LD: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bakura: Shut up!
LD:!!!!!!
Bakura: I said shut up!
Tea: I think you should probably know by now that she doesn't care, right Pinky?
Pinky: OnO
Bakura: You shut up too!
Pinky: -spits-
Bakura: AHHHHHH!!!!!
LD: I don't want to be in school anymore! NONONOOOONOOONONONONONO!! By the way, I don't own YuGiOh!. But this plot is mine.
Malik had to have Tea open his door for him again, seeing as how every time he touched the knob it shocked him half to death.
Right in the middle of the balcony, he had a miniature fit, complete with stomping and babyish punches. His hair looked like nothing more than a Brobdingnagian poof-ball, and Pinky eyed it hungrily.
Tea told him to stop being a wuss, and suggested he wear less jewelry.
With a very indignant, masculine huff, he turned away, shining his very manly bracelets on his very manly mid-riff shirt.
Thousands of miles away, de Nile river gurgled with what sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
"What's taking so long?" he inquired irritably.
Receiving no answer, he gyrated to help the girl open the door, only to find her staring inside his apartment, door happily open in her slender fingers. Malik gave it the evil eye as he went to stand by his dazed friend, dreaming of the day he could take a sledge hammer to it. Abandoning such happy musings, he peered around Tea's shoulder, but could see nothing out of place.
She flushed, feeling his somewhat scornful gaze on her face. "Sorry. Felt a wierd chill for a moment there."
He glared playfully. "It's the vengeance of the jewelry god. You're forever doomed to never be this sexy." With a lazy hand gesture, he indicated himself..
Tea snorted, though she did blush, and shoved him into the building. Malik, as the door was slammed shut behind him and her footsteps pounded away, couldn't help but feel inordinately pleased.
And then he was swarmed by green blobs, and he, understandably- was no longer so pleased.
"WHAT THE SHADOW REALM?!!"
They came slowly, at first, individuals dropping onto him from the ceiling, oozing over his feet from cracks in the floor. From the walls, they came, from the deep impenetrable corners and the riddling cracks, they poured viscuously, speeding in his direction.
Then, of course, there just had to be more.
Swarm upon swarm descended upon him, latching on to his clothes, hair, and skin. Pain flashed through him as they started ingesting whatever they touched- when you're a neon green lump, it's hard to be choosy........
"NOT THE HAIR, D******!!"
He snatched up a lamp, lashing violently out at his nearest assailants. From the ventilation system, the original green blob felt an indescribable twinge of-was that guilt? Nah, it decided. Must just be the after-effects of ingesting the Egyptian's fingertip.
Malik snarled, lavender eyes slitting into peepholes of the fiery underworld. In one hand, he crushed twenty of the green blobs simultaneously, emerald pulp oozing between his slender digits. He threw the pulverized lob into the new wave of his attackers, only to witness them reshape themselves and pirsue him once more.
If I die like this, he thought, it will be the most embarressing thing I will have ever done in my whole freakin' life. And considering the way that whole world domination episode went, my impending demise looks miserable wth a side-dish of post-humous humiliation.'
And so, because he really did not want Bakura laughing at his gravestone for all eternity, he summoned the shadows.
His shadows were not powerful like Yami's, or intimidating, as Bakura's irrefutably were. They both had thousands of years of practice to accumulate a wealth of power and knowledge, both driven by motives so strong the world had trembled at the force of them. Although he supposed that went away the first time Yami wore a tutu. The shadows obeyed one's most strong desires, and the stronger the heart, the more powerful the shadows.
And Malik, for the first time since Battle City, was feeling incredibly, delectably homicidal.
The shadows rose up behind him, over him, a crashing tidal wave of darkness that swept away the hungry green monsters. But even as he was extricated from their grip, the shadows wiggled their way inside him, their insidious fingers sinking into his bronze skin. He tried to scream, but it was muffled by a semi-transparent hand.
The shadows responded to the heart's deepest feelings, to the soul's commands. But unfortunately for Malik, they obeyed his desire to survive by resurrecting that which had been born the first time his life had been in peril, the first time he had called out for something, anything, to save him.
"Did you miss Marik, Malik-kun?"
Malik felt his heart stop. Slowly, carefully, hating every moment, he looked up at his captor. Insane purple eyes greeted him, a demented grin grew a distorted version of his own features.
"Marik knows Marik missed you a lot, Mailk-kun." Marik grinned down at him, large hand smothering the smaller Egyptian. Stricken with horror, Malik stared at the monster reborn, the one who had almost killed him and destroyed the world. The one who had almost led him to kill Tea.
