This took forever to finish XD But I'm reasonably pleased with how it turned out. I started to skip some parts I'd come up with near the end because I was really excited to finish up this chapter, but it's still pretty good even without those little parts.

Anyways, sorry again that it took so long to write this, and please enjoy the chapter :)


Chapter 6

The sultry smell of meat danced to the loud music that I had on the stereo. My mouth watered uncontrollably at the thick aroma the steaks gave off, my stomach angered by the fact that I wasn't letting it dive into the rare, bloody meat. I wasn't sure if I'd been around a food that could drive one insane if deprived of it before, but steak was starting to fit the description quite nicely.

Melvin's curiosity was the only reason we actually had these delicious morsels at our disposal. Marik and his siblings, being largely vegetarian, almost never had any kind of meat in their home, but the darker of the two souls had always been a bit on the adventurous side when it came to food. So, when at the store, he decided it was a good idea to buy a whole box of the things. And they had to be cooked today.

So, I got to have fun with the stove.

After a while of cooking in silence (I wasn't sure where Melvin had suddenly disappeared to. It was becoming a normal thing), I'd gotten sick of the quiet and had started blaring some music. The station that I'd tuned in to had a baritone's deep voice belting out a rock song about how fame and Hollywood weren't all that they were cracked up to be. The song seemed to amplify itself using the hard pounding of the bass and drums. The heavy beat drove itself into my bones and I started to twirl around the kitchen as I tended to the steaks.

Eventually, the throbbing of the music drove me to really start dancing around the room, playing with the variscite as I did so. Melvin had taught me a couple new tricks with it during the time that we'd been working together (about a week or so now, as far as I was aware), and I now knew how to make things levitate and move around and whatnot. Like telekinesis-type crap. It took a bit more focus than what it should've since I hadn't mastered the ability yet, but it was completely worth the effort.

Holding a hand out to the side mid-twirl, I gestured toward the ceiling with my fingers and a stool rose up shakily from the ground. It shuddered and quivered like a person would if without a coat in the middle of a blizzard, completely unused to its current place above the floor with nothing to brace itself against. But I forced it to remain that way even when I turned away from it to check on the steaks that were still cooking through in the pan. This was the third or fourth batch that I'd dealt with so far, and I had barely made a dent in the contents of the meat-crate.

A loud bang echoed out from behind me, scaring the crap out of me and making me jump; my hand lost its grip on the pair of tongs that I'd been using to flip the thick slabs of meat with. The metal utensil flew across the room, landing in the living room and skidding across the wood floor with a loud scraping noise. That was the least of my concerns at the moment. Spinning around wildly, I tried to figure out where the hell that thud had come from, only to realize that it had been the stool reuniting with the floor in a rather deafening manner.

Apparently, when it came to frying and using the variscite, I couldn't multi-task. Sucks.

Melvin thought that my near-death experience (I'd been having a lot of those ever since I met him. Hm.) was the most hilarious thing since bombarding innocent, unsuspecting people with balloons filled with spicy condiments. The creature of the night had practically materialized out of thin air and had appeared on the counter a couple of feet away from me. Currently, he was doing his best to laugh so hard I was certain he was going to pop a lung while also staying up on his little perch. He was doing a better job than I would've been.

I was about to retrieve the tongs and chuck them at him when something on the radio caught my attention. The song had changed, and now the apartment was being filled with a rough riveting, the sort of sound you'd expect to hear when an almighty demon was rising up out of the dirt, keen on stealing your soul away. " …It's true. We're all a little…insane…But it's so clear, now that I am…unchained… " The hushed soprano's words were not what had captured my ear's focus, but it was the mere beating and whispering within the chords and notes of the music itself. They reminded me of a nightmare-ish dream that I'd had a day or two ago.

I never mentioned it to Melvin since I hadn't understood what had gone on in it. From what I could remember, I'd been standing alone somewhere dark and empty, like a warehouse, except I was outside. The ground had been soft and plush, like clouds, and was the same black as thunderclouds. Every now and then, a strange light would flash across the floor, quick and bright as lightning. Wind howled around me and I could hear rain, though I felt nothing. Not even that wind.

Whenever the lights coming from the floor would go off, they would light up the endless space I was in, and I was able to see that I was not alone. There was a giant man standing some ways away from me, maybe a hundred meters at the most. I couldn't see him very well, but I could hear him talking with utmost clarity. However, I couldn't understand a word he was saying; he was speaking in some strange language that I'd never heard before.

The foreign presence had barely begun speaking by the time I awoke, more puzzled than frightened by the strange dream. What language—if it even was a real language—had that guy been talking in? What had he said? I could recall next to nothing that he'd stated; the syllables and twisting of his tongue had been so hard to follow. But if I had been able to repeat any of what he'd said who would have any clue of what that guy had been trying to tell me?

Well… I turned from the stove slowly and stared at Melvin. He was smiling to himself about something, probably my reaction to the bang that the falling stool had made. I would kick the crap out of him for that later; however, right now, he might be able to help me. He was well acquainted with the supernatural aspect of things, as well as relics and items with spiritual power. Who was to say he couldn't identify this voice?

Abandoning the raw meat hissing in the pan, I left the kitchen and made a beeline for the stereo. After flicking it off, I came back to the kitchen and received a confused glance from Melvin. "What was that about? You have something against Evanescence?" The escaped mental patient grinned at me, most likely expecting an ecstatic response of some kind. I usually got pretty defensive when it came to music, especially the songs I really liked.

My face remained blank aside from a touch of befuddlement. Sitting down on a stool opposite where he was on the counter, I stared at my hands as I brought up the bothersome thoughts. "…Do you remember me talking about that…voice I hear? I think I mentioned him about a week or so ago, the morning after we met." Slowly dragging my eyes up from my folded hands, I searched Melvin's face for something I wasn't certain of. Maybe his belief that what I kept hearing was real.

His smirk was gone, no trace of it left behind. "…You're still hearing it after so long?" I nodded quietly, not trusting my voice to be able to answer any clearer. Melvin seemed puzzled at this newly unsheathed insight; he leaned back against the cabinets with his arms crossed over his chest. "That's odd. I expected it to leave as soon as it knew we were paying more attention to it than what was normal…" He absentmindedly rubbed his chin, his eyes staring hard at the floor as if he expected something to rise from it. "What has it said to you?"

Thinking it was a pretty broad question, I shrugged my shoulders slightly. "A little about a lot of things…Like I told you before, he talks about the variscite, the Millennium Items, and things like that. But now he's started saying that he wants me to do something for him, that I'm supposed to find somebody and…" I paused, feeling a cold chill set in despite the heat given off by the stove. Not because I was weary of the word hanging on my tongue, but because I could sense he was listening to me. "…Kill them.

"It's somebody specific, but he won't tell me who. I think he was trying to in a dream I had a night ago, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. Everything was in a weird language I couldn't decipher," I felt like I was explaining all the symptoms of my disease to a doctor as I locked eyes with Melvin. He gazed back at me with an emotionless air, but his eyes expressed a kind of serious interest. No worry or concern, only intrigue.

