The Gray

Chapter Three: Καιρός (kairos)

In which Bakura, Yami Bakura, and Kaiba make their appearances and The Plot Deepens. Or something like that.

It makes me angry that FFN keeps removing "section breakers" and I hate those long lines that they want you to insert into fics as a section breaker. It just feels so much more final than a couple dashes or a string of asterisks. Anyway, yeah, yeah, whine whine, I know. But if anyone has a good method for section breaks that aren't those really final lines, please tell me! I need your help.

Note: For those who are unfamiliar, I believe "Amane" is the name of Bakura's deceased sister. If I am incorrect, please inform me.

...

For Ryou Bakura it began a long time ago. It didn't begin when he started playing pen and paper role playing games with elves and ogres, nor did it begin with Yuugi and Duel Monsters although that certainly played its part. It didn't even begin when he met the otherworld girls. It began long ago with the car crash that killed his sister (and little bits inside himself), or with the Ring, or the first time he couldn't remember what he'd done that evening and started trapping little pieces of his life in torn-out, ink stained, and sometimes unremembered journal entries. It even continued today with all the pieces of shadow he caught in the mirror after the Ring was gone, or the snatches of color he saw in puddles walking home. It also began with a frying pan. But not yet. Not just yet. We're not there quite yet.

And, because Ryou understood stories, he'd say it began several places, in several whens, in many times, with more than one event. Life doesn't happen like a story. There isn't a beginning that signifies "this happened here" or "if this hadn't happened then today would be different." Stories are like that, but not life.

Life is much different.

Ryou wasn't sure he had a life anymore. It fled from him much the way he imagined Amane's spirit did when screaming metal crushed metal. As with many things (memories, friends, possessions, time) the Spirit of the Ring had taken with him Ryou's life and all the white-haired boy had been left with was fairy dust.

Ryou could build miniature palaces, figurines, and monsters to exact scales. He could draw maps, write stories, and make entire worlds breathe for others to live in and enjoy as if they were actually there. He could fasten himself a pair of goggles, or gauntlets, or greaves with minute, painstaking detail. The experience of creating a thing is a complex one, wrought with many first-time mistakes despite attentive craftsmanship, but in the end you have still made something that has come irrevocably from yourself.

Ryou Bakura built things, everything grew from beneath his fingertips and given life from the stories in his head, but he didn't think he could rebuild his life. Not anymore. He didn't even think he could repair his life, if he still had one, after all the damage it had taken. You couldn't glue fairy dust back together into a recognizable shape. It just blew away, fell through your fingers.

But that was all before—

"Host," said the mirror-creature.

Bakura, eyes wide, looked up from the sink and into his bathroom mirror.

The mirror-creature looked back at him scornfully, arms folded across its chest.

"No," said Bakura, backing away. His hands shot up to grip the nonexistent Ring around his neck. It wasn't there, it was gone, destroyed.

"You are nothing without me," the image said, ghost-hands reaching out, a dark witch-smile spreading across its face.

"No," Bakura said again, remembering the way savage golden needles had drilled their way into his chest. He ran out of the room, slammed the door, and snatched up his school things. Bakura also remembered seeing the Millennium Ring fall into the dark with the rest of the Items.

Ryou Bakura knew all about stories and how they didn't resemble real life. There were no white knights, no kind and helpful strangers, and definitely no happy endings. Sometimes, though, he wished things ended where you left them. Every chapter needed some sort of conclusion.

He ran all the way to school, panting, clinging desperately to fairy dust.

...

The problem with Yuugi Moutu was that you could be his friend after only five minutes of talking to him. In fact, if you failed to threaten his life, his friends, his grandfather, or his trading cards, you were likely stuck with him as a friend for life. Actually, you were probably still his friend even after you'd done these things because it was incredibly easy for the teenager to zero in on the other obvious and fantastic qualities you possessed that weren't actually there or that other people needed a microscope to see.

It was also likely that you could be his friend while trying to talk as little to him as possible.

"Er, hi," Yuugi said, somewhat optimistic.

"Uh," said Kowareta, "hullo."

They stood outside the girls' bathroom where Glitch had gone inside to wash the vomit from her clothes. Ordinarily, Kowareta could carry a conversation at least fifteen to twenty minutes before she lost interest in who she was speaking to, or before she ran out of things to say. However, nearly five minutes ago she became acutely aware that she was talking to an anime character and was currently having a bit of an internal conflict.

Just look at that hair, she was thinking, no wonder he gets picked on so much.

"Um," Yuugi tried, realizing the purple-haired girl was staring right through him.

Say something nice, Kowareta continued, he's staring at you like you're a crazy person. Which you are. Because you think you're in an anime.

"I…" started the girl, "…like your dog collar. I wear stuff like it all the time."

"Oh," said Yuugi, hand reaching up to his neck where his collar was. "Thanks."

