The Three Kings: The Hunt
Disclaimer (1): Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Systems, and TV Tokyo. Harry Potter is owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Arthur A. Levine Books, and Warner Bros. Please support the official releases.
Disclaimer (2): The Crucible and all its characters are owned by Arthur Miller. Lord of the Flies is written by William Golding. The Greater Moncton International Airport is owned by Transport Canada. The McDonalds Corportation is founded by Richard McDonald, Maurice McDonald, and Ray Kroc.
Warning: violence, alcoholism, depression, and self hatred.
Chapter 12: Hello
Bakura sits on the roof of Hathorne's Broom Shop, cloaked by his powers of invisibility. He stares at the corner of Warren and Parris, where the Abbey's bookshop resides. He glances down at the bag at his side; it's filled with all sorts of texts. Bakura almost wants to stay up there and read them all, but he only has a few more hours before the bus that will take him back home leaves. He looks at his phone again. It's still dead - has been since he arrived.
This is stupid, he thinks. He knows that Doctor Mutuo isn't going to text him. Bakura had told her about the wards right before he'd entered the town. He hasn't even been able to receive a response. When he gets back, maybe he'll send Leo a message and ask him about the handheld version of whatever it was that took out the wards in Philadelphia.
Leo. Shit.
Bakura runs his hand through his hair, trying to calm down. What was he going to do about Leo? He still wants to someday meet the guy, maybe go get coffee and actually see what he looks like. But then there's the chance that both of these crushes were completely one-sided and he's worrying about this for nothing.
He sighs. This liking two people at the same time thing had been so much easier when he'd known Igraine liked him back and Charlie Weasley didn't even know he existed.
Bakura stares back at the street. In the distance, he can see Putnam's Clothing Store, where he and the others had bought their wizarding outfits. He remembers the girl who works there. Kisha. Kisha Borrego. Duke had talked about her afterwards, hoping that their visit wouldn't get her in too much trouble.
"I don't know, man. She just seem...nice," the former smuggler said. "Never met a witch that was nice before."
"You've never met a witch that wasn't trying to kill you before," Joey told him.
"True. But still…" Duke let that train of thought die. "Can you believe it, though? Schools with illegal book trades?"
"There was one at Hogwarts," Bakura supplied. "They ran it out of Ravenclaw tower. Tolkien was always a favourite."
And he thinks of Ryou Andrews, cooped up in the North Tower during his final months, reading and re-reading Lord of the Flies while Professor Trelawney tried to get him to eat.
"The night is coming for you, my dear boy," she used to tell him. "You must be strong for when it does. Have some chicken."
"She knew," Bakura smirks, slipping into an old tongue that he learned in a mud brick home. "'The night is coming'. She wasn't predicting my death. She was talking about this. Damn seers. Do they have to speak in riddles all the time?"
And then, all of a sudden, the bottom drops out of his stomach. He touches the Millennium Ring, hidden under his jacket, and his vision inverts as it activates. The souls of those walking through William's Abbey burn dark and their names hover above their heads.
Bakura watches from a distance as Kisha Borrego throws Keith Howard out onto the street.
His fingers are numb. His heart is pounding in his chest. Bakura stares at Keith and tries not to hyperventilate. What is he doing here?
He's tracking you, obviously, he thinks. What you did made sure that the Unspeakables would know that it was mages that were behind the raid. And if they managed to connect the stolen wands to us, William's Abbey isn't exactly a big leap.
But why Keith?
Keith had mentioned once his intention to use Ryou's conversion to get on the fast track to retirement. He might have intended it as a joke at the time, but Ryou had known that it was the truth. He held Keith no ill will, though - it had been one of the reasons why he'd refused to run away with the man when Keith had tried to rescue Ryou from that cell. Keith Howard had wanted to spend the rest of his life on a beach with a fruity drink in one hand and a pretty girl in the other. Everyone was supposed to get what they wanted.
So why was Keith still working for the Department of Mysteries?
