I honestly wrote this chapter three times, each one going in a different direction of /how/ Akefia/Spirit of the Ring/Yami Bakura was reaching out to Ryou so easily. I decided on this one, so I hope you like it!
Due to the mysterious nature of Ryou's father, I've taken some artistic liberties for this chapter. I've named him Katsuro Bakura because for the life of me I could not find his first name anywhere. This is an AU, so I'm also taking things differently than the manga/tv show. There will be many similarities though. Stay tuned~
The trip began in the blazing sands of Egypt, where Ryou's father, Katsuro Bakura slaved under the hot sun, searching for relics to bring back the Domino City Museum. He was a man in his early forties, with stark white hair that he tied back in a messy ponytail to keep the hair off the back of his neck. Gloved hands dug carefully through gritty dirt, which smeared across Katsuro's face as he wiped the sweat from his brow. His glasses had become speckled with sand particles, but he continued on. Something was pulling him toward this very spot, and he was going to get to the bottom of it.
"Hand me that trowel," he spoke to his expedition partner. The man was tanned, native to the region, with dark black hair and stubble that decorated his chin. He appeared to be ten years the elder Bakura's junior.
"Sure thing!" the man called back, leaning forward to lightly toss the trowel in Katsuro's direction. He knelt in front of where his partner was digging, scooping the dirt away from the dig site.
"I see something," Katsuro called out, excitement filling his voice with glee. He pulled a small brush from his belt to flick away the dirt in a gentler manner. The object glinted in the light of the sun once the dirt had fallen away. It was unnaturally clean, despite having been buried underneath the earth. "Help me get this out."
The tanned male used his own trowel to gingerly dig around the object. They quickly discovered its circumference, and scooped the earth away from the golden item. Katsuro placed his hands along either side of the relic, lifting it in front of him, eyes widened in awe of its beauty. It was a golden ring, with a triangle that lay in the center. Etched into the center of the triangle was the eye similar to that of the Eye of Horus. He ran his fingers along the outside of the ring, noticing the five golden spikes that jutted from the bottom and sides of the ring. It was breathtaking.
Katsuro flipped the ring over, to inspect the back, noticing specks of dried copper. His eyebrows furrowed, as he rubbed the substance. It flaked off, cascading down to the dirt below. "Must be some sort of red clay," he muttered, using a microfiber cloth to further remove the contaminant. In reality, the substance had been dried blood from the last unlucky individual who had tried to wear the ring around his neck. The ring had been buried in a panicked frenzy before it took the life of the unsuspecting victim years ago.
"Thank you Kafele, I should get this back to the camp. I have some preparations to make before my flight tomorrow," the man spoke as he stood, completely mesmerized by the ring. There was a mild resonation that made his fingers tingle. He would need to take it back to the museum to have tests done on the item in order to determine the age of the relic. Kafele stood beside Katsuro, taking in the beauty of the item before turning to pack up their belongings. "Don't worry about it. You said you had a hunch about this place, and I trusted you. Looks like that trust was well placed, friend." When Kafele spoke, his voice was lighthearted and warm. The kindness in his words was infectious, causing the elder Bakura to grin.
The two of them had met through work, but had formed a close friendship throughout the years of working together. Kafele had even introduced Katsuro to his current fiancée, something the older man had yet to tell his son. The sun had reached its peak in the sky by the time the men had finished packing. They had begun in the morning, hoping to beat the heat of the desert sun, but the dig took longer than expected.
"Hey, let's go out to dinner tonight after I get this all set up. I'd like to spend the night with you and Kiya before I have to head back to Japan for a few weeks." Katsuro lifted two bags up over his shoulder. He had wrapped the ring in a protective cloth before placing it snuggly into one of his bags so that he could easily transport the item without causing damage. Kafele let out a jubilant laugh, picking up the rest of the items, nodding his head. "Yes, of course! That sounds wonderful."
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The plane ride was long, and tiring. Katsuro's plane had been delayed by several hours, causing his arrival to be later in the day than he had originally planned. The sun was starting to set when he arrived at the Domino City Museum. He had unpacked his array of relics, saving a special place for the golden ring that almost hummed in his hands. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but there was something oddly alluring about the item itself, more so than any of the other items he had acquired on his expedition. Was it the gold content that made it so appealing? Katsuro let out a sigh, locking the item away in a secure case. He would return the next day to get to work on identifying and dating the relic.
