All Possible Worlds, Part 1: In which Bakura and Ryou Get Back Something for Nothing
Chapter 8 of 8
Author: Tsutsuji
Rating: M (R) - I bumped it up only because of a little bit stronger language in this chapter, just to be safe.
Warnings: Language, shonen ai (m/m romance), a bit of angst here and there.
Disclaimer: Tsutsuji doesn't own these guys and doesn't get paid for this. (Full Disclaimer at the start of Chapter 1.)
Chapter Summary: The Battle for the Files reaches a conclusion. Hey, what's a few little pieces of paper between, uh, friends, anyway?
Something for Nothing, Chapter 8
Ryou had handed the file to Akabane before he knew what he was doing. Now he could only stand still; barely able to move his lips to speak, he hardly dared to breath or think. He felt encased in a cloud that held his limbs and his mind frozen in time and space, and all he was aware of was the pin-prick sensation at his throat, and the slim curve of Dr. Jackal's lips, and how they both remained unmoved by his own whispered plea. He was hardly even aware of Bakura, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know what Bakura was feeling or what he might do.
The park lit up like a flare, the air crackled, and someone broke through the cloud with a shout that made his heart jump.
"Jackal"
Ryou figured it was Bakura. He was still confused by what he'd just done, and his brain felt so fuzzy that he wasn't even sure if the squeal of terror that followed the shout had really come from himself or not.
Then he realized that Lady Poison and Dr. Jackal had suddenly become engaged in another battle, but not with Bakura or his Duel Monsters. Jackal had become a dark blur; there was another blur of white and blue arcing across the park along with him. Lady Poison shouted in wordless fury at an opponent who seemed to be made entirely of crackling white lightning.
"What the hell?"
That was Bakura, speaking right in his ear. Ryou realized his Other's arm was around his waist, and he sagged against Bakura gratefully.
"I'm sorry I couldn't help it I'm sorry I don't know why I'm sorry..." he began to pant into Bakura's shoulder.
"It's not your fault," Bakura growled, squeezing him tight. "One of her poisons must be a mind-control drug, and she probably tracked us with a scent as well. I should have expected something like that. But I certainly couldn't have expected this!"
Ryou looked up; Bakura was watching the Jackal spin, leap, dodge, attack, and dodge again, scalpel blades flashing like a rain of deadly ice. His hat had flown away, the remains of his tattered and singed coat trailed behind him like a shredded cloud. The strangely scarred skin of his chest and arms gleamed and rippled with his movements, his hair flew wild around his face, and his eyes were alight. Of course he was smiling, Dr. Jackal always seemed to be smiling, but there was something so much more alive in his face now that Ryou almost - almost - felt happy for him.
He finally shook off the last effects of the mind-fuzzing perfume and realized what was going on. Jackal was fighting another man, who looked nearly as feral and determined and deadly as he was; white shirt tails flapped as he leaped around and swiped at Jackal with his fist, and blue eyes blazed bright enough to see even behind dark purple shaded glasses. Ryou was impressed that anyone dared or was able to get that close to the scalpel-wielding maniac, especially without any kind of weapon, using only his bare hands - but then he saw the other man's fist miss Jackal by a hair's width, and the half-foot thick steel post he grabbed with that bare hand instead crumpled like paper.
"That explains that," Ryou said to himself. He was very glad they weren't standing any closer.
Dr. Jackal laughed at this, clearly having the time of his life as he spun around to face his glaring opponent again. Apparently, Ryou thought, he had about as warped a sense of fun as Bakura had, only much, much more so.
Of course, through it all, Jackal never let go of that handful of papers.
"Damn it," Bakura swore through clenched teeth. "Who the hell are these guys?" He was thumbing through his deck in between glances at the fight - fights, Ryou corrected himself, as another flash of lightning lit the air. Lady Poison's new opponent seemed to be able to shoot rather large sparks from his hands. Ryou was alarmed, but hardly surprised, all things considered.
"If she keeps up with those moves," Bakura observed, "that costume of hers isn't going to hold out much longer."
Ryou was not surprised to catch him leering at the girl. Her clothes had faired only a little better than Jackal's in the backlash from her flame perfume attack earlier, one shoulder was bare, there was a rip across her torso on the other side, and her tight-fighting trousers had effectively become mini-shorts, but the fabric that was left was beginning to show more signs of strain at the seams.
"I hadn't noticed," Ryou said absently.
"I'm sure you didn't," Bakura replied.