That's when Bakura takes a closer look at Keith's name. And to his horror, he sees the same coding of numbers below it was Cyril Weller had had.
Keith Howard II
Seedling 123-42M
Bandit
The Millennium Ring shows all the names that a person collected in their life, from first to last. The more faded the name, the less that it was being used. Keith's name and the word 'Bandit' shined brighter than he Seedling code, which was some form of relief. But those number - 123-42M - were still just enough to be visible. And that was terrifying.
Bakura watches as Keith walks down the street and is joined by a woman. The incredibly faded names of 'Anja Simola' and 'Seedling 123-37F' stand above the bright, bold letters of 'Tilla Mook'. A young man not much older than Bakura joined them as they pass in front of Hathorne's. He either goes by 'Misha' or 'Pete' or 'Seedling 283-06M'. Bakura can't tell. All three of his names burn with the same intensity. What the hell?
Okay. Okay. What is he going to do? The safest option would be to do nothing and let Keith go on his merry way. But then Bakura thinks about the Keith Howard he used to know and the one that stands before him now. He'd always taken pride in his appearance, clean shaven with neat hair and clothes. Now he had scruffy bread with greasy hair, stains on his shirt and a coat that looked far too big for him. Not to mention the general air of doom.
Bakura remembers Keith holding his hand in the Hospital Wing, snapping at Madame Pomphrey for refusing to treat the likes of him. He remembers Keith covering him with a blanket and letting him crash on his couch when sleeping in the Slytherin dorm became too dangerous. He remembers Keith helping him cope with breaking up with Igraine. He remembers Keith staying with him to the bitter end and how he'd taken comfort in the fact that he wasn't going to die alone.
He was being paid to do all that. The people who hurt Ryou, hurt you, were the same people he worked for. Bakura remembers the potions that make him hallucinate, made him feel like his veins were on fire. He remembers the curses, the broken bones, the bruised that he covered up. But Keith Howard…
"Damn it," Bakura hisses, rising to his feet. "Damn it, damn it, fuck, shit, fuck- "
Keith is his. Just like Joey is his, like Duke and Mai and Amanda are his, like Haley and Serenity are his. Most people might call people like that friends, family - hell, even acquaintances or strangers on the street. But Bakura - who is possessive and desperate to keep what little he has from slipping through his fingers… To Bakura, they are his.
He jumps down from the roof, still invisible, and rolls when he hits the ground. Bakura runs towards where Keith and his two companions stand.
"Damn it," he hisses, still speaking that half-forgotten language from a place he once called home. "What the fuck are you doing, idiot?"
Three men block their path. Bakura slides past Keith unseen and stand between them. The Millennium Ring twitches beneath his shirt.
Only two of the newcomers have the same Seedling codes, but all of them have dozens of names. Kadin Spurrell, Blaine Gerrish, and Jermaine Sport are the ones that glow most intensely, but Bakura catches others: Dawid Fronczek, Kamil Potocki, Jay Biddick, Henry Ratliffe, Heath Plumlee, Bryan Burritt… the list goes on.
Only Blaine Gerrish doesn't have the code. But still… No one has that many names, Bakura thinks as he reads a faded Aloc Flint at the beginning of the man's list. No one up to any good, at least.
"You," he hears the woman, Tilla Mook, hiss. "What are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same question," Gerrish responds calmly, as the shops begin to close up for the evening. "I told you already. Your team is no longer in charge of this investigation. You three are out of your jurisdiction."
"Pegasus-" Keith starts but is cut off.
"Maximillion Pegasus is no longer in charge of this investigation. I just told you that," Gerrish smirks. "If you have any complains-"
"Yeah, take 'em up with our supervisor. I got that the first time," Keith slurs. Bakura's jaw drops. Is he drunk?
"Then you know that you should not be here," the one called Spurrell speaks. "Turn over any evidence you collected today."
"Or what?" The kid by Keith growls and his fingers twitch towards his wand.
"Coppermine," Mook whispers and shakes her head.
"No. They walk into our investigation, try to boss us around - no fucking way. They're not getting anything else."