The man glanced down at his watch. "Tch, it's far too late to surprise him today. I'll just go over there in the morning," he spoke aloud to himself, referring to his son, Ryou.
Ryou still lived in their old home, two hours outside of Domino City. Katsuro wasn't looking forward to returning to that place, but he wanted to surprise his son before the new school year began. He wished that he could have spent the summer with the teen, but he had been so busy with work and his new fiancée that he hadn't had the time to spend with Ryou. In place of his own guidance, he had asked his neighbor, and good friend, Fujioka to keep an eye on Ryou. He had initially wanted Ryou to move in with Fujioka and his wife, however, the teen outright refused to leave that house.
Every time Katsuro came to visit his son, it re-opened old wounds that had never healed correctly. Ryou looked very much like his late mother, and his father resented him for it. It wasn't rational, and he knew that, but it didn't stop those hurtful emotions from emerging. The house was widely untouched, and appeared the way it did before the accident. Amane's room was across from Ryou's, and everything was where she had left it the morning before she passed on to the next realm. Katsuro's old bedroom was a memorial of his dead wife. It pained him to return to that place.
The man sighed to himself, brushing his messy bangs out of his face and pinching the bridge of his nose to release the tension headache that was taking hold. He would have time to gather his emotions before morning. With that notion, Katsuro locked up his office and took a cab to a nearby hotel. He planned to take the train in the morning to get to his old city.
It was around 9:30 p.m. when Katsuro arrived at his hotel to check in. It was a small, humble room, but the bed was soft and there was a bathtub in the restroom. The man dropped off his belongings before gathering his keycard and wallet to take a brisk walk to the konbini he had seen on his way up to his hotel. There, he paid for several small boxes of sake, along with a bottle of plum wine before returning back to his room.
The sake box resembled a children's juice box, with a small hole to poke the plastic straw through. Katsuro sipped the alcohol that burned his tongue and warmed his throat as he paced the room, back and forth. It had been a long trip, and he was exhausted, but the anxiety that coursed through his veins was making him feel uneasy. He self-medicated with the alcohol, hoping that it would bring him enough relief that sleep would be able to steal him away for a few hours.
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"Ouija, are you there?"
The words echoed through the ethereal realm, reaching like tendrils into time and space. Sitting in the Domino City Museum, the ring pulsed with rejuvenated power. A soft glow emitted from the golden relic, along with a high-pitched humming barely audible to human ears.
"Ouija, are you there?"
Yadounushi…The ghostly spirit of the ring whispered into the empty space. A projection of his earthly form rose from the case that the millennium item rest in. Crimson eyes examined the tendrils that approached him, reaching out a tanned, yet translucent hand out to touch the wisps. It was painful. He felt as though he was being ripped through space as the shadows surrounded him in a suffocating intensity.
The spirit shivered, a feeling of electricity washing over him. He stood, in total darkness, and peered forward where a beacon of light was penetrating through the shadows. He walked toward the light, glancing down. It was too bright to see through, and the light hurt his eyes a great deal. It was strange. He hadn't felt much of anything for centuries. This newfound pain made him both curious and anxious at the same time. The spirit frowned, kneeling before the small opening in the shadows, and tentatively placed his hand through the glowing space.
His fingers touched a smooth surface, which tugged him down into a more earthly realm. The shadows held onto his body, leaving the spirit hanging above the board beneath his fingers. Cautiously, the spirit moved the planchette to 'yes' in response to the voice which brought him there. A nervous laughter flitted around the room, but it sounded far away. The spirit let out a growl of frustration, tugging against the shadows that bound him in place.
He felt panicked and trapped, a feeling he had long forgotten from the days when he was alive. "Release me!" he shouted, but there was no response. He pounded his translucent fists against the tendrils wrapped around his waist, kicking his legs in the process. The shadows would not budge. The shadows began to pull him back into the darkness when he reached forward with all his might to place his fingers back on the planchette.