Sliding down from the counter, Melvin walked purposefully over to where I was seated, standing before me like a great ruler before his miserable kingdom. There was a darkness injected in my mind that he no I had placed there and neither of us understood its strange aura. I was not afraid of it, and I knew that Melvin would not be either; he feared nothing in or of this world. But I didn't like it.

It kept telling me to kill Melvin.

The blonde Egyptian wasn't the specified person that the entity wanted dead per se. That was someone else. But he wanted me to get away from Melvin, not matter what I had to do to do so. He chided me for thinking it would be wise to trust anyone, to be with anyone for long periods of time like this. Trying to reach me, get me to listen, he had threatened to kill Melvin himself if I would not obey him.

It had been a while ago that we'd had this conversation, but I could still remember how enraged that had made me. My blood had hissed like water thrown to sate the fires of hell, my soul freezing solid as my heart became unwilling to listen any more. I'd brought my hands to my head, my palms over my ears as I tried to blot out his voice. Instead of keeping him away with my hands, I'd made a barrier between us with the variscite.

The voice had not sounded since. At least not when I was awake.

He came to me nightly, sometimes just to talk about seemingly random things, but it had begun to be the same thing over and over again. That one thing was always me leaving Melvin's company and finding that person that needed to die for justice's sake. I'd wondered once if my mind had fabricated all of this out of my hatred for solitude, but the feeling of sickness that I awoke with after speaking with this…thing…convinced me otherwise.

This was a real thing, a thing I couldn't escape in my dreams. He had not threatened harm upon me yet, but I myself felt pained when he spoke of mutilating Melvin in ways that I dared not linger on. For the longest time, I'd tried to forget about the dreams and all that the voice had been saying to me, but now I knew that this was serious. Whatever it was, it was happening, and it was happening to me.

Reaching out his hand, Melvin brought his palm to my forehead like I did whenever I searched someone's memories. He accessed the green stone's power through my body, and I braced myself against the island counter, grabbing onto the top of it with one of my hands. Every time that I used this ability on someone, they would become weak and collapse almost instantly. However, I did not fall; I didn't even lose consciousness in any way.

Lifting my eyes from the floor, I raised them steadily and realized that my sight had not been stolen from me. I could see Melvin's face, watched his skin twitch and quiver as he searched for whatever remnants were left of the dream. I was curious to know if I could still speak despite this connection, or use it against him and enter his mind, but, for fear of disturbing his concentration, I restrained myself.

What seemed like an eternity passed by before Melvin removed his touch from my forehead. Royal purple eyes opened and stared at me, hard and emotionless like ice as they pierced my own, making my head bleed like a gutted animal or the victim of a brutal assault. A heavy silence passed between us, the smell of overcooked meat beginning to build thickly in the air. I could taste it every time I breathed in.

After a few moments, Melvin broke the bond our gaze had formed. His eyes moved down to my arm; he wrapped his fingers around my small wrist and slid my sleeve up my arm gruffly. The tattoo-like markings were revealed to him then, for I'd never shown them to him before, neither had I mentioned them. I hadn't thought that they mattered. They were just some weird black scribbles to me. They meant nothing. Right?

Not to Melvin. "Why didn't you tell me about this, Kushoku?" My pale eyes shot up and stared at him, stunned that he'd used my name. He never used my name unless it was important business he was talking about. The exotic teen used it so little, in fact, often times I found myself wondering if he didn't use it because he couldn't remember what it was most of the time. I wouldn't put it past him, truthfully.

I opened my mouth to stutter out some kind of reply, but he didn't give me any time to explain myself. His lips were already moving again, much faster now, as if he was coming close to solving a mystery that had evaded him for eons, "He was speaking in an ancient Egyptian tongue that's barely used nowadays. He was repeating the same thing over and over again for the most part, 'Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.' Your memory stopped recording the dream in the middle of a new statement, though, and all I heard him say was something about your arm.

"And now," He brushed his fingers over the markings as if they were some jewel his mind had been haunted by. A jewel he had finally stolen. "I see what he meant." Melvin paused for a moment, moving to push my sleeve up even further despite the fact that there were no more marks. But he kept inching it up my arm as if he was looking for where it would finally end. This reaction to the tattoo struck a chord of astonishment in my chest, and I glanced at my arm to see what he was staring at.

I was shocked to learn that I'd been wrong.

There were more markings than what I'd once thought. Many more. I jerked my arm away from Melvin and sprinted to the bathroom, the full-body mirror being the only thing running through my mind. Aside from the sickness that was beginning to spiral all around my body, starting up in my head and dripping all the way down to my toes like a thick, sticky slime.

Slamming the door closed behind me, I slid to a stop in front of the mirror, my momentum almost making me tumble over and into the bathtub. I moved my other sleeve up as high as I could get it; I hadn't thought to check to see if there were marks there as well. They were. The black squiggles had barely concerned me until now. I hadn't thought that they would have anything to do with the strange voice that was now locked within my head, only coming to haunt me in my dreams.

I saw that the symbols trailed all the way up both of my arms, but still did not stop. All my movements were nearing the point of being frantic now, my mind racing and wondering what the hell this meant. Yanking my shirt off over my head in search of the place these characters would end, I held my black hair up with my hands and turned my back to the mirror. Swiveling to glimpse at my back, I hoped to see only skin that was unblemished by these odd, inky symbols.

But they were there, too. Albeit, not many; they trailed across my shoulder blades, making a perpendicular line with my spinal cord, staying in one straight line from wrist to wrist. I stared in a stunned silence for a moment or so, wondering how I could've been so oblivious as to have not noticed this until now. They were so dark against my skin, like splatters of pink paint on black cloth. Perhaps it was because I'd become accustomed to only seeing the marks on the one forearm. I just hadn't thought it possible to have more than that and I hadn't realized the falsehood in my thoughts.

Whatever the cause, it didn't matter. I knew they were there now, and the knowledge weight heavily upon my psyche. Actually, to be honest, it was the lack of knowledge. Why did I have these strange things so artistically written across my skin? There was no mistaking it; they had to be related to the voice in my mind, which was apparently fluent in both English and Egyptian. One step closer to knowing who it is, I suppose…But what do these…things mean?

Usually, something like this would bother the crap out of me, this not being able to understand something. I'd gone through it with the variscite and the Millennium Rod (and a bunch of other things. It would take way too long to list everything), except now, I had someone who knew what was going on for once. "Melvin?" I called his name through the door as I slid my shirt back on. I continued to shout as I opened the door and headed back to the kitchen. "I need some professional help!"

"And lots of it…" Melvin mumbled loud enough for me to hear as I came into the kitchen. He was using the tongs I'd unintentionally discarded thanks to my lack of expertise and one very annoying chair (I'm gonna hate that thing forever). Glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, he dropped the mocking tone and became serious again. "If you're talking about what I think you are, then you probably don't want to know—"

I knew I should've stayed quiet and listened to what he had to say, but I couldn't stop myself from cutting him off thusly, "You know what the squigglies mean?" That had sounded so much smarter in my head. All right. Out of all the little particles that make up my brain, which one of 'em thought it was a good idea to let that come out? Despite the raised eyebrow that Melvin gave me, I attempted to pretend that I was still a respectable villain.

Even if I had said 'squigglies'.

