NEW CHAPTER! FINALLY! I've been forever trying to think out this doggoned scene, and then ff.n was down for a while, so forgive the long wait. ^.^;

Standard disclaimers for Yu-Gi-Oh. It ain't mine. Yue belongs to . . . well, Yue. Aoi, Mik-chan, and Kanshisha are mine, everyone else isn't. -.-; What a shaaaame . . . think of all the wonderful yaoi goodness I could put into the series. I have a sudden vision of me being sued by Kid's WB.

Their Lawyer: This isn't the series we agreed upon!

Me: *evil grin* Oh yes it is. You bought it before the hostile takeover.

Their Lawyer: We can't show this to children!

Me: Why the hell not? They hear worse in school!

OK, maybe that wouldn't work after all. -.-; Damn. Oh well, perhaps they'll let me borrow Yugi, Bakura, and their Yamis . . . *hentai grin* Fun fun.

OK, that's enough outta me. On to the chapter. *turns up the Sugarcult and off we go*

Sanctuary

By: Nizuno Mikomi

Chapter Three: Bouncing Off the Walls

Oblivious to his aibou's emotional anguish, Yami drifted in the abyss that was the Realm of Souls. Around him, myriad shapes leaped and twisted impossibly. There was a time when he would have been afraid, but that was more than forever ago. Now all the dark Pharaoh felt was curiosity . . . and perhaps the slightest twinge of anxiety, but certainly not because of the millions of souls swirling all around him, hungering for life.

He felt terribly guilty about leaving so abruptly, without telling Yugi where he'd gone. His Light wasn't nearly as vulnerable nor as naive as he used to be, but Yami still felt a certain amount of possessiveness toward the giggly, cheerful boy who had freed him from the Millennium Puzzle. Yami knew that Yugi would be practically insane with worry after he found out that Yami was gone . . . .

'He has Aoi . . . he'll survive,' the Game King thought. For a moment, he reflected on the sarcastic, wise-cracking bounty hunter that had so captured Yugi's heart. He remembered only too well the night Yugi had met her, through their mutual friend, Yue. It hadn't exactly been love at first sight. A certain amount of verbal sparring had been necessary first. But after each had finally gotten up the courage to admit their feelings to the other, they became positively inseparable. They went everywhere together, watched each other's backs, shared a room, shared a bed, shared their secrets, their thoughts, their hopes and dreams . . . everything.

A tiny pang of what might have been mingled jealousy and regret gnawed with burning needle teeth at Yami for a split second before he crushed it utterly. Aoi was Yugi's guardian angel now, as he had once been.

'NO!' something inside him screamed. 'My Light! MINE!' Apparently, he was more possessive of the boy that he had thought.

That train of thought was derailed before it went much further by his arrival . . . somewhere. He landed with a muffled thud on a hard floor, his senses fogged and muffled.

Looking around as his vision cleared, Yami found himself in someone's Soul Room. Whose exactly it was, he had no idea. A surreptitious glance around took in the storm-colored walls, the sparse dark furniture, the prostrate figure on the grey and black canopied bed, the votives, the chessboard . . . wait a minute . . . .

His brain hit "rewind" in a hurry. Prostrate figure on a bed?

This demanded further investigation . . . and NOT for any remotely hentai reason whatsoever, either.

Several cautious steps bore him across the room and he lifted a hand to draw aside the filmy curtain hanging around the large canopied bed. A better look at the figure lying therein short-circuited more than a few synapses.

It was a girl (or at least, it looked remarkably like one), deeply tanned and perfectly proportioned. She lay on her side, facing him, one arm across her chest, the other beneath her silver-maned head. Above the slope of her shoulder, which rose and fell with the rhythm of her breathing, he could see what looked like . . . wings. The Game King glanced back at the creature's face, serene and unguarded in sleep.

'What ARE you?' he wondered. 'And what am I doing here?' Was this the being that had called to him? One wing rustled as she shifted in her sleep. The movement dislodged the sheet that had previously covered her nearly to the waist. It now slid down past the curve of her hip, revealing far more skin than before. Yami's ruby eyes widened slightly. Was she . . . .

Ever so gently, he slipped a one finger beneath the dark sheet and pulled it down just far enough to ascertain that she was indeed completely nude . . . and the silver color of her hair was 100 percent natural. A rather large sweatdrop appeared on the side of his head as he realized exactly what he was doing. He snatched the offending hand away as if burned and stumbled backward several paces, silently thanking every god and goddess in Egyptian theology that Mik-chan couldn't see him now. She would never have let him live it down.