"And how are you planning on stopping us?" The third man, Sport, smiles wickedly.
"Fucking try me, pretty boy," and in one smooth movement, both Coppermine and Sport draw their wands.
Bakura gets out of the way just in time. The two men fight brutally, casting spells in blinding colours that move faster than anything he'd ever seen before. The other four palm their wands as well. Mook shouts out a name ("Depre!") and forms a shield to protect herself and Keith from an onslaught of magic.
The most frightening thing about it all is that they're moving - and not just the small steps that wizards normally take when dueling. The six of them roll to dodge spells, swap opponents on the fly, and dance in a way that he's never seen wizards do before.
This was how you fought when you were trained to kill mages. You didn't stand your ground. You moved with your opponent. Bakura watches them in fascination and realizes that this would be the enemy he would be facing, if he ever had to fight an Unspeakable.
Keith is a bit sluggish, though. He's hammered and off his game and Spurrell know it, judging by how he's throwing spell after spell at the man. Keith is on the retreat, backing himself against a wall. He'll be a sitting duck there, Bakura thinks. Make your choice. Do it now and don't look back.
And Bakura does, timing it with the cold precision of a perfectionist. Just as Keith begins to slash his wand, Bakura sends a powerful stream of air shooting towards Spurrell's knee. There's an awful cracking sound as the bone break and the man falls to the ground. Keith looks confused, murmuring, "What the fuck?" before kicking Spurrell's wand away from him.
A blast of energy brings Bakura's attention back to the main fight. The two sides have been separated, thrown onto opposite sides of the street. Another man stands in between them. He's dark skinned like Bakura, but heads taller and sturdily built. His dark eyes are blank, but not empty.
Jonathon Kaham
Seedling 285-54M
Plant 85,470M
Depre Scott
Two codes, Bakura's eyes narrow. That...probably isn't good.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Coppermine snaps.
"They are in command. We will hand over all evidence collected," the newcomer states, watching as Mook rises to her feet.
"They aren't getting jack shit from me!"
"Pete, just do what he says," Mook sighs. "We're in enough trouble already."
"But-"
"Do it!"
Coppermine spits blood on the ground, but waves his wand. A receipt flies from inside his jacket over towards Gerrish. The man catches it, turning it over in his hands.
"An order of jerk pork and a chicken club at Tituba's," he reads. "Taken by a waiter that doesn't exist."
"Joseph Wheeler. Older brother of Serenity Wheeler," says the man with two codes. Bakura clenches his fists. They knew about Jono and Sera.
He could stop them right now. He could drop a tornado on them all, suck the air from their lungs, crush them beneath a building he'd blow on top of them. He could tear this town to shreds, even without tapping into the powers of the Demon Snake or the true, terrifying potential of the Millennium Ring.
Or he could do nothing and they'd continue to spill their guts about how much they knew. Bakura hates making the tough choices.
"Was that so hard?" Gerrish smirks. Then he turns to Spurrell, who's still clutching his broken leg, "Let's go. We've got what we came here for."
There are three cracks as Gerrish, Spurrell, and Sport disapperate. Immediately, Coppermine turns on the Unspeakable with two codes.
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
"You attacked a superior officer and refused to follow orders," he responds. "Punishments for such actions-"
"I don't give a damn about punishments! Pegasus gave us an order!"
"Pegasus also said that if we got caught, we were supposed to lie low, idiot," Keith slurs.
"So say the guy who broke one of their legs!" Coppermine spits, "Pegasus gave us an order! San Francisco can wait until we find the mages who broke into the Ministry!"
"Don't talk about that here!" Keith grabs him by the collar, "And didn't they teach you anything in auror training! The spell I was casting would have knocked the wind from him, not break his leg."
"So fucking what?"
"There's someone here," Mook realizes, eyes sweeping the street. "Watching us. Cloaked."
Immediately, Two Codes flicks his wand and a dust storm flies around the street. Bakura turns intangible just as it reaches him.
"Nothing detected," Two Codes says.