Melvin snorted out a little laugh at the childish word. He turned away from the stove and crossed his arms, now facing me with a small grin. "They aren't 'squigglies'—" You're never gonna let me live that down now, are you? "—they're hieroglyphics, and very well written ones at that. But, like I was trying to say before, you're probably not going to be very happy to know what they say. I'm going to assume that you want to know anyways, correct?" Melvin continued almost immediately after pausing, barely allowing me enough time to give a simple nod.

"…They are a curse. 'He shall be cooked together with the condemned; he shall be miserable and persecuted. The god of chaos declares it to be so.'" Melvin fell silent after repeating to me what the hieroglyphics stated, as if he was wondering if this would affect him. If he'd damned himself by agreeing to by a mentor to me. I could see he did not fear for his life, but was merely pondering who such a curse might be directed towards.

I too couldn't keep my mind from questioning the point of the dark spell. The 'he' in this was so broad, it could mean anyone that I came into contact with—random people that I passed by on the street, for crying out loud! Or was it intended to be for someone much closer to me, like a friend or…maybe even a lover. Ha! That's doubtful. Nevertheless, I wasn't sure what to do.

If it did affect Melvin, then, like it said pretty clearly, he'd be killed in the most malicious way that one could think of. The thought made every process within me stop cold, my whole world becoming quiet and empty like winter. I'd risked getting thrown into prison to find him, and now that I had, I could be the reason for his imminent demise. Was that the reason why the voice had told me it was best to remain alone? Or had this curse been placed to keep me alone?

My perplexing thoughts were interrupted when Melvin's unconcerned, calming voice sounded in my ears, "But that doesn't mean anything. Stuff like that was used to frighten thieves away from things they weren't supposed to have, like riches in tombs. It's nothing more than a bunch of empty words. Mere squigglies," I shot the Egyptian criminal a glare that could kill for mocking me with that same stupid word yet again. I'd been right; he was going to bring that up every chance that he could for the rest of my life.

"…If you think so…" I muttered unsurely as I shook myself from my paralyzed stupor and walked around Melvin, practically having to shove him out of the way so I could get to the cabinets. The steaks were all finished now, and I'd figured that I may as well find a container for them. As I stood up on my toes to reach a plastic bowl large enough to fit all of the meat in it, I glanced over at Melvin. He was happily watching me struggle, showing no sign of wanting to help me and my shortness get to said dish.

I ignored his irritating nature, having no intention of letting him help anyway. Instead of stretching for the plastic, I grabbed the tongs from the stove and used them as an extension of my hand. Grinning at Melvin, I flicked my wrist, aiming to hit him in the head with the light container when it shot out of the cupboard. My plan sort of backfired when it fell rather slowly and he had more than enough time to catch it. A snide smirk on his face, he tossed it to me; I caught my now least favorite bowl with a scowl, trying to pretend that that hadn't just happened.

Wanting to change the subject to something other than how good I was at failing, I decided to bring the spirit I kept hearing up again. With all this new insight to the voice thanks to the dreams and curse, there was a chance it may've slipped up and let a hint at who it was drop. And I was almost certain that it had. "At the end of the curse, you said something about the 'god of chaos'. Do you think that is just part of the curse, or could it be some kind of…you know, a signature?" My eyes came to rest on Melvin, watching him curiously as I used the tongs to put the browned meat into its new home.

"…So, what you mean to ask," Melvin tossed the bowl's cover to me like a Frisbee, which, surprisingly, I caught with reasonable ease. It was sad how happy that little feat made me. "is if the guy you've been hearing in your brain is the same person as who cursed you?" I nodded a 'yeah, basically' to him as I picked up the plastic dish and put it into the refrigerator. I thought it was weird that Melvin knew what my mind wanted to say, but I didn't. I wasn't sure if I should feel insulted or not.

Melvin thought for a moment before giving a confident answer, although it wasn't what I'd been hoping for, "Well, if you want a simple answer, then yes. According to what you've told me, the Egyptian god of chaos—called Set—has been living in your head for a while now." I closed my eyes as the door of the fridge thudded closed. I could almost feel the threads of my soul and psyche being toyed with, torn up and then meshed messily back together again as if it were putty. This all felt like it should be impossible, and yet here I was wedged in the middle of it.

"It's not like that makes a difference, though," Apparently sensing my extreme confusion and apprehension over having no clue of how to deal with having a god constantly watching my thoughts and actions, Melvin attempted to stop me from tearing my hair out. "Yes, an almighty being is stalking you, hoping you'll kill me, and wanting you to kill some other guy. But you're my underling; therefore, you've got nothing to worry about. I fear no god."

Stunned, I snapped around to face him, my eyes glowing with astonishment. But he'd already left the kitchen and had retreated to the living room. I let out a small snicker at the eccentric way he flopped down on the couch, literally leaping up into the air before landing on his back on the cushions. Bright yet dark violet eyes gazed up at the ceiling as he twirled the Millennium Rod around with his fingers.

I wasn't sure if there was ever a person that could even come close to what Melvin was. What he meant to me. Of course, it wasn't a romantic feeling at all, but it was just as strong as one. We bickered and argued often, but when I looked back at all those times, I couldn't help but smile about it. There was something about fighting with him that made it feel more like bonding than actual fighting. It was strange to me, but still…I'd never felt happiness like this before, and it hurt to think of life without him.

Abandoning the professional-looking kitchen, I joined Melvin in the living room, sitting down on the floor with my back propped up against the couch. A contented sigh drifted from me as I rested the back of my head against the muscular Egyptian's side, feeling his ribcage expanding whenever he breathed. It was comforting to have a living soul so close to me. I wasn't sure why such a thing felt so calming, but it did, and I left it at that.

Encouraged by the serene air, I raised my left hand and twisted my fingers this way and that, my eyes locked on a light bulb as I attempted to unscrew it. At first it did nothing but jiggle a tad, but my determination to accomplish this refused task to weaken. I continued to move my fingers in the way that Melvin had instructed me to, flipping them about like he was as he messed with the Millennium Rod. After a couple of minutes of this, the light bulb started to twist and come out of its spot, thus proving that I was getting better at using the variscite. At least when it came to telekinesis.

As if sensing my minute amount of pride and wanting to remind me that I still sucked at operating the powerful green stone, Melvin glanced down at me, poking me with the Millennium Rod lightly as he stated rather blandly, "You're going to need to know a lot more magic if that stuff is ever going to be useful. You know that, right?" Despite the flat line his lips made, his eyes were grinning at me, enjoying the touch of annoyance that could be traced in my face.

I scowled at him fiercely. "I've been practicing as much as I can. And besides, you haven't mentioned much stuff I can attempt to teach myself." Turning away from him, I returned the majority of my attention to looking for something to screw around with. I'd found that it was a good idea to go with something that wouldn't break. Or, at least something that if it did break, Melvin would be the only one capable of restoring it.

He hated it when I did crap like that.

"We need some kind of test dummy for most of that," Melvin replied nonchalantly, his eyes inspecting a tiny speck on the Millennium Rod in a scrutinizing manner. I would almost be willing to say that spot was scared witless of the Egyptian. Which, honestly, wasn't something that was all that surprising. "A living one, too—but preferably not me." He cast me a sharp glance as he flicked the small black dot off of the golden weapon in his fingers, as if he expected me to make some kind of smart-aleck remark.