What he actually said was "arigatou" which, Kowareta knew, was Japanese. Which ordinarily wouldn't be a problem since Kowareta was very lucky to be nearly-fluent thanks to long-distant half-related Japanese relatives, however, the problem was that Glitch didn't know any. And the first thing out of her mouth, to Yuugi, had been "My friend, you could not describe my day any better," in Japanese. Kowareta knew for a fact her friend didn't know the word hentai from arigatou.

Forget the anime you think you're in, Kowareta thought scowling, folding her arms over her chest and her attention suddenly on the girls' bathroom door. That's fucking weird. Something's up. Is Glitch an alien?

"Here," Anzu was saying, appearing from a twist in the hallway, "the administration ladies gave me your schedules. You're in the same homeroom as us."

"How convenient," said Kowareta, suspicion creeping into her voice as she took the slips of paper as though they were evil talisman.

Anzu gave her a funny look before turning to Yuugi who seemed to have taken a page from Kowareta and was staring into space.

"What about that thing you said you saw?"

Yuugi stared at Anzu.

"It was…" Yuugi began slowly, hands grasping at the air in front of him as if he could wrangle it for the words he wanted. "…A thing. There were… stars and… shadows. And then there was… well, I saw him."

The teenager looked away, embarrassed.

"Him?" Anzu asked, needing no confirmation as to who he was. "Are you sure?"

Yuugi nodded slowly, shifting his gaze to his hands on the table as if looking up into his friend's face might make what he saw untrue.

"But it's been…" started Anzu, hand on Yuugi's shoulder. She tried again, "I mean, the Millennium Items, they're—"

"Gone," completed Yuugi miserably. "I know."

"Maybe you imagined it," Anzu said, "You stayed up late last night on those translations, didn't you? And you've been working on your paperwork for career day, right? There's the math test coming up too. You've just been under stress, you know?"

Yuugi nodded, but Kowareta didn't think Yuugi was as sure as Anzu sounded. It was the kind of conversation that sounded private, or at least the kind of conversation Kowareta would make sure was done in private, but neither of her companions seemed to mind the fact that she was there to listen in on them. Maybe they didn't care they sounded weird or it was more important to get it out of the way than to care what Kowareta thought.

As it was, it sounded important.

It was then Glitch came out of the bathroom, parts of her uniform still drying from where she scrubbed it down, and immediately jumped into conversation with the anime characters—nothing to do with shadows and ghosts or stars though. Glitch seemed to inspire normalcy and seemed to have little to no reservations about having just been tossed into crazy land where anime characters were living breathing vomiting people.

On the other hand, Glitch was one of those kinds of people that happened to other people. You didn't meet a person like Glitch. That would imply things like celestial balance governed the universe. They didn't. Glitch came into people's lives much the same way whirlwinds tore their way through small towns.

Kowareta was thankful for it now though, since it took attention away from herself (and stopped people from thinking, "Wow, that girl's pretty quiet" and changed it to , "Whoa, Glitch is enthusiastic") and gave her time to collect her thoughts and find her sanity.

Kowareta could see Glitch happening to them right now, expressing opinions and asking questions and moving with energy that could power a city block.

'Let's get to our homeroom," Anzu said taking the lead.

...

Seto Kaiba was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming because he was barefoot in the sun-beaten sand and dressed in clothes from an entirely different time period. He stood underneath a clear blue sky staring at the dunes around him. It always started out like this, he remembered suddenly as he climbed a dune. He'd had this dream before. It always went something like this: he would climb to the top of a monstrous sand dune, angry wind blowing in his hair, and as soon as he reached the top of this dune, he'd see an even taller one off in the distance. But then, for some reason, he'd turn back against the wind and a silvery voice would call out to him.

It would say: "Seto!"

Shielding his eyes with a hand, he would try to see past the bright light from the sun to make out the pale girl with long blue hair in the shadow at the bottom of the dune. She would suddenly raise an arm to him, as if gesturing for him to come down to meet her, and call out to him again.

"Seto, there's something very important I need to tell you."

He'd recognize the figure then, or his dream self would, and he'd turn around again, wind whipping at his back.

"No," he'd say, and proceed to walk away, bare feet burning in the sand.

"Wait!" the silvery voice would call out. "Please! Just listen!"

"No," he'd repeat and keep on walking.

And that's when he'd wake up, blue and silver swept into the corners of his mind like sand.

He awoke to the homeroom teacher introducing two new transfer students. He'd pulled an all-nighter yesterday and the day before to work on some more complicated algorithms for his most recent project and was groggy because of it. Additionally, he wasn't allowed to skip school as much ever since his new board of directors and his shareholders showed concern over his slipping education. How could he lead a company when he can't even get a basic education? It didn't seem to matter he had an intellect to rival university professors which allowed him to make brilliant inventions, remarkable hardware and software designs, nor that he had unmatchable business acumen. If he truly was brilliant, they said, then it shouldn't be a problem to pass his classes—or at least go to enough of them to satisfy the mandatory attendance policy.

