The Magicians' Realm Chapter 95: A Little Iron in Your Diet, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

Chapter 95, everybody! In which Teana gains a headache and some of the boys drink before breakfast….Also, Bakura's on the skeletons' side in the Great Skeleton War.

Salt in the coffee seems to be something from the Great Depression, as any instance I've heard of it has been my parents referencing the generation before them (my grandfather on my Mom's side and I think a friend of the family are two examples that come to mind). Theoretically, it's supposed to make the coffee less bitter—I tried it once when we accidentally cooked the coffee too long, ended up throwing the whole cup out because I made it too salty. XP The frying pan, meanwhile, is a reference to one of our (fortunately retired) frying pans that was starting to flake badly at the time of writing this.

Movie this week is The Meg—can we just—can we just take a moment to recall that megalodon was a real shark that we HOPE is extinct? And then there was Mosasaurus HOW did anybody go out in the ocean back then my butt would be way up in the mountains and as far away from those as possible yeee. :O

Angiembabe, thanks for the review! She certainly does….

References:

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

…Wait, that's it?

It took her a while to get dressed and composed in such a way that she hadn't looked like she had been up all night chasing her own tail on a fruitless idea.

Because that was what she had decided while in the shower, letting the warm water revitalize her—it had been a fruitless pursuit. She had fallen asleep, gotten the idea that she had precognition, and had wasted a night toying with the idea. Now all she had to show for it was bags under her eyes, which took some ice-cold water soaked into a towel pressed to her face to lessen.

…And a sinking feeling in her stomach that just wouldn't go away.

She told herself it was nothing. Indigestion. It happened to her all the time. It'd go away eventually.

…Like when everyone was dead.

She buried her face in her cold towel again—not helping.

A knock on her door.

"I'm fine!" she called. "I'll be down in a minute."

"Oh good," Yami said. "Because I was wondering about the coffee I brought up a mug but then I had the little issue of getting it in there without causing accusations of indecency, and teleporting it into the room is pretty dicey. I mean, furniture could be moved, stuff could be in the way, the coffee could end up in another room…."

She buried her face in her cold towel again—nope, still not helping, most definitely not blotting out his nattering.

"Is this another one of those incidents?" she asked finally, through the towel.

"I may have tried to teleport a Pepsi to Kineil once. It didn't end too well—kind of misjudged the height of her desk. She still has a ring of glass imbedded in it."

Oi. "I'm coming down, the coffee can wait there."

"Actually I think I better hang on to it, so it doesn't get any additions. Like whiskey."

Oh. "You might have mentioned it was Bakura and Marik swinging by," she sighed, wringing her towel and hanging it up.

"Well, I figured I didn't need to stress you needlessly," Yami hedged. "Besides, saying they were people that annoyed you was probably enough, right?"

"Probably," she said, getting dressed in the bathroom—she hadn't wanted to needlessly corrupt or traumatize the bird. "So I guess I'll be needing the coffee first before dealing with them."

"Probably," Yami agreed—she could just picture him nodding as she went to the door, Lil' Stevie lofting to her shoulder as she swung it open. "You have bird on you."

"You still can't perch on me," she said, taking the coffee and taking a long sip. Oi, she needed that—definitely needed something to still her churning stomach. "What's for breakfast?"

"Hey, something smells good!" Hephaestus called from the parlor.

"Nothing if we don't get downstairs—make haste! Make haste!" Yami said, herding her in front of him and waving his arms about as she moved sedately down the steps, taking great care not to spill her coffee. She stopped about three steps up, waited for a fighting Vulcan and Hephaestus to tumble past, made the rest of the way to the kitchen without incident.

"Wow," Bakura noised, having paused in buttering toast to watch. "That was very good. How'd you guess?"

It had been a snippet from a random thread, and she wasn't sure if she had been acting on it or if those two were just that predictable. She shrugged, mentally went for the latter as it was least concerning, came and sat at the counter as Yami went and broke up Hephaestus' and Vulcan's fight before it destroyed anything important, like furniture.

"Feminine instinct. It's a thing," Marik said, stealing a slice of toast and pulling the jam over before examining Teana. "You look dreadful."