I tried not to. Instead, I questioned him while trying to get the table in front of me to tilt upwards on the right side, "Why do we need something like that? I'm doing pretty well without having to make a human guinea pig implode." I heard Melvin chuckle behind me, probably having mentally pictured some random man being sucked into himself before suddenly bursting into a thick, red, gooey mess.

A quick mind-check with the variscite confirmed my suspicion.

Despite where his thoughts were currently at, he was still able to talk as if he knew a thing or two. "A lot of the things that the variscite can do look like parlor tricks, but there are plenty more that can be quite deadly, and to be able to do them properly you'll need to know what each and every one of them looks like when used on another living being. You need to know what the correct pain looks like. It's the only way to know if you're doing some of them right."

His face took on a bit more of a grave, serious expression as he explained the preference of not being said test monkey. "And I saw what you did to that cop who caught you trying to nab that ball of string—Kamisama forbid what evil you can do with string—so I don't want to be the recipient of whatever you accidentally do." As if to make his point that much more fervent, Melvin threw the Millennium Rod across the room like a knife, the sharp tip of the handle thudding into the far wall. It stood out perfectly straight from its new perch.

I could easily understand Melvin's lack of a want to be impaled by me—which, knowing me, would probably be intended as a joke but then not quite turn out as a joke. But I still felt the need to at least be a pain a time or two more during this conversation. "First, it was yarn, not string—" Melvin shot me a look that said, 'You're kidding me' before raising his palms up and getting an, 'Oh, my apologies' look on his face. He smacked me roughly over the head, irritated by my need to bother the crap out of him.

Rubbing my now sore ear, I continued, pretending that nothing had happened. "—and second, where are we going to find somebody to use as a variable in our 'experiments'? Are we just going to go out, kidnap the first person we see, and do whatever the hell we want with him from there?" Of course, that sounded like it would work just fine, but it didn't seem like something that Melvin would want to do. Like he'd said before, he liked to have something somewhat elaborate planned out. Even if he didn't seem like the guy to think twice about murdering someone.

A thick silence set in between the two of us, the Egyptian lost to his thoughts once more. I attempted to amuse myself by playing with the variscite, but that even grew tiresome after a few moments more. Sure, it was an incredible weapon that could be used to bring on mass destruction and death, but it wasn't a very good thing to have when you were inexperienced and bored. It didn't do a whole lot for you then.

While looking for something else to occupy myself with, I noticed that one of Melvin's hands was hanging over the side of the couch, twitching every now and then as he thought deeply (it was actually pretty darn freaky). Not knowing what else to do, I took hold of his hand and pulled his arm down closer to me; I began to trace the lines in his palm, finding that it gave me some entertainment to do so. It made me feel like one of those fortune tellers who made stuff up about your future just by pretending to look at your hand for five minutes.

Melvin didn't seem to mind—or notice—my use of his hand. And if he did, then he wasn't showing it in any way. We both knew that I the strangely curious sort and I learned better when I was able to feel things, which was why I was always so touchy and close to him. I felt that it was easier to learn from him that way, for whatever reason. I knew that he'd noticed, but the exotic teenager seemed to know that I didn't mean anything romantic with how I acted. It was just how I was.

Without so much as a warning, Melvin shot into a sitting position, his hand being ripped from between my own in such an uncoordinated manner that he smacked me again. He didn't apologize; that wasn't his thing. But I knew that he hadn't intentionally done it this time. When I looked up at him with confusion scribbled across my face, I saw that he was grinning.

He glanced down at me with a devious, excited glint in his eye, the tiny sparkle matching the smirk that was currently etched across his lips. His voice was like black velvet as he purred demonically, "We're going on a limey hunt!" Despite the intriguing tone that his voice had taken on, I wasn't sure that there was anything more random that could've possibly spurted out of his mouth. For a moment I thought that I just hadn't heard him right.

But I knew I had, and even then I had absolutely no clue as to what the hell he'd just said. As if asking the lunatic to explain would help anything, I raised my eyebrow and repeated exactly what I'd heard: "…We're going on a who-ie what, now?"


I tore down the sidewalk faster than a thief chased by royal guards, swerving and twisting to get through the sea of people that walked briskly in the opposite direction. I paid them little to no mind; I was looking for someone specific, and none of the pedestrians that I passed by were him. Besides, if one was the man I was searching for, Melvin was pretty far behind me, so he'd be able to pick him out of the crowd. Either way, there was no way he could escape our notice.

Unexpectedly feeling the need to interrogate someone, I skidded to a stop, grabbing the first guy that I saw by his jacket and dragging him over to me. Looking him hard in the eye, a vicious snarl on my face as I panted from having sprinted for so long, I barked at him as if he'd have any idea what I was going on about, "Have you seen an albino Brit anywhere around here?" If I said that guy was puzzled, that would be a complete understatement.

The poor man all but had a freaking heart attack. His face turned as red as a strawberry and sweat dripped down from his forehead; he tried his best to stutter out some kind of answer to get me the heck away from him, "I-I-I don't know what y-you're talking ab-bout!" Not knowing what I might do to him after learning that he had no good information for me, the man started on the verge of hyperventilating. But I was already done with him.

Releasing his coat from my fists, I took off down the sidewalk again, nearly crashing into a group of ladies dressed in expensive-looking business clothes. One of them shouted some obscenities after me, but I was too busy wondering about the man I was looking for to care. Melvin had said that the perfect person to test the variscite out on would be the Spirit of the Millennium Ring, granted that we were able to find him. The Egyptian had made it quite clear that said ghoul was a slippery fellow.

From the very moment that Melvin had mentioned the Ring's Spirit, my mind had been lost to daydreams of who he might be. I knew that he opposed Pharaoh like Melvin did, and I'd heard his name before, but I couldn't remember it. But other than that, my thoughts were free to make him whoever they wanted. Currently, I was picturing some guy similar to Duke and his dark, tantalizing beauty. I wasn't certain why my mind was acting this way, but…

A girl could dream, couldn't she?

Despite the fact that I hadn't been paying even one shred of attention to where I was going thanks to my thoughts, most everyone had gotten out of my way in a hurry and I hadn't run into anyone. Most everyone, that is. As I rounded another corner, hoping to find the one I was seeking down a street other than this one, I crashed into someone, my nose smacking against his hard collarbone. I hit him with enough force to fall over backwards; he didn't fall, though, which made me feel very uncoordinated.

I snarled up at the man from down on the ground, my hand tracing my nose to make sure it hadn't been sent back into my skull. "Hey, watch where you're—" The rest of my threat caught in my throat when I locked eyes with the guy I'd run into. For a moment, I thought that I'd met up with Ryou again since we usually did find each other at random times like this, and that was why I'd stopped speaking so harshly. I couldn't talk to Ryou like that.

But this wasn't Ryou.

Dark, irritated, golden brown eyes burned my leafy green ones, singeing them like a forest fire as he glowered down at me. Wild but sleek white hair flowed half way down his back, parts of it sticking out in seemingly random directions; two little wing-like protrusions were nestled like devilish horns atop his head. His pale face and almost black eyes were framed by some of the longer strands of white, making him appear almost like a demon disguised as an angel.