"Regardless, we should get out of here. Wipe the town," Mook orders. Two Codes nods and waves his wand in a circle above his head. A glowing ring appears around them and Bakura dives inside it.
"Obliviate Maxima!" Two Codes curls his wand slightly and the circle expands, rushing inside the buildings. He can't see it, but Bakura guesses that the occupants of William's Abbey now had no recollection of the fight. The four disapparate without another word.
Shit, Bakura thinks. Shit, we're fucked.
There is only one reason why they'd talk about San Francisco: the Department of Mysteries is planning an attack. He needs to get home, now.
He can't take transit back - it's far too slow. So he bolts out of the Abbey, propelling himself forwards with a blast of air. Bakura reaches the town's limits in under a minute and his phone lights up, alerting him to the fact that he has three new texts and a dozen emails (most of which are spam). He flicks through his contacts until he sees Matthew Jacques.
- Emergency evac ASAP
Bakura waits three nerve-racking minutes before he gets a response.
- Turn on your location services
- HOW
- Settings. Privacy. Location Services.
- Done
- Stand by
There's a crackle of energy and a faint buzzing sound. His screen flickers for a second before going completely white. Bakura smells ozone and burning rubber and turns to find Matthew standing behind him.
"I still have no idea how you're doing this without active ley lines," Bakura mutters.
"Had to learn to make do the last thousand years without the gods actively powering them. I've been using rivers, air currents, streets, and recently, the transmissions between cell towers - though they are pretty chaotic," the older man shrugs. "Let's get going."
Bakura grabs his hand and watches as Matthew calls up a picture of his office building on his phone, encircled by a green ring.
"~Guard and guide our trip and all who venture on this road. May the Crone see us safely to our destination, see us safely home. Blessed be.~"
The world around him fades to black and he catches snippets of a thousand conversations as they fly through the air waves. Finally, they touch down in from of Owl and Sun Ltd.
"Now, what's the emergency?" Matthew asks as he flattens the creases in his suit jacket.
"Wizards are planning an attack on San Francisco," he answers and watches the colour drain from Matthew's face.
"Did… would the raid have brought it on?"
"Don't think so. By the sound of it, it's been in the books for a while. I'll start contacting our people and get the message out. You-"
"Fortify the city's defenses. Of course, right away," and then Matthew's on his phone again, calling up Duke to get his team to start painting.
Bakura spends the rest of his evening visiting the homes of their people in the city, reassuring families and talking about emergency procedures. He also attends meetings with Seth, Jono, Maya, and the others to talk about plans for defence.
At one point, Jono makes a joke about how much easier it would be it they had a spy in the wizard ranks. Afterwards, Bakura wonders if it's because he's been up for nearly twenty hours that he thinking, I could help with that.
Which is why he finds himself on top of Nomad at one in the morning, contemplating using the Millenium Ring to find where Keith Howard lived.
Divine weapons are tricky to wield, to say the absolute least (though considering that they were forged with the intention of fighting the gods, it's understandable). Most of the time, the simplest of their powers could be used without consequence, which is why he could see names and souls and even track within a city's limits. But the weapons were powerful enough that he could use their abilities on a global scale. And with that power came the risks.
The more you used a divine weapon, the more it consumed you. He can't recall much, but he knows the legends regarding who he and the other Kings had to fight during the war. He remembers Aknadin, the Dark Priest, with his terrifying gaze, mad laughter, and the death and blood that followed. The last thing he wants is to become that.
Aside from the insane power boost and gaining a new set of divine abilities, there is one major complication: all divine weapons are connected. That means that if he used the Millennium Ring for anything more than its simplest abilities, then anyone who had another weapon would know. Of course, they wouldn't know that it was him, that he was using the Ring, or even why he was using it at all, so there was an advantage. But usually, those who possessed such weapons didn't just let that information go.
And then… the other thing was, using the Ring just made him feel uncomfortable. He can't remember why, though. Bakura gets a flash of a cauldron filled with gold and a figure cloaked in shadow, but nothing else.
