Previously, on Stars From the Gutter...

Well, there's very little in the last chapter that might be relevant to this chapter. Largely because the previous chapter was composed entirely of PIRATES. Nonetheless, summary. So, um, the thieves decide to be pirates. And they go pirating on an airship full of rich, obnoxious OCs. Amidst the piracy, Bakura tells a sweet little totally-not-foreshadowing fairy tale to the children. And then they threaten the entire family for their money. After some minor mishaps, they make their way back to the Diabound with an impressive array of valuables, and an even more impressive array of bloodstains. Ryou, in the meantime, has been exploring the ship; amongst his meanderings, he has identified two, mysterious, shiny-shiny golden necklaces. But no time to dwell on the discovery, for the thieves return, thoroughly and inexplicably drunk. After a totally deep discussion with Marik, Ryou leaves the two in a stupor on the chaise longue. At which point, we ask people in England to please save us from this madness, and they are happy to comply...

xXx

It is, Honda decides, easier than he would have thought. To kill a king, that is.

His king's chamber is in the west of the palace. It is large and airy, with a soft yellow carpet and heavily embroidered curtains that would rustle if he were to make the mistake of standing anywhere near them. Yes: easy. Not a single member of staff watched him slip past, and the door opened with nary a creak after he picked the lock – which was not, he found, a model fit for royalty.

Standing over the prone body of the slumbering king is the easiest thing in the world.

Watching his eyelids flicker with traces of the dreams enacted behind them is perfectly simple.

So why then, Honda wonders, is it so very difficult for him to bring his damned kitchen knife down on the boy king's neck? Honda is not overly patriotic: no more so than any other petty thug on London's streets. And yet, he has the niggling suspicion that it is not the 'king' part of his monarch's title that he has trouble overcoming, but rather the 'boy'.

He will count to three, and then he will bring the blade down. Or perhaps not, for he reaches three with little to no change in general demeanour. He will think of the reward, and then he will bring the blade down. But what is gold, compared to the eternal damnation of a bloodstained conscious? No, he will have to pretend that it is not a person lying helpless under the silken sheets, and then he will bring the blade down.

"Why… who… What are you doing?" King Yugi is awake, eyes wide and desperate, fingers splayed and clawing at the blankets. He is pale in the chink of moonlight that the gap in the curtains provides, and paler still from terror, and inexpressibly human – nothing like the stern figurehead of Hond's imagination.

The blade shakes in his hands until the tremors are visible, and Honda wills them to please stop, feeling strangely embarrassed at his own ineptitude in front of one who is, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Then he harshly smothers the king's mouth with one shaking palm, pressing him down with the other, because the merest hint of a whisper might give him away.

To his surprise, King Yugi squirms. He rolls and kicks and bites at Honda, who reels back in shock and horror at the sheer, stubborn will to live. Blue eyes, previously large and childish, narrow, and the king, just out of reach, looks at Honda with the expression of one betrayed. "You tried to kill me!"

Shut up, Honda wants to say, and it takes him a moment to realise that he is allowed to do so – now that he has attempted to kill a king, mild acts of treason have less of an impact. He is irredeemable. "If you don't shut up, I will kill you."

Again, the earnest eyes and furrowed forehead reveal an odd hint of confusion at this treachery. King Yugi is obviously astounded that anyone would want to hurt him, and Honda could laugh at the whole situation. A useless assassin for a powerless child king. Perhaps he was the right man for the job after all.

"Why?" asks the king, enunciating the syllable very carefully, with the 'h' before the 'w'.

"Because I damn well want to," says Honda, and feels a little better. After all, he is the one with the knife.

"But… how will you get away with it?" The question is voiced with sincere curiosity.

"No one will ever know it was me."

For a time, King Yugi considers this reply, and he does not break eye contact for a second. Honda notices shapes in his peripheral vision, strewn across the floor. Strange, elaborate boards; animals; cards: toys. He wishes that he had not looked.

