BookDragon: "Thanks for the Reviews guys!"
Bill: "Er…yeah… I told you you should have started writing the sequel earlier!"
BookDragon: -_-u "Thanks for the support Bill…"
Bill: "She doesn't own Yu-Gi-Oh, and probably never will with her work ethic."
BookDragon: "Okay THAT'S it!" *starts dust fight*
Chapter 3: Is that ice-cream truck speeding?
The group emerged into a brightly lit room. Their feet were pressed hard on the oak wood floor while glancing at the refrigerator Tristin, wearing his usual brown trench coat and weird hair style, was digging through, to Joey, in a white t-shirt and regular jeans, stuffing mouthfuls of chips sitting on the couch to the left of them, Mokuba in a yellow vest and stripped long sleeve shirt, looking at Joey like he'd suddenly eat him too, and Ann at the corner of the room trying too hard not to be noticed by the blonde. Bill didn't pick this up.
"Ann! What's the rush? I still gotta introduce you to a few people-" Joey looked at her surprised and made an attempt to leap off the couch but found the chest nut coffee table conveniently in the way, and himself going over it like a ton of bricks into the tan fluffy carpet painfully while Mokuba laughed at him. Tristin glanced out at them, waved to Ann with a mouthful of food, and back into the plastic cold white chamber looking for something to eat. Joey quickly pulled himself up and looked around like an excited dog. No wonder Kaiba liked to compare him to one, she thought, he was loyal and brave and a very good friend, like a dog. His brown eyes darted across her and everyone else as his mouth slowly turned to a frown.
"Where's Marie?" Ann looked a bit insulted but shrugged it off quickly at the thought of her sister.
"She's at home. Bill picked me up on the bus." His frown grew longer, making Ann not have the heart of telling him what her sister was up to. She was currently dating another boy. The experience of last summer seemed to dim her sense of how real it had been and more like a dream to her. She met him six months after Joey and the gang left. She was passionately in love with the dark haired cutey she called him. It made Ann sick with grief at the thought of Joey and glad she wouldn't see him again. That didn't happen to plan.
"How is she?"
"She's fine… she misses you." Ann lied guiltily, letting her stomach turn with the uneasiness from it. His face grew bright and a bit pink as he grinned warmly at her, making her stomach jolt worse.
"Tell her, I miss her too! She'll visit next time right?"
"She should…" His face beamed brighter as pride glowed from his pale skin.
"Tell her I'll see her soon…"
"Yes, I will…"
"What's going on brother?" A teenage girl that looked a little bit like her sister stepped into the doorway to the right of them, looking puzzled with her pale brown eyes as her reddish tan hair swept her face lightly and stretched beyond her pink collar of her shirt. She was very pretty and very much like Marie. No wonder why Joey liked her. Ann noticed Tristin immediately shut the refrigerator and Bill's gaze becoming every dreamy like and forgetting about the tour he was taking about. She could help but smirk at him, at the humorous look of pure bliss spreading across his face with each passing moment, as she stood oblivious to him, looking at Ann.
"She's a friend of Bill's…"
"She's the one you love?" Bill started laughing immediately at her comment as Joey let out a shrilled sounding what.
"Him? In love with HER?!?!?!" Bill plummeted to the ground laughing. She fought the urge to give him a right hook as she spoke to her thought gritted teeth and red faced.
"I'm Marie's sister…I'm Ann." Her pale completion brightened in the realization at her name.
"You're Ann? Bill and Bakura told me all about you…" Ann could have fallen at that.
"Really? I'm glad you heard of me…" She kicked the rolling body as she smiled at her.
