bakura was beginning to turn red in the face and Yami found himself worried for the other man's health. Maybe he hadn't been exaggerating about his high blood pressure. "Yes, Bakura, I got a job at the shopping center. I knew you wouldn't be thrilled, but don't you think you're over-reacting?"
The ticking time-bomb named Bakura exploded.
"You got a thrice-damned job at the fornicating shopping center where the Sacred Items will no doubt be acting like Set-spawned magnets for every power-hungry creature in three realms, and you have the gall to tell me I'm over-reacting? Have you lost your mind?"
"I think it's a good plan."
"There are so many things wrong with that sentence that I don't even know where to start, though 'think', 'good', and 'plan' spring immediately to mind."
"No, listen! It will give me a legitimate excuse to be around the center every day, so that I can find whoever has the Items." Yami held up a hand to forestall the objection he could see forming on Bakura's lips. "And it has to be me because I'm the only one who can sense their power signature, as you well know, so don't even try to talk me out of doing this. It will work."
"Uh-huh." Bakura remained supremely unimpressed with Yami's logic. "So, tell me, O Great One. What kind of job is this, anyway?"
"Handyman."
And they were back to the boggling.
"Will you stop doing that? You look like a fish out of water."
"You- Wha-? Handyman?" Bakura paused for another quick boggle. "You?"
"Yes, me." Yami folded his arms over his chest and glared at his companion. "Why is that so hard to believe?"
"You've never done menial labor a day in your life! Have you ever even held a hammer? Do you even know what one looks like?"
"Now you're just being insulting."
From the way Bakura was reacting one would think Yami had announced his intentions to become a rocket scientist rather than a handyman. Sure, he lacked practical experience, but he wasn't stupid. He could figure things out as he went along.
"You are going to get yourself killed and then Lady Isis is going to murder me. Slowly. With dull spoons."
As the car cruised toward the hotel Yami and his entourage currently called home, Bakura mumbled further predictions of impending doom - most of which involved household implements and the Wrath of Big Sister Isis - which Yami did his best to ignore. His thoughts turned back to the game shop. So much depended upon finding the Items before they could fall into the hands of those who would abuse their power.
For the first time since leaving the game shop, Yami felt a frisson of apprehension race along his spine. The future of the three realms was riding on his shoulders. He had been aware of that responsibility almost from birth, but things were more immediate now, with the Sacred Items somewhere close at hand and his own, very personal, stake in finding the Puzzle... He shoved that worry away. He had to find the Items before that could become a factor.
For now, he would concentrate on tracking the traces of magical signatures he had sensed lingering at the game shop. And, to do that, he would have to become a handyman for awhile. He forced himself to relax against the plush leather seat.
It was just manual labor. How hard could it be?
-o0o-
It was the hardest thing Yami had ever done in his entire life.
Frustrated, he slammed the flat of his hand against the wall beside the recalcitrant air conditioning unit he had been attempting, for the last fifty minutes, to fix. If you could call glaring at a tangle of incomprehensible wires and tubes "fixing." By all the Gods! Why couldn't he figure out what to do with this stupid machine? His tutors had never indicated he might be lacking in intellectual prowess, but his continued failure at this task was beginning to make him wonder if his brain cells had gone on an unscheduled vacation. He scowled at the air-conditioner. He could almost hear the cursed thing laughing at him.
"Yami? Are you okay up there?"
Yami took a deep breath and forced the thrumming tension from his voice before leaning over the trapdoor to call down to Yugi. "I'm fine!"
"Okay. It's just that I've tried percussive maintenance on that unit and it doesn't last. As you can probably tell by the distinct lack of cooling going on at the moment. So, I was hoping you, being a professional and all, could try something else."
"My hand slipped," Yami yelled back and then, very pointedly, closed the trapdoor.
Yami sat back on his heels and glared at the air conditioner some more. This wasn't working. He had no idea what he needed to do to fix the machine, but he couldn't confess his ignorance to Yugi, not if he wanted to keep this job. And, despite his current epic failure at it, he did want to keep the job. Not only so that he had a plausible excuse to stay near the shopping center, but because he wanted to prove to himself that he could do it. He had taken Bakura's lack of faith in his ability to be a handyman as a challenge, and Yami never backed down from a challenge.
So. Yami ran his fingers through his hair and blew out a breath as he considered his options. He had to keep his job, and to do that, he had to figure out how to repair this Apep-spawned air conditioner. There was, therefore, only one thing to do.
With the stealth of a stalking lion, he moved away from the trapdoor. At what he judged to be a safe distance, he drew a black velvet pouch from the pocket of his jeans and spilled a handful of small metal tokens onto his palm. Each held a different, intricate glyph on one side and a drawing on the other. The glyph was a name; the picture, a portrait of the being bound to answer the token's summons. The hexagonal tokens glinted golden in the dim light as he sorted through them until he found the one he wanted.
He replaced the other tokens in the pouch. Then, holding the token that bore an image of a man in strange, curving armor, he whispered the spell that would summon the Dark Magician Mahaad.