"You haven't killed me yet," says Yugi (Honda has ceased to think of him as anything as impersonal as 'king'), as though imploring him to finish the job, for his own sake at the very least.

"Are kings supposed to talk like that?" Honda evades the question. If he can buy himself a little time, he might be able to go through with this.

"No," answers Yugi, wincing. "I don't speak properly. And I really hate giving speeches. And I think most of the balls I've been to are boring." He smiles, confidingly. "I like games, though."

It all seems a rush of unwanted information, and most of it passes over Honda's head and out the crack beneath the door, saturated with lamplight from the corridor beyond. He can do little but answer in kind, though it seems inappropriate and awkward. "I'm a terrible assassin. I should have killed you by now. I've never killed anyone in my life. I was picked for the job by mistake, I think." This admission just seems to flow; he makes no conscious decision to reveal his dilemma – merely he opens his mouth, and there it is; the information presents itself with unsettling ease.

Yugi nods, as if this is the most interesting thing he has ever heard. "Maybe you should stop being an assassin." He cringes, as though he has made a terrible faux pas. "Only if you want to, though."

"Sure," says Honda, trying very hard not to think about what will happen to him when he is inevitably caught in Yugi's bedroom with a kitchen knife in hand. Now is the time to act. "And what would I do instead?"

"Well," muses Yugi, "you could work in my soup kitchen."

"Anything but that."

"Then you could be… my personal guard! I have one, but I could do with another." The sheer guilelessness of the remark is startling.

"And if I was?" asks Honda, responding with none of Yugi's hope or cheer. "I work for… a gang. I doubt they would be happy with me. Neither would my employer, for that matter."

"I would protect you!" Yugi cries, as though it is the most obvious answer in all the world. As though Honda is his oldest, most intimate friend, and Yugi is a master in the way of armed combat.

As though dreams flicker easily into reality with none of the muddle or disarray of reason obscuring their crystalline clarity.

Honda settles onto the corner of the bed, and realises with a sudden rush of vertigo that if he does not accept the offer, he has no future at all. He is as dead as Yugi was (before Honda realised that he was not). "Yes?" Yugi prompts, and Honda considers that the boy king is very close to his own age, and probably no more a boy than he is. About as well-versed in killing, at any rate.

"Yes," concedes Honda, and is promptly flashed the brightest grin that he has ever seen.

"I suppose I should inform someone that you are here, then," says Yugi, suddenly more formal. "If I do not, they might burst in and assume that you were here to murder me." The way he says it, it sounds for all the world as though the assumption would be false – and, for that matter, most unjust. Unbelievable.

"What will they think of the knife?" Honda asks purely out of curiosity. He suddenly feels very, very tired.

"They won't think anything, if I tell them not to," Yugi answers blithely.

"Ah," says Honda, and it is the last thing that he says for a while, as Yugi opens the door and shouts down the corridor, and servants bustle in from all directions. He is silent throughout Yugi's hurried explanation of where he is to be taken, though that is largely because he is too busy re-evaluating his entire life to be able to concentrate, and it would probably be incoherent if he made the effort to respond.

The rest passes in a blur. He is whisked down corridors that he never knew existed, past startled glances and widened, sleepy eyes, Yugi attempting to follow all the while, waving away any attempts to put him back to bed or, for that matter, to call for guards. Honda allows himself to be dragged, only feeling a twinge of apprehension when someone suggests waking the Regent; Yugi responds with regal certainty that it can wait until morning.

And finally, before anything can make sense, he is pushed into a warm bed, softer than any he has experienced aside from Yugi's. Though he spends a while staring at the wall, waiting for the entire beautiful illusion to dissolve, after a time he realises that, in fact, it will not, and so it does not take long for him to sink into the welcoming arms of sleep.

xXx

Morning approaches with all the relentlessness of an overenthusiastic German Shepherd; Ryou's room brightens, and the contours of furniture become distinct. Light is cast on the mismatched stack of wooden crates, open-topped and spilling over with numerous chalices, powders and crystal goblets – no doubt relics of Marik's life as an alchemist, perpetually unpacked and quietly mouldering in storage space. (Ryou imagines that one day he may even pluck up the courage to explore their contents; for now they seem far too foreboding to investigate.)