"You are Serenity? I assume. I've heard a lot about you as well. " She blushed as Ann made an attempt to act older than she really was and shook her hand, while Bill got up slowly from the pain exploding in his ribs. He glared at Ann and smiled flakily at her as he dusted himself off to look fashionable in Serenity's presence, while Ann couldn't help a snicker as a tall blonde in tight clothing stood tall above her head with a familiar brown haired cheerleader she had meet last year. Tea wore a fluttering blue skirt in a white shirt and looked beautiful enough to make Ann understand why she was bewitching to Yugi, who was blushing in the corner of her eye. She smiled warmly at her as the blonde with purple stern eyes looked over the new comer, Ann felt like twitching under the look she was getting with nervousness. It wasn't until Serenity noticed it too and tapped her lightly to tell her who she was.
"You're Ann?" She asked disbelievingly in a plain tone, crossing her arms and tapping her black boots as her ring earrings swung.
"Yeah. She is." Bill's voice drawled bored as he took her arm quickly and started to walk away, dragging her backwards, farther down the hallway pass the family room as the others started to spread out and do other things.
"See yea around kid…" She replied and walked from her view back into the room with Tea and Serenity, who waved warmly at her, making her feel weird to be waved at. They walked on far into the hall way of what seemed like many never ending doors in one direction. Bill started to talk like he always did when agitated.
"Mai is always like that when it comes to people I know, personally I think she hates me."
"I would be lead to believe that too… but why would she hang out here?"
"I don't know, maybe because it's free food, place quiet to hang at, and a place to crash in case of trouble. Usually." Ann sluffed off his grip on her shoulder and walked with him.
"What do you mean usually?" Bill sighed as he grabbed at the center of his shirt and quicken his pace.
"Malik has decided to visit a couple of times, haven't figured out why, Kaiba agreed to have the place on watch with cameras to catch the son of a gun." Ann looked surprised at the thought of Malik showing up, then again it would be perfectly normal for him to do something like that, it would have happened sooner or later. She sighed at the thought of it.
"Do you think he knows I'm here?" It seemed unlikely, but having the Yu-gi-oh cartoons in your own home terrorizing you was also unlikely at the time.
"Maybe. He too has a millennium item, and probably can detect something like the ripple we cause by traveling through the space; he could be here by tonight. I really haven't a clue."
"It figures." She sighed disheartedly, and then noticed the same door kept going by when she turned around to find she was able to see the doorway into the kitchen clearly. Bill looked to and looked more annoyed and almost steaming mad.
"Damn charms…BAKURA!"
"He says to knock on the door three times and tap once." Bakura's voice rang down the hall.
"Thanks." Bill knocked three times and a quick tap with his knuckle once. Immediately the hall ways stretched out like a slinky and made about five more doors and a sharp turn to the right. She looked at it amused, and tired of being surprised. Bill didn't bother to explain and went down the hall, looked at his watch suddenly and rubbed his head.
"Ann… I got a seminar with Peggy; the tour will have to wait, turn the corner and knock five times and kick the seventh door once if it's important. Later." He turned swiftly on his heel and ran down the hall quickly, his trench coat swishing like a robe. Ann was left wondering what to do and realizing how much Bill had changed, he was more business, an eerie alikeness to Kaiba. She sighed at what was happening to her friend and decided to think about it later, she would now explore. He reached the knob for the battered door Bill had just knocked on and turned the brass knob wonderingly and looked in side.
It was a plain room with a window, a bed, a desk, a closet, and a bookshelf. The bed had sheets thrown all over in a muddled mess, like someone had tossed about a lot in a nightmare or something. The desk was a chestnut color wood and polished so it shinned in the sunlight from the window, it had been covered in all sorts of golden trinkets and kept clinking and clanking every second in weird movement, which was some what interesting. The closet had a door like the one she entered, she wouldn't have even known it to be a closet if the door wasn't hanging open and clothes hanging about it scrunched up. The bookshelf was made of the same wood and as tall as the ceiling, crowded with books and stray pieces of paper shoved into them. Disappointed, Ann slowly shut the door with a click and turned to Mai looking at her straight in the face. She flinched at her sudden appearance, and the serious but calm violet eyes like Yugi's.
"How can you stand it?" Ann frowned curiously at her.