I would've thought that was the truth too, if I hadn't noticed the Millennium Ring resting against his blue-and-white-striped shirt, partially covered by a light green button-up left open. But there it was, shining brilliantly in the afternoon sunlight, every part of it glittering as if having been made by the gods of Egypt themselves. Something told me, however, that the Millennium Items had a more complicated past than that.

As I stared at this extremely aggravated stranger (he was probably just pissed that I'd run into him like I had), I began to feel as if I'd seen this man before. He looked so…familiar, but not because this was practically what Ryou would look like if he became an insane killer or something. It was different, like I'd met this guy before, or at least passed him while on the street. But I knew that the street option was out; I would've stared—remembered—if I'd seen him.

My thoughts were interrupted briskly when Melvin came up behind me, grabbed onto the back of my shirt, and roughly dragged me back up onto my feet. I didn't bother looking back at him; I knew he'd be irritated, so it wasn't worth the effort of tearing my eyes off the snowy-haired man in front of me. His eyes stayed on me even as Melvin began to speak (I could tell by his tone that he didn't like this guy at all—that they knew one another quite well), "You must stop knocking my accomplices on their tushes. It's getting very old, very fast."

"Maybe," My heart pounded in my chest like a gun being fired off every second when I realized that this man had a British accent. This was the one that Melvin had had me running all over town to find. This was Bakura, the Spirit of the Millennium Ring. The golden-eyed albino crossed his arms before his chest as he answered gruffly, clearly hating Melvin as much as Melvin seemed to hate him, "you should get minions that aren't so blind and weak."

All cheer at having found Bakura faded instantaneously at his insult to me, and I no longer cared that we needed someone to use as a test monkey. "Who are you calling weak?" My hands balled into angry fists at my sides, but it didn't make me feel much more powerful. I wasn't sure what the Millennium Ring, let alone Bakura himself, could do, or if my variscite could compare in brutality. Currently, I was doubting that I could even get it to work being this distracted.

Like I'd expected, Bakura seemed unfazed. "Who's asking?" Adrenaline poured into my veins as the realization of that voice being directed at me finally hit. I wasn't sure why two words spoken by those lips and that tongue meant anything more to me than what anyone else's would've, but…he seemed…different compared to others. I wasn't sure if I liked this or not.

I mean, this wasn't a crush or anything—of course it wasn't, why would I even consider that I was freaking out because it was? It was stupid to think like that. Nevertheless, this guy sent my sanity over the edge, sent it spiraling into the dark abyss of never-return-again. And I had no idea why. "None of your business, you—" I was about to snarl out some kind of insult, but Melvin's hand clapped onto my shoulder and I caught my tongue just short of my vile words.

Confusion was the first thing to hit me. I thought I'd been doing what Melvin would've wanted me to: Verbally fighting with someone that he obviously hated viciously. My head spun to project this perplexed mindset to my Egyptian companion, but he wasn't looking at me. His eyes were trained on Bakura, the dark purple orbs becoming almost black as hate and malice filled them to the brim.

"Allow me," He hissed coldly, though the ice was not intended for me, but for the albino that stood boldly before him. It was quite impressive, really, that this Spirit-man held no apparent fear of Melvin. I'd never met anyone who was more than willing to stand up to him like this before. I wasn't sure whether to think he was brave or incredibly idiotic. Or both. "I have more practice hating this wanker than you'll ever comprehend." …That's British for something bad, isn't it?

Bakura smirked at the other's words, laughing to himself as he mockingly taunted the tattooed Egyptian, "Incredible. You're actually right about something for once. The world really is ending." I scowled at the possessor of the Millennium Ring, enraged by his attack on my only companion, but Melvin didn't seem bothered in the least. He'd really been serious when he said that he had a lot of experience with this guy, this...Bakura

"This world is mine, and it'll end when I tell it to. As will your life," The blonde snapped back heatedly, his words coming out as if he believed that they were completely and utterly true. His tone was so convincing that I couldn't help but wonder if such a thing was possible. I mean, so many things that shouldn't be real were—magic, the Egyptian gods, spirits without true bodies, and so many other incredible, inexplicable things.

What was so hard to believe about a man being able to tell the world, 'You're done', and have it listen? I believed that the marks on my arms and shoulders were put there by a god who controlled chaos and evil. I believed that the weapons I'd been given in the form of gloves were magical, and that I could to almost anything that I wanted to with them. I believed that I was friends with a split personality that another acquaintance had formed. Why wouldn't someone be able to destroy the world with his words?

Bakura's velvet but malevolent voice drew me back to the conversation at hand, his sarcastic tone driving a new touch of irritation into my already aggravated soul, "Wonderful," I noticed about then that his eyes had finally left me and were now glaring into the lavender orbs of the foreigner that stood beside me. "Now, get away from me before I decide I am in the mood to kill you." Without so much as a second of hesitation, the white-haired male started forward, pushing past the both of us as he began to leave.

My eyes were drawn to him as he started to walk off, but my gaze didn't go unnoticed. The brown pools framed by silver hair caught mine in a vice grip, refusing to let me look away. I felt a spark of heat course through my body when his shoulder brushed almost tenderly against mine, a tingling sensation filling up my stomach as well. A small, almost unnoticeable shudder trembled through my body at the feeling; I quickly looked away from Bakura as he continued on his way, not once looking back at either Melvin or myself.

The strange shivers and fluttering nausea didn't leave me even after he did. It was as if I'd been injected with some kind of virus from that one little bump of his shoulder, like his skin was poisonous. For all I knew, it could've been. Or, thinking a bit more realistically, it could've been some kind of act that the Millennium Ring could perform. Either way, I knew that I'd never felt this oddly before. I felt like I was going to be sick, like I needed to lie down on the sidewalk until the world around me stopped spinning so violently.

Of course, that was out of the question since Melvin would probably notice if I suddenly collapsed onto the sidewalk after having met Bakura, since that was far too odd to be just a coincidence, and there was no way that he'd ever let me live it down. Half of Domino City would know about the little ordeal before I had time to utter one syllable of protest. So, I had to force myself to keep from tumbling over; however, I couldn't stop from shaking.

Melvin didn't seem to notice my strange reaction to Bakura's agonizingly piercing and intriguing gaze. The only thing he'd come to terms with so far was the fact that the silverette had left without giving either of us a chance to weasel him into our training plans. "…Well, that didn't go the way I'd planned." He muttered to himself as he placed his hands on his hips and scowled at nothing in particular.

My trembling eased away and became a mere tremor in my fingers as I glanced over at Melvin, one eyebrow arched. "You had a plan?" I questioned, my tone coming out both surprised and with a touch of insult to its breath. Then again, that kind of a sound was normal for me whenever I was talking to Melvin. I mean, really…it was Melvin. There was no actual…normal…around him. At all.

"No. Hey, look," The Millennium Item-wielding Egyptian didn't seem to give a crap about my mocking tone, and ignored it completely. Then again, he did that to me a lot—the whole ignore-the-stupid-person thing. Besides, his attention was focused on someone else, and was currently trying to get me to see the importance of the newcomer sitting on the sidewalk about a half-block away by pointing at him like a little kid would at a puppy he just saw. "A hobo."