And who should come bursting in his door then?
"At least I'll never be as pompous as you!" It seemed Tea had finally come up with a retort, at very much the wrong time. Her large blue eyes swiveled from Malik to Marik to the dying green blobs, and a little sound emerged from the back of her throat that sounded almost like a drowning cat choking on a bullfrog trying to sing opera while a fly in the background wailed pathetically at the miserable sound. It was quite the cacophony-impressive considering it was only coming from one person.
In the next second, she had swung back out of the apartment, nimbly dodging a shadow that clutched at her slender ankles. Emphatically, the door slammed shut behind her.
"Marvelous," spat the deranged semi-solid spirit. "The little bimbo has gone to fetch the Paroah, no doubt. But she'll be a while; his aura is far, far away. Too far," he grinned maniacally. "For any help to reach you."
Malik glared at him solidly, hissing into the mad-man's palm. Marik held a hand to his ear mockingly. "Sorry, Malik-kun, Marik didn't catch that."
To his surprise, a section of the shadows were ripped from his control and coerced him away and down. Malik, standing above him, unleashed a murderous stare upon his translucent person.
"Don't you call her that." he stated with a terrifying level of calm. "Don't you dare."
Marik only smiled his insane smile. He rose, quicker than a serpent, and pinned Malik against the nearest wall. "Marik didn't mean to make Malik-kun upset." He purred menacingly. "Marik will make it all better." And he wrapped his broad hands around Malik's throat, and he squeezed.
Eyes widening, Malik wheezed for air, striving to move even one of his captured limbs. His frustration mounted, but so did his weakness as the seconds without oxygen deprived him of sense, feeling, and, as seconds wizened into minutes, sight. He spasmed uncontrollably in Marik's relentless grasp, while Marik just grinned wider and wider.
From the ventilation shaft, the original blob was now suffering extreme guilt. Or was that indigestion? The world will never know. It had just about resolved to aid its wheezing roomate when a loud bang rang through the dorm, along with a brief shudder from some loud impact and a muffled yelp.
Tea Gardner stood in the doorway, the frying pan in her hand still vibrating from hitting Marik's head so hard. He, currently, was incognant at her feet. With her free hand, Tea steadied Malik.
"Sorry it took me so long," she apologized. "I couldn't get ahold of Yami-the idiot still thinks the cell phone's possessed, and the frying pan was in the sink."
Even as he looked at her gratefully, and a bit freaked-outedly, she hefted her frying pan again, expression resolving into one of battle-ready horror.
"They propagated?" She breathed, and Malik saw that some of the blobs were stirring obdurately.
"You tie up Marik." she asserted, striding boldly onto the field of battle. "I'll deal with the blobs."
And even as he realized that, along with many of the blobs, his scarce furniture was being dashed to bits in the ensuing crashes and bangs, he couldn't bring himself to deny that the sight of her, blue eyes flashing, brown hair waving, frying pan about to splatter an unfortunate blob, was something he'd never forget.
The first thing Marik saw, as his mind painfully stumbled back towards consciousness, was a light bulb.
The second thing he saw, blinking fuzzily, was the smiley face drawn on the light bulb.
'Greetings, dim one. Is it just me or is your filament a bit loose?' Bartley smiled eerily.
"Oh, he's up!"
The third thing Marik saw was a frying pan, waving menacingly in his face.
"Now then," came a feminine voice that very much failed at being intimidating. "Tell us why you are here!"
"Uh, Tea?" interjected a sarcastic voice he knew too well, "I already know why he's here."
"Oh...............oops."
Marik groaned and stirred, reaching outwards. A muffled squeak acknowledged his motion, then the frying pan filled his whole world again, and over the bang of it hitting his singularly hard yet translucent skull, all he could only hear his own bemused thought: It tastes a little like burnt eggs..................burnt eggs...........eggs.....
Malik clapped a hand on the quaking Tea's shoulder, who stammered out apologies as fast as she was able.
"It's probably a good thing that we don't have to worry about him getting brain damage." he decided. Beside him, Tea finally expended the totality of her air supple and fainted onto the floor. Hefting her limp body up, Malik emended his statement. "We might still have to worry about you."
The second time Marik woke up, it was to something cool lying on his aching head. His wrists and feet were bound with what appeared to be knee high stockings, and he was sprawled over a bright pink bed. He groaned. This was fashion karma for the crappy cape, wasn't it?