"Stand what?" She shook her head, swing her golden locks of hair.
"Never mind. Come on… you need a make over…" Ann noticed the way she was looking at her frizzed and knotty brown hair and made her nervous.
"Um… no thanks… I don't think I need one…" Mai took her by the wrist and pulled her hard out of the hallway talking bossy but formidable to her.
"Believe me; I've never seen anyone need one more than you girl." With that Ann was dragged off to the one thing she always feared when her sister tried to take her to beauty salons. To look pretty.
3 hours later.
"Wow you look good." Tea said while putting some kind of hair gel in her hair to keep the uncomfortable way it was set on her head to stay uncomfortable. Ann struggled in the chair, terrified about the thought of anyone seeing her like this. Mai took the last swipe of a comb and stood back looking at it, making sure it was perfect, in her eyes, as Serenity gave her some slivery lipstick to use on her. Ann looked at her sadly as she bent down to apply lipstick while Mai talked again to her.
"I don't understand you. You have the looks to impress a lot of the men I meet but you don't want to. I mean you almost look as good as I do when the right makeup is added." Ann rolled her brown orbs and waited until her lips were done and waxy before she answered.
"I get enough of that from my sister. She wants me to prance around looking like a doll for heaven's sake! I swear she only does all this stuff for her boyfriend…" Everyone was silent. Ann could have cursed at that slip, while looking at everyone's faces.
"She has a boyfriend?" Ann looked unhappily at her shoes and tight jeans they forced her into.
"Yeah, she met him six months after Joey left, and she's absolutely devoted to the guy. Like he is necessary to life." Serenity didn't look happy, sadly at the carpet, making one wonder what she was thinking. Tea looked calm, she probably understood what Marie was doing more than she did, which made her feel a bit more comfortable about the subject. Mai just shook her head.
"That's unhealthy." She shook a blue flower-covered can of something that smelled nice and sprayed it all over her as she uneasily tugged at the tight red shirt she was wearing and wanted badly to wear her old clothing. Mai only rolled her eyes at this.
"It covers all your good features, now hold still…"
"That was the basic I idea, what IS that stuff?" She asked in the middle of coughing, making the mistake of trying to sigh in relief.
"It's perfume." She finished by capping the can.
"Done." Everyone stood back as Ann got out of the chair clumsily as they looked on at the job they did.
"That's got to be the best job I've ever done." Mai said while looking at her with pride.
"Well, second best to me." Ann felt sick at her statement and looked for a mirror to see how bad, or good, it was and to find the nearest sink. Tea handed her a mirror calmly and she looked in.
Some one completely different looked back. Well, not completely different, her brown eyes looked back at her. The rest of her was transformed into a lady, which scared the shit out of her on first glance. Her usually frizzed hair had been smoothed down and tamed to look glossy and soft, making her want to pick at it. They hadn't put any powder make up on her because her skin was just too pale, but in stead but silver on her lips to make it stand out. The light blue eye shadow made her eye lids itch while trying to blink it off as she looked at the tight fitting clothing she was wearing, exposing herself. She dropped the mirror immediately and dove for her odd clothes.
"Does ANYONE know where the bathroom is?!?!" Mai frowned.
"It's not that bad."
"No, no, it not that it's just that I actually hate being dressed up." She continued to pick up clothes franticly, hoping not a single male soul will ever see her like this, but that wouldn't happen. She expected Mai to object but no one was saying anything to her. She looked up with handfuls of her clothes.
"What's the matter with you-" She froze at the sight of Bakura's head in the door, staring at them looking pink, and then going light red, then going the darkest red she ever saw. Horrified she took the mirror she dropped and threw it at the door as fast as possible.
"GET OUT!!!" Bakura quickly took his head out of the door and slammed it as the mirror smashed. So angry she huddled her clothes in her arms and without saying another word she opened all the doors in the room until she found the bathroom and slammed the door and started scrubbing at her face furiously.
