I know, I know. I haven't updated in too long. I'm sorry! Las Vegas did not want to be written… but here it is, a nice sized chapter to make up for your patient wait, and hopefully the next chapter will be up sooner than this one was. Nt-xx
Chapter Three
Las Vegas
Casinos, foyer rides and the temptation of thieves
…
On the plane
"So let me get this straight? We are going, in the most ludicrous way possible, to try to cover every continent on this planet? And that's all they'll tell us?"
Malik nodded his head.
"And the pilot refuses to tell us specifically where we are going, and that includes the darn country itself, on Marik's orders?"
Malik nodded again.
"And we have entrusted this entire trip… to Marik?"
Malik groaned, and buried his head in his hands.
"We're doomed," he muttered under his breath. "Bloody doomed. Some days I wish I'd never come out of the hole."
Ryou sighed and massaged his temples. The plane started to descend through the air and make its steady progress down to Las Vegas- although neither of them knew it yet.
"We really didn't think this one through, did we?"
Meanwhile, a few rows back, Marik lay snuggled next to a sleeping Bakura. He knew they had thus far escaped jet lag, but he guessed from what people had told him (because of course he wouldn't know) that they would be feeling the effects now.
He closed his eyes and smiled, resting his head on the arm of his partner that was draped around his shoulders. He'd known that had to go to Las Vegas ever since he'd seen a woman on the television talking about it.
She's said it was a den of vice, the ultimate city of sin.
And that, Marik had decided, sounded exactly up their street.
The gentle smile on his face soon turned into a smirk.
'The city of sin?' he thought, 'Here we come."
---
Later
The hotel was nice, Malik had to admit. Very big, but elegant, and the outside of it screamed money. However, he thought that the blinking lights around the reception desk were a bit much, and by the glazed looks on the receptionists' faces, they agreed.
But, he could have lived with the lights.
It was the huge merry-go-round in the middle of the huge entrance hall that he thought was unnecessary, really.
'I mean,' he thought, 'how many adults are actually going to want to go o-"
He tailed off as someone tugged his sleeve. He turned to see the wide, pleading eyes of Ryou. Marik and Bakura, he noticed, were already on the ride.
He gently massaged his temple, a headache ensuing, and tried to avoid looking a Ryou.
He failed.
"Oh all right," he sighed, and Ryou grinned, grabbing his hand and pulling him with him along to the ride.
It seemed to be an old-fashioned merry-go-round that had been upgraded with some new seats and carriages. Bakura had already chosen a traditional horse, but Marik perched next to him on a big red motorbike. Ryou had chosen a typically glittery unicorn, and Malik glared at every available seat like it had personally offended him.
Eventually, he chose a polar bear, perching perilously on it, as he refused to hold on to the security handles or even sit properly on it- he 'rode' side-saddle, and was finding it had to stay balanced as the ride moved up and down.
Ryou laughed at the sight of the blonde, who had a huge scowl on his face.
'I have to admit,' he thought to himself, 'he does look rather cute.'
The ride eventually finished, and Malik found that his headache had worsened. He made his way to the reception desk as the others, reluctant to leave, followed, casting longing looks back to the fairground ride.
The two receptionists were very different. One with mid-length, blonde hair had a phone tucked against her ear, held in place by her shoulder, and was scribbling furiously down on a piece of note-paper. Her half of the desk was neat, and her 'out' box was full to the brim with paper-work she had done. She had bags under her eyes and her hair was messy, her eyes slightly glazed by the bright lights that surrounded the desk.
Every few moments she would jump to her feet, running across to a different cabinet to get a folder of this, or a document of that, and her computer screen was filled with all kinds of stuff, from the database where the clients booked in to her work email inbox.
The other girl, however, was very different.
Where as the blonde was hunched over her desk, the other, who had long dark hair that nearly reached her hips, was leant back in her chair, spinning herself half-turns on it. She was singing quietly, and seemed to have no interest in doing work at all.
As Malik reached the desk, he leant his elbows on the counter and smiled at the two.
"Can I help you?" asked the dark haired girl in a bored tone of voice.
"The four if us should have been booked in here under the name Ryou Bakura."
She sighed. "One second, I'll check."
She leant over and hit the other girl lightly in the side.
"Hey, did a Ryou Bakura book for four?"
The blonde politely put the person on the phone on hold and brought up the log book on her computer. Scanning the list quicker than Malik would have thought possible, she then jumped up and grabbed two keys from the key bank, handed them to her accomplice, and went back to taking the call.
