Spending the day was a different experience for Tanith. She would have spent the entire day doing chores. Chores like checking the generators and tuning them up. Gathering gas and oil for them. Then later entertaining herself with Bakura. Instead she helped Yugi and his grandfather with the shop.
Tanith fixed the cards and shelves that she and Bakura messed up alongside Yugi and his friends. After the shop was cleaned up, Grandpa called for another window to be put up and then opened the store. While Grandpa minded the counter and Yugi played a three way duel with Tristan and Joey with Tea cheering them on, Tanith tinkered with door chime and made it play "Hey good looking."
Once a customer walked in and the chime played, Grandpa suggested she try fixing their VCR. After two minutes, Tanith came down and announced she was done and the VCR was now a four head instead of two.
Yugi went to say something and then shut his mouth.
What? Cat got his tongue? Bakura inquired. Tanith smiled and just shook her head.
Lunch came and so did a few more suggestions from Grandpa since he noticed Tanith's technical know-how. She could fix the T.V; the picture kept going from light to dark then back again. After that she could see why the can opener kept making grinding noise. Then after that, repair the back left burner, it refused to work.
"I'm sorry that my grandpa is putting so much work on you." Yugi told her while she crawled underneath the cabinets to see about fixing the burner.
"It's not work, I do these things all the time." Tanith replied. "In fact, it's fun."
Yugi leaned down to see if he could see what Tanith could.
"I see why that burner isn't working… The wire's frayed to the point of no return…" she exclaimed then added, "Incoming."
Yugi stood up just in time to see a roll of electrical tape go flying underneath the stove, right into Tanith's waiting hands.
"You really can move things!" he exclaimed. She chuckled as she worked.
"You didn't see me shove a piece of toast into Joey's big mouth earlier?" Then Tanith scooted back out from under the cabinet and began "manually" putting pots and pans back.
The pharaoh's hikari is an idiot, Bakura told her. Tanith scowled and replied mentally, Be nice.
"You just talked to him, didn't you?" Yugi inquired when she nodded he continued, "It must all be too fantastic for you. Having a spirit inside you that isn't your own."
Tanith shrugged, "Not much more fantastic than having telekinesis, just something to take in stride."
"But you can't wait to get rid of him, right?"
"Oh yeah, when Ryou is up and runnin' Bakura goes!" she laughed.
Bakura snorted and muttered, And here I was beginning to like you.
I didn't say I wouldn't miss you… a tad. She replied privately. The shared some silent laughter.
"You did it again." Yugi told her. "My friends tell me when I talk to Yami I get the same far off look that you just had."
"So what is the ex-god king of the civilized world up to?" she inquired as Yugi began helping her put things up.
Yugi shrugged not sensing the sarcasm in Tanith's voice. "I don't really know."
Probably plotting on the many ways he can ruin my life, Bakura said to her. Tanith giggled and really began laughing when Yugi gave her a funny look.
"Oh come on, you don't share private jokes with the Pharaoh?" she asked. When Yugi shook his head, Tanith shook her head and muttered, "What a stiff."
Inside Yugi's mind, Yami humph.
Once they were done, Yugi followed Tanith to the kitchen table with the can opener floating up behind them. Once it sat itself on the table, a screwdriver followed suit and ended up in Tanith's hands.
"Usually I don't show off like this," she told the short teen that sat beside her as she quickly took apart the can opener with the screwdriver. "Making things float all over the place, ya know?"
Yugi nodded.
"It taxes me if I do it too much." Tanith said as she examined the inner working of the machine in front of her. "Makes my head her, gives me nose bleeds. When I was nine, I had a puppy. Loved it to bits."
How sweet, Bakura cooed.
"Can it spook!" she replied and without pause went back to her story, "It ran in front of a car and I tried to stop it. Car looked like it hit a brick wall when the dust settled and my puppy died of fright."
"That's so sad." Yugi replied. Tanith found a piece of metal in the gears of the opener and tossed it aside then began putting the machine back together.
"No. The sad part was waking up gazing at the glassy eyes of your beloved pet in a puddle of blood, some of it yours and experiencing the worst migraine Ra has curse you with."
Yugi started when she said Ra and suddenly in a blaze of light, Yami was in Yugi's place.
"Good afternoon, Pharaoh Yami." Tanith greeted as she finished reassembling the can opener. "To what do I owe the honor of your presence."
"Simply to talk." He replied innocently enough.
She smirked as she got up with the can opener and placed it back on the counter where she found it. Then Tanith walked off to repair the television, trailed distantly by Yami.
"God-kings do not talk to shadows of ancient evil tomb raiders." She told him firmly as she began working on the television. "So what do you really want with me."
"You don't trust me."
"I don't even trust Bakura and I allow him to reside in my body."
