A/N: Just as I had almost finished this chapter, I read through it and decided I hated it, so I had to start over. I do have some good news though… I know with certainty how this story will end. And it's a good ending, too. I'm excited about it. And since I actually have a direction now and an end in sight, you can expect faster updates. This chapter in particular may be a bit slow as it has to bridge several events together, but I assure you that shit starts getting real in the next installment. Enjoy!

SELFLESSNESS AND SARCASM

Chapter Ten: Pride War

My moment of shocked silence was short-lived as Kaiba pulled into the nearly vacant parking lot of a hardware store.

"Pull yourself together and let's get to work."

I was deeply sick of him barking commands, but in light of the recent developments, I couldn't muster the will to argue. He always seemed to be in a hurry, always striding quickly wherever he went, and I once again found myself struggling to match his pace. It's his damn chicken legs… he looks like he's on stilts.

The store was dark and sketchy and it smelled like sawdust. The florescent lights flickered precariously above us, and many of the bulbs looked to have burned out a long time ago. A scruffy looking old man with a trucker hat and an orange apron sat behind the only cash register and wordlessly shot us a puzzled expression when we walked inside. In retrospect, I guess he wasn't used to our sort dropping by his store… what with Kaiba's heavily-starched white trench coat and my own tight, leather apparel, not to mention the strange dagger tucked into my belt loop.

It didn't take long to find the shovels. We each grabbed one and returned to the cashier. He stared at us intently for a moment, as if trying to decipher us, before moving to ring up the shovels.

"This all fer ya?"

"Yes," was Kaiba's clipped reply. I half-expected him to make me pay for at least one of the tools, but he fished out a card from his neatly organized wallet and didn't so much as shoot me a side-glance as the disgruntled cashier processed the transaction.

"So, what 'er you kids doin' with those shovels?"

There was an obvious undertone of suspicion to his voice. I could hear Kaiba growl under his breath, but I chose to indulge the old man.

"We're just on our way to dig up some body parts," I said casually. Kaiba turned to glare at me heatedly, and the cashier froze for a moment, studying my face with wide eyes. Then he burst into laughter.

"That's a good one! I gotta say, you almost had me goin' there!"

I forced a chuckle. The old man waited for the receipt to print before handing over Kaiba's card and smiling at us with a wide, toothy grin.

"Well whatever yer doin,' you kids be careful out there."

Kaiba scoffed and grabbed the shovels, pushing one on me forcefully before storming outside.

I tossed my shovel into the back seat of his car and slid inside, only to see Kaiba gripping the steering wheel too tightly.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded.

"It's fine, he didn't suspect a thing."

"Is this a joke to you? You come to me asking for help and here I am, putting my reputation and company on the line, but you don't seem to care."

I was tired. Tired of the forced alliance with my closest rival, tired of the shady dealings with murderers, tired of not having my own body. I knew I'd probably regret what I chose to say next, but I had been at my breaking point for hours. I was too tense, too anxious, too pissed off. Something had to give.

"Oh, so you're just helping me out of the goodness of your heart?" I shot back coldly. "There's no ulterior motive here? You just suddenly felt charitable and decided to give your old pal Atem a hand? No, the only reason you're doing this is because I'm the only hope you have of saving your brother."

I knew I had made a grave mistake the moment the words left my mouth. Kaiba's arms suddenly relaxed. He turned to me, that unwavering stare piercing right through me, and I struggled to meet his gaze. He was trying to stare me down, and for what it's worth, I really wanted to look away.

"What?" I asked curtly, just to break the silence.

Kaiba replied by punching me squarely in the nose. His bony knuckles cut through my lip like butter. I was dazed for a moment, then I hunched over, holding my throbbing head in my hands. I pulled up to see blood gushing from my nose and upper lip.

"Do not mention my brother again. I have plenty of reasons outside of personal interests to want to see Khaba put down."

I was still bent over, probing my face as if to try and find a way to piece myself together. As an afterthought, Kaiba grabbed a towel from the back seat and threw it at me.

"Clean yourself up," he spat before pulling Slick's old receipt from an inner coat pocket. From the corner of my eye I could see coordinates hastily scrawled on the back. All of the locations were labeled with the corresponding body part. How convenient. How fucking considerate of Slick to neatly document my appendages.

I groaned in pain and frustration and dabbed at my bruised face with the towel.

"It looks like all the burial sites are in the same general area," Kaiba commented as he studied the scrap of wrinkled paper, completely ignoring my muted grunts of pain.

"Wonderful," I retorted, my voice muffled from the towel.