I glanced in the direction of Melvin's pointing finger, noting the tattered brown coat and the layers upon layers of other clothes that the dirt-covered homeless man was wearing. His eyes were tired; they'd seen a lot of pain and suffering in this world. I couldn't stop myself from wondering how he'd come to be this way, so alone. But that didn't seem to cross Melvin's mind, and I didn't care enough to ponder it for very long.

I made a small gesture with my hand, trying to get Melvin to at least give me a little bit more information about what he was thinking. He had this weird thought in his head, this…theory: He had the strangest feeling that I was able to read his mind like a billboard. Well, I couldn't. "…And? What is so special about this hobo? Does he have a Millennium Item? Or a penny that he stole from you or something?"

He chanced an odd look at me for the penny comment, risking losing sight of where the man might wander off to. But he stayed right where he was, completely unaware of the horrors running through Melvin's sadistic mind. "We need a practice dummy for today, and Plan A didn't work. So, he's going to be our Plan B." He said it as if it was the simplest Math problem in the world, and he couldn't figure out why I wasn't able to understand it like he was. Or as if he were trying to explain why bullets were able to kill people.

"But we didn't even have a Plan A—" I tried desperately to make sense of what was going on in his head as he schemed, but it was all in vain. When you were partnered with Melvin, be it for a Science project or a possible murder, there was really nothing you could do except say, 'Yes, Melvin. Whatever you say' whenever he said something to you. If you attempted to think about it rationally, or at all, you'd only end up losing your mind and becoming just as insane—if not, then more—as he was.

And the world could only handle one Melvin Ishtar.

As he started to walk calmly towards the doomed homeless man, I was attacked by more of his odd brand of 'logic'. "Who needs a Plan A when you have a hobo?" I stared after him with my head cocked slightly to the left as I tried to process his words, my mouth hanging open absentmindedly. I'd had no idea that hobos had infinite power in Melvin's world. …Maybe that's not a real hobo…Maybe he's…like, Hobo Man or something crazy like that—

My wandering thoughts were interrupted by the lavender-eyed blonde yet again. "Well, come along, you little fool." I shook my head to lose all of the thoughts clouding my brain, and saw that Melvin was already half way to the defenseless man, who still hadn't even glanced over at the commotion going on between the two of us. Dark, manipulative eyes stared at me impatiently as Melvin waited for me to come to terms with the fact that he'd started moving again.

He'd already begun the first steps of demonic Plan B.

Without another sound—no protests, no concerns for the other man's well-being, no nothing—I followed Melvin as he lead the both of us over to the man.


My head felt like it was going to pop. I'd been sitting upside-down on the couch for so long—I couldn't even recall the correct amount of time—and it felt like all the blood in my body had pooled in my skull. Every breath I sucked in made it feel worse, like my brain was a balloon and every time I took in more air, all of the precious oxygen went straight into it, only making the close-to-exploding feeling that much worse.

I'd had the same sort of feeling when Melvin had me practicing with that homeless guy, though it had been a tiny bit different. Maybe…it had been a less physical feeling, I think. There really was no other way to describe it, now that I thought about it some more. It was like…like seeing someone that you really liked but couldn't talk to no matter how many times that you tried, no matter how much you wanted to or how many times your friends attempted to start the conversation for you and yet you ended up running away like a headless chicken searching for some duct tape to screw its head back on with.

…Yeah, there was absolutely no way that made sense to describe how it had felt.

I glanced over at Melvin from my spot on the couch, my brain thudding violently despite how simple the movement had been. He was still sitting at the island counter in the kitchen, writing something that he refused to talk to me about. Apparently it was super secretive or something, seeing how he'd written it in hieroglyphics the moment that I had become curious. I couldn't be certain, but I had a strange feeling that he was taking notes about the variscite and just didn't want me to know.

But, whatever he was writing and whatever the reason he didn't want me to be able to read it aside, he was busy, and I had all night left to waste away. I didn't have anything to do around here besides try and make sense of all of Melvin's squiggles and picture-words, but even then I'd probably end up trapped inside some other dimension or the Shadow Realm if I bothered him more than necessary.

Wandering aimlessly around the city it is, then. I rolled to the side and righted myself before getting off the couch. Casting a glance over at the balcony doors, I saw that it was completely black outside, ignoring the light from the streetlights and the bright moon. But the darkness didn't frighten me like it did to many others since I knew all the horrors that it could hide, and I knew that it they were easily destroyed.

"I'm going out. Probably be back in…never mind. I'll wind up here eventually," I called over my shoulder as I headed for the door, pocketing my small flip-open knife as I did. I didn't think that I would actually need it or anything, but it wouldn't hurt anything to have the darn thing along. Besides, I could always use it to entertain myself somehow. Not sure how yet, but…I'd think of something. Eventually.

"If you die," I mentally rolled my eyes at Melvin's 'warning', immediately thinking that there was absolutely no way that anybody living here in Domino City could pose even the tiniest threat to me. Well, aside from Melvin, of course. Or that Bakura guy…but then again, he didn't seem like the type to go hunting after some random girl that he met earlier that day, so I probably didn't have anything to worry about there. "I'm gonna be pissed. Just saying."

I made a small 'mmhmm' noise at him before leaving the apartment (as soon as I closed the door behind me, I realized that I didn't have my key and swore at myself for being so forgetful). But, instead of wasting more time by retrieving it, I shrugged it off and continued on my way down the hall, down the steps, and out into the crisp night air. There was a touch of a breeze, but other than that, the night was silent and calm.

As I walked down the street, accompanied only by the sound of my feet padding on the sidewalk and my shadow mimicking my movements from afar, I thought blankly of things that should've been bothering me a lot more than what they actually were. Like the variscite and my lack of knowledge regarding it. Melvin seemed more than intrigued, and I was too, but it felt like I was…stuck with it. I didn't like feeling forced into something, let alone destined to be trapped with it forever.

And apparently I was stuck with this magical rock because of some ancient Egyptian god—Set, I think it was—who was caught in my mind like an animal in a zoo. I could hear his thoughts in my head sometimes, but they were spoken in a language that I'd never heard uttered before (kind of like Melvin and his hieroglyphs) and I couldn't understand anything other than the fact that sometimes he was somewhat content, and at others he was more…vexed, I guess. I didn't know if there was a reason for the conflicting emotions, but I didn't know how to ask about it even if I wanted to.

I wasn't sure how he could've gotten into my mind in the first place, though. I mean, it wasn't like I'd ever been to Egypt (although, for all I knew I could've been. Melvin reasoned that I couldn't remember anything about my life beyond the past three days was because I'd gotten a sudden, unexplainable case of amnesia. Which was a bit far-fetched, but what else were we supposed to think?) to have had any contact with a relic. Well, aside from the Millennium Items. But they had spirits of people in them, not the souls of gods.

And while I was on the subject of stupid crap that I didn't understand/couldn't remember coming to be, how had I gotten those strange hieroglyphics on my arms and shoulders? They looked and felt like tattoos, but they seemed so…apart from my body, like it truly threatened anyone who came near me. If it was a tattoo I'd gotten, why would I have made the words spell out a curse unless I hadn't had any clue what it actually said? But if it wasn't…

Then would the curse actually work?