"You allow him? You control when he can come out?" Yami asked incredulous.
We got a winner! Bakura exclaimed.
"Yes, great oh mighty pharaoh. I decide when he comes out, not him." Tanith explained. "Power wise we're an even match. What he can't do, I can and what I can't, he can. Understand, great one?"
"You have a bad attitude."
Tanith looked up at him from her work, "You just figured that out?"
I see why you don't like him, Tanith said to Bakura as she went back to work. So snobby, so full of himself.
You should have seen him when he really was the king of the world. Bakura replied.
Happy I missed that, sorry you didn't.
Bakura chuckled, Yeah, too bad. We would have been holy terrors.
Yup I can see it now: you dragging the old pharaoh's body in and me taking up the back singing his praises. All the death and blood, yup real blast.
Bakura went silent on her and thought in that space of time privately, How did she know….
Meanwhile while Tanith spoke with Bakura, Yami was speaking to his hikari privately.
From the moment I took over, she's been spiteful. Why? He asked his light.
I don't know, maybe Bakura told her some lies about you.
No, I don't think so. Yami replied. From what she said it appears she thinks I'm-- `too good for her'?
Yugi laughed, You? An ancient pharaoh? Too good for a lowly orphan who lives in a junkyard? Nah.
Do I detect a hint of sarcasm? Yami inquired with a small smile.
Maybe a little. Yugi replied. Listen, Tanith's got this idea that just because she lives on her own that she's beneath us all. Someone thinking like that has to have some defenses. Plus she's in a house of strangers.
So you think she's simply leery of everyone, me especially and not intentionally being spiteful?
From what I've seen of Tanith, I think so.
"Hey your majesty, " Tanith said all of a sudden snapping Yami back to the present. "If you're done talking about me to Yugi, would you go get me a soda? I'm thirsty."
I think she's warming up to you, Yugi told Yami. She asked for something.
The former pharaoh shook his head and went to the fridge where he knew the sodas were and got Tanith one then returned to her.
"Hey look Bakura, his majesty know how to serve people." Tanith said to her yami as she took the drink from the pharaoh. She noticed Yami clenching his teeth and a vein in his forehead begin to throb and laughed.
Push him a little more and you'll end up in the Shadow Realm I bet, Bakura told her.
"Gonna send me to the Shadow Realm, Yami?" she inquired as she began working on the television once more. "Bakura thinks you will. Think Yugi and his friends would miss a scummy kid like me if you did?"
Yami felt like ice water was dumped on him. Yugi was right!
"Which question would you like for me to answer first?" he asked still reeling from his light's insight.
She shrugged, "Whether I'm taking a one way trip to the Shadow Realm is fine."
He tries it and he dies…again. Bakura told Tanith.
"The answer is no, I'm not." Yami told her. She merely shrugged again and so he rushed on.
"And I think Yugi and his friends would miss the inventive young lady I see before me."
Tanith smirked, "Come on Pharaoh, tell me what you really think. I've heard it before. Trashy, dirty, and let us not forget freak."
Who called you a freak? Bakura demanded. Let me get a hold of them and the deck you swiped from Ryou and I'll show them!
She smiled slightly and awaited Yami's answer as she worked.
"Do you think Yugi is a weakling simply because of how he looks?" he asked.
"No, most people would call the cops or men in white if they heard what happened to me in the past six months. I think Yugi is pretty brave for a shortie." Tanith said the last with a smile.
"Then why should I judge you for how you have to live?" Yami asked.
Tanith paused in what she was doing and looked up at him, "You shouldn't."
"Then I won't."
She smiled faintly and after a brief pause said, "Thanks for the drink."
Yami smiled as well and turned to walk away, "You're welcome."
Dinner at Yugi's was like the prior night with the addition of Tanith. Yugi and Joey dueled against each other while Tristan and Tea watched. Tanith slipped out of the room and crawled up to the roof from Yugi's room while no one was looking.
The night sky was full of tiny bright stars. The moon was full in the sky as she gazed out into the night sky and city lights.
"What are you thinking about?" Bakura asked appearing suddenly beside her.
"What might have beens." She replied solemnly. "What would my life be like if my entire town hadn't been wiped out. Would I be like Yugi and his friends? Would I be happy without a care in the world? Or would my life been better if I had also died in the fire."
"Focusing on might have beens is pointless. I thought you knew that." Bakura told her. "It gets you nowhere. Think instead on what will be."
"Like about how we're going to win against Malik?"
"Like that. What else are you going to make happen?"
Tanith thought about that for a moment and replied, "Sell my inventions to a company and make thousands…no millions of dollars off them."
"Anything else?" Bakura inquired quietly.
She looked over at him and then back at the night before her.
"I'm going to return the Millennium Ring to Ryou, where it belongs." She replied.
He just nodded.