"Chirp," Lil' Stevie noised.

"Not you."

"I'm fine," Teana said, rubbing her eyes. "I just didn't get a good night's sleep." Which wasn't a lie.

Kineil spun and stared at her, dropping the egg she was holding, shell and all, into the pan.

"What?" she asked. "Who else died?"

Marik and Bakura both looked at Teana, who wondered if anyone would notice her killing Kineil this early in the morning. Followed up by wondering if she had the strength to do it this early in the day.

"Who else?" Marik asked.

"Wait, who died?" Bakura asked, looking between the two girls quickly. "I need details! Do I know them? Do they know me? Do they have a posthumous restraining order against me?"

Teana tore herself away from the glaring match she was losing to stare at Bakura incredulously. "Posthumous restraining order?" she repeated slowly.

"Those start getting issued after you let it get around that necromancy is basically reanimating dead bodies," Bakura said, waving everything off. "For some reason, people get snippy when they find out that's a thing."

"You have to be buried properly, that's the rule," Marik said, biting into his toast. "Being reanimated to wash your windows isn't being buried properly."

"And then what about cremation? Criminal waste, is what it is!"

"Only because you tried reanimating ash, you idiot person you."

"No, don't waste the jam," Yami moaned, coming in just in time for Bakura to slam Marik face-first into a jar.

"We have bacon now," Kineil said, sliding several pieces onto a plate. "And one of the boys gets the eggshell omelet. And the person does have a restraining order against you, since the person dying is me."

"Wait what?" Yami asked, stunned.

"But you're nice enough to make us breakfast before you go on to your final rest," Hephaestus said, coming over and tugging the plate of bacon to him.

"It was her unfinished business," Vulcan said, taking the plate from her. "We should eat it all, respect her memory."

"She would have wanted it this way."

"Do you mind?" Teana asked, aggravated. "I'm sorry, I tried, I really did, but I had my fill."

"Ah," Yami noised, before looking at the rest of the boys. "All of you, out—you're aggravating Miss Teana."

"Whiskey helps you last longer," Bakura proffered, holding his coffee cup up.

"Ew, not in the coffee," Marik said, cleaning his beak off. "You ruin good whiskey like that."

"So how did you bite the big one, Kineil?" Hephaestus asked, managing to fit a whole slice of thick bacon in his mouth.

"Guys, smaller bites, women present," Yami protested.

"Thank you for noticing," Teana muttered, nursing a headache.

"No problem. Bakura, you didn't doctor anyone's coffee, did you?"

"Why?" Bakura asked, trying for innocence and failing.

"If you all must know, I get shot in the back in an orchard," Kineil said, dumping a frying pan full of scrambled eggs onto a plate and putting it on the counter. "It was a very sordid affair, people turned up from all over the country to make sure I was dead."

"So old man McMurran did you in," Hephaestus guessed.

"I knew this day would come," Vulcan said sagely, taking a forkful of eggs.

"I don't know, actually—who did me in?" Kineil asked, looking at Teana.

"I do it," Teana said through gritted teeth. "Mostly because you drive me up the wall."

"Ah. Now see Vul, this day I knew would come."

"Right," Vulcan said, frowning as he crunched through his eggs. "What's in this stuff?"

"Extra calcium. And possibly iron, the frying pan might be flaking."

"I thought that was pepper," Marik said, peering at the eggs on his plate.

"When you do bump her off, let me know," Bakura told Teana. "When dealing with the dead, freshness is often key."

"Then why do I always see you with skeletons?" Yami asked, as Kineil whapped Bakura with a potholder.

"Because ow there's ow such a ow big business ow with fresh ow remains ow in the ow mad scientist business will you stop that!?"

Teana stared at him for the longest time before pushing her plate away. "I'm not hungry."

"Chirp," Lil' Stevie agreed.

"And older skeletons break easier," Marik put in, taking a bite of scrambled eggs before recalling that they did currently have eggshell in them. "This is the nastiest omelet I've ever eaten."

"What about that time I ran out of patience with you lot and threw the pan and everything out the window?" Kineil asked.