That's stupid superstition and you know it, Kushoku. Just drop it. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself to change the subject of my thoughts, I couldn't leave that question unattended. If it didn't do anything, then I was wasting my time thinking about it right now, yes. But if it was a real curse and there was a real violence buried deep within the ancient words, then what would become of the people that I came into contact with? What would become of me?

I wasn't sure what to think of it, but I also didn't want to bring it up around Melvin either for a reason I wasn't completely sure of. It was plain to see that I didn't mind bothering the crap out of him—hell, it was one of my favorite pass-times—but I was starting to notice that he would get very quiet and think for long periods of time when I asked certain question or mentioned certain things, like anything about Set or the other gods, or what he thought about my 'amnesia'. His silence frightened me little, but it was not knowing what was going on behind the quiet that made me a little uneasy.

Nevertheless, that wasn't the only reason why I didn't want to bring it up. Melvin already thought that I was prone to fretting about unimportant things, and I didn't want this to end up doing nothing but adding to his list of 'Stupid Things You Think Too Much About'. And that was already starting to become a pretty long list.

I sighed exasperatedly; I hated how I couldn't get certain things out of my head. Like that stupid Bakura guy…

Oh. Right. Him.

I snarled at my own thoughts, pissed that my search for an escape from one obsession had only lead me into one that was a bit…I don't know, weirder? Not that anything about me was even relatively normal, but this was going pretty far even for someone like me. I mean, I had absolutely no idea who this guy was except for the fact that I knew his name and that he was the spirit that had been trapped in the Millennium Ring—and he was the guy who shoved me out of Ryou's head—and yet I got such a strange, familiar vibe from him. And not because he looked a little like Ryou.

It was as if I'd met him before, heard that sinister sarcasm at some other point in my life. Perhaps that was proof of the amnesia theory. But then again, if I really had met him before and knew who he was, then he should know me as well and wouldn't have needed an introduction. But…he'd looked at me with the same confused look of 'Should I know who this person is?', so was there a chance that we had met before—

My thoughts were interrupted by a couple of deep whistles coming from the parking lot I was almost past. Even though it was against my better judgement, I cast a glance back in the direction of the obscene noise, and spotted a group of shady men leaning against the hood of a dull red car. They were all smirking at me; one of them waved, and I had a feeling that he was the one who'd whistled.

Irritated at myself for having even acknowledged their presence, I turned away from their daunting grins and continued on my way, pretending that they hadn't even been there. It was foolish of me to have let them break into my thoughts like they had; my processing all of these crudely organized memories should be one of my top priorities, not some gangster-wannabes trying to—

"Hey, hey, hey, little lady!" A curt yet gentle and smooth voice snapped out of the darkness behind me. I tried to ignore it at first and kept walking, pretending that I hadn't heard him shout, but my attempts were thwarted when two other men came running out from an alley a few yards ahead of me. I stopped short of smacking into them, astonished that they'd been fast enough to cut me off. Unless they'd been waiting for a signal from those other guys… "What's the big rush, missy?"

I turned slowly around to face the tall, tanned man that was speaking to me, a stupid, I'm-so-dang-awesome grin resting suavely upon his lips. But I wasn't impressed. A menacing snarl was slapped onto my face, and the knife in my pocket suddenly weighed a couple hundred pounds. Accepting the temptation that it offered me, I stole it from my jeans and closed the short distance between me and the speaker, slamming the sharp blade into his upper thigh.

After relishing his shriek of both pain and surprise for a brief moment, I allowed the blade's handle to slip from my hand in favor of making a getaway dash. However, I lingered a second too long, and that gave the two men behind me enough time to recover from the astonishment of my sneak attack, enabling one of them to reach out and snatch me in a headlock before I could escape. I cussed quietly, making the other man laugh.

While the man that I'd just injured slinked back to try and remove the projectile from his upper leg, another with blinding platinum blonde hair came up out of the dark with a glimmering smirk on his face. And a shiny little blade of his own, though his looked much longer and sharper than mine had been. This…I've got a bad feeling about this…

The blonde must've noticed me staring at his knife; he followed my gaze down to it before grinning back up at me. "So, you're a fan of knives, are you?" I offered him a mere growl as a reply, not wanting to waste my breath mincing small talk when even a moron could assume what was running through his mind. Now would be a great time to actually understand how this freakin' variscite crap works. Or maybe that voice—Set—could give me a hand. "Don't worry, we'll have plenty of time to play. That is, if you cooperate with us…" A dark chuckle tore through the air around me.

The man with the blade started to come toward me again, the sharp metal glinting threateningly in the moonlight as he approached. My mind hadn't quite pieced together exactly what might happen to me if I didn't get away soon, but it had gotten about as far as 'this is really, really bad' before I'd switched into escape-right-freaking-now mode.

I struggled against the grip of the man behind me, but he was much stronger than I was, and his grip was starting to choke me. If only I knew how this stupid variscite worked! Dissatisfied to simply give up without trying everything that I could, I closed my eyes and focused on the variscite, focused on delivering pain upon these evil men, focused on—

A loud snap sounded from behind me, intertwined with a cry of pain as the muscular man holding me suddenly released me and dropped onto the ground, his neck twisted in a way I knew for a fact it shouldn't be able to. It was completely silent all around as the creeps and I tried to process what the hell had just happened. My confusion was absolved when a gleam of mystical gold caught my eye in the shadows.

Whoever it was, they had a Millennium Item.

"Hey!" The dark-eyed man who'd just threatened me a few moments before seemed to be one of the most shocked out of all of us. His face had gone completely pale and I could almost see goosebumps of fear raising up on his skin. I wasn't surprised, though, since the dead man behind me looked like he'd been mangled by a demon. "Who the hell—"

He never got his full question out; he dropped to the ground before he could. A shocked, horrified gasp came from someone, but I wasn't entirely sure who. I knew that it wasn't me—I'd stopped breathing altogether when that first man had fell to the pavement. I could feel my heart pounding like a drummer with a sugar rush in my chest, something that I hadn't noticed it doing before. I didn't remember being this frightened by these men, but it was hard to argue with the such physical evidence.

When it came to the bodies now laying in front of and behind me, however, there was next to no indication on how they'd been wounded, especially when no one had seen the perpetrator. That right there was apparently too freaky for the guys who'd just tried to grab me. Most of them took off running in different directions, a few screaming in terror and a few too stunned by the experience to make any noise at all. Before I had really even figured out what was going on, I was alone again.

Well, not entirely.

"You're lucky I'm feeling a tad bit gracious tonight," Shock and a twinge of apprehension struck me like a bat to the head at the sound of such a familiar yet strange voice. I spun around despite how much I didn't want to have any kind of confrontation with…him. And yet…I couldn't bring myself to really want to leave without at least seeing his face.

Bakura came up out of the shadows like a glorious serpent from its hole, his walnut-brown eyes gleaming like polished metal in the valiant moonlight. His silver hair seemed to glow as said light did, the same shimmer and shine wafting through it like the ripples of a previously-stagnant pond. But there was a fearsome air to him, a breath of this…this…confidence that made me feel…insignificant. Like he was a god trapped in human form, though the reality was much closer to a simple spirit bound to the Millennium Ring.