"I am NEVER going to let them do this again…" She scrubbed for what seemed like hours, until her face was pink and throbbing, but clean and free of powers and wax. After she threw her clothes off and got into her old jeans, tank top, and heavy green sweater that was always to long for her arms and then jumped around for a few minutes putting on her old ratty sneakers she loved so much. She was about to attack her hair when someone knocked on the door.
"Yeah?"
"Bakura was gonna tell yea Bill was out." She paused at Joey's voice, realizing he was there on Bill's account and it probably a complete accident, and she threw a mirror at her. Oh wonderful.
"Hey Joey."
"Yeah?"
"Where is Bakura?" There was a pause.
"He's with Bill." Ann sighed and opened the door to Joey leaning on the wall, looking surprised. She looked at her hair and back to him annoyed.
"Yeah, yeah, just direct me to them." Joey shrugged and started walking out the door with Ann following him, tugging at her hair mercilessly. She followed him into the family room and through the door at the corner of the room, outside. Trees seemed to surround the house, mostly pine there was one or too bare trees, snow lightly covered their branches but covered the ground like a thick layer of frosting on a cake. Their breath turned foggy as they started along the house through the snow, swirling in the thick cold as they walked through the icy white numbing their ankles. Joey was shivering unlike Ann, she was use to the cold weather, had grown to love it. She smiled warmly at the light fluffy flakes falling down from the thick gray sky, wondering if Bill had the house built here for the same reason. He lead her to the shed on the side of the house, also make with oak wood like his cabin, built larger than any garage she had ever seen. Bill was outside polishing a red car; it was one of those classy sporty kinds of cars with leather seats and had the top down. Bakura was washing the wheels talking to him quietly, Bill smirking and laughing as Bakura kept his calm posture, nudging Bill at the sight of them.
"Ann, sorry for the wait… but I heard you did something useful with the time at least."
"Don't make me sock you… whose car?" Bill got up and threw the cloth onto the bottom of the car looking at Ann ripping at her hair.
"Do you like it? It's a Viper… I bought it with some of the money Peggy gave me…"
"That must have been a lot… where IS Pegasus anyway?" She asked him confused, noticing Bakura was avoiding eye contact with her.
"He's still in the seminar… I leave him there… it's arranged."
"What ARE those "seminars" about any way?" Bill gave her a stern look, surprising the hell out of her.
"It's private; I'm doing it as a favor…where's Joey?" Ann immediately looked around to find Joey missing but tracks clearly marked going around the garage. She looked at the both of them puzzled until Joey remerged from the other side of the garage a few moments later with Yugi running and white in the face toward the car yelling to go. Everyone looked confused when the garage door opened slowly, exposing blinding headlights on a white van. Bill looked at it wide eyed and shouted.
"GET IN THE DAMN CAR!" Confused in the muddled chaos of the engine suddenly starting up, Bill jumped in the front seat while Bakura pulled her into the back seat as Joey slid over the back of the car and into the back with a crash. Yugi quickly jumped into the front seat while Joey started bellowing to go at the top of his lungs as Bill turned the key and hit the gas petal, making everyone lunged forward as a very large van with an ice-cream cone on the top broke the garage door and speeded after them. The car roared through the trees like a low flying jet as Ann watched the white van through her raffling hair, at it doing the same turns and trying to keep up.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?!?" Bill finally asked at Joey pissed.
"I got a job selling ice-cream last week…I had to fix the engine…" Bill's eyes went stormy, suddenly enraged making Ann stare astonished at him.
"SO THAT'S WHERE THE HELL THE ENGINE WENT! YOU TOOK IT YOU THEFTING BASTARD!"
"TURN! TURN!!!" Yugi yelled over his voice in a high chirp as he ducked behind the dash board. Bill twisted the wheel quickly with an unnerving look on his face, so angry he was calm at how fast they were going through trees. The car spun in a circle, swerving snow all other the place, making Ann sick and almost throwing up over the side of the car before it started roaring and went forward.