He tried summoning the shadows, but the pounding in his spiky head escalated sharply, and he abandoned his efforts in favor of moaning out a stream of expletives that made the air crackle in distaste.
Bartley smiled down at him. 'Your filament is definitely loose,' the bulb concluded smugly. 'You are no competition for the radiant Bakura. By the way, did you actually intend to shape your hair in order to make a porcupine neon with envy?'
Marik grinned and lunged for the offending bulb with his teeth. Well, he never was known for his thinking capacity, and Malik was probably on to something concerning the brain damage.
Bartley popped out in an effort to minimize Marik's visibility. Before the porcupine wannabe could even make an attempt on his electrical current, an inhuman roar of rage filled the air.
"BARTLEY! WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT SLACKING OFF!!" Light flooded the tiny room as the door flew open. Teeth still bared, Marik slowly rotated his head to face Tea, who had processed the situation with a speed that came from many years being a dead-man's friend and multiple attempts on her life during said years.
"Marik! Are you so hungry that you're trying to eat Bartley? Oh, I'm so sorry, I should've realized it before...." However, her ability to correctly interpret situations still needed quite a bit of educating.
Barely able to believe his interpretation of the light waves disrupted by her words, Bartley could only flash out in Morse code something about serious brain damage before fizzling away in a horrified stupor.
A few minutes later, Malik walked into her apartment to find Marik seated in her only chair, being served eggs from the same frying pan she had hit him over the head with.
"Brain damage," he snapped, then had to sit down himself, only on the floor.
Far, far away, in a place few dared to tread, Yami looked up abruptly. "I sense a disturbance in the force." He intoned ominously.
"Dude, that's your hair," responded a nerd dressed like R2.
In a nearby corner, Yugi banged his rather large head repetitively against the wall slathered with posters of Jedi and light sabers, or, as he liked to call them, little green freak-Yoda, his groupies, and the leftover glow-sticks from Halloween. But he dared not breathe a word of his internal misgivings for fear of being torn apart, marinated, and likely used as an offering to aforementioned green freak. For he was in the heart of evil, the epitome of danger-A Star Wars Convention.
A sudden shout made him quail. Nearby, a girl dressed in a strange metallic suit pummeled a boy dressed like Anakin.
"Skywalker didn't deserve Padme!" squealed the girl, throwing the wannabe Jedi into a poster of Obi-wan.
"Padme didn't deserve Anakin!" The boy tackled her into a nearby table. Shivering, Yugi huddled in closer to the wall,praying for salvation. He closed his eyes as the brawl escalated into riot. That was the problem with these things; no one could have a quiet dispute-everyone had their own distinctive opinion and would massacre all who disagreed.
He whimpered as sudden loud breathing interrupted his desperate 'Please let me live on without severe mental trauma or seriously crippling injuries as that would kind of suck and please please let me live and leave' speech. He looked up, and for the first time in his life wished it was Dartz instead. After all, no one likes to see Darth Vader staring back at you.
He made a very small 'eep' as a gloved hand was thrust in his face. "Join the dark side, Luke," a mechanical voice intoned. "Or I will no longer be so magnaminous."
Quaking in his various faux leather buckles, Yugi wondered whether or not it would help to mention that his name, was, in fact, not Luke. Probably not.
Malik glared at Marik and Tea both. The former merely grinned sheepishly as the latter stuffed his face with eggs.
"How is he even eating?" Malik burst out. "For Ra's sake, he's see through!" In morbid fascination, he watched the eggs get chewed by Marik, then followed their passage down his throat and into his stomach.
"Well." Tea struggled to smile. "It almost makes up for the biology lesson we missed yesterday!"
Malik laughed a sweet, gentle laugh. It was utterly fake. "Not really!"
Bakura sang the Doom song under his breath as he descended the many, many , many, many miles into his lair. Finally touching the ground, he came to a rather horrid realization: the light switch was back at the top of the ladder, and he had neglected to turn it on.
'Ryou!' he screamed through his mental link. 'Ryou, turn on the lights for my supersecretevillair of ultimatedoom!'
Ryou did not answer, because Ryou did not find the demanded muffins waiting for him after he came home from school. Indeed, Ryou's Britishness had called for even more serious a punishment. So now, Ryou was happily burning all of Bakura's belongings in a bonfire on their front lawn. The Brits will always have the last say!
Miles, miles underground, Bakura waited in the dark. And he waited. And waited. He started to fidget slowly.
