A/N: It's finally time! The sniffer who sneaks around at night is revealed! (Along with what he/she discovered....)
Chapter 4 - So who said there was no junk food on the ship?
There was a knock on the door, and Kaiba let Malik and Bakura into his room. He closed the program he was working on, as well as other windows that he had open.
"What do you want?"
"Can you upload these pictures onto the computer?" asked Malik, holding out his digital camera.
"Why can't you do it?"
"You'll see once you start transferring the files," he replied. Kaiba looked suspiciously at the two. "What have you got in there? It can't be anything secretive, otherwise you wouldn't be letting me look at them. I guess I'll find out soon enough, won't I?" Malik and Bakura nodded.
"By the way, where's Ryou? I haven't seen him for a while," said Bakura.
"Down the corridor, third door to your left, watering the plants."
"Plants? Since when do spaceships have plants? And how do they survive?"
"I might have the most advanced spaceship in the world, but I still haven't figured out how to create oxygen out of nothing. That's why the plants are here, and they grow in a special room with artificial sunlight. Would you like me to go into more detail?" asked Kaiba, indicating that he wanted to be left alone to do his work.
"No thanks. Well, we'll be going then," said Malik. They walked away and went off to find Ryou. They followed Kaiba's directions and eventually found themselves standing outside a door labeled "the Greenhouse."
"Hi Bakura, hi Malik," greeted Ryou as they entered the Greenhouse. "You guys wouldn't mind helping me water the plants, would you?" He didn't wait for an answer and handed them a watering can each. As they tended the shrubs Ryou started a conversation.
"Are you enjoying your trip so far?"
"Yeah, it's been pretty cool," replied Malik. "It's just like seeing the world for the first time. A great feeling. I bet my sister's wondering how I am. I should talk to her soon. Tell her how it's been."
Bakura was not so satisfied with his trip. "I can't believe you said there was no junk food here. You don't know how badly Yami and I are affected by this. You wouldn't begin to imagine the terrible nightmares I have! Each morning I wake up soaked in sweat, trying to recover from a horrible dream where I'm running and running and running, but the pizza's always just out of reach. No matter how hard I run, how much effort I put in, I CAN NEVER REACH THE DAMN PIZZA!"
"You'll eventually get used to it," reassured Ryou. "This trip is good for breaking you out of the habit of eating too much junk food. It'll save you from obesity." And it'll save myself from going into debt, he added silently.
"But I won't ever become obese because I'm a spirit!" Bakura shouted, exasperated.
Suddenly they heard raucous laughter from the room where Kaiba was. It was so unexpected, so loud and so maniacal that everyone on the ship heard, and jumped at the sound. Then, Ryou, Malik and Bakura, who were closest to Kaiba's location, also heard a thump. It sounded like someone had fallen.
Everyone ran into the control room as quickly as possible, worried about Kaiba's welfare. By the time they got there, nothing unusual was to be seen. Kaiba was sitting at the computer, working on various programs. He turned around to face the others.
"Why have you all come here?" Kaiba had a straight face on, as if nothing had happened.
"We heard you screaming with laughter," said Yugi, "and we wanted to know if you're all right."
"And we want to know what's so funny," added Joey.
"Nothing much happened," said Kaiba.
"We also heard a crash, as if someone had fallen to the floor," said Ryou. "Are you okay?"
"Look, nothing happened," repeated Kaiba. "But I do have something to show you all. I've finally been able to connect ourselves back to the Kaiba Corp, where Mokuba's waiting." He typed in a few things on the computer, and the screen started flashing.
"Isn't anything else supposed to happen?"
"Patience, Joey. Wait and see." After a while the screen flickered, then showed a blurry image of Mokuba before clearing.
"Mokuba, can you hear and see me?" asked Kaiba.
"Yes, Seto. Everything appears to be working fine," Mokuba answered.
"Hey, how's it going?" Tristan's head popped onto the screen. "Sorry I didn't get on."
"It wasn't your fault," said Joey, looking at Yami. Yami looked away.
"So how's everything been? Having fun?"
"Yeah! Just yesterday we went walking in space."
Kaiba interrupted their talk. "Hey Tristan, Malik has been taking pictures of what we've been doing. Care to look?"