"HEY YOU TOLD ME TO GET A JOB!" Joey retorted, red in the face with heated madness not making Ann feel any better. Bill turned around with a deep red face and his eyes alight with flames and seemed to be getting taller than him by the second.
"YOU BASTARD! THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN TAKE MY EQUIPMENT!!!" Suddenly the car swerved at the pale hands of Yami, looking distressed but calm as he tried to figure out how the car worked.
"STOP FIGHTING NOW AND CONTROL THIS…THING!" Bill's mood didn't lighten a single bit. He only turned on Yami smoking with eyes like a bon fire.
"KEEP QUIET! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS!" He then turned back to Joey looking ten feet taller than him, looming over him so angry Yami didn't even bother. He kept struggling with the wheel franticly until Bakura finally climbed into the front and swerved the wheel right to miss an on coming tree and directed him what to do next. Ann was shrinking down in the seat at how fuming Bill had become and how irritated she was getting at him. Her fists turned white from the force she was applying as her face turned from a light green to a purple color. Yami was calm as Bakura ducked a few times thinking they would crash and coming back up glad like a mole in the whack-a-mole game at those arcades, sometimes looking back the three of them and the ice cream van speeding after them.
"YOU'RE THE BIGGEST NUSSENCE I HAVE EVER IN MY MISFORTUNE TO MEET. I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY ANYONE CAN THINK OF YOU AS A FRIEND!!!" Bakura turned over disgruntled, his eyes a crimson shinning color as his hair ruffled up like lighting in a storm and glared at Bill hot in rage.
"BILL YOU SHUT YOUR FILTHY MOUTH AND DON'T OPEN IT AGAIN!" He turned around just as quickly as Bill suddenly shrunk down to normal size, loosing all the rage like a deflating balloon, looking aghast at what he had just said with everyone but Yami because he was desperately trying not to get them killed. Everyone was silent, leaving the cars roaring and small trees smacking against the hood and the cold wind whistling in their ears as well as biting into their bodies like knives. Ann was baffled, heated, terrified, and calm in an eerie twist of raw emotion bubbling under the surface of her own awareness as she looked back into the van still somehow keeping up with them no matter Yami's crazy driving. She had never suspected anyone could have been worse that Kaiba. Yami was ten times worse. She wouldn't have been surprised if they had ten cops on them in ten minutes, it would definitely happen if they got to town. Hopefully for the lives of everyone else they won't.
"How are we going to loose these guys?" Ann finally asked to the back of Bakura's head, who she suspected wasn't looking any of them on purpose.
"We could always try the throwing the ice-cream I put in the trunk…" Bill glared at him but didn't open his mouth on fear of Bakura exploding again. Yami turned the wheel again, narrowly missing a huge birch, jarring all of them unpleasantly.
"That sounds like a good idea…" He agreed. Bakura responded by pushing a button on the dash board and hearing a faint click from the trunk of the car as the hood flipped out and hit the snow. Ann looked at the messed up hood, it had opened backwards to the seats inside of the rear lights. It didn't last long. Joey, Bill, and Ann instantly dove into what seemed like hundreds of gallons of ice-cream.
"How many did you buy?!?!" Bill asked astonished.
"It was on sale, an American dollar a gallon."
"How many gallons did you buy?"
"Two-hundred."
"YOU SPENT TWO-HUNDRED DOLLORS ON ICE-CREAM!?!"
"Well, I didn't want to run out of it." Bill put his face into his hands and sweatdropped. Ann shrugged it off and pulled out a box of strawberry and chucked it as hard as she could at the ice-cream truck. I swerved out of the way and kept on their trail doggedly. Bill pulled out a box and looked at the flavor as Joey threw a chocolate one.
"There is a such thing as marshmallow ice-cream!??!" Bill asked.
