And so when White Mage woke up much later, with a splitting headache, only to realize that he was being carried by a bunch of rats, some who he trusted more than others…
The first thing that came to mind was, "Why is it always me?"
"Man, what a hangover!" Thief King Bakura laughed, dryly, the next morning.
Naturally, he had a headache.
That was after… How many drinks?
He forgot a long time ago.
He picked an apple up from the floor, wiped off some of the dirt, then bit in. "I swear, this has the be the best fruit in this whole dang game. Next to grapes."
The King of Thieves then sat back in his throne, eating away at the red fruit.
"I'm gonna be so bored today if nothing exciting happens…" He made a loud yawn, "Maybe I'll go on a raid. Steal some stuff. Whadoya think, Mage?"
He blinked when there wasn't a response, "…Erm, Mage?"
"I can't believe this guy. He can't even remember sending someone to get wine." The first goblin complained.
Thief King slapped his forehead with a laugh, "Oh right, so that's what I did!"
He got up from his throne and stretched his arms out, "Well, better go see what's going on down there! Maybe he's knocked out. Heh, heh."
He took one last, big bite out of the apple and then threw it on the floor on the way out.
"I hate this job." The second goblin complained as he went to pick the abused fruit up.
"Should have listened to Mother and become a jester." The first goblin complained with a groan.
"Ahaha!" Thief King laughed as he walked on by the goblins and out into the hall, "Man I love those goblins. Hilarious!"
Thief King scratched his head, confused, when he got to the wine cellar.
There wasn't a sign of the mage anywhere.
"Where'd he go, then?"
Akefia was just about ready to turn and look somewhere else, when he noticed a piece of cloth by a broken wine bottle.
"What's that suppose to be?" He went over and picked it up.
There was a message, though not very well written.
It took about five minutes for Thief King to get an idea of what it was trying to say.
And it wasn't even a very good idea.
"Okay, so: There's a Yeti, living in the mountains… And it wants revenge for the time some guy stole its ice cream machine." He thought back to something he saw on TV, "…Why is there a Yeti in Egypt?"
There was then he kicked an older rug, pushing it over and reveling a secret trap door.
Thief King grinned, "Well, I think I might have an idea where my mage went."
He pulled the trap door open, and slipped through to see where it would lead.
As it turned out, it was the sewers.
"…Seriously?" Thief King blinked, annoyed.
He wasn't exactly fond of places like this.
Of course, he had survived in worse places and decided to put up with the sewers until he knew what was going on.
And so the Thief King went onward with his little journey, in hopes that he wasn't just wasting his time.
White Mage Bakura had spent the last few hours being carried by rats.
Yes, rats.
At first he couldn't have been bothered to do anything about it, since his head hurt a little too much.
And then he spent some time thinking over what happened.
I went to get something.
Something fell.
And now I'm being carried by rats.
He had been repeating that in his head for the past hour, and it still wasn't making sense.
And now that he was really thinking about it, the question came to him.
Why am I being carried by rats?
"U-Um…?" He tried to speak.
"She… I mean he's awake!" One of the rats cried, starting a whole round of chatter.
White Mage winced when he was pulled back down after trying to sit up. "I don't like this. I wanna go back."
"Sorry, we have orders to take you to our leader." Another rat said.
White Mage blinked, "Leader? Wha?"
"Just this way."
The mage pouted, "But I wanna go back to the palace!"
"No can do."
"I wanna go back!"
"No!"
"Pleaseee?"
"No. We're halfway there, so just shut up."
White Mage scowled, "I'm not going to shut up. I wanna go back, so take me back right now!"
He raised his foot up, slamming it down on the rat's heads.
Those rats fell over, holding their heads in pain and White Mage giggled as he managed to slide off of the others.
"What do you think you're doing?" The rats exclaimed in alarm.
"Getting away from you!" White Mage stuck his tongue out while pointing his staff at them in a somewhat threatening way.
And then he made a run for it.
"After him! …Or her. It's hard to tell."
"I'm a boy!" White Mage hissed as he ran, not daring to look back.
It felt like Thief King had been walking forever, and for all he knew, it probably had been forever.
If he really had to say it, he was bored.
"I don't know what I was thinking when I thought Mage might be down here…"
He was just about to go back, when someone ran into him.
"What the…?"
White Mage blinked, "Huhh? Akefia?"
"Mage? Huh. So you were down here."
The mage giggled, and hugged the thief, "You did come for me!"
"Yeah, sure. Why were you down here again?"
"I was being carried by rats."
"…"
"What?"
Thief King burst into hysterics, "Rats? Seriously? That's ten times funnier than a yeti!"
White Mage gave him an odd look, "…Why would there be a yeti in Egypt?"
"There he, or she, is!" Called a rat, from just around the corner.
"I keep saying that I'm not a girl!" White Mage screamed, running around the thief to hide.
"I dunno, Mage, you're not being very convincing." Thief King winked, getting a kick in the leg as a response.
The rats gasped when they saw them, "It's the Evil One!"
"Yeah, you'd better be afraid." Thief King laughed.
"What do you want, anyway?" White Mage peaked his head out from behind the thief to ask.
"Well, actually…" Said one rat, who was interrupted by another.
"We just took you so we could use you for ransom against the Evil One!"
"Nice name they gave me."
"It is a very feared name."
"It better be."
White Mage poked the thief in the back, "Um… Akefia? What should we do?"
Thief King thought for a second, "So what were you wanting from me again?"