The young CEO's skinny fingers danced across the LED screen of his GPS system as he entered the coordinates, and within minutes we were on the road again.

"Start out going North on I-75," came the vaguely female, digital voice.

The ride that followed was a quiet one. My busted nose and lip stopped bleeding after a few minutes and I righted myself. I pulled down the passenger sun visor and slid a small plastic door to reveal a lit mirror. I frowned at my reflection.

I could hear what sounded suspiciously like a sigh through our mind link.

"Yami… his brother's in the hospital. Try to be more understanding."

"I'm just a little flustered given the circumstances. I'm about to dig up my body parts and to be honest Yugi I'm…"

I hesitated. I was embarrassed enough as it was, having just been clocked in the face by my closest rival. I didn't want to further betray my usually cool and collected demeanor by admitting my fears.

Yugi must have sensed this.

"I understand," he said quietly.

After some more soulless directions from the disembodied voice of the GPS robot-lady, the words I had been dreading finally pierced the silence:

"You have reached your destination."

Kaiba pulled over on the side of the road and glanced behind him to ensure that nobody else was trailing us. He then pulled his GPS from its niche in the console, hopped out of the car, and shed his trench coat before grabbing the shovels from the back seat.

"Come on," he commanded. I slid out behind him and took a shovel, inhaling a deep breath to steady my nerves. Before long I found myself following the CEO into a shady forest bordering the highway. My footsteps grew more deliberate as we trudged through the thick forest carpet of dead leaves and sticks.

Kaiba was studying the screen of the GPS as we went along, and a meter in the top left-hand corner conveniently displayed our direct coordinates. Finally he stopped and jabbed his shovel into a patch of soft earth. The small mound of dirt was still loose and had obviously been upturned recently. I groaned.

"This should be your left arm," Kaiba said matter-of-factly.

He turned to his right and studied the forest floor until he found what he was looking for.

"See that spot right over there? That will be the right arm."

I nodded numbly and set off in the direction he had been pointing.

The patch of soft dirt stuck out like a sore thumb among the otherwise covered ground, cluttered with leaves, logs and weeds. I kicked the spade into the earth with the heel of my boot, and the resulting sound of metal against metal seemed to echo around me. I almost felt drugged. This whole situation was just so surreal.

As I dug, I felt something watching me from the corner of my eye. I slowly turned, tensing my body for battle, when I met the eyes of my silent watcher.

It was a squirrel. Even the damned squirrel knew there was something off about me.

"Fuck off," I said, kicking up a cloud of dust in the vermin's direction. The startled creature hopped back and bolted up the trunk of a great oak, getting lost in the gnarled branches above.

I hate squirrels anyway.

I dug down for a good six feet or so, to the point that my hands were growing raw with blisters. I started hitting the natural, densely-packed soil below that was thick with twisted roots and buried pebbles. Still, I had not found my arm. I began digging out from my initial hole, thinking that I may have missed the appendage by a few inches, but still I found nothing.

I stood there helplessly for a moment, trying to figure out what to do next, when I heard Kaiba calling for me. I pulled myself out of the dirt and brushed myself off as best I could before jogging back over to him.

"Have you found anything yet?" he asked.

"No, have you?"

Kaiba glanced back at his own handiwork, another hole in the ground that was similarly empty.

"No."

I began to grow anxious. Had we been duped?

"Are you sure those coordinates are right?" I questioned.

"Of course they're right, and it's obvious that someone else was digging here before us."

I then became aware of something vibrating in my pocket. I pulled out Yugi's phone and was a little taken aback to see that in all of the chaos of searching for my dismembered body parts, I had apparently missed several calls and at least as many text messages, the most recent of which was from Joey.

"Ryou is missing. Where are you," the message read. I narrowed my eyes in thought and slowly turned back toward the young CEO.

"Ryou is missing," I stated distantly. Kaiba looked up at me with a confused expression.

"I think I know where we can get answers," I continued. "We have to find that damned tomb robber."

After making a few phone calls without getting any useful information in return, we decided to begin our search at Rabbit Ridge Apartments. I hid my amusement as Kaiba first laid eyes on the repulsive place. The sun was starting to set by now, casting looming shadows across the already intimidating parking lot. A small group of angry-looking individuals was huddled behind a beat-up SUV and paused to glare at us as we pulled up in Kaiba's pristine, luxury sedan.

"You should just stay in here," I advised hastily. "If we leave this car unattended I'm pretty sure you'll lose your hubcaps."

"Fine."

I stepped out and once again found myself climbing the wrought iron staircase leading up to Bakura's apartment. I paused at a familiar landing and swallowed hard when I saw that the concrete was still stained a sickening brown color with old blood.