"Of Course there is, when they say a thousand flavors they mean a thousand flavors!" Joey said loudly over the engine as he launched a bubble gum box into the gritted part of the truck. Bill threw the Marshmallow one and hit the cone on the top of the van squarely in the center. Suddenly a squealing music came on and they covered their ears painfully.
"OH RA! WHAT IS THAT HORRIBLE SOUND!?!" Yami screamed through gritted teeth as they suddenly drove out onto the road, Bakura shouting for him to stay on it. The disgusting song twanged painfully the melody of "Do your ears hang low" annoyingly as it persisted with the van behind them, somehow turning on a dime on the corner. A normal van should have fallen over, making Ann blink at it.
"I guess I shouldn't have loosened the tires…" Joey said stupidly making Bill scream.
"WHAT?!?!" As he stopped throwing ice-cream and looked at him horrified. Ann threw vanilla box as she saw they were going down hill into the city. Actually they were going down a mountain into the city. So much for not going into the city. They kept throwing ice-cream as fast as possible, trying to slow it down. It worked a little, but not enough to give them a chance to escape. Coconut, lime, cherry, cookie dough, grasshopper, pineapple, coffee, mint, dark chocolate, chocolate swirl, checkered, and vanilla bean were only some of the ice-cream that was now splattered onto the road behind them down the mountain and into the city, speeding past cars while they all hoped to god, one to Ra, that no one would cross their path of disarray they were causing. It was when speeding through the center of the busy city that they finally caught a break. The ear screeching music had finally come in handy as kids started running up the sides of the van, slowly it down for a few spare moments. Ann could see what seemed like two figures in the van trying hard to find the off switch as no disappeared into the back and shoved off a whole load of ice-cream that started kids screaming, but only slowed them down more. The figure returned, paused at the waving arm movements, and took the wheel as a familiar snow haired teen climbed out of the van and onto the top it and blasted the ice-cream cone off the top of the van, sending it tumbling down into the street.
"Hey! It's TombRobber!" Bill said surprised as Ann's jaw unhinged while Yami swerved the car at a corner. The van followed at the same movement, sending TombRobber stumbling off the top as a tanned hand grabbed his leg through the window and held on to him as he lifted vertical turning the corner and slammed into the side of the door as it started straight after them again.
"Judging by the hair it seems Malik is driving… god that's bad." Ann nodded in agreement as Bakura told Yami directions nervously, now hiding behind the dash board every once and a while. She watched as Bakura's counter part climbed shakily back into the van through the window and speeded faster after them. They got closer and closer, until somewhere near the end of the city they were so close Ann could have reached out a touched the hood of the van. Both teenage boys looked angrily at them through the wind shield, until they started cursing Bill for the sly idea of giving them the finger and having Yami floor it. They might have not known what it meant, but they knew it was something insulting. The speeded on the edge of the city, back to the mountains, while they finished throwing the last of Joey's ice-cream. It seemed like hours speeding up and slowing down, turning and swerving, avoiding the van trying to ram them. Okay Yami wasn't that bad of a driver, only five times worse than Kaiba. Finally they started going upward, back up the road to the cabin, having no more luck of loosing them. It was sure in everyone's mind they would get caught any second when they finally scored the break they hadn't dared hoped for, the turn into the forest the van suddenly lost a wheel and went over the drop, with a loud screeching, and Bill and Joey cheering, but left everyone else wondering what had become of them and if it would be the last of them. Probably not. Ann slid down into her seat as the car slowed down to a reasonable speed, until it got even slower and stopped dead with a loud sputter in the middle of the thick pine trees. Everyone was silent.
"We're out of gas." Bakura finally said as Bill jumped out of the car and popped the trunk back on and started pushing upward. Everyone soon did the same as him, pressing hard forward.
"How far is the house?" Ann asked already getting tired and sweaty.
"About a couple of miles…" Bill replied sadly as everyone groaned.
"Be glad Yami can't drive the way back." Bill laughed as he was suddenly pelted with snowballs.
BookDragon: "That's the end of the chap, please review!"
Bill: "Or call the collect number!"