Everything

By: ChocolateEclar

Disclaimer: Obviously I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! or anything that has to do with the anime/manga.

Claimer: I fully own Ichidou Yachitose and her family, Mrs. Suteki Iyashii, Suteki's deceased father and mother, Ryougi, Karei, Sumizome, Komayaka Mada-Tafunesu, Ke-ki and her gang, Miss Jishi, Nenriki "Riki," Tomobito, Kurisutaru "Kuri" Susume, Nekura Kyouran, Neferetiabet, Miw-sher, Hasha, and Great Wife Netikerty. Please don't use any of them in any form without my permission.

To Blank: *laughs* I'm not so sure I know what to say about the last chapter either. It was just one of those with the only purpose of crossing over into a new "Arc." ^_^;; Thank you again!

Duel Twenty: The Darkness Residing Within

I am falling into grace

To the unknown

To where you are
And faith makes everybody scared

It's the unknown,
The don't-know

That keeps me hanging on and on to you

        - "Unknown" by Lifehouse

Ichidou was never one to faint, but she very nearly did when, that night, she was visited by an almost mirror image of herself. Ichidou had been cuddled up and snoozing among her cerulean blankets when she was awaken by someone muttering oaths. Ichidou was a heavy sleeper at best, so it was quite awhile before she even stirred. But the tone and dialect was familiar yet strange, and soon it had curled around Ichidou's subconscious.

Ichidou's peculiar tanned double went over to her slumbering counterpart and nudged Ichidou's shoulder. Ichidou grunted something incoherent in her sleep and rolled onto her other side. With a faint grumble of her own, the look alike yanked Ichidou's sheets off of her.

Ichidou shivered and reached out to cover herself. She found nothing, jarring herself awake in search of warmth. She opened her eyes blearily and searched for her covers. "There you are…" she muttered groggily as she grabbed the blankets off the floor. Only then did her sleepy brain register the woman standing on the sheets with her arms crossed. "Hold it," mumbled Ichidou, blinking to realize the woman was really there.

"Who the heck are you?" snapped Ichidou, yawning. She wasn't in the best of moods most mornings and being awoken at three AM didn't please her at all.

The lady, on closer inspection, looked awfully like Ichidou to her shock. Bejeweled and robed in a cream dress, the double was undeniably an older, tanner version of Ichidou. Blinking, the woman replied something in a language Ichidou couldn't understand in any way. She did recognized it though. It was what she herself and others had spoken when she'd been thrown back into Ancient Egypt. She couldn't decipher it at all anymore though.

"Who-Wait a minute! You're Neferetiabet!" Ichidou exclaimed.

Being the reincarnation of said woman, Ichidou had actually pronounced the name so the lady recognized it as her own spoken with an unfamiliar accent. Neferetiabet made an "Ah!" sound and began to speak rapidly in Egyptian.

Ichidou held up her hands and Nebet's mouth clamped shut. "Hold it there, girl. I can't understand a word you're saying," Ichidou tried to explain with hand movements.

Inside her soul room, Ichidou rushed out into the hallway and shouted, "Yo, Pharaoh! Your old girlfriend's back from the grave!"

If that didn't get Yami's attention nothing would.

Sure enough he appeared at his soul chamber door. "What in Amun-Ra's name are you yelling about, aibou?" he questioned.

"I'm not lying. See for yourself," said Ichidou.

Yami complied and looked through Ichidou's eyes at the young woman standing beside her bed. He let out a few choice expressions in his ancient tongue before turning to Ichidou. "How…?"

"I dunno. She just kinda…appeared!" Ichidou explained.

Yami sighed and said, "Speak with her. I'll translate."

"How will she understand me?"

"Just tell me what you want to say."

"Umm… Alrighty then. How about "Why are you here?" " Ichidou suggested.

Yami complied and spoke the question through Ichidou's body. Neferetiabet responded adamantly. "She said she's "been wandering this great hazy place for many years" and that suddenly she was "drawn to a great light." "

"And that's supposed to make sense?" Ichidou asked.

