"Brighton, get in the shower." Bea ordered, gabbing my arm as I slipped away to the hopeful safety of the living room.
It was a scene not unlike a mother trying to get her disobedient child into the bath. Only, I was not a disobedient child, I was just an overly excited teenaged fangirl. To Bea it was utterly confounding that I wanted to leave before bathing but at the time I don't think that the severity of our situation had completely registered in her head. She still saw Melvin as fictional and funny versus the reality of him being a murderer.
"Nuuu!" I squirmed out of Bea's unrelenting grip.
"You can't just not take a shower, it's disgusting!"
"Why can't we just go?" I asked, exasperated by my best friend's persistence.
Marik and Bakura sat idly by and watched the whole affair, Bakura had helped himself to a cup of tea (how very British of him). Bea saw her chance and seized the mug, throwing its contents all over little unsuspecting me.
"What the-" Bakura began crossly.
"See, now you're dirty- take a shower." Bea cut Bakura off and gestured towards the bathroom.
"I don't need clothes to be free!" I vocalized, attempting to slip out of the boundaries of my shirt.
"Bri put your shirt back on!" Bea shrieked
"No!" I protested.
"You're flashing everyone, wasn't that a problem five minutes ago?" she reasoned.
"That was unintentional flashing, it didn't count." I argued haughtily.
Bea looked at Marik and Bakura pleadingly before realizing that they were both of the male species and I was in my bra (to which I didn't see much harm in considering they were both totally ga-)
"Get out, get out, get out!" Bea screamed, quite literally shoving Bakura into the kitchen.
"You two are being blithering idiots." Bakura complained.
"Once my dad tried to force me into the shower," Marik began, "He brought in his snake Cornelius and said, 'If you don't get in the shower now, Billy, Cornelius will castrate you.' But then I said, 'No.' and dad let Cornelius loose and locked me in there. And he said that he would let me out when I was done but then he forgot about me and I had to run around the room naked for like five hours and by the time he found me I was ready to take a shower. Actually it wasn't really a shower, it was more like a puddle."
"How are you not dead yet?" Bakura asked.
"I'll go take a shower now…" I gave up, slightly traumatized by Marik's tale.
Deciding to redundantly put my shirt back on before heading to the shower, I had one arm in a sleeve when the wall came down. Bea threw herself on the ground, covering her head. I was unfazed by the tumbling bricks until one hit me on the head and I fell down. Rubbing my head, I regained my stance prepared to see Melvin, but instead it was the polar opposite. Standing in the gaping hole that should have been a wall was Yugi, closely followed by his usual entourage of Joey, Tristan, and Tea.
"You can't burst into my apartment! Why didn't you just knock?" Bea fussed, kicking a brick in frustration.
"What are you even doing here?!" Bakura asked in bewilderment.
"The jig is up, Bakura!" Joey pointed a finger accusingly at him.
"Joey you know I always have the first line!" yelled Yugi.
"I'm still trying to get my shirt on!" I squealed, searching frantically for the head hole.
"Why is everybody yelling?!" Marik screamed at the top of his lungs.
"Both of you shut-up!" both Bakura and Bea shouted in sync.
"I like peanut butter sandwiches!" bellowed Tristan.
"I thought you said we were going to lunch?!" Tea shrieked, glancing around in search of food that was not there.
"No, that's after this!" Joey corrected.
"We're here to challenge you to a card game!" Yugi announced.
The screaming battle was going nowhere. Bea and I glanced at each other, we both knew that if we started to play a card game we'd end up there for at least another three chapters. So our solution was evident; we turned and sprinted straight out the hole in the wall, hoping that Marik and Bakura would take a hint and follow.
"Did they just run away from a children's card game? They can't do that; it's against the rules!" Yugi floundered about for an explanation.
"Screw the rules!" Bea shouted.
I turned half circle and stuck my tongue out at the group as a farewell, and good riddance too.
It felt like we'd been running for hours though it had really only been about ten minutes. Still, ten minutes of exercise outside was more than I could handle. Exercise and outdoors were not my strong points.
"Can't… run… anymore. Internal bleeding… dying." I exhaled between breaths as my stomach contorted itself into painful positions and my lungs tried to crawl up throat.
"Suck it up." Bea replied, wiping sweat beads from her brow.
"Where… are we…. even… going?" I asked.
At that, Bea stopped and supported herself using a nearby park bench.
