Authors' Notes:  Well, now that FF.net is working once again, I can finally update!  Oh yes, PM and I have a fun chapter in store for you. And I'll update fairly soon, since this chappie had to wait for so long.  Thanks everyone for the reviews!--Neph

onlyHAUNTED:  Hehehe… Oh, I think the spraying is a definite must.  Yami no Malik needs to suffer from time to time, too, ne?  So glad you like the story!  We'll definitely continue!

Yami Krissy:  Ah, so glad you enjoyed our ranting Yami no Malik!  We had much fun with his tirades!  Had to pick something random for him to be angry about, after all.  Hope this chapter keeps you laughing!

Beverly:  Yes, well he was a bit distracted at the moment.  ::pats Malik::  Hee!

Mikazuki Kagaya:  Well, fear not! They wouldn't buy anything used.  That much we can attest to.  Though, there will not be Seto/Ryou in this fic.  Sorry!  Seto's kind of… involved with someone else already.  Oh, and Yami no Malik will get his fun soon enough!  Thanks!

Sarah aka Celebi:  Oh, Yami no Malik gets pissed off about a lot of things.  XD  We did have a lot of fun with the shampoo/fabric softener exchange!  And just wait until you see what we have in store!

Neko chan:  Don't tempt me!  You might wind up having your house ransacked by a pissed off Yami no Malik.  Then again, why do I get the feeling that you won't mind?  Oh, and you know that there's more Yami no Malik ahead.  We're just starting to have fun with him.  So glad that you're reading this!  Enjoy!

Chapter 3

The Spraying (a.k.a. Damn the ball of hair!)

Malik hadn't really been thinking about anything when the doorbell rang, which was probably helped by the fact that he was still being held aloft by his other character. He would have thought nothing of Ryou going down to answer it until Yami no Bakura grew so very insistent that he did not. It was only then that it occurred to Malik what Yami no Bakura might be worried about.

For his own part, Malik didn't particularly care. It was sure to be packaged well, and they could always open it privately. And if Ryou saw, well, then it could be very educational for him. Unfortunately, Malik had no way of conveying this information to Yami no Bakura, because not only had Ryou himself been present, but his Yami was standing right there, as well. Standing right there and clearly getting a notion of what Yami no Bakura was thinking about...

Malik had sighed wearily as he dangled in midair and gazed up at his other character. He could practically see his mind going towards the correct conclusion. As he had hit the ground, Malik had been somewhere between relief that he was no longer being held aloft, annoyance at the way his other character was provoking Yami no Bakura, and an acute awareness that Yami no Bakura was going to rise to the bait. Malik had seen this scene play out enough times to know that it would end more quickly if he just kept out of it. And Yami no Bakura could handle himself, Malik noted with a small smirk. It wasn't his fault if he found Yami no Bakura to be completely sexy when he was acting psychotic, enraged, or best of all, possessive.

Jealously possessive Yami no Bakura was absolutely the most attractive thing to Malik of all...

Anyway, as the doorbell sounded again, Malik thought to just go and answer it himself and thus spare Ryou the trouble of getting yelled at again or Yami no Bakura of getting more pissed off. Of course, Ryou hadn't realized or hadn't cared that when Malik climbed to his feet, he began to take a few steps towards the door. Before he could reach the exit, however, his Yami had arrived at it first, having completely ignored the fact that Yami no Bakura was barking orders at Ryou, while Malik had paused to watch.

"Well, at least he's forgotten the shampoo..." Malik muttered to himself, turning to head out the door. Of course, there was a slight possibility that Yami no Bakura had not, but the notion that Yami no Bakura would even care didn't occur to the flaxen-haired male at the time.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Yami no Malik had reached the front door--or rather, the place where the front door had once stood. Standing there before him was a most intriguing sight. A man, dressed all in bright orange and purple, as if he had been the victim of some sort of horrible vomiting incident, stood before him with a crate and an electronic device of some sort. "Why are you here?" Yami no Malik asked, grinning wickedly at the thought that a willing sacrifice to the darkness had surely just appeared on Ryou's doorstep.