He approached me without any kind of caution, a threatening yet somehow charming grin on his lips. I assumed it was because of the way that I was staring at him as if he'd just told me that his tongue was made of gold and licorice. When he finally came to a stop, he was about a yard or two away from me; I had the urge to take a few steps back myself, but I figured that that might be a sign of fear or weakness, neither of which I wanted to show in Bakura's presence.

I didn't understand why I felt so strangely around Bakura, though. He was pretty, I did have to admit that, but…but that was it. I didn't know who he was aside from the fact that he was a spirit I had somehow given a physical body, had once been stuck in the Millennium Ring and had had to use Ryou Bakura's body as a host form, and for whatever reason…I felt like I knew him. And the whole thing with how he'd probably saved my life only moments ago.

I gulped once, my throat dry for no particular reason that I knew of, before muttering out some sort of a reply, "…I…I guess that depends on what you mean by 'lucky'," I cursed myself mentally; my voice was nowhere near as strong or resilient as Bakura's British-accented tone had been. A light pink coasted onto my cheeks at the indignity of being thought of as skittish—and all because of this spirit! "How do I know that you're any different from those other men, anyways?" I already had a bit of a hunch that he was nothing like them, but I was a little interested in knowing how Bakura might answer.

He looked at me for a moment, leaning forward absentmindedly as he appeared to inspect my face. Those piercing brown orbs seemed to scorch my skin, burn my gaze and meld it to his as he stared down at me (he was quite a bit taller; I came up a little past his chin), staring as if he were trying to piece together some sort of puzzle in his mind. Perhaps the same one that he'd been so fixated upon this earlier today.

"I don't waste my time stalking little girls," He stalked around me like a lioness, his eyes holding mine as long as they could, though I followed his movements with my gaze as if he had some kind of hold on my mind. "I have more pressing matters to attend to, and I don't plan on spending much more of my time on you—" He paused; I could sense his mind racing as he thought. "What was your name again?"

I blinked in surprise as he came back around on my left, brown orbs yet again dancing with emerald. I'd thought for a moment that this was some kind of mockery to make me think that he didn't even think I was worth remembering, but then I realized that he'd actually wanted to know my name. For whatever reason. "…It's…I'm Kushoku…" I hesitated for a moment, really and truly wanting to ask one of my questions, though I feared what he might remark regarding them.

In the end, I sent my anxiety packing and inquired softly, tentatively, "…Have we met before today? You seem…I feel like I should know you a lot better than what I do." I could feel my heart pounding and pounding and pounding within me, climbing its way up to nestle in my throat like a baby penguin would cuddle its parent's feet. However, this was a lot less cute and a lot more aggravating.

The silverette stared at me for a long moment and stopped pacing around me. From his spot in front of my right side, Bakura searched my face a bit more critically, apparently having had the same wonderings as I had. He inspected me for a minute or two before shrugging, crossing his arms over his chest and uncaringly stating, "I don't remember you. You're probably confusing me with Ryou, like most people do."

I nodded at his answer, knowing that it made sense, but still not wanting to believe that it was really that simple. I knew what Ryou looked like, and that was not the face that I saw in Bakura's, the mysterious glint in his eyes that I knew I should recall. But my mind refused to cooperate with me, and I saw no point in chasing after answers with a man who would clearly rather take off right now and leave me in the dark rather than hear one of my 'theories'.

However, somehow, I was wrong about one of those assumptions.

"If you're done with your game of 'Ask Bakura the Strangest Questions Possible', we should go," Bakura breezed past me and started back in the direction of where the apartment was. How…how did he know that we got that place? He couldn't have been following us if he manifested a day or two ago… Misreading my confusion, Bakura gestured down the street. "You think my little double-homicide is going to keep those fools away for very long? I'm walking you back so I don't have to waste my night chasing down delinquents." And with that, he continued down the street.

Not knowing what else to do, I reluctantly ran to catch up with him, though I left a great deal of space between the two of us when I arrived at his side. It felt so…weird to have someone who was practically a stranger walk you back home, especially when he didn't seem to find anything odd about the situation whatsoever. The only thing Bakura seemed concerned about was how fast we walked and how soon he got rid of me.

But I wasn't done with my question game yet, so I took advantage of the quiet and asked, although there was a touch of reluctance to speak again notable in my tone, "Why…why did you help me back there? We aren't friends—I'm in a life-long deal with a guy that you hate, so that's not great buddy-material—and even if that wasn't part of it, we only met today! Why did you kill those men to save me?"

Bakura was quiet for a moment, his eyes never once glancing over at me as he pondered my questions, mulling it over in his mind for quite a while. Long enough, actually, that I'd begun to wonder if he even planned to answer me at all. However, after a few minutes went by in steady silence, he replied rather briskly, "I did the same basic thing for Ryou when he was my host. It was a spur of the moment sort of thing. Nothing more, and nothing less.

"Anything else that you want to ask me?" The way that he snapped out the inquiry told me that this was more of a threat. Something along the lines of, 'Ask me one more question and I'll perform the most unimaginable torture on you that not even the best scientists in the world wouldn't be able to tell that your leftovers are even human'. I shook my head, repressing a sudden smile; for whatever reason, I'd found the threat more funny than harmful.

We walked the rest of the way back to the apartment building in silence, though it was a reasonably comfortable one, and not the awkward sort of thing that you'd expect. It was as if we were both content enough with one another's presence that we didn't need to disturb the air with formal chatter and clichéd small-talk. The quiet, serene feel of the night was much better than any conversation could've ever hoped to be.

Bakura didn't follow me into the lobby when I turned and walked through the doorway; instead, he continued on down the sidewalk without so much as a word of 'fare well'. Though, the fact that we weren't actual friends didn't really entitle him to anything. Especially not saving me from a gang of hormone-crazed psychos.

I didn't completely buy the silverette's excuse, though it could have something to do with part of the conspiracy, though it couldn't have been all of it. It was easier to tell me apart from Ryou than it was to tell the sun apart from the moon, unless it was just the fact that someone had been in trouble and saving the person had been the first reaction to cross his mind since it was normally what he had to do when he'd been in their minds.

Sighing exasperatedly, I plunked my feet up towards the apartment, taking the stairs even slower than an old lady would have. For some reason, I wanted to rush back down the steps, through the lobby, and find Bakura again so I could try and get him to be sure that he didn't remember ever meeting someone that even looked the littlest bit like me.

I wasn't sure why that bothered me as much as it did, but it did. I reasoned that it was such a plague on my mind because there was a chance that those hidden memories of Bakura/someone that Bakura knew very well would unlock some part of my memory, possibly rid me of this amnesia-like sensation. The thought made me excited, and I rushed up the rest of the stairs, now filled with even more energy than I had been when I'd left.

But I still didn't have my keys.


I hope you guys liked the chapter :) Please let me know what you guys think of the story so far-crits are welcome, but try to be reasonable with them and not flame since that doesn't help anybody out. Nevertheless, it's 12:23 AM here, so good night/morning and thank you for reading!