'Ryou?' he called plaintively. 'Ryyyooouuuuuuu??'
Miles and miles and miles above, Ryou smiled gently as he threw Bakura's favorite hoodie onto the roaring flames. Payback is a Brit.
Becoming a bit antsy, as his light would say, Bakura groped about for the ladder, only to trip and land on his face. Swearing, he stood, only to slam his head into a lower section of the ceiling.
He stared forlornly into the darkness. Which way was up again?
"So," Tea cleared her throat and sat down in front of the no longer transparent Marik. Oh the wonderful properties of eggs......
He fixed her with his perpetual half-mast gaze. "Marik is not going back. Marik has his own body now- he is going to live."
"And blow how many things up in the process?" Malik asked under his breath.
"i wonder if it gets confusing to refer to yourself in third person all the time...." Tea mused. "Well," she addressed the spiky-haired male across from her, "We're going to have to establish an identity for you, a convincing story for everybody as to your appearance, and, most importantly, rules of conduct for your stay."
From her cage, Pinkie spat a thick wad of acid that sizzled through the floor, her apparent way of saying ' You will obey or else.' Or maybe a better translation would be 'I'm freaking bored, let's see who I can make squirm or dissolve into goo.'
"We'll work on indoor training later." Tea grinned sheepishly. "Sure hope that didn't go through any important pipes....Right. So, here is a list of things you are permitted to do. With anything else, you're going to have to ask for permission first."
Malik raised an eyebrow. "Isn't it normally a list of what you're not supposed to do?"
She smiled grimly, replying. "I thought this way would be shorter." She handed the taller Egyptian a sheet of paper, which read thusly:
MARIK'S CAN-DO LIST :) (flowers and hearts here)
carry out NORMAL bodily functions- breathing, eating, sleeping, etc.
go to school PEACEFULLY
make friends that aren't for the sake of world domination or any other evil intention
learn that smiles do not generally involve sticking one's tongue out about a foot- that should be reserved for giraffes only
become a wonderful citizen concentrated on bettering humanity and the environment! :)
pursue the perfect dream of a happy world!
pet bunnies sweetly :)
listen to Malik and me
sing happy songs and dance!
Malik, reading the list over Marik's shoulder, looked at her with a kind of horrified awe. "What insane, twisted world do you live in?" he breathed. Tea rapped a hand warningly on the frying pan, and Pinky spat a glob that sizzled through the wall. Once more interpreting things her own way, Tea instantly cooed over how cute it was that Pinky was defending her. Pinky spat a hole through the frying pan.
Tea stared at the hole. "If I didn't find profanity so demeaning," she promulgated, "You have no idea what I would be saying right now."
Malik grinned at her. "Oh? 'Cause I recall you cussing the lights out of Bakura recently, then using him as your carpet."
She smiled blissfully in remembrance. "That had to be the greatest day of my life."
Irrationally, Malik felt a stab of anger at Bakura, a little snarl of envy that was completely illogical, directed at how he, albeit inadvertently, had made Tea smile like that. He clapped a hand to his head. The trauma of the day must really be getting to him.
Marik interrupted his confusion, tapping Tea on the shoulder. "Excuse Marik, but Marik doesn't understand most of these words."
Yugi stared up into the masked face that represented his doom. "Umm," he gabbled. "Can I get a rain check on that decision?"
Dark, heavy breathing ensued, somehow condemning his weak words.
"Luke, I am your father. As I helped bring you into this world, now I help you leave it." The masked maniac drew forth, of all things, a baseball bat painted red. Let's see, there's a clue that you might need help: toting around a baseball bat painted like a lightsaber and hitting innocent people. Yugi thought it might go something like this:
CrazyDarthVaderfreak: Hello doc (heavy breathing)
GentlySmilingGuyinaWhiteCoat: Hello demented freak-I mean esteemed patient.
CrazyDarthVaderfreak: I had another dream. (heavy breathing)
VaguelyInterstedWhiteCoatDude: Oh? (pushes up glasses)
CrazyDarthVaderfreak: Yoda kept laughing at me, and he sent hordes of frogs up my pants legs.
(Awkward Silence)
ConcernedGuyinaWhiteCoat: And how did that make you feel?