"I…am lost," he spelt out his words as he spoke aloud, hoping that the person on the other side would sympathize with him. He could sense it in his core. The voice on the other side of the darkness was his incarnation, his host body. He frowned once more, furrowing his eyebrows as he spelt "Help me" over and over again.
The voice cried out for him to stop, but he had gotten the boy's attention. He needed him to invite him in. "Release me," he whispered, moving the planchette accordingly. The voice asked such trivial questions, which made the spirit impatient. With the boy's wariness, the shadows constricted the spirit tighter, trying to tug him away from the board in which he desperately clung to. He growled low in his throat and spelt "Shadows" for the boy to see. Perhaps it would make sense to him.
He waited for an answer, his eyes flitting across the board in silent desperation. That's when he noticed a faint glow coming from the numbers at the bottom of the board. Curious, the spirit traced his fingers, along with the planchette, across the numbers, starting from 9 and reaching back to 0.
Once his fingers brushed across the last number, there was a blinding light and burst of cold air that caused the shadows holding him to burst and dissipate in the air behind him. Instead of crashing down as he had anticipated, he merely floated to the ground, a being somewhere between worlds. He stood in his ethereal form, crimson eyes locked onto the young teen before him.
"My host, I need you to listen to me," he spoke aloud. As the words left his lips, he noted that they fell upon deaf ears. The boy was still trying to contact him through the board despite the fact that he was standing right in front of him. He growled, stomping the ground to get his attention, but to no avail. The teen had risen from his place and was ascending the stairs. For a moment, it looked as though he had seen him, but he just kept walking.
The spirit let out an aggravated scream, swiping at the Ouija board on the ground. The board lifted from his force, but only moved a few inches away from where his hand had been. Crimson eyes narrowed as the spirit contemplated his ability. He was thinking about this all wrong. He didn't have a body anymore, and was not limited by the body's capabilities. Glancing down once more, he noticed symbols etched into the floor. They reminded him of the symbols the priests drew back in Egypt, but where would the teen have gotten such information? They were thousands of years old; surely it didn't make any sense. But he was going to find out, and he needed to figure out a way to possess the teen's body to retrieve his millennium item.
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Ring-ring
Ring-ring
Ring-ring
Katsuro groaned, groggy and confused. He snorted, breathing deeply and lifting his head up to glare at his cell phone. His hair had fallen out from the ponytail that it had been in, sticking to the side of his face where he had drooled in his sleep. The man had passed out, intoxicated, on his bed without so much as taking a shower or changing his clothing beforehand. "The hell?" he rasped, clumsily opening the flip phone to his ear. "Yes? Who is this?" he muttered. It was late at night, and a quick glance at the clock near the bed let Katsuro know that it was nearly 3:30 a.m.
"Katsuro? Oh thank goodness. You need to come quick, Ryou's been in an accident and he's at the hospital.." Fujioka rambled on the other end of the line. Upon hearing the sobering news, Katsuro shot up from the bed, panic washing over his body. He felt numb, dissociated. Those words stabbed him through the heart and made his head spin to the point where he couldn't tell if it was the alcohol or the anxiety.
"Oh my god.." he whispered, his voice barely audible. Years ago, he had received a similar phone call when his wife and daughter had been struck by another vehicle. He had rushed to the hospital to see them, but Amane had died at the scene, and his wife had fallen into a coma of which she never woke up from. Katsuro shakily grabbed his coat and his keys, rushing for the door to put his shoes on. "I'm coming. Tell Ryou, I'll be there. I just flew in tonight. I'll be there." And with that, he hung up the phone so that he could call a taxi to get him to Ryou as quickly as possible.
Fujioka had gone to speak, to question what time the other man had arrived, but the harsh tone of a dead line cut him off. He sighed, shaking his head as he hung up the phone. Katsuro never was good at telling other people his plans, which made it difficult to get in contact with him. Still, it was good news to hear that he was back in Japan at the moment, even if he hadn't notified anyone about his arrival. The man went to sit in the waiting room so that he could greet Katsuro when he arrived. Ryou was resting in his hospital bed, where doctors had diagnosed him with a mild concussion. The impact from the window had caused some shock to his body, and they wanted to check on his spine to make sure he hadn't caused any damage to his neck or spinal cord.