"I hate you sometimes." She expressed with passion.
"Where did Fluffy go?" Marik enquired.
I looked about with the sudden realization that Bakura was nowhere in sight. We had lost a fictional character, a one-of-a-kind, real life, fictional character. How do you even manage that?
"Bea, you lost Bakura!" I accused.
"How is this my fault?"
"Well, you were in the lead." Marik resoned.
"No- I just- ugh!"
"It's okay, though, Bakura wanders off a lot."
"Well what do you usually do?" I asked.
"Here, Bakura! C'mon!" I called, clicking my tounge.
Marik cupped his hands around his mouth, amplifying his already loud voice,"Fluffy? Fluffy!"
"You do realize he's not an animal." Bea said distastefully. She seemed utterly disgusted with the both of us.
"We should put up lost and found posters!" I suggested gleefully.
"Oh, you're enjoying this, aren't you?" Bea scowled.
We continued on in the same manner for some five minutes of so before being approached by a kindly old lady wrapped in a knit shawl.
"I'm sorry dear, but did you lose your kitty?" the woman asked.
"Yeah! He's like 5.10 and has long white hair that sticks up in odd places." I replied.
"Just move on." Bea gently led the confused elderly woman away.
Bea returned. "C'mon, we can cover more ground if we split up."
"Whatever you say, Fred…" I groaned.
I wandered around aimlessly occasionally calling out for Bakura. I looked at my cell phone (which I had completely forgotten I had until Bea had returned it earlier on in the day), 3:48.
School would be out by now, I thought absently.
Almost as if on cue, I looked up and saw Jay. He hadn't changed at all in the few days since I'd last seen him; it still didn't look like he'd washed his hair and h sure as hell hadn't started using the proactive that Bea gave him for Christmas every year, but still, I was glad to see him. Jay seemed to have also just noticed me because he dropped his Starbucks coffee (he's such a hipster) spilling it all over his shoes.
"Shit, shit, shit…" He muttered for a few seconds before running over, "Bri, you haven't been at school for days!"
"Great, Jay! You can help!" I grinned and kept walking.
"Where have you been?" Jay asked, jogging to catch up with me.
I yawned, "Long story, we're looking for Bakura."
"Like, a cosplayer?"
"No, the real Bakura. We lost him while we were running away from Yugi and Tristan and Tea and Joey."
Jay stopped me, taking me by the arms and looking me straight in the eyes, "Bri, are you sure you're okay?"
I broke from his grip, keeping my eyes locked to his dark brown ones, "Yep! Especially now that I'm away from Melvin."
"How 'bout we go to Starbucks and get you something to drink, I think you're delirious."
"We can do that after we find Bakura."
"… okay, whatever you say, Bri." Jay sighed, still staring at me worriedly.
As soon as Jay shut his mouth, I heard it; Bakura cussing, his choice of words and British accent were unmistakable.
I slipped through the gathering crowd, diving under elbows and around stroller. At the center of it all was Bakura and some potbellied man with his truck.
"I'm tellin' yeh, yer faerie ass was in the middle o' da road."
"I don't care where my ass was, your bloody truck nearly hit me."
"If yer not gon'r 'polagize then yer lookin' fer a fight."
"I'd be happy to duel you and your food baby into oblivion if I had time for a sorry bunch such as yourselves, but if you couldn't tell, I'm a little busy."
I watched the rage fire up in the man's eyes and saw it a fit time to intercede.
"Excuse me, sorry, but I couldn't help but over hear."
"Who'r you? Tha faerie's boyfrien'?" the hillbilly afforded himself a chuckle.
"Actually, I'm a girl but I can see how you'd get confused. It's probably due to the fact that your mother is probably your father's sister, this is why they illegalized incest in the first place. You can't really develop fully as a product of it, but that's okay, it's not your fault."
When I'm scared or nervous, sometimes I talk in circles and not really say anything at all. Facing a large balding man that could probably lift a truck, most people would piss themselves. Instead, I unintentionally provoked an attack from the proverbial sleeping bear.
The man wound his arm up to punch, and I probably really would've deserved it if the impact had come, but power of the hit landed on Jay who had dove in front of the incoming fist.
"Holy shit, Jay! Are you okay?" I gasped in a moment of panic.
I broke Jay.
"…'m fine…" he mumbled.
"Great! Uh- use this to call an abulance," I threw my cell in the air and grabbed Bakura's hand, "Run!"