"To make a delivery," the man replied in businesslike fashion, handing the crate towards Yami no Malik. "Would you be able to accept this for the person called... Yami no Malik...? Or are you he?" the clueless delivery man asked, extending the electronic signature device hopefully towards Yami no Malik.

"This is for me?" Yami no Malik asked, looking puzzled for a moment and gesturing towards himself with a thumb. Of course, though he accepted the package, he had no intention of accepting this electronic... thing... from the man. "I'll accept it," Yami no Malik said, wishing he had a door so that the pathetic idiot outside would come to understand that their business was now concluded.

"But--but... You need to sign this, sir!" the deliveryman protested, frantically waving the electronic signature device at Yami no Malik.

"I don't think so..." Yami no Malik replied, looking rather dangerous at the moment.

"If you don't sign... I'll... I"ll take the package back!" the deliveryman spoke out in a rush of bravery... very foolish, badly-timed, and misplaced bravery. Yami no Malik just smirked evilly (it wasn't as if he smirked any other way), holding up the Sennen Rod in one, as usual, overly dramatic and flashy moment.

Two minutes later, Ryou sighed as the sounds of screamiing came from outside. A quick glance at the window quickly confirmed Ryou's guess... the deliveryman was now running away from absolutely nothing at all. Of course, Ryou knew better than to think that air was chasing the deliveryman, especially after he had been stuck in the stomach of a monster for nearly a day. He was just lucky that he hadn't been digested.

Meanwhile, Yami no Malik had watched in triumph as the dark monster he had summoned using his yami no chikara chased after the poor deliveryman, before he had remembered about the package. Frowning, he looked down at the... it seemed like a box, and it smelled very bad.

Yami no Malik's mood immediately brightened. A bad smell? Bad smells, in Yami no Malik's experience, usually meant corpses. And corpses meant death. And death meant hours of entertainment for the sadistic and lonely. Both of which Yami no Malik was, as everyone who knew him tended to stay away from him.

Smiling serenely now (an even more scary sight than certain writers trying to smile innocently), Yami no Malik opened the package with a quick series of knife cuts. If it smelled bad enough, he could always find some way to make some type of liquid from it to dump on Yami no Bakura. The white-haired thief annoyed him greatly anyway, and this way his omote would be suffering too, because who would have kinky... stuff... with somebody who smelled like a corpse?!

Well, Yami no Malik would. And he had a feeling that Yami no Bakura would too. But they were psychotic, so they had an excuse.

Well, Malik was somewhat psychotic as well... in his own way. Malik just wasn't olfactorily psychotic.

Not even bothering to look at the address label (which had luckily been shredded to pieces in the cutting process), Yami no Malik flung the box open and prepared for a vision of absolute beauty... perhaps a bashed-in skull? Random body parts? DEATH?

What he hadn't expected was a ball of black and white... fluff.

Fluff?

To be truthful, that wasn't what Yami no Malik thought. A word like 'fluff' would never have been in his vocabulary. He scowled as he reached in to grab the ball of black and white... hairs. Yes, that's what it was. Hair. Not hair that was soft and silky and smelled like fabric softener (damn his host!), but more rough and... very smelly. Extremely smelly.

Meanwhile, the skunk had been lounging about in his prison after having devoured the can of cat food that the nice person had left him! What a nice person that woman was, Skunkzilla mused to himself. That was, of course, before being subjected to screechy whining and a great deal of turbulation, which had caused him to hit his head on the walls of his prison more than once.

To put it frankly, this meant that Skunkzilla was very angry. And when his prison had finally been opened and Skunkzilla released, some... some... mere mortal had the audacity to grab him by his sleek, gorgeous, black and white fur! Somebody who smelled like fabric softener!

Not that Skunkzilla knew what fabric softener was... that was beyond the point. The point was that Skunkzilla was not a very happy skunk. And a not very happy skunk was prone to do some serious damage due to the fact that he was not very happy.

The first thing that Skunkzilla did was actually not something that Yami no Malik would find wholly objectionable, masochism also being something in which he could indulge from time to time. As soon as that hand roughly grabbed onto Skunkzilla's fur, the unhappy skunk began twisting its head around. Skunkzilla wasn't going to take having his fur grabbed lightly, after all.