"Fine, this may be a close second. Very close."

"In the interest of shutting down this morbid train of thought: what makes you so sure you die that way, Kineil?" Yami asked. Oh no no no—

"Teana told me," Kineil said. "She dreamed about it, she said."

"Actually, as it turns out, you die in a kitchen," Teana said, glaring at her. "Blunt force trauma to the head. From a frying pan."

"Ah, but I'm the one with the pan."

"You can't hang onto it forever."

"Oh dear it is serious," Bakura said.

"It was lovely knowing you Kineil," Marik said solemnly to her, hands clasped over Bakura's head.

"I don't know why you all are treating this so seriously," Teana groused, going back to her now-cold toast. Lil' Stevie chirped at her, attention fixated on said toast.

"Dreams are portents, messages, signs of what's to come!" Marik said, nearly bombastic in his enthusiastic delivery. "You've foretold Kineil's death—now we get to look forward to how quiet it's going to be when she's gone."

"Don't be so sure—I plan on making it a point to come back and haunt your dumb selves," Kineil said, dumping fresh and hopefully-eggshell-free eggs on the plate. Not iron-free, if the black flecks were any indication.

"That's true, that's a very real risk. I'm going to have to insist you leave her alone when she dies," Marik said to Bakura.

"We have other options to keep her from bothering us," Bakura tried.

"Have those ever worked?"

"The trick is to continue to think positive."

"That's a no, then."

"I'll make sure to tell all my new ghost-buddies too, so they know to come get you when you stuff me into a jade jar," Kineil said, wagging her spatula at them.

"Why would that even work?" Teana asked, massaging her face and wishing she were elsewhere.

"Jade is one of the very few substances that affect preternatural beings, ghosts specifically," Yami said. "It traps them and sucks out their essence—so really it's one of the few things that can effectively stop a ghost."

"That and the Ghostbusters," Hephaestus pointed out.

"Except they don't come this far south," Vulcan put in, putting some eggshell-and-iron omelet on a slice of toast and biting into it.

"Yeah, that's a pity."

"Why are you even eating that?" Teana asked, pointing at the sizeable piece of eggshell poking out of the fluffy yellow mound.

"As I understand it, calcium and iron are important parts of our diet," Vulcan said.

"Not like that they're not."

"Maybe I'm getting in touch with my roots."

"Right," Marik drawled. "Well, just for the record, if you start growing armor and wings, I'm leaving town and I'm never coming back. You'll never be able to track me down."

Kineil froze, considered Marik for a moment before shoving the frying pan at Vulcan. "Here, go nuts."

"Okay, now that's too much," Vulcan said, considering the pan. "I'm going to need that in bite-sized pieces."

"Did we leave the solder iron in the garage?" Hephaestus asked.

"I think it's in your room."

"Now wait a minute, we talked about you having that thing in the house!" Yami said, indignant.

"Oops?"

"We have talked about having that thing in the house," Kineil said, putting the pan back on the stove and finally sitting down. "But you insist on letting them back in."

"I have to put my foot down about solder irons."

"Yes, and I wish you would about idiot men too."

"Excuse me, don't lump me in with that lot," Marik said, salting his coffee.

"Me neither," Bakura said, pulling out a few sheets of paper. "Now if you were to sign your bones over—"

"Bakura, I'm going to spend the rest of my life training my skeleton to make rude gestures at you if you insist."

"I can remove middle fingers, they're not necessary."

"I disagree," Hephaestus said, pointing.

"Are you okay?" Yami asked, touching Teana lightly on the shoulder.

"I have a headache," she announced. "And I think it has your friends written all over it."

"Ah, now see, you've gone and upset Miss Teana," Yami said to the rest of them. "I'm afraid this means you'll have to leave."

"Now what did I do?" Hephaestus protested. "I didn't do anything."

"Are you implying I did?" Vulcan asked, narrowing his eyes and jabbing his fork at Hephaestus in jest.

"Yeah, you ate an eggshell omelet and grossed her out."

Yami was already escorting Teana out of the room, saying she probably needed a lie-down. This wasn't a falsity.

But she was hard-pressed to say how she was going to fix things at all.