Sorry for the wait, guys; my schedule is such a complete and total wreck.

But, I think you'll like this next chapter!

Pusheen the cat: Don't worry! We'll learn about Mariku's past soon enough, and all it's messy glory!

Inori no Uta: Yeah, Bakura's got some sort of feeling going on, alright.

Wilbell: Yup, Yami's terrible about determining gender... It's pretty sad.

I don't own YGO, yada yada.

Chapter 6:

"Alright, onee-san!" Mariku said pleasantly into her phone, sounding happy for first time in days. "I'll see you after the tournament then... Say 'hi' to Odion for me! Bye, sister! Love you!"

Ryou smiled, listening to her friend's conversation. It was nice to hear Mariku sound happy for once; it was always such a rarity with that girl. "So, how is Ishizu-san doing?"

The Kenyan smiled broadly at the other girl, looking very content. "She's doing well, and so is Odion. She was a little tired, since she and Odion just got back from some meeting with some ambassador or other, but she seemed okay."

"I'm glad to hear that. I'll bet you can't wait to get back home, can you?"

Mariku grinned. "You know it." After a few moments, her grin turned into a genuine smile that she flashed at Ryou. "Thanks for suggesting that I call her, Ry. I really needed to do that, but I didn't exactly want to appear weak in front of everyone."

'Especially that Malik bastard!' she thought to herself.

The silver-haired girl smiled gently at her friend, a look of understanding in her eyes. "I'm happy to help! But, I don't think missing your family is exactly what's seen as 'weak, 'Riku."

"It's not just about missing my sister! It's also about being afraid!"

"Afraid of what?" Ryou's voice was level, her words casual. Setting Mariku off was not wise; she had been traumatized when she was younger, and as a result she was considered 'mentally unstable.' No one was afraid of her, as she wasn't exactly insane or psychotic, but her friends and family where all afraid for her, and whether or not something would push her just a little too far.

Mariku sighed. "Everything. An unfamiliar place – unfamiliar people – and so many challenges." She gazed at Ryou and let out a second sigh. "Sometimes, I can't even remember why I decided to join in with this little competition."

Ryou laughed slightly. "I think it had something to do with all that encouragement Yugi and Jou were giving you."

"Encouragement?! They were practically grabbing my by the hand and twisting my arm out of its socket to get me to come along!"

"And both Ishizu and Odion thought it would do you good to get out of the house a little more. Come on, 'Riku. You spend all of your time in your bedroom and you only come out either for school or to visit the game shop. You need to get out every once in while and feel the sun on your face!"

Mariku's eyelids drooped over her lavender irises. "The sun is overrated."

Ryou rolled her eyes indulgently, letting her friend have her own way for once. "Well, come on. We'd better get back to camp before anyone starts missing us."

"Excuse me?"

Stopping in their tracks, the two girls turned back to see a young boy with a long ponytail of pink hair standing nearby. He didn't look any older than Kaiba's little brother, and it made them wonder what he was doing out in the woods.

"Hello," Ryou said pleasantly, bending down a little so that she was eye-level with the boy. "Are you lost or something?"

He shook his head. "Not exactly. My big brother's at our camp not far from here, and I can go back whenever I want. I just wanted to know whether or not either of you were duelists."

He eyed the card decks that the girls had in their pockets with interest. "My name's Leon, and I'm looking for an opponent."

"Mariku's in the competition," Ryou said, nodding her head at the blonde standing beside her. Mariku frowned, saying nothing.

Mariku growled under her breath, muttering softly to himself. "I don't duel boys."

Ryou must have heard her, because she shot a quick glare at the blonde.

"Look, kid, I just don't think you're going to be much of a competition," the Kenyan explained, trying to make an excuse to the pink-haired lad. "I mean, y'know..."

Leon cocked an eyebrow at her in irritation. "I know, I'm just a little kid. But I can tell you that I'm just as good an opponent as any! In fact, I can take down any duelist I compete with, even girls who bleach their hair and wear pants a size too small."

Now this kid was starting to annoy her. Mariku openly sneered at him, fingers inching towards her deck. "If it's a duel you want, then it's a duel you've got! Get ready to lose your star chips!"

tQoG

Pausing in the middle of his stride, Malik leaned back against a tree, feeling distinctly lazy. "I'm tired of walking! Can we just sit down?"

Yami and Bakura turned back to give him a sidelong look.

"We've only been walking for ten minutes," Yami told him, looking at the time on his cell-phone.

"But it seems like forever!"

"Oh, stop whining, you big baby!" the white-haired bodyguard to his right growled. "Man up for once in your life, would you? It would make my life a #$% of a lot easier!"