Finally, as Skunkzilla writhed and twisted, he was able to get his head around into perfect biting position, and with a quick snap of the jaw, Skunkzilla's very sharp incisors chomped down on one of Yami no Malik's fingers. Skunkzilla was pleased to have drawn blood on the person so bold as to try to pick him, the mighty Skunkzilla up.

Yami no Malik was typically not very vulnerable to pain, but the shock alone of being bitten by what appeared to be a ball of hair made him snap his hand back defensively, letting the skunk fall to the ground. Yami no Malik, being from Egypt, after all, was not familiar in the ways of skunks in general, and thus had no way of knowing that dropping the skunk to the floor was precisely what Skunkzilla had wanted him to do. One could bet that if Yami no Malik had been aware of Skunkzilla's wishes, he would have done the opposite, just to spite the creature for biting him.

As it was, Skunkzilla was elated to find his four feet planted firmly on the ground. Finally, the unhappy, pissed off skunk was going to have a chance to spray someone other than PM and Neph. And after waiting all of those hours on the plane, Skunkzilla was good and ready to do just that. The little black creature jumped around, presenting Yami no Malik with its posterior and raising its tail.

Yami no Malik gazed down at the creature in puzzled fashion. It seemed to be making a most obscene stance in his direction--perhaps its primative form of mooning. Yami no Malik narrowed his eyes and glared menacingly down at the skunk, leaning forward and intending to do it some bodily harm.

Unfortunately, it was at that precise moment that Skunkzilla decided that its target was ripe for the spraying. Or perhaps it was fortunate, given that Skunkzilla might have very well wound up as a skunk-kebob if he had waited a few more moments to spray. It just depended on whose side one was on.

The little skunk let forth a powerful blast of aroma-laden liquid. At this close range, its spray completely covered Yami no Malik. The odor rapidly filled the room, leaving Ryou's poor living room in quite a bad state indeed. This was to say nothing of Yami no Malik, who was in a worse state odor-wise than the living room itself. At the very least, it was quite certain that his hair no longer smelled anything like flowers or fabric softener for that matter. It smelled like nothing but skunk, pure and simple... So did the rest of Yami no Malik...

*****

Upstairs, Yami no Bakura chose to allow Yami no Malik to survive (aka he was too scared to go after him... although we would never say it that way) in order to take care of something much more important. Before anyone could say anything, he whirled on his lover and demanded rather shrilly, "FLORAL-scented shampoo? You've been using FLORAL-scented shampoo?!"

Malik couldn't help but look offended, "I thought you liked it!"

Well, yes, he did.. but he wasn't about to ADMIT that. Quickly pushing aside the thoughts about how he had really been enjoying the flowery scent, he continued to rant instead, "But... it's FLOWERS. Since when did you use a FLORAL-scented shampoo?! It's... it's... it's. I can't believe you use it! That's the type of stuff the yadonushi will use! Have you been taking it from him or something?!"

As a matter of fact... that was exactly what had happened.

"I ran out of shampoo one day, and I couldn't use your stuff because you don't have any conditioner. So I had to borrow Ryou's."

Ryou squeaked and immediately backed out of the room. Which was a good thing because before one could say 'oops', Yami no Bakura was running right after him screaming like a banshee, "So this is YOUR fault, yadonushi!!"

Of course, it was not Ryou's fault that Malik had been quite pleased with the results or that Bakura had seemed particularly ardent in his affections the night after he'd used it. And it was most certainly not Ryou's fault that Malik had gone out and purchased several different varieties of floral-scented shampoo so that he wouldn't use up all of Ryou's.

Perhaps Ryou did encourage Malik just the teensiest bit... commenting on how nice his hair smelled after he'd switched shampoos... but it still wasn't really his fault. On top of that, Malik didn't exactly see why it was such a huge deal to anyone what his shampoo was scented with.

And he knew that Yami no Bakura liked it. Malik knew that this was really about Yami no Bakura being pissed off about liking the smell of the floral-scented shampoo more than anything else. And he meant to call him on it.