Unfortunately, said gods and goddesses have rather wicked senses of humor. The sound of his footsteps caused the winged being to stir . . . and yawn . . . and wake. Yami froze as two sleepy sable eyes blinked open and fixed directly upon his person.

===

The sound of stumbling footsteps woke Kanshisha. As her consciousness shook off the cobwebs of sleep, she noted the subtle change in the Ward surrounding her Room. It had been breached, but not by force.

'Ah,' she thought, smiling to herself. 'I have a visitor.' She opened her perfectly clear onyx eyes for a look and nearly lost her cool trying not to react. 'By the Light . . . someone up there must like me an awful lot.'

Her visitor was, as she had hoped, male, and undeniably gorgeous. Of course, the widened eyes and shocked/worried/apprehensive expression on his face didn't exactly add to his looks, but then, at least his head hadn't exploded. It was a start.

First things first. Her wings were cramped from staying in one position for so long. They needed to move, as did the rest of her. Much to her guest's obvious discomfort, she sat up, the black sheets pooling around her hips, and stretched her arms and wings thoroughly, giving vent to a great yawn in the process. Muscles reasonably awakened, she lowered her arms to rest in her lap and smiled at him.

"Ohayou."

===

Yami's eye had never twitched so frequently or so fast in his entire life. His brain was short-circuiting on many levels now and the loss of control irritated him more than a little. The angel . . . that's what he had decided she was until something told him different . . . was sitting up now, affording him an uninhibited view of her torso. Said uninhibited view was the cause of most of said numerous short-circuits. Her voice when she greeted him was musical and pleasant, friendly and not in the least bit suspicious.

Struggling to recover his scattered dignity, he managed to stammer out, "K-Konban wa, tenshi-san." The winged goddess laughed, a wide smile revealing perfect white teeth.

"What a clever one you are!" she crowed. At his confused expression, she continued, "To know me for what I am without being told . . . and to comprehend it without . . . yes, yes, clever indeed."

The Game King was completely lost now. He was in an unknown Soul Room somewhere in the Realm of Souls, chatting with what had to be an angel, who, by the by, was completely NAKED, and who seemed to trust him implicitly before she even knew his name. No mathematician in the world could make that add up. The angel cocked her bright silver head to one side.

"You must be very special for my Summons to have reached you," she remarked, crossing her ankles lotus-style and leaning the heels of her hands upon them. "Who are you?"

"I could ask you the same question," would have been the Pharaoh's usual haughty response, but now he surprised himself by making a polite bow and replying, "Yami." The mention of his name sent the angel into another fit of giggles, making that gorgeous figure of hers quiver and bounce in the most delectable way. Whether she laughed at him or his name, he didn't know, but it irked him all the same. "Forgive me, did I say something funny?"

"Rather!" the angel chuckled, wiping tears from her pitch-dark eyes. "Well, actually, more ironic than funny." She gestured to the stumped Game King, then to herself. "Yami . . . you whose name means darkness . . . I am the Light."

===

Well that does it for Chapter Three! As promised, they've FINALLY met. I'm rather proud of this chapter, actually. I wanted Kanshisha's style of speaking to have a sort of archaic ring, but with a modern edge to it, so I spent half an hour reading parts of C. S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia" series before I began. So, if any other part of the language in this chapter, i.e. the imagery or what-have-you, sounds like C. S. Lewis, that's why. The language some of the royal characters use is more formal, more flowery, and it suits Kanshisha pretty well. At least, I think so.

In case you haven't noticed, I've been naming each chapters after whatever song happens to be playing as I begin. Last time it was "Get Off My Back," from the "Spirit" soundtrack. For this one, it was "Bouncing Off the Walls" by Sugarcult. Oddly enough, I usually listen to a repeating playlist when I work, so one of these chapters might be called "Stick 'Em Up" or "The Inevitable Return of the Great White Dope" . . . even though I have no intentions of bringing Ryou or his Yami into the story at this point . . . yes, that was a joke.

Yami Bakura: *Glare O' Death* Do you have a death wish, Mikomi?

NM: For me, no. For the dealership inspecting my car, yes please. -.-* And who taught you the Glare O' Death, anyway? That's patented property, Snowball!

Yami Bakura: O.o**** SNOWBALL?! WHY YOU LITTLE . . . .

Aoi: *very calmly puts her gun to his head* None of that now. We still need her to finish this story and if you kill her before she brings Yami back and I have to spend the next thirty years with Yugi after his mental breakdown . . . I'm just gonna have to hurt something . . . and you're AWFULLY convenient.

Yami Bakura: -.- Grr . . . fine. Finish the damn thing.