Yami shrugged and said, "I am simply translating." There were little sign of his discomfort at seeing his old deceased love, but the anxiety was there, and Ichidou noticed it.

"Daijoubu ka?" she whispered.

"I'll be fine," said Yami tightly.

Ichidou's forehead creased in worry, but she remained taciturn on the subject. "Ask her what she remembers before this hazy place," she said instead.

"She says… she-she remembers her death," muttered Yami after several words were exchanged between the two Egyptians.

"So do I," Ichidou whispered, her eyes downcast. She gazed up at Yami and said, "By the looks of things and our differences in personality, I'd say, like you're Yugi's yami, I'm Nebet's yami. I'm too dark to be the other way around even if I am the reincarnation of part of her."

Yami didn't say anything.

"Ask-ask her why she thinks she's here," mumbled Ichidou.

Yami obeyed and informed Ichidou, "She thinks she's done something wrong to deserve such a fate."

"Tell her it's because of me, not her, that she hasn't moved on."

"Ichidou-"

"Tell her!"

Yami sighed and spoke with Nebet. "She wants to know why you think that."

"As a reincarnation of her darker half, I know what's happened to cause this," Ichidou murmured.

"Which is?" asked Yami.

"Nebet-I-we… Anou, you know what I mean, I sought after revenge right after I died," said Ichidou as if remembering some dream she'd had ages before. Shadows were gathering at her heels, enveloping her up to her ankles. "I wanted so badly to be with you, and Netikerty had taken that away from me. So, I-I," Ichidou stammered. "I should've have, but I did! I-I-"

"What did you do, Nebet?" queried Yami for the present Ichidou had been replaced by a darker version of the modern Japanese ti-n'e-ja and the Egyptian ti-n'e-ja combined via the creeping shadows. "Nebet? Aibou?"

The hikari part of Neferetiabet that had been standing at her bedside had vanished. The figure telling the tale had the peachy complexion of Ichidou unlike Nebet's tanner one, with bright gold-speckled emerald eyes. She was wearing an atramentous gown with shimmering, transparent sleeves that quivered in the wind the fluttering shadows picked up. Around her neck was a gold choker two inches thick with an azure scarab in its center. Her hair was plaited and pooled on her shoulders in ebony strands. She looked as malevolent as the blackest surrounding shadows with a cool smirk on her richly painted crimson lips.

Yami took an involuntary step back as the transformation was complete. She was startling in all her ethereal caliginosity. "So you are what resides in Ichidou and Nebet's soul," said Yami. It wasn't a question for he knew the answer.

"Everyone has one form of me or another in them, Pharaoh," purred the lady as she sidled to one side. Her black, high-heeled leather boots made click clop noises as she stepped. "You are a prime example. You're so dark it's chilling, koishii,*" she continued. (A/N: koishii=dear, darling, beloved)

"So you wished revenge upon my mother," said Yami coolly.

"Well, yes and no. Not wholeheartedly anyway," replied the woman, tugging at her hair. "That's why the half of my soul that was supposed to reincarnated, and the half that was supposed to move on stayed in limbo."

"And what of Nebet and Ichidou?"

"We're like peas in a pod, koishii. We're an equal amount of hikari and yami," the lady answered. "Every person is… at first anyway, and to survive as an atleast somewhat normal person we needed hikari and yami, ying and yang. As such, we split evenly. We've become quite a bit different – millennia can do that – but we are, in essence, identical. Identical in personality and… certain desires…" She gave him a sly smile, but said nothing more.

Yami ignored this, knowing full well the needs of a dark spirit. This one was older and darker than even he though, making him uncertain as to what exactly she was capable of.

"What will happen to Nebet now?" he questioned.

"I will finally move on, as was originally intended," said the lady in the ancient tongue they had used long ago in Egypt.

"What of Ichidou then?"

"I will be as I was before with minor changes," the woman replied, switching back to Japanese. Smirking, she added, "Will you try to banish me as you did with Seto Kaiba's darkness so long ago?"

"Non. That wouldn't change Ichidou for the better," whispered Yami.