The boy with the lightning in his fingertips danced around her, but he seemed to be annoying her more than anything else since he was obviously trying not to fight with her. He looked happy, too, but Ryou realized with some amazement that he was not smiling because he was enjoying the battle, as the other two obviously were. He was trying his best to convince Lady Poison that they were all friends and shouldn't be fighting at all. Rather predictably, she was not buying it.
"They seem to know each other," Ryou said vaguely.
"Yes," Bakura agreed. "I have the distinct impression they do this kind of thing a lot."
Ryou opened his mouth to gasp in horror when he saw that Himiko, unbelievably, had sucked in a burst of flame, and then blew it out like a diabolical smoke ring at her happy-go-lucky blond opponent. The lightning bolt that burst from his fingertips only ignited the flame more brightly as it came rushing toward his face. Out of the corner of his eye at the same exact second, Ryou saw the blue-eyed man spin around a little too quickly. He was face-to-point with one of Jackal's knives.
In the second between drawing the breath and letting out the gasp, Ryou felt everything slam to a halt with a blast of magical energy more intense than anything he had ever felt during a Game of Shadows. He heard a shout, an ordinary vocal yell from a young voice - like the cry of a samurai, Ryou thought unexpectedly; on another level, there was an unheard vibration that even seemed to waver through the Millennium Ring. He thought he saw, or felt, Bakura wince. That would have alarmed him into panic and fury if he hadn't been so immediately distracted by what happened next.
Himiko's firestorm vanished like a whiff of steam, and what appeared to Ryou's eyes to be a flock of tiny white paper birds fluttered around where the flames had been, before they too sparkled out of sight. When the shimmering of that magic disappeared, Ryou realized there was another man standing just beyond the Transporter and her lightning-laced opponent, standing quite still with his long gray trench coat fluttering lightly around his legs. He seemed perfectly calm, as if he was meditating with his hands poised in a spiritual gesture, but his eyes were bright and his gaze was pinned on the space between the two fighters.
Almost more bizarre than that was the boy who had suddenly materialized in between Jackal and his blue-eyed would-be victim. He was no more than Ryou's age, fair and blond and fragile looking, but with fierce green eyes. The scalpel blade had come to a halt barely an inch away from the other man's face, but that was as far as even Dr Jackal could reach over thebokken the boy had thrust between the two men.
Ryou's mind spun; why did they look so familiar? Then he remembered. They were the same two men he'd seen arguing over dinner and dessert in the street earlier.
"What's this?" Bakura hissed, squeezing Ryou more tightly against his side. Ryou almost did panic, then; if these two newcomers made Bakura nervous, something very bad must be about to happen.
However, nothing else at all happened right away. Instead, the Transporters drew back, each with a little frustrated "huff" as if all their fun had been spoiled, but Jackal, who seemed to live for such "fun," was still smiling, while Himiko looked furious.
"Don't get in our way!" she shouted, although whether she was trying to warn the ones they'd been fighting or the newcomers wasn't clear. None of them seemed very impressed, which, Ryou guessed, must have frustrated her even more than she already was.
The boy who had blocked Dr. Jackal from his almost-certain kill pushed Jackal back with the tip of the wooden sword at his breastbone. Jackal fairly danced away backward; the blades in his hand disappeared, but he swung the file - oh, yes, the file! Ryou thought, suddenly remembering what this was all about in the first place - out of reach as the boy made a grab for it.
"Hisoka," the man in the trench coat said in a mildly warning tone, at which his younger companion scowled, but the tip of the wooden sword dropped a little further until it no longer appeared as a direct challenge to the Transporter.
"Those files," the boy began, scowling at the sheath of papers in Jackal's hand even more darkly than he'd scowled at the man holding them.
"Don't give it to them, Dr. Jackal!" Lady Poison commanded. "We got them back without any of your help, and we're going to deliver them to our client, without fail!"
She spun away from her bewildered looking opponent and leaped over to stand near her companion Transporter. The blue-eyed man moved to put himself between them, and Jackal moved a step away from both of them.
"Who the hell are you guys?" the blue-eyed man said to the newcomers in a casual way, as if he was no more than mildly annoyed at the interruption. "Don't tell me Hevn-san double-booked another Retrieval service!"
At the same time, in spite of his tone, he pushed his dark glasses down and peered over them at the newcomers, studying them with a wary look in his eyes. Considering the power they'd displayed, Ryou thought wariness was definitely called for. However, his companion didn't seem to know the meaning of the word "wary."
"Ban-chan, she wouldn't do that to us!" He turned to the man with the trench coat with a broad, friendly smile, as if they'd just met over drinks with mutual friends. Then he gave the same grin to the other boy, who scowled back with a look that was most definitely not friendly.