CrazyDarthVaderfreak: pretty clammy actually. (heavy breathing)
Rudely interrupting his daydream, the impostor Darth Vader hauled back with his, ahem, 'lightsaber', preparing to strike. Yugi, backed into a corner, shook in his strangely pointy black shoes and tried not to think about how much this was going to hurt- both in body and ego. This was like a replay of the days before he had solved the puzzle, before he had met Yami. He smiled involuntarily. Yami who cared, who helped and respected him. And, okay, Yami who often pranced around in a tutu.
Yami, who called him-
"AIBOU!!!!"
The whole room froze, watching in a stupor as Yami vaulted over several fan's heads and body-slammed CDVf into the wall. He knelt, taking Yugi's hands into his own.
"Are you alright, hikari?" His ruby eyes gazed into Yugi's stunned violet ones, holding endless concern and care.
Yugi twitched. "Oh my duel-disk," some people fainted from the profanity, "that creep hit me so hard that I'm hallucinating."
Tea stared at Malik's handiwork critically. "Not to be rude," she decreed. "But I've seen rabid seven foot tall mountain men look more subtle than this." She indicated 'this' with her hand, the broad gesture including Malik, Marik, and Malik's failed attempt to disguise Marik.
"Don't give me that!" snapped Malik. "You have no idea how traumatizing it was to get him into that!"
Tea scoured the humming Marik with her eyes skeptically. "Looks pretty content to me." She hefted her school bag.
"Well, I only have my own uniform, and you know they don't let people in unless they're attired correctly-not counting the tutu and trenchcoat psycho pair-and since we can't leave him here alone-"
"I know," Tea finished morosely. "He had to wear my spare uniform instead."
Marik smoothed the short skirt with a hand, twirling about experimentally. The knee socks strained to contain his muscular calves, and the seams at the shoulder continuously emitted an ominous ripping sound. Still, he looked better than any boy other than Ryou should be allowed to in that kind of outfit. Not that the others didn't try, though.
Somewhere in a pink sparkly castle on an island we wish was farther away, Pegasus gyrated before a mirror, appreciating his image.
"Well, aren't we pretty," he chortled, blowing a kiss to his reflection. He swished the skirt about his thighs, taking a second to plump the pink bow on the top. "Pretty Sailor Pegasus to the rescue!"
Behind the door, his bodyguards exchanged numbers for therapists.
"Why did you even insist that we attire for school anyways?" Malik grumbled, trying futilely to ignore his evil, cross-dressing counterpart who was currently tieing a spare pink sock of Tea's into his hair as a bow.
Tea took pity on him, pulling his hair into a neat pony-tail and constructing a lop-sided bow. "Wish I had a ribbon," she mumbled. "And, my woefully mistrusting neighbor, we are dressed for school because we are going to school."
Malik put his hand on her forehead. "You don't seem to have a fever. I'm not sure that makes me feel better, though." Indeed, the second his hand had touched her forehead, his heart had started pounding. Frowning, he checked his own head, then asked her: "Have you really forgotten the fiasco of this morning when we tried to have school?"
Instead of answering, she asked them both. "Can you keep a secret?"
Malik and Marik looked at one another, for a second completely aligned in their emotions. "Have you forgotten that I managed to conceal from my own family both the existence of a demented alter ego and my intentions to take over the world for years?"
Tea widened her eyes innocently. "Just checking! Jeez....I'll take that as a yes. So," she opened the door and stepped out into the cool evening air. "Are you guys coming to the secret-night-school-established-by-yours-truly or what?"
Hesitantly, Malik followed her, dragging along Marik. "You set up another school after hours?'
Marik stepped on his foot. "That's what Tea-scary said, Malik-pretty."
Tea smacked her face. "Really. That's what I get for talking through a frying-pan."
"Well, on the up side," Malik grinned. "I'm alive."
She regarded him, then turned away. "That's what I get for talking through a frying-pan...."
"Hey!" Malik protested. She laughed; he glowered. She stuck out her tongue; he snorted, then chuckled.
Marik watched uneasily, a dark feeling curling upwards in his newly created stomach. "Marik can do that better!" he interrupted. "See!" And he stuck out his own tongue, which he was indeed creepily good at. Coupled with the skirt and knee-sock pig-tail, it was a bit unnerving.
"I think I should have been more specific about that on the list..." sighed Tea. She turned watery eyes on Malik. "Do you think poor Pinky will be alright while we're away?"
"Honestly?" said Malik. "I'm more concerned about your poor apartment."
AN Hey guys, I'm sorry it's been so long. I've been in something of a rut because of some family issues, but thank you for reading and constructive criticism will fill my little heart with joy! Ehem...yeah....I'll try to update soon!