So Bakura sits on the roof of Nomad, thinking about what he should do. And then, two hours before sunrise, he makes his decision. And as the Ring activates, his eyes glow purple and nothing in world remains hidden.
At exactly 3:48am PT, a series of events occur simultaneously around the globe.
A college professor sits up suddenly in bed, gasping for air as a dream about two boys, one fire and the other air, fades from her mind. She glances at the golden puzzle box beside her and contemplates her choices.
A man on crutches goes into a coughing fit in the middle of the Greater Moncton International Airport. A security officer watches as his exhausted traveling companion rummages in her pocket for an inhaler.
Two people sitting side by side, one dead and one very much alive, pause in the middle of an auction and lose their chance to purchase a rare artifact.
A golden eye, located on an island with no name, spins on the spot and shines with an unholy light.
Albus Dumbledore, alone in his office, mutters, "Curious," and glances at two objects: his wand and a cloak, folded on the center of his desk.
A shattered mess of a soul writhes inside of the body of a snake somewhere in Albania. His student, Quirinus Quirrell, voices his concern before he is silenced with a curse.
A diary belonging to a former Hogwarts prefect opens in the depths of the Malfoy Manor and a series of scribbles appear and disappear on its pages.
A mystical ring of unearthly power sits in a shack just outside of Little Hangleton. It leaps a foot in the air before coming down to rest on the rotting kitchen table.
A locket inside a crystal cave starts to scream and hiss, causing the pool it's sitting in to boil rapidly.
A cup, hidden deep inside a Gringotts vault, rattles and falls from it's shelf.
A beautiful diadem shakes on top of a pile of books and clatters when it hits the floor.
A boy with green eyes and a lightning scar shudders as he sits in his bed inside of the cupboard under the stairs.
And finally, a woman with thick red hair and blue eyes frowns, glancing upwards for a moment. "Damn you, Pegasus," she murmurs and then shakes her head. "Looks like you're back, Thief King. Now… let's see if the rest follow."
Keith Howard wakes up in his bathtub. He blearily remembers Kitamori coming over after they witnessed Pegasus getting chewed out by that Latner chick. He thinks they might have had sex again, but all he can remember is that he spent the night drinking from a bottle of firewhiskey and holding Kitamori's hair back as she threw up in his toilet. For a moment he'd been concerned that he'd gotten her pregnant, but she'd shaken her head.
"No, that's not possible," she'd sighed. "Not anymore."
"You alright then?"
Kitamori had looked at the mirror before taking the bottle of firewhiskey from his hand. She took a sip, switched it around her mouth, and then spit it out into the sink, "Just… memories."
He hears his radio playing in the background, turned to some muggle station. They've got one of their weather prediction people on, who's talking about some weird air pressure anomaly that was spotted at ten to four this morning along the California coastline. He listens half heartedly for a few minutes before he smells grease coming from the kitchen.
Keith finds his shirt from last night and pulls it on, stumbling out of the bathroom. He blinks rapidly as the sunlight hits him, "I didn't know you could cook."
"It's McDonalds," a male voice responds. "Besides, your eggs are three months past their expiry date."
Keith stares unbelievingly for a moment. The man (boy? He can't really guess his age) sits at his kitchen table eating from a styrofoam container of hotcakes and sausage and cup of coffee. He's black with bone white hair. Keith sees the massive burn scar that passes straight over his right eye and instantly knows who this person is and how much shit he's in.
"You…" he breathes, hand going towards his belt where he keeps his wand. It's not there. Well, fuck him.
"Keith Howard, I presume?" The one unknown mage from the break-in smirks and Keith realizes that his eyes are actually purple. Seriously, what the hell?
"I'm not completely defenseless without a wand, you know," Keith scowls.
"Your wand is in the fridge. You're free to go get it at any time. I'm not here to fight," the mage tells him before nodding to the seat on the other side of the table. "Sit."
It's not like he has much of a choice. Keith carefully edges his way over to the table and into the chair, "Then why'd you take it?"