"We're the GetBackers: that's Ban-chan, and I'm Ginji," the lightning user explained, as if that would clear up everything for everyone. "We were hired to get that file back for the client, so that's what we have to do, you see!"
He laughed. As simple as that, Ryou thought, astounded. Bakura looked dumbstruck, but then his eyes narrowed.
"He actually means that," Bakura said, and looking again, Ryou could see it too. Beneath the goofy grin, the blond was every bit as determined to get that file as the Transporters were to keep it.
He watched the others react; Lady Poison sighed as if this was all too familiar; Jackal grinned.
"How perfectly like you, Ginji-kun," he said, and he actually giggled.
"But you're not getting this file back," Himiko added quickly. "We were hired to do a job as well, you know."
"Himiko," said the man called "Ban-chan" - even though he appeared to be possibly the oldest of the group (aside from Bakura, who didn't look his real age of 5000 years anyway). He sounded weary yet determined, as if he knew this conversation wasn't likely to get him anywhere but he had to try it anyway. "You Transporters can just walk away this once, and..."
Himiko turned on him, looking like she was ready to explode even without swallowing any more of her flame perfume. Ban-chan grinned, but he took a step back from her just the same.
"Tsuzuki," the other boy said softly, ignoring the exchange between the two apparent long-time rivals while the others looked on with bemused interest. Ryou looked over to see him stare at the file in Jackal's hand, and then turn back to his partner. "Those papers..."
Tsuzuki, the man in the trench coat, followed his gaze, and his eyes narrowed, then widened. A strange expression came over his face, as if he suddenly felt ill.
Ryou realized with a cold shock that his face was familiar for another reason, besides seeing them earlier. He was hardly recognizable as the same laughing, childish man he'd seen outside the shops, but the blank eyes and slack mouth as he stared at the papers in Jackal's hand were the same as those of the bandaged man in the old pictures. He gazed up at that face with a twinge of horror, and a pang of sympathy as sharp as one of Dr. Jackal's knives, as he saw the man's look of recognition - of remembering.
At the same time, hope sprung to life in Ryou's heart, mingled with horror: the man who had lived so long, so impossibly, and died so tragically, was still alive after all, after all these years. That must be the reason Satomi kept that file - he knew the man was still alive! he thought. The bitter mingling of hope and dread grew deeper at the implication of that.
"Bakura," he whispered, choking a little on something that caught in his throat. "That man..."
Bakura gave him a puzzled glance, then followed his gaze.
"Ah," he said after a moment. "So that's what he is."
It wasn't quite the reaction Ryou was expecting. "What do you mean?"
He looked at the man, at the file, wondering now if it held the answers they needed after all. But even if it did, how could he ask for it, especially when he saw the pained look fade to a blank stare suddenly, as if even the memory was too much to bear. The man's companion flinched, as if he knew exactly what his partner must be thinking.
Jackal's eyes darted from one to the other and then to the file in his hands, as if wondering about it as well. Ryou turned to Bakura, who was staring at Tsuzuki now with a hard, suspicious gaze.
"Bakura?" Ryou asked, a little alarmed at the look in those ancient blue eyes.
Bakura didn't get a chance to answer. Lady Poison had lunged toward "Ban-chan" with a snarl of frustration. He took a light leap backwards out of her reach, and Ginji tried to jump between them, waving his hands as if that would calm them down. Naturally, it had just the opposite effect. With a snarl, she pulled out another vial. Flames again, Ryou noted, as she spread a huge arc of fire all around her, aiming it not only at the GetBackers but at anyone else in the vicinity - including the two strange newcomers, Bakura, and himself.
"Look out!" Ryou yelped. He and Bakura grabbed each other and jumped away; somehow they managed not to get tangled up while trying to save each other this time. Ryou heard the roar of flames and shouts from the others. Bakura swore and fumbled with his card deck. The green-eyed boy gave another yell like a warrior's shout, but this time there was no spell to disperse the wall of flames. The dark, sheltered little park lit up like an inferno; Ryou felt the heat of it on his face.
Suddenly, though, the heat was blocked by a cool wall of ice. Bakura had cast a card, and sheltered himself and Ryou from the blast with Cold Wave. It wouldn't do the others any good against Lady Poison's frantic attack, especially since she seemed not to care if she incinerated herself along with the everyone else. But Bakura wasn't concerned with any of the others.
"That file!" he muttered loudly, and spun around toward Jackal and the wall of flame.
"Wait!" Ryou shouted. He made a grab for him but only caught his sleeve.
Then Bakura stopped short. Jackal was no longer standing there. All they saw where he'd been a moment ago was a cloud of petals fluttering in the heated breeze from Lady Poison's inferno.