"Sure thing. Sending pictures now."
As the files reached Earth and were opened by Tristan, the group could also see them on the adjacent monitor. There were pictures of the group when they first boarded the ship, the gang in their pyjamas, their first dinner, and various other pictures.... Joey trying unsuccessfully trying to play Duel Monsters in zero gravity... Yugi eating blobs of water... the view of the Earth and the moon... Everyone when they were asleep... Yugi drooling on his teddy bear... Téa and Ryou cooking....
And then came the pictures of Yami pulling funny faces at the spaceship. Tristan and Mokuba erupted into laughter. Joey, Téa, Ryou and Yugi also burst out laughing. Kaiba, Malik and Bakura resumed their laughing. The entire spaceship shook with uncontrollable laughter. Yami was the only one who was trying to be un-amused. His face was bright red, and even he couldn't control the occasional giggle.
"That was some neat work, Malik," complimented Tristan. "Yami, you'd make a really good actor. When you return I can introduce you to some companies that might want to feature you in their shows."
They talked with Tristan and Mokuba for the rest of the morning. In the afternoon Isis made her appearance, and checked up on her little brother.
"Malik, how are you doing?"
"I'm fine."
"Are you behaving yourself?"
"Yes."
"Kaiba, you'll have to keep your eye on him. Otherwise he might cause a lot of trouble."
"Don't worry Isis, Malik's been well-behaved. In fact, he's made sure that all of us aren't bored."
Their whole day was spent talking to their friends and family. At the end of the third night everyone felt just a tiny bit homesick. After all, they hadn't seen their loved ones for days. Everyone went to bed with light hearts, hoping to have pleasant dreams.
Yami's sleep was interrupted. He was waken when he heard someone say, "Pharaoh, you've received a delivery from KFC." At that moment his eyes snapped open, only to find Bakura standing above him.
"You don't know how loudly you snore," said Bakura.
"You don't know what time it is," said Yami. "Why've you woken me up? I've done nuthin' wrong."
Bakura had a big grin on his face. "I've discovered where they've hidden all the junk food!"
Yami was wide awake now. He followed Bakura through the spaceship, amazed at the skills of the tomb robber. So that's what I've been hearing these past two nights, he thought. Bakura's been searching for the pizza! Wow, he has such a good sense of smell. Can't ever be tricked. I wonder how Ryou's going to react. He must know that the food's here, only he tried to keep it a secret.
"You'll have to be extremely quiet here," Bakura warned. Yami realized that he was now talking in Egyptian. "There are alarms here designed to keep us out. I've been able to scramble the programming so that it doesn't recognize Egyptian, but it detects shapes, which is why I had to cover your head."
Yami lifted his hands and discovered he was wearing a hat. Bakura must have been a very good thief, for me to not notice the hat.
They finally stopped at a room at the far end of the spaceship. Bakura went to work trying to break the locks that guarded the room. Yami was amazed at Bakura's colorful language as he struggled to open the lock. He hadn't heard such creative profanity in all his 5000 years of existence. Must be because he's an experienced thief.
After half an hour Bakura finally succeeded in cracking the locks. "Come on Yami, wake up, we're in!"
"How did I know you were going to come here?"
Bakura and Yami instantly froze. The voice laughed. Yami realized that this person was also speaking Egyptian.
Malik stepped into the weak light that penetrated through a window.
"I knew you'd return, after we'd found this place," he said. "And when I heard you waking up Yami, I decided to follow."
The three sneaked into the room, closed the door and then turned on the light. Yami gasped, and stared at the enormous room, which housed the biggest pile off pizzas, pies, chips and chicken he'd ever seen. Bakura and Yami went to work eating away, satisfying their cravings which had been eating away at them for so long. Malik watched in disgust as the two stuffed themselves, and then went off to bed. Bakura and Yami ate for the rest of the night, and only returned back to bed when they were bloated and when they felt the need to. They didn't want to be caught for eating something that was illegally, yet rightfully theirs.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Well, they've hit junk food jackpot, but I wonder what will happen when Ryou and Kaiba find out.... There must have been a good reason for keeping the food a secret. Not to torture the Yamis, surely....