"To keep you from cursing me right off the bat," he says. Keith has to hand it to him, that actually makes sense. He hates the smart ones.
"How do you know where I live?"
"You know I read your files."
That's actually new information to Keith, but he isn't going to say that, "You read the one on wizardborn mages. My address is not in those files."
"You were in Ryou Andrews' file."
If anything, that just makes him all the more pissed, "I was only mentioned in there as his Handler. I'll ask you one more time: how do you know where I-"
"For fuck's sake, fine!" The mage rolls his eyes. "So much for trying to be mysterious. Calm down. Look, I was at William's Abbey today. I… accidentally followed you home when you did the," he makes an exaggerated disapparation sound, "teleporting thing. And I thought, 'Hey, you just saved me having to buy train tickets.' So I brought you breakfast."
"You broke that guy's leg."
"Guilty as charged," the mage shrugs.
"Why?"
"Why not."
"What were you doing at the Abbey?"
And if that isn't a shit-eating grin, "Shopping for a friend. Coffee?"
The mage pushes a travel cup his way. It's got milk in it. Keith takes it and drinks. Still tastes like crap.
"What do you want?" He growls when he finishes.
The mage's smirk drops and he almost looks concerned. But that can't be right. He's a wizard and the mage is… well, a mage. No mage would ever give a damn about him.
"We both know why I'm here. Let's not pretend, alright. Wizards are launching an attack on San Francisco," the mage scoffs slightly. "Pete Coppermine - 3613 Cobweb Road, Detroit - isn't exactly the brightest person in the world, is he? I know that my friends wouldn't go shouting about our secret plans in the middle of the street. Who knows who's listening?"
"Are you threatening my men?" Keith hisses as his head pounds.
"No. I'm informing you that the guy made a stupid mistake. I'm not here to fight," the mage says. Then he leans forwards, "Why did you try to help Ryou Andrews?"
Ryou is, like always, a punch to the gut. So Keith gets up and goes to the fridge. Part of him wants to see how the mage will react (the answer: a very controlled inhale but other than that, he does nothing to defend himself… which is actually terrifying) and part of him just wants to drink something other than shit-tasting coffee. He sees that his wand is hidden behind the milk and comes to the conclusion that the mage is a brat.
He grabs a beer - because he's not kidding himself - and cracks it open with his hand. Keith sits back down at the table and takes two large gulps so that he can maybe pretend that he doesn't give a fuck, "What does it matter to you? He's dead. You can't help him."
"Why do you think it matters? A wizard attempting to break a mage out of one of the most secure cells on the planet. Of course I want to know why."
"How did you… oh, right. Those three," Keith glances off to the side. They were just children. I had to, "They… made it?"
"Yeah. They made it."
Good, he thinks. He didn't die in vain.
"You didn't answer my question. Why did you try to help him?" The mage asks.
"You…" his vision gets a bit blurry. "You have no idea… no idea what you're talking about."
"Keith-"
"Don't. Just don't," he hisses. The mage sighs and grabs the plastic sugar container he keeps on his table for the off chance that he gets guests. But then the mage just dumps the whole thing into his coffee and Keith's heart clenches. "Why are you doing that?"
The mage blinks and then realizes what he's referring to. He runs a hand through his hair, embarrassed, "Pretty gross, huh? I just can't take my coffee any other way."
"You know, you could just add milk," Keith says, but behind the scenes his mind is whirling. Ryou took his coffee like that. Keith knows it, but he never put it in the file. The mage couldn't have known about Ryou and his sweet tooth from his recon. So that means…
That means he's doing it because that's how the mage takes his coffee. The familiarity of it all is almost too painful.
"Yeah, but where's the fun in that," the mage answers and takes a sip of the now semi-solid. He makes a face and scrapes the bottom of the plastic container with his fingers. Keith takes another swing of his beer.
"I got too close."
"What?" The mage frowns.
"You wanted to know why I tried to save Ryou Andrews. It's because I was an idiot," Keith spits. "I cared. That's why."