Flower petals? Ryou thought wonderingly. But it's the wrong time of year. Or feathers, tiny and white, drifting all around, or was it snowflakes? No, he realized finally, that was silly, it was far too warm for snow; they must be ashes from the flames. He held out his hand, and a few fell on his palm.
Not ashes after all. In fact, they really looked more like small white petals, like tiny cherry blossoms, even though that made no sense. And some of the tiny things were brown, or edged with dark lines, like - like ink, he realized. Like old handwriting. Like the sepia tinge of a faded photograph...
He looked up. Everything else had gone still and the flames had disappeared. The air was thick with tiny bits of white and brown. Each of the others had stopped to watch the paper petals fall, and one by one, each of them turned to watch as Dr. Jackal walked away. As he passed under a street lamp, they could all see that his hands were empty.
"Akabane-san," Tsuzuki said, softly and wonderingly.
Dr. Jackal raised his gloved hand but didn't look back. No one spoke again as he disappeared into the darkness beyond the park.
Then Lady Poison screamed.
"Ahhh, that - maniac! Why the hell did he go and destroy the file? What about our client!"
"SHIT!" Ban yelled even more loudly. "How the hell are we supposed to get paid for this job now!"
As stunned as he was, Ryou got ready to duck and run again as the Transporter and the GetBacker turned on each other, eyes blazing.
"This is all your fault, Ban Midou!" Lady Poison yelled.
"My fault? How is it my fault if you choose to team up with an unpredictable maniac!"
Ryou relaxed a little. Apparently, the two of them were going to be content with a war of words, at least for the moment. He was surprised to hear Bakura chuckle softly beside him.
"As amusing as this lovers' quarrel has become," he said, with a mischievous glint in his eye, "this should make it even more interesting. It's certainly no use to us, anyway."
Ryou watched, beyond surprise or disappointment, as another rain of white filled the air. He remembered that the only papers in his hand when he'd been taken over by Lady Poison's control perfume were the old papers from seventy years past. He'd forgotten about the rest of Prof. Satomi's files that had been in the case.
In spite of all that had happened, Ryou had to stifle a laugh when Himiko and Ban saw what was fluttering in the air around them. They stared for a second, glared at each other, and then did exactly what anyone would predict by this time. Ginji joined in, leaping around like a kid under a pinata, while the other two fought over every sheet of paper like cats and dogs.
Bakura and Ryou stood watching from one side, while Hisoka and Tsuzuki stood back on the other side of the park. Hisoka plucked one of the papers out of the air, glanced at it, scowled, and tossed it back into the fray dismissively.
Across the paper-strewn battlefield, Bakura and the strange man gazed at each other, Bakura guardedly, the other with more open curiosity.
"Hisoka," he asked his companion without looking away from Bakura. "Are you certain there wasn't another part of this assignment?"
Hisoka shook his head and scowled. He looked as puzzled by the way the two men were studying each other as Ryou felt, and nearly as worried about it, although Ryou wasn't sure why. All he knew for sure was that, as much as he wanted to ask this Tsuzuki a million questions about how he'd stayed alive so long and how he was still alive, he'd never be able to. He felt a chill in his soul that he couldn't explain when he looked at the man, but something else in his heart would have prevented him even without that warning.
Tsuzuki's eyes glinted, like amethysts catching the light, Ryou realized, as he studied Bakura with concern - or sympathy, Ryou thought, with another pang of emotion he didn't understand. Bakura, however, drew closer to Ryou, and he felt the ripple of Shadow Magic awaken. The Ring's power gleamed softly from its hidden place on the cord around his neck. Ryou braced himself, reluctantly, hoping another battle was not about to follow. He wasn't sure whether Bakura was calling on the power of to attack or defend this time - or for some other reason entirely.
"If you intend to try to escort me to the Afterlife now, after 5000 years," Bakura said, "I'm afraid you're a little late! I have no intention of paying a visit to the realm of Anubis any time soon, at any rate, so I would advise you not to bother!"
Hisoka gasped, and his large, green eyes grew even larger as he studied Bakura much more intensely than before. Tsuzuki only seemed mildly surprised. He shrugged his shoulders, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his long coat.
"Well, I guess that wasn't part of our assignment," he said, smiling. "So there's not really anything we can do about it,anyway!"
Hisoka glared at Bakura with a look of determination. "But he's - Tsuzuki, we can't just walk away from this!"
Tsuzuki cut him off with a wave of his hand and a grin. "It's not up to us to do anything, Hisoka, if we haven't been ordered to! Anyway, we don't have any jurisdiction over an Egyptian soul. That's a long way out of our sector!"