The dark haired girl got up from behind the desk and sashayed over to the elevator door, whistling a porter as she went who ran to take the fours bags.
She turned back and gestured for the four to follow her. After dragging the yami's away from the merry-go-round, they complied.
The life took them up four flights, and then the bored hotel employee lead them down a maze of corridors that only Bakura would be able to find his way out of (hey, it didn't hurt to be a tomb robber some days).
When they eventually found their rooms, which were opposite each other, they threw in their bags and followed Bakura back out again, the hotel worker having gone to find "something to make work liveable". Ryou wondered if she was an alcoholic.
They eventually made there way past the garish foyer ride, and wandered around the city for a while, following big signs until they found themselves in front of a huge casino, which blinked with lights and roared with loud music and the sound of dice being rolled and gambling chips being moved.
Malik rolled his eyes. "No wonder Devlin has a hotel here, the amount of dice there are in this city."
They wandered in, past the doorman who looked them up and down and looked like he wanted to say something about their dishevelled appearance (hey, it was a long plane ride), but the slightly insane look on Marik and Bakura's faces seemed to warn him away.
Which was, really, better for him.
They split when they got inside, Malik heading to the bar, Ryou following him, and Bakura and Marik slipping inconspicuously away into the large hall.
Malik had decided that he really didn't want to know where they were going.
Ryou took a seat on a bar stool, and Malik stood next to him, lounging against the bar and staring around the room curiously. All of a sudden he felt a tap on his shoulder.
He turned to see a tall, quite beautiful woman, who oozed expensive taste. She smiled down at him.
"I'm sorry sweetie, but where did you get those ear-rings? They are quite adorable."
Malik blinked.
His ear-rings?
He couldn't actually remember where he'd got them from, only that he'd always had them. Upon telling her this, instead of the annoyance he expected, she laughed, telling him that she also had so much jewellery that she couldn't remember where it had all come from.
It was the second time in that conversation that Malik blinked with surprise.
'Yes,' he thought, 'too much jewellery… that's exactly what I meant…'
Ryou, who had been listening to the whole conversation with mirth, now took control as his friend was left looking gormless in confusion. He smiled up at the woman, offering his hand to shake hers.
"I'm Ryou Bakura, and this is my friend Malik Ishtar. Forgive our ignorance, but we haven't been in a casino before, and we're at a bit of a loss as what to do."
She smiled at Ryou, showing white teeth.
"Come on then, I'll give you a demonstration. Let's go to the roulette table."
They followed the woman across the room, heading towards a large group of people clustered around a table. One man in the middle seemed to have control over the wheel, and was taking counters from the others and placing them on squares of a board drawn on the table.
She drew them close to the table, to show them how it was done.
"In the game the dealer spins that wheel in one direction, then spins a ball in the opposite direction around the inside surface of the wheel. The ball eventually falls on to the wheel and into one of the 38 pockets, which are sorted by colour and number. Players place bets on the winning number and the color of the pocket, whether the number is odd or even, and things like that."
They stared blankly at her, and she sighed, smiling.
"Look, I'll show you."
She placed a chip on the table, calling to the dealer to put it on red, even numbers. Malik and Ryou watched the ball spin quickly and continuously around, around, around the wheel, before landing…
On a black nineteen.
Ryou sighed in exasperation for the women.
"Geez, bad luck there. So does that mean you loose that chip?"
She smiled benevolently down at him.
"Yup. But don't worry, it was only a small one."
She turned back to the dealer, and a manic glint seemed to form in her eye.
"Three on even blacks!"
Malik peeked over her shoulder, his face paling.
"Shit, Ryou! These are thousand dollar chips!"
Ryou's eyes widened as the woman lost another three. She laughed, almost manically, before placeing eleven more in several places across the board.
The dealer laughed nervously.
"Excuse me ma'am? Don't you think that's rather a lot to bet on one spin?"
She growled at him, in a way that reminded the watching hikari's of their yami's, something which worried them slightly. They backed away from the obviously addicted gambler, only to bump into their yami's, who had suspiciously bulging pockets, and wanted to leave.
Ryou glared at his taller yami.
"Please don't tell me you did."
He smirked downwards at the worried hikari.
"But of course. It's a room full of ridiculously weathly people and tourists. I'm a theif king, Ryou, what did you expect?"
Ryou smacked his head with his hand in exasperation as Malik rounded on his own, rather furtive looking yami.
"You don't have an excuse! We're tomb keepers, not theives!"
Marik shrugged, rolling his eyes at the disbelieving blonde, and pointing at Bakura.
"I've been hanging out with him too much."