There's a dull thud as the plastic hits the table. Keith looks up just in time to see the look that passes over the mage's face. If he didn't know better, he'd almost say it was relief.
"You… you cared about…"
"Look, you got what you wanted. So why don't you just piss the fuck off," he snaps.
"But I got you an Egg McMuffin," the mage pushes a styrofoam container towards him and, horrifically, it doesn't sound like an attempt to mock him. Keith just snaps.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"What? Should I have gotten one with sausage?"
"It's not about the fucking eggs!" Keith hisses, rising to his feet. "I gave you what you wanted! Now leave me alone!"
"No," the mage snaps back. "No, fuck you, no, I'm not leaving. You're hungover and smell like shit and you were sleeping in your shower, for god sake. So, no. I'm not leaving you alone. So sit down, shut the fuck up, and eat your breakfast. Idiot!"
Keith's jaw clamps shut. He takes a series of deep controlled breaths, easing back into his chair. After what feels like hours of lost time, he reaches out and grabs his McMuffin. It smells like grease and fat and it sets his stomach churning. But he's hungry. Really, fucking hungry because the only thing he's eaten in the last twelve hours is beer, whiskey, and a bag of chips. So he digs in.
"What's your name?" He asks around eggs and bread (and how the hell does this guy know that he likes this shit anyways?).
"Bakura," the mage tells him.
"First or last?"
"First, I guess."
He guesses? "What, they don't have last names where you come from?"
Bakura snorts, "Believe it or not, no."
"What the hell kinda name is Bakura, anyways?"
"It's the one my mother gave me. Got a problem?"
"None," Keith rolls his eyes and then reaches for his beer… which has mysteriously been replaced by orange juice. He looks up at the mage, "How did you…"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Bakura's grin is so full of bullshit.
"I swear, if your power is turning beer into juice, I'm walking out of here right now."
Bakura laughs and digs into his hotcakes, "Nah. That's not my thing."
Keith drops his food, "You're an illusionist." Fuck, fuck, he hates illusionists. You could never tell what was real with them.
But the mage shakes his head, "Nope."
"Then it's poisoned."
"No, I told you. I'm just-"
"Here to talk. I got that. Shit," he leans forwards and the palms of his hands dig into the sockets of his eyes. "What is happening?" Seriously, he's making small talk with a mage. How the fuck did his life get to this point?
Except, he knows exactly why he's doing this. Those phantom skeletal hands are on his shoulders again and he imagines that it's Ryou sitting across from him, with his black hair and blue eyes and smiling in the way that he hadn't in years. He wishes that could happen. But people don't just come back from the dead.
Bakura puts down his plastic fork and knife and stares at him. And Keith nearly freaks out because there in those purple eyes (and really, who the hell has purple eyes?) is the same ancient gaze that Ryou had. The mage looks somewhere between fifteen and a thousand, million years old and it shakes him to his core.
"All it takes is one to start a revolution," Bakura says.
"What?"
"One voice. One person saying 'no'. You could be that person. You could be the one to change how wizards treat mages like Ryou Andrews."
Keith grits his teeth, "What makes you think I give a damn about mages?"
"Because you could have gone for your wand when you went to the fridge. But you didn't. You're hearing me out. How many other wizards would ever give me that chance?"
None. He knows that had Bakura approached anyone else, he'd have been blasted into next week. Keith wishes the mage wasn't right.
"So is that what you want? For me to be your spy?" He sneers.
"I want you to do what you think is right," Bakura tells him.
"And you think I know right from wrong?"
"...You're a good person," and that just sets his temper on fire because he can tell that the mage is lying.
"I led a kid to his death - a fifteen year old kid. I stepped back and watched him die and didn't do a damn thing to stop it. I kill mages like you for a living and I do it because I think that's right-"
"You kept him alive for five years-"
"Doesn't change the fact that he's still dead!" Keith yells. "Doesn't change the fact that he died hating himself! Hating me!"
The mage's fingers clench into fists and honestly looks to be in pain. Keith thinks for a second that Bakura might up and leave. But then he opens his mouth and says the one thing in the world that would make Keith want to strangle him.
