The Magicians' Realm Chapter 77: Disguises, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

Chapter 77, everybody! Love that number there.

Again, sorry for dropping off the face of the earth (with all my stories, goodness), but college was kicking my can. I want to get back to regular updates, but since spare time in the summer is spent taking care of outdoor work like gardening as well, that means that I probably won't be able to entertain such regular updates until September. Regardless, I will definitely strive to budget my time so I can still update my stories regularly, and in any case, I'm still writing, so when fall and winter roll around, I'll at least have the stuff for the updates. :)

Kels originally called the cat something else, which is also a term for cat—but could have also been considered offensive, so I changed it. And again, we have a couple of sections that were written early on….Now to see if my editing skills were up to snuff.

Movie this week is The Boxtrolls—cute, fun, interesting to look at, but I didn't enjoy it as much as Coraline or Kubo and the Two Strings (both done by the same studio). We Tivo'ed it, and while I liked it, I'm also kind of glad I didn't pay for it. *shrugs*

Angiembabe, thanks for the review! Really? Well happy (belated) birthday then! Hope you had a good one! :D Good question….And also a very good question. Well, in the beginning I was thinking of the Shard, which appears in Malice along with Tall Jake, but if you look at a picture of it, it looks to be in the ballpark of Osiris/Slifer, so…maybe. Oh good. *phew*

FicReader, thanks for the review! Haha, glad you like it! Yes….And yes and yes and yes. We shall see….

FluffyIdiotIsI, thanks for the review! It's good to BE back! Now to keep it at a semi-regular basis….I bet—especially considering real bottles don't break like they do on the TV (what they use for breaking glass is actually made out of sugar). That—sounds remarkably accurate. 'No, you have it worse.' 'No, you have it worse.' 'No, actually, both.' 'Both?' 'Both. Both is good.' Love that movie. :D Yes, slowly—they don't assemble as fast as the Avengers. Yes, Yami Skellington is most definitely set on causing problems…and lobster warfare is a criminally underutilized fighting technique. Me too….Thanks! I'll try!

References:

Original characters, + setting © Kineil D. Wicks (myself, not the girl in the story)

Unbeknownst to the arguing teens, the very subject they were discussing was hiding in the bushes just across the street from them, sloughing his feathers and resuming his normal…ish appearance.

Granted, this was a risk—Yami Skellington, after his foray into the Administration Building, had realized what sort of ruckus his appearance would cause. At the very least, he didn't want to be ducking and dodging an angry mob armed with pitchforks. You know, if they even did that anymore.

And he really needed to recover from his encounter last night. Boiling blood meant clouded judgment, and he needed to stay on his toes for this. And as it turned out, he couldn't rely on his Hagsfiend guise to stay on the downlow. Which was a pity, because he liked his feathers.

He really needed a better disguise, apparently. One that wasn't so...he wasn't sure. When did Hagsfiends start eliciting that response?

And then the puzzle of the Teana-that-couldn't-possibly-be, coupled with his summoner from last night, currently across the way and warding off an assault from a Kineil lookalike; he couldn't help but marvel at the irony. Patterns did repeat themselves throughout history after all.

"Okay, okay!" the spiky-haired youth hissed, batting the Kineil-copy's attempts off. "So summoning my twice-great uncle was a bad idea—"

Skellington sucked in hard; he had guessed that maybe he had some relation to the boy, but that was mighty close. It gave him some comfort though: it meant his sisters had survived. Or at least, one of them had.

He heard someone else suck in too; he turned to see a little girl, a ball she must have just retrieved in her hands, staring wide-eyed at a tall thin figure hiding in the bushes—at least, that's what he hoped he looked like.

He put one finger up and another to his lips, slowly reached down and picked up a few leaves, showed them to her, and then stroked them with his other hand.

As the leaves came back down, they transformed, until he was holding a lily in his hand instead.