"Yami…"

"Yes aibou?"

There was silence between our mind link for longer than was comfortable.

"…nevermind. It's nothing."

Under any other circumstance I would have stopped to find out what was troubling Yugi, but there was too much at stake for me to pause to have a heartfelt conversation. I shook it off and climbed up the rest of the way until I was facing the door to apartment 310. It was crooked, having been hastily reattached with a pair of cheap hinges. I chuckled at my handiwork before tapping into the power of the Millennium Puzzle to strengthen my leg as I once again kicked the door down and sent it skidding across the floor. As I stepped inside, I was stricken by how terrible the apartment smelled.

To my relief, Bakura came bursting through the bedroom door, a livid expression on his narrow face. He wasn't in a sadistically playful mood like last time.

"I swear to every cursed god in the Underworld, if you break my door down one more goddamn time I will rip out your carotid artery with my bare hands and feed it to the strays."

"Nice to see you again too, tomb robber. But I have an issue. You see, not only has my body gone missing, but now Ryou has disappeared as well. You wouldn't know anything about this, would you?"

Bakura's eyes narrowed dangerously. He looked a bit more insane than usual, and this worried me to some extent. He took a threatening step forward, and when he next spoke his voice was oddly strained.

"I might have found him by now if you weren't in my fucking way!"

My mouth fell agape. So Bakura didn't have a hand in kidnapping Ryou?

"Well… where is he then?"

"Abianes has him… somewhere. It's the same stunt he pulled with your vessel."

I frowned. What did the fat brothers want from Bakura? My gaze settled on the Millennium Ring hanging around his neck. I supposed that he was powerful in his own right.

"So they're bribing you… like they did with me. But why?"

"It doesn't matter because they'll be dead soon enough."

Another whiff of the same putrid stench wafted to my nostrils and I grimaced.

"What the hell is that smell?"

For a moment, the vengeful smirk returned to Bakura's face.

"It's probably your festering body, pharaoh."

As soon as the words left his mouth, I found myself overcome with anger. I lunged forward and grabbed his collar with a trembling fist.

"What the fuck is wrong with you! How did you even know where to find it?"

Bakura frowned down at me before wrenching away my arm and stumbling backward.

"'Slick' is a personal friend of mine, and I needed to get back at you for the whole fiasco in the alleyway. I had a lot of fun things planned, you know. I was considering strapping a party hat onto your head and dangling it in front of Yugi's window, for starters."

I couldn't believe that the tomb robber had actually robbed my tomb. After 5000 years, he still couldn't let go of that particular hobby.

I noticed then that Bakura had lowered his gaze to the floor, his heavy bangs casting a shadow across his angular features.

"It hardly matters now though," he continued. "Take your damn body. I have more important matters to attend to, as it were."

With that, he shoved me out of his way and sprinted down the stairs and into the shadows.

I stood there for a moment, utterly dumbfounded, before finally creeping to the open door of Bakura's bedroom, where the stench grew stronger. There, in a corner, was a collection of black, lumpy trash bags. My breath hitched in my throat. I was still for a moment, paralyzed with a fear that I could not name. I didn't hear the young CEO's footsteps approaching.

"I saw Bakura run off. What's going on?"

I startled at Kaiba's voice. He must have known what had happened just from seeing the expression on my face when I turned toward him. Wordlessly, he stepped forward and peered into the bedroom. His eyes rested on the pile of bags in the corner.

"I see."

I was trembling then, rooted to the spot. It is an odd thing to look upon the dirty trash bags in which the remnants of your defaced corpse are placed. I heard Kaiba sigh, and I was both grateful and shocked by what he said next.

"Call Ishizu and tell her we'll be there soon; I'll load up the bags. We can deal with Abianes once you're in your own body again."

I made the call, purposefully withholding the particularly grisly details of the state of my body. Still, Ishizu assured me that she would be prepared to conduct the ritual by the time we made it to the museum. I listened as Kaiba hefted the bags to his sides, all of them at once, and made for the open door frame.

"Come on," he said, his voice lacking its usual edge. I followed him out the door, keeping my distance, too disturbed to want to be near the remnants of my physical form. I watched as Kaiba quickly loaded his sickly burden into the back of his car and slammed down the trunk with more force than was probably necessary. He was most of the way back to the driver's side when he paused, his hand hovering over the handle.

"God damn it," Kaiba spat under his breath. Curious, I walked around the luxury sedan and followed the CEO's gaze to his wheels. I couldn't help but chuckle.

"I told you they'd take the hubcaps."