"Ryou loved you."
"How would you know?" He hisses and for the first time, he's tempted to go get his wand. Bakura must see this because he gets up and walks over to the fridge. Keith watches as the mage pulls his wand from behind the milk, eyes widening as Bakura sits right back down and offers it to him.
"What are you doing?" He whispers.
"So maybe you're not a good person. Maybe you could have done more to help Ryou Andrews. But right now, I'm giving you back your wand and you are going to do whatever the fuck you want with it. And whatever that ends up being, I'm going to be sitting here eating breakfast at your kitchen table and there isn't a damn thing that's going to change that."
Keith barely breathes when his hand closes around the handle. He pulls his wand back and stares at it for a whole minute. There's nothing wrong with me, Keith. I'm not sick. So, he puts it away because Ryou would be disappointed if he didn't.
Bakura's smile is closer to a smirk, but it's genuine.
"I just don't want to start a fight before 10am," Keith snears before the mage can say anything.
"Sure, we'll go with that," Bakura says and points to his food. "You should finish that before it goes cold."
Then he takes a sip of his coffee flavoured sugar and it's so stupid that Keith has to shove his face in his breakfast to keep himself from laughing hysterically.
After he finishes his food, the mage gets up and moves towards the sliding glass door that leads to his balcony, which is unlocked and explains how he got in. Keith is shocked by how short the guy is - Bakura doesn't even come up to his shoulder - and wonders if he's just been given the pep talk of his life by a child. But Keith knows better than to underestimate him because Bakura moves so soundlessly that he probably wouldn't know the kid was there if he wasn't looking directly at the mage.
Bakura checks some kind of device in his pocket, "This is where we part ways, I guess."
"Hopefully, we'll never meet again," he answers. Bakura chuckles at that.
"Oh, we probably will. I'm willing to bet on it."
"You realize that 'next time' will be when we'll be on opposite sides of the battle field?"
"So we're not now?" Bakura raises an eyebrow and Keith honestly wants to say no. The mage sees that in him, too, "When it happens, it happens. But… I don't want to kill you."
"Will you?"
"If I need to, yes. And don't give me that look," Bakura scoffs when Keith does just that. "Like you wouldn't do the same if you were in my position. I got people that are mine and as much as I don't want to kill you, I will if you try to take them from me."
"Wonderful," he sighs.
"Hey, you know how to work a phone?" Bakura asks and hands him a folded napkin when he nods, "You ever feel like you want to talk, call me. I know you probably won't because of what we both are, but still. Offer's open."
"Why?" Keith opens it up and sees a series of numbers separated by dashes.
"Because you cared about Ryou Andrews," Bakura answers. "And I don't want to kill you."
He snorts, looking off to the side for a moment, "Has anyone ever told you that you're the most confusing little shit-" He looks back just in time to see Bakura jump off his fucking balcony. Keith panics and rushes over, leaning over the railing. He sees Bakura rising from a crouch on the sidewalk below. The mage waves. "Yeah, I bet they have. Asshole."
And then he realizes that he's late for work. He downs the last of the McMuffin and rushes out the door. Strangely enough, he feels a little better.
Hello again!
I'd like to thank those who reviewed for the last chapter: anita15, Tz342, Aqua Burst 07, Rita Mu, green lilah, Uryuu-Nipaa, InsanityByDefinition, MyEyesOnew, and MusingAIR.
Okay, so I'm sure you've all noticed the extremely long periods between updates. I think this one was about half a year. First of all, I'd really like to apologize, because I know that you all really enjoy this story and I'd love to update it as often as I did when I first started. But the truth is, my job takes up a lot of my life and I don't have a lot of time to write.
Does that mean that Hunt is going to be abandoned? No way in hell. I'm just trying to be honest about why updates are going to be really, really infrequent. I'm very sorry, but I promise you that even if an update takes months to get out, I will eventually publish it.
Thank you all for your patience. It means a lot.
Until next time,
AlcatrazOutpatient