The shadows are expelled from wooden, worm-ridden bookshelves, all nailed slightly askew, where thick, ponderous manuscripts squat beside gaudy Albian penny-dreadfuls (all one and the same and indistinguishable in their illegibility to Ryou.) The ship judders mildly, and dust is dislodged from various corners, rising in fine, grey plumes only to settle once more, relocated to new crannies.

Gradually, sounds temporarily blanked seep back into Ryou's consciousness: the insistent creak of neglected hinges; the occasional burst of scraping turbulence; the ubiquitous, low, throbbing hum of the engine. The Diaboundseems alive: organic and irritable. Further sleep becomes an impossibility once noise re-establishes its presence.

Accordingly, Ryou brushes off his blankets, slips on a purple, silk-lined dressing gown borrowed from Marik, and stumbles across the ship in the direction of the kitchen door, in faint hope that the thieves will have woken. A cursory glance at the cuckoo clock in the living room reveals that this hope is hardly unreasonable: it is 11:56am; perilously close to what might be deemed lunchtime.

(Marik and Bakura are nothing if not punctilious in their observance of mealtimes; for instance, lunch is to occur no earlier than 12:00 and no later than 1:30. If earlier, Bakura will complain of lack of appetite; if later, Marik begins gnawing at the edges of the furniture. Thus, a happy medium.)

Still, most likely they are recovering from the ill effects of whatever alcoholic substance they miraculously managed to obtain on board the ship they victimised and looted. A quick trip back down the hallway indicates that, yes, the door to their room is indeed firmly closed. Ryou shrugs to himself. So he must be self-sufficient. So what? He will manage.

Padding on the silent balls of his feet, he braves the kitchen.

Behind the door, the table sits adorned with a lavish spread of colourful food, all displayed in sparkling, cut-glass bowls, garnished with sprigs of unrecognisable herbs, and framed with elegant cutlery that Ryou strongly suspects to be newly acquired. At the outskirts of this splash of banquet lie the thieves: Bakura slumped in an odd, glass-pitted chair, head clasped protectively in his hands; Marik stood bouncing on his heels at the side of a tall bowl of fruit - bright and anticipant. Light streams in from the window lattice, warming the room with a delicacy that almost feels like welcome.

"Now that's just unfair," groans Bakura through his fingers. "I wake up to a throbbing, screaming headache – like a lecture from some virtuous angel – and the wretch gets to sleep in longer than either of us?" He turns vaguely to Marik, seemingly appealing to his sense of justice.

"I... thought you were still asleep," murmurs Ryou, nonplussed.

Bakura flinches theatrically at the noise. Marik surreptitiously shakes his head. "The rustle of the bedclothes was disturbing him," he explains, in the softest of tones.

Bakura emits a pained sort of whining sound.

"So!" says Marik, breezily. "Breakfast?"

Ryou takes a tentative seat.

"Take as much as possible," says Marik, ladling generous heaps of fruit and honey into his own bowl. "We got all of this from the other ship last night, but Bakura refuses to eat anything – "

"'T'd poison me..."

"So it's just the two of us, and a whole mountain of luxuries. Look at this, demon child. Strawberries!" He proffers a few, large and crimson. "Ah, the joys of being able to afford anything by virtue of never paying!" he pronounces; a playful scattering of quasi-philosophy.

Ryou eyes the food. "I don't recognise most of this," he says, dubiously.

"I know," says Marik, with relish, skewering a chunk of cantaloupe. "Isn't it great? Gods, the rich subsist on an alien diet alongside everything else." He nibbles daintily at the melon.

"And what are we, if not rich?" drawls Bakura, painstakingly. Then winces, massaging his temples.

"We're not anything at all," says Marik, insistently. "We stand outside all definition or category. A non-law unto ourselves."