The little girl gasped with surprise and clapped her hands lightly, ball forgotten. Yami handed her the flower and her ball, put his finger back to his lips once again for emphasis, then shooed her away.

He turned back to eavesdropping just in time to see the Kineil-girl pitch her bottle into the bushes in a fit of rage.

Unfortunately, they were the bushes he was hiding in, and she scored a perfect hit on his forehead. He fell back with a yelp, then realized that they had probably heard that.

They did, if the way they were both frozen across the street staring at the bushes in suspicion was any indication. "What was that?" the girl asked.

"I don't know," his now-nephew said, striding over. "But I aim to find out."

*\*/*

Okay, maybe Yami should dedicate one day a month or something like that to coming in early and working—this was actually kind of productive. An hour and a half in his office, and he had already vetoed a good chunk of the Administrator slag and was even doing a counter-proposal thing on his typewriter, after sending a startled-looking page for a few files. Should probably check into that and discuss giving pages days off or something like that.

"Hey—say…pal…you don't look so good."

"I'm working," Yami said, glancing up.

"You do what?" Maxwell said, staring. "What—the world's ending, isn't it?" he asked, crossing to the window and looking up. "The sky's getting ready to fall or something like that."

"What? I work on a regular basis," Yami protested.

"Not like this. What are you, cramming?"

"I'll have you know I've been here since eight and plan to stay until five."

"There's something wrong with you."

"You make the second person today to accuse me of not working like I should."

"The first being your little beau, I'm sure. She's going to work you into an early grave."

"This isn't going to become habit," Yami said, looking in his mug. "After all, there's no coffee in here. Why do I have no coffee?"

"Because you drank it?"

"Yeah, but my usual stash is gone. You know, the stuff that keeps me from having to interact needlessly with the Administrators?"

"I do—that's why I use it."

"So it's your fault I have no coffee."

"I do try," Maxwell said, lighting a cigar—Yami opened a window with a flick of the wrist and some application of magic. "And while I'm aggravating you—I hear the Administrators are talking about their new book lists."

"Oh no," Yami moaned, rubbing his temples.

"I thought you'd like that."

"I think you do this to me on purpose."

"You want I should wait until after they pass it with two-thirds majority?"

"When are they voting?"

"Right now."

Yami swore under his breath and bolted from the room.

"You're welcome!" he heard Maxwell crow behind him.

*/*\*

Yami carefully crossed over to the bushes, left hand ready to cast a spell, and moved some branches with his other hand, to reveal—

A cat.

A skinny black cat, obviously a stray, with yellow whiskers and a few white markings on its chest.

Kels looked over his shoulder and saw the cat—which was grooming itself indignantly—and the bottle behind it. "Ouch," she muttered, realizing what she had done. "Sorry, cat."

The cat glared at her.

Yami picked it up by the scruff of the neck, prompting it to hiss at him. Yami ignored it in favor of examining the markings on its chest.

"I think there's a spell that lets cats talk," he said, watching the cat's reaction; he had a sneaking suspicion about it—weren't cats a common selection for animagi?

"Leave the cat alone," Kels scolded. "Look at it; it's starving."

Yami glared at it, still suspicious, but dropped it.

It landed lightly, hissed again at Yami, then curled around Kels' legs.

"Smart, isn't it?" Kels asked.

"Too smart," Yami intoned.

The cat trotted off, tail held high, obviously indignant at Yami's comment.

"Now see, you hurt its feelings."

"Since when did a cat care to follow a human conversation so closely?" Yami asked.

Kels frowned, thinking, then gained a look of horror. "You think—?"

"I do."

"Get back here you hairball!" she yelled, chasing after it. The cat took off like a shot. Yami sent a spell after it, knowing how cats soaked up magic—

The spell deflected and the cat made a getaway.

Kels stopped running and turned to him. "Well, fearless leader?" she asked breathlessly. "Now what?"

Yami sighed.

"Now…we find everyone else and let them know."