Malik exhaled slowly, making his breath into a sigh. "And besides, we agreed to stay with this group of Japanese kids, and yet we never actually stay with the group. Why is that? I find it rather enjoyable to hang around with that lot."

Bakura snorted at him. "You just like being able to eye-up that Mariku girl!"

He sneered right back at his partner. "Yeah, what of it?"

This earned him a terrible look of disgust.

Yami sighed. "I don't know why we can't just stay with the group. Ask Bakura; it's his idea."

Malik swiveled his head back to stare at Bakura, who glared at both of them in frustration.

"Don't you two understand that you can't just trust anyone? If it were my decision, we never would have joined up with those stupid kids, much less have stayed with them for so long!"

"Well," Yami replied with a frown. "I rather like them, and I want to spend more time with them and see how good they are at dueling. So tell me, Bakura, which one of us is the Pharaoh and which one is the servant?!"

Bakura turned away in irritation, not even deigning to answer the question.

Yami pointedly turned away and began to walk again, walking away from his two bodyguards with a swift pace. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go look for either Mariku and Ryou or those other four. You are welcome to come with me, or you can just stay here. I really don't care."

Bakura growled as Malik stood and began to follow their king through the woods, finally moving to follow after them. "Why am I the only one with a brain around here?"

Right now, he was wishing he'd stayed back home in Egypt. Then he wouldn't have to deal with being trapped on an island surrounded by idiots!

The three Egyptians continued their little forest stroll in near silence, not speaking to each other in an awkward sort of way. They weren't walking for very long when they heard some familiar voices nearby.

"Hear that?" Yami asked, his head cocked to the side.

Bakura answered the unspoken question without skipping a beat. "It's that bigmouth Jounouchi kid. He's dueling someone who I don't know. Yugi, Anzu, and Honda are all cheering him on. I've only been listening to them for the past minute and a half."

Yami and Malik turned and stared at him, eyes and mouths agape.

He smirked at them both. "It's called training your senses. You should try it sometime."

"Whatever!" The Pharaoh shook his head in slight annoyance. "Let's just follow their voices. At least we'll get to see some actual dueling for once."

Following the sound, the three Egyptians were soon poking their heads through a crop of bushes, sitting on top of a hill that overlooked a clearing. Down below, they could see Jounouchi standing on one side of a dueling arena, a blonde woman they didn't recognize standing across from him.

Malik latched his eyes unto the woman as she laughed evilly, his tongue slipping out of his mouth in a hungry sort of fashion.

"See anything you like?" Bakura asked dryly, a slight sneer on his lips. He really hated it when Malik started perving out like that; it gave him the creeps.

The demented pervert that was Malik turned to look at Yami and Bakura, tongue still hanging out of his mouth. "When they're done, do you think maybe I could –"

"NO!"

Malik pulled his tongue back into his mouth and sighed. "Alright, alright. I'll behave, I guess." He smirked. "I like Mariku better, anyway. She's not as loud and obnoxious as that dame down there."

All he got in response was an eye roll from Yami, who then quickly turned back to see how the duelists were doing against one another.

Things were beginning to heat up in the arena, that was for sure.

"Go, Time Roulette!" Jounouchi called out. He crossed all of his fingers as he watched the spinner on the Time Wizard's clock go round and round, hoping it would land on a good space.

Mai chuckled to herself. 'A two-in-six chance? That might as well be no chance!'

Imagine her surprise when the spinner landed on just the right slot.

Jounouchi began to whoop and jump up and down excitedly as the playing field was effected by time. "Yeah, baby! Come t' Papa! Take that, Mai! Time Wizard turns Baby Dragon into a thousand year old dragon! Baby Dragon is now Thousand Dragon! And with age comes experience in battle!"

"So what?" his opponent huffed. "That doesn't mean that your dragon even has a chance of taking out – my Harpy Ladies?! What happened to them?!"

"What's that dumb broad squealing about?" Malik asked. He was immediately elbowed by Yami, who then directed his gaze away from Mai's cleavage and towards the dueling field. He saw that the Harpies were all just sort of sitting on the ground, looking very much like old ladies and apparently too elderly to combat gravity, much less anything else. "Oh."

Jou's new Thousand Dragon destroyed all of Mai's Harpies within seconds, and her life points shot down to zero.

The scruffy boy grinned hugely as Mai removed one of her many star chips, handing it over with a small pout.

"Wait, Jounouchi," Mai called as he began to turn away.

"Eh?"