"Tch. It's too early for your self-delusion, brat," says Bakura, decisively. "I can barely stomach that when awake, fed and sober, let alone drowsy, nauseous and hung over."

Marik does not seem offended by this expostulation, merely good-naturedly resigned. His only comment is: "Heh. That almost rhymed." The two exchange sharp, playful glances. Bakura then reclines once more, eyes firmly lidded, arms tucked behind his neck as a makeshift pillow.

Amidst all this, Ryou is struggling to locate any food with which he is familiar, being somewhat distrustful of the rest. Cautiously, he picks at a tureen of grapes. Marik, noticing his reluctance, sidles over with a plate of green fruit. "Kiwi, demon child," he says, holding it aloft for Ryou's inspection. "Not poisonous or harmful in any way, I promise. Actually quite delicious."

Ryou hesitates. Not due to any concerns regarding the food itself; more owing to his residual traces of moral integrity. True, he has accepted the hospitality of thieves; nonetheless, he cannot say he feels comfortable eating food so recently stolen. Most likely it is contradictory and hypocritical, but it entails a level of complicity he is not certain he wishes to take on. Here seems to be an area of crossroads – accepting the spoils of piracy would incriminate him past the point of no return. The pick-pocketing lessons could easily be dismissed as sport; here, he is bidden to comply directly. A silly scruple – but troubling nonetheless.

"I'm not lying," says Marik, with a breath of laughter. "Here." Delicately, he picks up a slice and brings it to Ryou's lips.

Recoiling indignantly, Ryou squeaks: "I'm not a child; I don't need to be hand-fed!" He brushes Marik's arm away, with some force. Marik seems to find this entire process highly amusing, and chuckles as he ducks out of reach.

Bakura, peering through half-lidded eyes, gives them a sardonic sidelong glance. "Play nicely, you two," he mutters.

A little sullenly, Ryou spears another piece of kiwi fruit on a silver (and definitely new) fork. He takes a defiant bite. So be it. From now on, he shall be a criminal – rich, amoral and free.

Later on, Marik occupies the chaise-longue in the living room, sprawled lengthways, heavy novel in one hand; gold paper knife in the other, ready to separate the pages. He is halfway through, and deeply immersed – so much so that, rather than pushing him out of the way to take a place on his favourite seat, Bakura simply grunts and falls back into a nearby armchair. Ryou takes a risk and sits close, propping himself against the leg of the chair. He is fascinated by this man, who is such a creature of contradiction, alternately teasing and aloof, and cannot help but feel the urge to puzzle him out. His headache seems to have receded, at any rate, judging by the gradual reduction in bitter complaints, so now might be a perfect opportunity to learn. Peering up at Bakura, he notes that he has prompted a smirk, but no outward sign of contempt; Ryou is safe from scorn for the moment.

But not from light raillery, it seems. "Still in your dressing gown, wretch? Our resident aesthete would despair, were he not buried in Dostoevsky's latest." A wry nod in Marik's direction. "As it is, you're safe, but sloppy."

Ryou shrugs. "This is much finer than anything I ever wore before meeting the two of you," he argues.

"The colour suits him!" Marik chips in offhandedly from the left, before returning to his book.

Bakura sighs, gustily. "Outnumbered, then, am I? This had better not be a sign of things to come."

Marik laughs appreciatively, without looking up.

Dryly, Bakura raises an eyebrow: and now I am worried. Then, unfazed, he extracts a dog-eared pack of cards from the top pocket of his Albian dress-coat.

"I am not playing solitaire with you again," says Ryou, firmly. "I won't fall for it twice; there's no way at all that can be a two player game. And you were cheating, anyway."

Bakura's face is suddenly both dark and subtly dangerous. "How about fifty two card pickup?" he suggests, silkily, meditatively thumbing the deck.

"I'm not falling for that one again, either!" insists Ryou, heatedly.

Bakura chuckles. "All right. How about I show you a trick, instead?"

"That would be preferable," says Ryou, with dignity.