As it was, he didn't even look up from his desk to see the new students. His thoughts were still clutching at the last remnants of his dreams. He had an exceptional memory, but for some reason he could never recall his most recent dreams, if or when he dreamt at all. He thought that maybe they were some sort of reoccurring dream but he couldn't be certain of that.

"Allow me to introduce Yvette Kanadawako and Raven Rashidenka," the teacher was saying, struggling to pronounce the names off the roster.

"A-Actually," one of them said, a self-conscious voice, "my name is Glitch."

"Oh," said the teacher, "well then what's your last name?"

"Um… Yvette?" said the girl. It sounded like the most unlikely name ever—Kaiba thought even the girl sounded somewhat unconvinced.

"And you?" asked the teacher to the other new student.

"Kowareta Raven," said the other girl flatly without missing a beat. Because he wasn't looking, Kaiba didn't catch the grimace when the girl said this.

When the new students were directed to their seats (none near him, all of those were already taken) he raised his head from the desk and sat up straight. He had a long few months ahead of him if he was going to come to school regularly and still finish his project deadlines. As the teacher began to write on the blackboard Seto could feel the post-all-nighter headache brewing. He barely even noticed when Bakura, one of Yuugi's friends, came into the classroom late and panting.

...

Glitch didn't think like normal people did, it probably had something to do with being English. So when she'd gotten thrown up on by an anime character and then made friends with him and Anzu, she didn't act much differently than she would have in real life if she'd met someone who wasn't an anime character.

This was, mostly, because she thought she'd finally gone crazy. It wasn't surprising because the redhead thought that it had been a long time coming. She'd been a bit of a different person when she was younger and even though she'd been through a lot and gotten better, she wasn't shocked if she had finally snapped and immersed herself in her head. Which happened to be full of Yu-Gi-Oh!

Well, Glitch thought, there were worse worlds you could immerse yourself in when you've gone bonkers. Like Barney, maybe. Although, finding names that are worse than 'Glitch Yvette' might prove to be a challenge.

She could see poor Kowareta sitting a few seats away from her thinking really hard about what happened, because she liked to try to figure things out with reason and logic and rational thinking and silly things like that. Glitch already knew none of this would help. Because Glitch had gone crazy and delusional and so even Kowareta probably wasn't real anyway. The redhead briefly wondered if telling Kowareta she wasn't real would make her happy but decided against it since Kowareta was never happy with anything, even if she was a delusion.

And because no one was real and this was all some big dream, she might as well make the best of it. She thought she was doing pretty well, even when her old time anime-crush Ryou Bakura came into the room drenched in rain, until the teacher started writing on the board… in Japanese.

Glitch knew a lot about madness. She knew a lot about delusions. And what she knew was that in a delusion, or a hallucination, no one could know anything that you didn't know.

Everyone around her was speaking English…

…But they were all reading Japanese. Glitch didn't know any Japanese. Except maybe hentai.

What was going on?

Glitch started to bite her nails.

She looked around and started watching all the other students. There was a kid in back who was picking his nose, apparently oblivious to the rest of the class. On the other side of the classroom, Anzu was propping her head up in her hand while doodling something in her notes. Ryou looked like he was determined not to look out the window or see his reflection in it for whatever reason.

She started to bite her nails so bad that they bled.

Her heart was pounding so hard she thought her ribcage was going to crack. She could feel the blood pump through her veins and she thought that her bones were stretching again, like when she came here. And she couldn't get away from the idea that she was going to be lost in the dark with stretching bones and a pounding, stabbing heart forever.

And it got worse once the teacher called on her a few times and she didn't know any answers because she couldn't read the board and couldn't pay any attention since her thoughts were going faster and faster and faster like a shooting star and she couldn't breathe. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't. Breathe.

And then she stopped breathing entirely when she couldn't look away from Ryou Bakura, because there was a shadow behind him, in the window, and it was going to eat him. It was going to eat him and she couldn't say anything because she couldn't breathe. And he couldn't do anything about it either because he was too busy looking at her not breathing to see that there was a shadow, dark like a bruise, right behind him that was reaching, reaching, reaching…

Someone ended up taking her to the nurse's office, where a woman in white clothes had her lie down and asked her if she suffered from panic attacks often. When Glitch nodded the woman patted her head and told her it was okay and that she should just lie there until she felt better.

And Glitch wasn't even sure if she would feel better because it was all supposed to be some big delusion.

Right?

...

A/N: Looks like everyone except Anzu has gone a bit crazy this chapter. Eh heh. Whoops.

MeriCheri