"How... how exactly did you manage to beat me? I mean, my parlor tricks aside, how did an amateur duelist like you actually manage to defeat me?"

Jou flashed her a small smile. "'Cause unlike you, I'm duelin' with a purpose. I'm not just here to show up every Joe that passes by – so to speak – I've got someone back home who relies on me to win this tournament. An' I don't plan on lettin' her down!"

So saying, he raised his fist in the air victoriously and raced over to Yugi, Anzu, and Honda, who were jumping up and down and cheering for him.

Mai shrugged, completely bewildered, and walked off, eager to find an opponent to crush.

Yami jerked his head in the direction of the four kids, indicating that he thought that he, Bakura, and Malik should go meet up with them. The other two nodded, and the three of them stood up to go join the group of cheering kids.

Jounouchi and Honda were doing a cancan dance together, singing loudly at the top of their lungs. "Kankan, ketabasu sukoshi kankan...!"

As they approached, the three Egyptians stared at the two dancing Japanese, then turned to stare at the girls.

Anzu shrugged and rolled her eyes. "All I know, is that this is why I have female friends."

Yugi giggled.

"It's our victory dance!" Honda cried out by way of explanation.

Jou nodded energetically. "Yeah! Every time we kick some can-"

"-we do a victory dance!"

The two best of friends grinned at one another, then began their cancan again. "Kankan, ketabasu sukoshi kankan...!"

Halting her amused giggling for an instant, Yugi raced over and gave Yami a quick hug. "Hi, Yami-kun! I didn't get to say 'good morning' to you earlier!"

Yami was frozen for a moment, shocked that he had been hugged by someone that was not his younger sister. He smiled at his new friend after a second though, reaching out and gently setting his hand on her delicate shoulder.

"I'm sorry, little one," he apologized, his smile widening when she beamed back up at him. "I had to make a quick phone call to my cousin, because I knew he would be worried to death about me. Otherwise, I would have given you a morning greeting myself."

For some reason, he felt better when he was around little Yugi; her pretty voice and her cute smile did wonders for his normally stand-off-ish behavior.

Bakura shifted on the heels on his feet, clearly becoming bored rather quickly. "C'mon, then," he growled. "Are we going to stand around here all day or are we going to try to find the others?"

"Is Fluffy worried about the cute little angel with the silver hair?" Malik asked under his breath, his voice mocking. "You did seem to be enjoying her company very much last night when you were pinning her to that tree-"

"It wasn't what it looked like, you #$%-ing pervert!" Bakura turned away, walking back towards the camp, not caring whether or not the others followed him. "... and don't call me 'Fluffy'..."

Yami sighed, not wanting Bakura to just walk off, and, holding a finger up to Yugi and promising to be right back, moved to follow the white-haired body guard, Malik not too far behind.

"Bakura, stop!" Yami called. At first, the other didn't respond, but he finally halted and stood still for a moment, just long enough for the other two to catch up with him.

Yami opened his mouth to speak, but Bakura cut him off immediately.

"You're getting mighty close to that girl, you know. Are you looking for a rival or a potential wife?"

"Excuse me?" He wasn't following.

Malik chuckled. "You're completely smitten with that little Yugi girl!" He punched Bakura in the shoulder, making his friend wince. "Call me a child molester?! I'm not the one eying up a fourteen-year-old kid!"

Bakura sneered at him as he clutched his shoulder in pain. "No. You're just the one staring at a sixteen-year-old girl, obviously envisioning her naked. Like no one notices that look on your face."

Malik frowned and looked away, saying nothing. He had been blatantly staring at Mariku – had barely taken his eyes off of her since he'd first seen her.

Yami shook his head. "Sometimes, I honestly don't know what the two of you are talking about."

The white-haired Egyptian looked up from his shoulder, his steel eyes considering his King for a moment. "No. You don't, do you? For the past five centuries, you've barely been able to discern a girl from a boy and you've treated everyone as the same. But now, you've met a little child from Japan and you can't seem to take your eyes off of her."

Yami turned away. "I have no such ideas in my head as you two would profess that I have. I find the girl's company to be pleasant, unlike that of you!"

He turned and strode away quickly, heading back towards Yugi, honestly not yet realizing what the other two had already realized.

Bakura rolled his eyes and sighed. "Idiot pharaoh... he's too stupid to even notice that he's fallen for the girl..."

Malik smirked at him evilly. "Just like how you don't know that you've fallen for that Ryou girl?"

All he received in answer was a growl.

Hope everyone enjoyed it! 'Later!

(Bonus points to anyone who can identify the song Jou and Honda are singing.)