"Then watch." He takes the card deck in one hand, and shuffles it mid-air: a line of cards flies from hand to hand in one continuous stream.

("Show-off," says Marik, still not looking up.)

Ryou stares, entranced. "Teach me."

"How optimistic. Given your uncanny prowess and speed at learning how to steal a wallet, I do wonder if it's completely warranted."

Ryou registers that he is being casually insulted, but brushes it aside with impressive sangfroid. "Teach me."

"Because, you see," continues Bakura, as though there had been no interruption, "such a skill requires months – perhaps years – of training. It is an ability granted only to the most adept. Some of the more ignorant may call it petty sleight of hand; rest assured it is more than that. In learning tricks such as these – " again, he repeats the mid-air shuffling "- you unlock the secret to numerous forms of deception, all dependent upon meticulous craft and virtually superhuman control. Truly, it is an art – "

Here, he is interrupted by Marik. "All it takes is a special flick of the wrist, Ryou; you can pick it up in about an hour."

Bakura shoots him a withering look.

"What?" says Marik, mischievously. "You were distracting me from reading. I can barely handle your speeches when working, alert and interested, let alone relaxed, tired and apathetic."

'Withering' swiftly modulates to 'murderous'. Marik returns once more to his book, with a broad grin.

Ryou feels that things have drifted a little too far off topic. He decides to take up the responsibility of steering the conversation back on track; a reasonably less formidable task than steering the Diaboundcorrectly on course, at any rate. "Teach me," he implores, doggedly.

"All right, wretch," says Bakura – although how he manages to force the words through the fortress of his steadfastly gritted teeth, Ryou will never know. "I'll teach you."

The rest of the day is spent in almost somnambulistic content, as Ryou struggles dutifully with the cards, Bakura titters lazily from his imperious seat at the armchair, and Marik darts the occasional, well-aimed one-liner at the proceedings, before returning to his happy intellectual stupor. The ship ploughs along with cheerful, asymmetrical judders, and somewhere in the distant swathes of cloud lingers a recently plundered dirigible on its subdued, shamefaced plod to England, and dinner is served promptly at 6:00, containing all manner of delicacies which even Bakura does not refuse to eat – and Ryou realises exactly how quickly a strange, newly-established routine may become custom.

Amazing how quickly he has grown in fondness for this godless, lawless, tactless (albeit not entirely heartless) den of thieves. Circumstance drove him to this situation – but he remains where he is by his own choice. (Admittedly, they are airborne, thus escape is impossible – nonetheless.)

And so, with no small amount of inevitability, much like the cuckoo clock that chimes throatily at every hour, the stacks of unsorted books that cling to the edges of the living room, or the central chaise-longue that appears to be Marik and Bakura's pride and joy – he becomes a permanent fixture.

They are adamant to shape him into the vision they seem to have in mind: chipping with precise motion and sturdy hand; a polish here; some smoothing there. Ryou tolerates it with good humour. They whittle along the edges of his character, his poise, his bearing, adding embellishments alongside. Scrupulously, they alter him; he feels like an ivory statue, half-finished.

And they never seem to grow bored of it. Marik, whom Ryou would grace with the attention of a small mollusc on a generous day, is now teaching him how to read.

And, oh, it is complex.

Ryou has come to the conclusion that the written word is heavily overrated. Nothing is worth pouring painstakingly over intricate, meaningless hieroglyphs until they betray some semblance of pattern – not given the backache this ineluctably entails. And the Albion language – frankly, it is illogical, ugly and misshapen – no matter what Marik spouts about the beauty of its cadences, or the flexibility of its prose.

Nonetheless, it becomes pitifully clear that Marik craves the intellectual company of one who, unlike Bakura, will actually engage in earnest debate, rather than infuriatingly adopt a perverse position calculated to irritate. Ryou recognises that he is being moulded into a political and philosophical sparring partner, and he does his best to cooperate. When he is perilously close to giving in, Marik will read him an extract from one of his favourite books, voice reverent and sonorous, and they will discuss it at length. Ryou will be reminded of the arcane intricacies trailing the corners of his mind that he longs to clasp, soften and smooth into perfect words – and, yes, he will remember why the effort is, after all, worthwhile.