So, luckily for Ryou, Malik burst in through the door of his room only seconds after Yami no Bakura had cornered him in there. And luckily for all involved save Yami no Bakura, Malik lunged forward at the tomb robber as soon as he was inside the room, using his momentum to propel Yami no Bakura away from Ryou and towards the back wall, where he proceeded to pin him.

"Bakura, stop being unreasonable," Malik said calmly, fixing Yami no Bakura with a steady gaze. He knew better than to tell Yami no Bakura to calm down. Had Ryou not been present, Malik would have begun to argue that he knew that Yami no Bakura liked the scent of the shampoo already, so there was no point in him trying to cover that fact up.

Given how proud Yami no Bakura was, though, and given the fact that his omote was in the room, Malik knew that making such an argument now would only have the opposite of its intended effect, with Yami no Bakura growing angrier and more impassioned in his supposed distaste. Malik knew Yami no Bakura well enough not to reveal any remotely embarrassing secrets about the tomb robber, or more importantly, any private softness that passed between the two of them (Yami no Bakura would hardly want to confess to burying his face in Malik's hair, now would he?) when they were in the company of others.

Fortunately, Malik also knew Yami no Bakura well enough to make another, similarly efficacious argument Ryou's presence. "If you'd just listen to me for a minute, you'd see why leaving my shampoo choice alone is precisely the best thing to do. By now, we both know that my Yami no Jinkaku hates the smell. He wants it to stop. I can't think of a better way to piss him off than to keep making him smell floral," Malik said, smirking darkly. "And think of how you could mock him..." Malik knew that this idea would prove to be enticing for the tomb robber, to say the least. "Besides, it doesn't smell so bad, now does it? Really, I doubt that you'd ever even notice what my hair smells like."

Malik knew when to lie. He was confident that Yami no Bakura liked the scent, and this was a good chance to remind him of that fact. "Smell my hair now and judge for yourself. I believe that you'd find that lily of the valley is not an unpleasant scent. And it's poisonous, so keeping the shampoo around could come in handy," Malik added, smirking again. "Helpful in keeping Ryou in line," he added, winking teasingly at the omote, before he gathered a handful of his hair and extended it towards Yami no Bakura. "Here, smell it for yourself..."

Yami no Bakura sighed as he glared at Malik. He had a suspicion that his lover already knew that he had liked the smell... HAD liked, being the key word. He didn't like it anymore, now that he knew what it was. In fact, he probably hadn't liked it in the first place! That had just been a hallucination caused by the smell. So it was really okay. He didn't like the floral scent. And Malik's reasons weren't very convincing, although he liked the idea of annoying Yami no Malik. If one hadn't noticed, Yami no Bakura had a thing for annoying Yami no Malik. Well, he had a thing for annoying everyone. But again, that was not the point.

"I don't need to smell it to know that I won't like it," Yami no Bakura growled as he again turned to face Ryou, who had been trying to sneak out of the room. Next thing the poor white-haired omote knew, he was trapped in yellow glowy-stuff. Which meant he was trapped. Which meant he couldn't move. Which meant he was royally screwed unless Malik did something to help him. And that was a 50-50 deal... sometimes Malik helped him, but sometimes he let Yami no Bakura torture him. Well, not torture him... but yell and annoy him. And that was bad enough already.

Luckily for Ryou, Malik was feeling benevolent as he shook his gorgeous strands of perfect hair (in another part of Domino, a certain raven-haired teen gritted his teeth at getting the limelight stolen away from HIS precious hair) at Yami no Bakura with an expectant look.

"Come on, Bakura...." Malik whispered in an almost seductive way. Well, it was seductive, to be frank... and Yami no Bakura liked it very, very much.

The evil, white-haired Yami sighed in the usual bout of self-sacrifice, as he finally released the spell on Ryou, leaning over to smell Malik's hair. Part of him was very happy though! The floral scent, the beautiful lily of the valley scent. Oh, he was getting the shivers just thinking about it...! So wonderful, so lovely! So....

The warm and fuzzy feeling did not last long. Especially since right at the moment Yami no Bakura took a whiff of Malik's hair, Yami no Malik happened to be getting sprayed by a skunk.

And what happens to the Yami tends to happen to the omote.