Mollified, the lady said, "Very good." And then she had melted completed into the shadows again. Standing in her place was a muddled Ichidou.

"Nebet's gone," she whispered, gazing up at Yami.

"I know, aibou," Yami said softly.

"Sooo… How was I? Dangerously sexy in my bad self, right?" teased Ichidou.

"Try-"

"Don't you dare say "try again" or I'll slug you," Ichidou joked.

"I thought you said no mind reading," Yami protested.

"I didn't read your mind," Ichidou answered, grinning. "You may be a three-thousand-year-old wise guy, but you're not really different than today's smart-alecks."

"Fair enough," laughed Yami.

"Sooo, did my wicked beauty seduce you?" Ichidou asked innocently as she sidled away.

"Aibou…"

"Just kidding," said Ichidou with a smile before vanishing.

Yami watched as she fell asleep once more a few minutes later. He could feel the dark spirit creeping within the boundary of Ichidou's soul room. He had never noticed this before, but he was positive it had always been a frequent pastime of the lady for many years. 'She lives, breathes…and even thrives in shadows after all,' Yami thought.

"So do you, koishii," purred a voice unbidden in his ear. But before he could react the lady was back within Ichidou's soul.

Yami could just picture the devious smirk on her ruby red painted lips. He nearly laughed aloud. What would his aibou do next? After all, the lady, although seemingly without a conscious, was still Ichidou. "Nice job, aibou," he said.

"Hmm?" muttered the ti-n'e-ja sleepily.

"You've proven you never were asleep to begin with this time around. Your darkest part can't really do what she just did without your consciousness," accused Yami.

"Naturally I can't sleep with all the little bad thoughts going 'round my head," Ichidou mumbled.

"So you admit to having your darkest part's latest appearance intentionally?"

"Hai," whispered Ichidou with a smirk before yawning. "Alright, so I'm sinful, yadda yadda. Now can we wait to make out 'til a decent hour. It's like three thirty in the morning, and, as great as that sounds, I'm too tired even for something like that. You know I need my sleep."

Yami laughed and stepped closely to her. "Without it you're too belligerent," he said. Smiling, Ichidou leaned in and closed her eyes halfway, not from anticipation of a kiss but from exhaustion.

"Go to sleep, aibou," Yami whispered gently as he planted a kiss on her forehead. Ichidou yawned against his chest and nodded. "'Night, Atem," she mumbled. She disappeared from the soul room once more and finally fell soundly asleep again.

Yami smiled and slumped against a stone wall of his chamber. Running both his hands through his hair, he sighed.

'What are you doing to me, Ichidou?'

This time no one responded to his thoughts for Ichidou really was sound asleep.

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A/N: So there you have Monumental Chapter Twenty©! *laughs* It was one big Ichidou/Nebet and Yami love fest, which is strange for me… I'm not usually one to right stuff like that. I enjoyed writing about the seductive dark spirit woman deep within Ichidou/Nebet's soul. She'll be making occasional appearances from now on…

A/N 2: I still have loads more ideas for chapters. I already know how the big finale will be like. (I just don't know how to I get to it yet… ^_^;;)

Iyami: Baka. -_-;;

A/N 3: ^__- The preview for chapter 21:

Let's review… Nebet's finally moved on, and Ichidou has a dark, seductive alter ego inside her that keeps trying to seduce Yami… Can things get more complicated? What kind of question is that?! Of course they can…

Ichidou begins her research into finding a way to get Yami a body of his own. According to Anzu, Seto Kaiba can help her do just that with his resources, but will he help? Does Ichidou even want his help?

Anyway, what have Riki and Kuri done?!?! They say they took things to the next level in their relationship, but a few months later things don't look so good… What's Ichidou's reaction when she finds out? These are her exact word: "What do you mean you guys-holy crap… Kuri, you're not-you can't be… Oh, Kami-sama… AHHHHHHH!!!"

Stay tuned for "Duel Twenty-one!"

A/N 4: REVIEW! ^_^ Sayonara!