Marik is a terribly impatient teacher. Bakura – when he chooses – has a slightly higher tolerance for Ryou's blunders (though his response will invariably be something biting and cold; a sting to be endured, and overlooked) but he will rarely be persuaded to conduct a lesson. Often, he will grow bored and break off halfway through a particularly complex explanation, sometimes even trailing away mid-sentence to go and pester Marik.

No matter, for Ryou – despite everything – is learning.

Odd, that.

(He wonders, at intervals, if they are taking the slow way round to Italy; it has been days, and ships do not move that slowly, particularly not KaibaCorp models – and perhaps they are merely keeping the Diabounddeliberately motionless until he learns the difference between 'insidious' and 'insinuate'. Difficult to distinguish between one blur of cloud and the next when peering inquisitively out the window, after all.)

He learns, at any rate, how to write his name. Marik splutters with rather inconsiderate laughter as he emblazons paper after paper with Ryou Bakura, Ryou Bakura, Ryou Bakura... proof positive of his existence, and no need to carve his name on the Diabound'shull after all.

When he writes Kemetic, Ryou gazes intently at every stroke, his vision narrowing to encompass the slightest movement of his pen. Sometimes, he will cut corners, tracing the edge of one glyph before he finishes another, or moving from the bottom-most stroke to the top instead of the standard top to bottom. Despite the fact that neither action renders the result any more illegible than it might be otherwise, Marik slaps the pen from his hand, telling him exasperatedly to begin all over again. What is the good in writing, Marik asks, if it is done in the wrong order? The words would look fine, but it would still be wrong, in the same way that copying out the same glyph for fifteen pages, only to find that a single incorrectly placed dash has made it unreadable, is wrong.

Albian is different. The alphabet of the English language is wholly difficult to memorise, and not nearly as intuitive as the pictograms present in Kemetic. Each squiggle has to be a different size in order to be legible, and must sit at a different level on a line of writing. Getting a letter wrong is even less permissible than misremembering a glyph, because, as opposed to creating garbled nonsense, errors can change the meaning of phrases and passages entirely.

Nonetheless, Ryou is undoubtedly making much progress. It is not consistently evident: meanings can seem to fall out of his mind completely, and, lost on the floor of the Diabound, do not help him to stumble through the texts that Marik gives him to read (each denser and more incomprehensible than the next). However, on occasion, he will find himself staring fixatedly at a glyph, mesmerised by the knowledge that, somehow, he has managed to internalise the meaning with no effort whatsoever, to the point that his recollection of its pronunciation is a surprise even to his teacher. It is when this happens that Ryou understands why he can persevere with his studies, and he is filled with an irrepressible swell of pride at his sheer ability to learn. Then, as if to nip his arrogance in the bud, Marik asks him a basic question in Albian, and Ryou stutters miserably through a mangled answer, rife with 'um's – it is then that he must stop celebrating and get back to work. His mixed success is worth it, though, if only for the flashes of insight when Ryou can read half a complex sentence, each identifiable phrase a pinpoint of light in a thunderstorm of merciless words, and a triumph of hard work. This usually causes him to spend the next hour babbling in badly pronounced, if enthusiastic Albian to Bakura, whose amusement gradually devolves into irritation. Ryou is then made to stop studying, and spends the rest of his day scrubbing the kitchen tiles, still buzzing with accomplishment.

xXx

Ishizu pats her head gently to ensure that her thick white veil obscures as much of her face as possible. Shrouded in pale, none-too-clean garments, she could easily pass for any Kemetic immigrant here on London's streets – amidst crowds that reduce the individual to one, unremarkable blur amongst many. To be sure, as a Kemetic native, she has attracted stares, and even mutterings of abuse from a few – yet this is balanced by some glances of intense sympathy that warm her attitude considerably. London, like any place, is a mixed bag – certainly not the sullen, homogenous mass that she and Mana had tacitly anticipated. Not at all. There is hope for these people.