He laughed and casually ran a hand through his hair, while his partner stared at him, bristling indignantly. There was nothing in the older man's face now of the memory of despair that Ryou had seen there seconds ago; that had faded away like Dr. Jackal melting into the shadows. Only the smallest hint of it remained, he thought, in the kindness that showed in smiling, amethyst-shaded eyes.
Ryou felt baffled, and more than a little worried. He had no idea why Bakura was talking about Anubis and his ancient life, but he remembered the sense of strong magical energy he'd felt when these two had first arrived. It occurred to him, with a choking wave of awe, that the man before him was neither still alive nor alive again, as he'd thought, and neither was his companion. But what exactly that meant, he wasn't sure. He was almost certain he'd rather not know.
"Well, I think this is it, then," Tsuzuki said with a dismissive shrug, and earned an even more puzzled glare from Hisoka when he turned away from the whole mess. He gazed out at the city lights beyond the park. "It's not too late yet, though - plenty of time for dessert, as long as we're here!"
"What!" Hisoka screeched, like a teakettle that had suddenly reached its boiling point. "Dessert? Are you kidding! How can you think about dessert now!"
Tsuzuki looked at him innocently, as if that was the single most ridiculous question in the world.
"But, Hisoka, we never got to finish dinner, because you sensed that battle going on between Akabane-san and these two, so we should definitely..."
"Tsuzuki!" Hisoka wailed, throwing up his hands.
But Tsuzuki was already walking away, happily (and with practiced ease, Ryou guessed) ignoring his partner's rant while he ticked off dessert possibilities on his fingers.
Bakura watched them go with the most what-the-fuck expression Ryou had ever seen on his face. He was about to ask, reluctantly, what that was all about, when Bakura suddenly turned away and laughed.
"Huh," Bakura said, grinning to himself at some private joke. "Maybe the gods really have gone crazy."
Ryou closed his mouth on the question he hadn't wanted to ask anyway, and officially gave up on trying to understand anything. He and Bakura watched the remaining three for a minute; they were still fighting tooth and nail over the remains of Prof. Satomi's files, and a lot of paper was getting ripped up in the process. Personally, Ryou decided he would be perfectly happy if he never saw any of them again.
"You know," Bakura said thoughtfully, "Dessert doesn't sound like such a bad idea. As long as we're here. And," he added, catching Ryou's eye with the glint of suggestion in his own, "a nice hotel room. With a private bath. And a very big bed. Hm?"
Unable to figure out anything else about anything for the moment, Ryou had to admit that that, at least, made perfect sense.
End of Part One! The All Possible Worlds series continued in "Interlude in Shinjuku," to be followed by Part Two: "In Which A Thief's Heart is Stolen" (a flashback crossover with Cardcaptor Sakura). Soon, I hope - at least way, way sooner than this followed "Anything's Possible!"
AN: Just in case anyone wonders, I have no idea who hired the Transporters to retrieve Satomi's files - Muraki, the Brain Trust, or someone else entirely! If I ever figure it out, maybe there'll be another story about it someday. I also don't know why Akabane owed Tsuzuki a favor, but they insisted they have some kind of history so I didn't argue with them, and maybe they'll tell me the rest of that story someday, too. I'm not sure about Hisoka using fuda in chapter 4, but it seemed like a nice idea so I went with it. I'm also not 100 certain about the way Himiko's poisons work, so I hope I didn't mess that part up. Sorry for any and all canon-errors and ooc moments that occur during this fic - I try to keep 'em in line, but you know how characters are sometimes...\
I wrote the first draft of this thing during the first two weeks of NaNoWriMo 2007, after a year-long case of writer's block, which is probably why the first few chapters ramble around a bit before I really got into the action and heart of the story. It took a little while to get back into Bakura's and Ryou's heads the way I used to be, so they still seem a bit off at the beginning, I think.
This story and the "All Possible Worlds" series take place in the same fanon-reality as "The Golden Dance" and "Anything's Possible." I only figured that out after I started writing them, so things aren't exactly consistent through all the stories in every detail, but they're all part of the same continuity - one that begins to diverge from Yugioh canon after Bakura loses the duel to Yami no Malik, as referred to in this story. The events in these stories replace the Noah arc, the Doom arc and the Grand Prix arc of Yugioh.
As always, reviews and comments are much loved and appreciated! (It hasn't gone out of style to review, you know!!) And thanks as always to all the B/R fans who've commented on my stories and inspired me with fanfic and fanart all along, because you all keep me going, more than you know!