The larger rat came into view, "You must come with us, for our leader wants to speak with you." He then turned to the mage, "…Oh, and remember me? I'm the one who hit you with that bottle!"
White Mage blinked, "The only thing I remember from last night was getting hit in the head."
"Yes, well that was me."
Thief King eventually shrugged, "Couldn't hurt, I guess."
"Whaat?" White Mage stared at the thief, completely irritated, "But I just got away from these creeps! I wanna go back to the palace!"
"Too bad."
And so the rats lead the thief and mage to their leader.
They were lead to a secret room in the sewers, where a giant, plump rat sat with a crown that seemed too small.
"Who goes there?" The King Rat said.
"It is the Evil One, Sir." The big rat said.
"Is that so? Then we have a lot to discuss."
Thief King rolled his eyes and looked to the side where there was a giant vault, "Yeah, yeah. First, what's in the vault?"
"That is our Treasury." The King Rat said, "Stay away from it, for it has all of our gold in it."
"Gold?" Thief King's face lit up like a candle.
White Mage sighed, "Here we go…"
"Yes, gold." Said the Rat King, "Now anyway, the reason we've called you because over the years you've made life very hard for us and we're sick of it."
"Huhh?" White Mage blinked, "Akefia hasn't been here that long, has he?"
"I dunno. I've obviously had this castle for a while." Thief King shrugged, "So what's your problem?"
The Rat King glared at him, "We used to live free in the two countries, but you took away our freedom. You trapped up here. …We finally decided that enough was enough. You, Zorc, will pay the price."
There was a moment of silence.
Then Thief King burst out into laughter, while White Mage stood there confused.
"Zorc? You think that I'm Zorc?"
"You are the Evil One, are you not?"
"I am now." The thief smirked, "Zorc's dead, I'm the new villain in town!"
"What…?"
White Mage nodded, "Mhm, I helped with his defeat!"
"You did…?"
The Rat King sat there, confused.
"The name's Thief King Akefia. Got that?"
"Thief King… Is that so?" The Rat King rubbed his chin, "Well, you'll just have to pay instead of Zorc."
He then clapped his hands, and more rats came out with weapons.
"Well that's a little harsh." Thief King blinked.
"Jerk!" White Mage kicked him again, "I don't wanna get killed by furry creatures with sticks!"
"Who said we're gonna get killed?"
The King of Thieves smirked before summoning his ka.
None other than the White Serpent; Diabound.
At the sight of the demon, the rats fled in a panic.
Even White Mage hid behind the thief with a frightened squeak of his own.
Thief King laughed evilly at then pointed to the king, "Go Diabound, kill the king!"
Diabound stared at him.
"…The fat guy in front of us who couldn't defend himself if he wanted to."
"You're a jerk." White Mage stated.
"I know."
Diabound hissed with sadistic happiness, and lunged right at the Rat King.
"NO-AGUAH!"
While the gruesome scene took place, White Mage took the honor of shaking in his hiding place.
"…Don't tell me you're scared of snakes." Thief King poked the mage on the head.
"T-Terrified."
After the murder, every rat that came out to see what happened was immediately taken prisoner.
Soon there was an entire line of rats, taking out from the vault.
Thief King laughed cold and cruel as the slaves tripped and stumbled over each other. "I want every last piece of treasure back at my palace by the end of the day! And those who do otherwise will answer to the White Serpent."
"You're a tyrant!" White Mage exclaimed.
"Look on the bright side, now we can get a hot tub!"
"Why do we need a hot tub?"
"No reason."
The walk back went by much quicker.
Of course, there was plenty of arguing between the thief and mage, and Diabound was sure to keep the newly found slaves in control.
"I can't believe you're doing this…" White Mage muttered as he held onto the thief's arm.
"Just think. Hot tub."
"You could just ask Master to make you one, you didn't have to enslave an entire race."
"Yeah, well, they deserve it."
"I hate you."
"Suuure."
Climbing back out of the trap door, they let the slaves pass through then Diabound slammed the door shut.
"Okay, take those riches to my treasury, and don't try anything funny!" Thief King addressed the slave rats.
Many of them sighed and muttered before being pushed and shoved along.
"I still can't believe you're doing this." White Mage pouted.
"You're still going on about that?"
"I'm not going to drop it."
White Mage waited for Diabound to leave with the slaves before he said anything else.
"Diabound scares me." Was the first thing White Mage said afterward, and blushed with a sigh.
"Yeah, that's nice."
"You don't care?"
"Not really." Thief King shrugged and pulled the mage with him as he went over to look at the wine, "Now that we're here…"
White Mage grumbled, "Jerk."
"Heh, so you want red or white wine?"
"I don't want any wine!" The mage snapped.
"Red it is!"
White Mage gave him the hardest glare he would ever accomplish.
And it lasted ten seconds before being dragged out the room by the loud, obnoxious thief who he often hated the best he could.
Though, he would regret to admit that he could try much harder to hate the man.
It couldn't be his fault that he failed every time.
After the heroes of Monsley Kingdom managed to defeat the water boss that had been placed for them at the oasis, it hadn't taken long for Yami Bakura and the Pharaoh, Yami Yugi, to get into yet another fight.
Ryou Bakura did his best to help his yami in the arguments, though his mind had been wandering to the palace.
Just what was going on in there?
Even in the real world, he could hear thing going on in the palace, and see things happening in the windows.
Ryou had always been someone who was curious about everything.
Though no matter how much he wondered just what kind of adventure the mage and thief had gotten themselves into, his conscience told him that it would simply be better not to know.
And so with good reason, he didn't dare ask.