That hope, she suspects, lies outside the gates of the palace and the fortresses of well-kept mansions. It simmers under cobblestones and permeates the air; a breeze blown in from across the Channel, perhaps. This is a city on the verge of ferment: the prospect of revolution both rots and burns in the hearts of those she steps past with such assiduous pace.

Easy to spot – that hum of ill-disguised secrecy and expectation; the loud bark of some daring street speaker; the mute exchange of gunpowder behind closed doors at pubs and cafes – and, oh, she does not envy Albion's rulers.

All it should take is a firm, compassionate leader to halt the spread of sedition, she reasons. But the vacuum of power is filled by an arch-royalist; a bloodthirsty imperialist – and Ishizu, being, above all, a political pragmatist, fears the worst.

She will not broach a word of this to Mana and Atem – but inwardly, she accepts it would be wise to anticipate reasoning with a newly instated republican government in time. England is on the brink of collapse. It would be prudent to plan ahead of its fall; to snatch some form of order out of the ashes. Above all, to be prepared. As far as the situation here on the streets is concerned, there is little she can do but observe.

For now, she has concerns of a more personal nature to which she must attend. Well – not so much personal as familial.

Surreptitiously, she shifts her leg, to ensure that the slim, cotton-wrapped package still rests at her hip, where she fastened it before leaving. (Mana, exhausted from the events of the opening ceremony, has taken to slumbering late into the morning; Atem, Ishizu assumes, left even earlier than her. No threat of discovery on either front, therefore.) The item is, to the extent of her knowledge, secure. Good.

The thing is – when the middle classes call for democracy (or for some form of democratic concession; heaven forbid they should enfranchise the masses), one grants a bagatelle: a consultative assembly, for instance. Which, England's ruling class did a while back, quelling tensions at the time – but now, more is needed. When the workers demand equality, one grants higher wages, or lower working hours, or affords some other dispensation. This has not been tried.

When the rallying cry amidst bourgeoisie and proletariat alike is "liberty, equality – or death!", one can be fairly certain that the end is nigh unless some rather drastic appeasement is practiced. No use clinging on, limpet-like, to the crown, when it means nothing without a willing populace.

Pragmatism. The only route worth following. She has advised Mahaado for long enough to know when to relinquish a strand of power. Not much, mind. But more than the King's Regent will be prepared to offer, Ishizu is willing to wager.

Well, Mahaado wants peace and, one way or other, he will be satisfied. Who knows. Perhaps a popular republican government will be more progressive with regards to foreign policy. On the other hand, they could be facing a populist assembly more nationalistic than its predecessor. This, on the whole, seems unlikely – but she cannot rule out the risk.

The streets are murmuring. They throb with a deep, rich vein of potential; they surge with a half-hidden aura of pure energy; anyone can feel it. The pavement ready to lift off the ground, the buildings liable to hover, like unwieldy aircraft in preparation for unscheduled flight.

Ah, but back to the concrete. Back to personal, familial. Back to the object wrapped in cloth, wrapped under her robe, wrapped in abhorrent history.

She approaches her destination: a musty old gaming house named, somewhat improbably, Bandits. Here, she will meet the man with whom she spoke earlier yesterday, in a shadowy sort of conference on a bench at Hyde Park. And, from there, he will take her to Revealing Light.

xXx

Extra Notes:

- No matter what universe he finds himself in, Yugi will always be ridiculously friendship-inspiring. Just the way the world works.

- OK, but seriously, who hasn't fallen for the 52-card-pick-up trick at least once? (Me? I fell for it twice.)

- Ishizu is what, in foreign policy terms, would be described as a realist. She's also got a streak of the One Nation Conservative to her. Change in order to conserve, and all that. At any rate, she's perfectly happy working with whoever happens to be in power, monarch or republican.