Disclaimer: I don't own YUGIOH! Alright?!
When Matron rang the morning bell on Tuesday, Takara rolled out of bed, groaning. They wake up earlier here than in America, she thought. She quickly changed into her school uniform, and went downstairs for breakfast. "TAKA!!!" As soon as she hit the bottom floor, about a dozen little kids tried to wrap their arms around her legs and waist. Ten succeeded in pulling her to the floor where the smaller orphans jumped her.
"Hey," she smiled at the kids. Slowly she tried to untangle herself, already knowing it was a futile attempt.
"Look what I made!" A little blonde girl said, holding out a paper crane.
"How pretty, Kimi," Takara said, taking it in her hand. Takara dropped it, though, when Jamie, a toddler, stepped on her stomach, knocking the air out of her.
"Children, children!" Takara heard the matron call. "It's time to eat breakfast!"
Takara grinned weakly at them, showing her lack of oxygen. Suddenly, they all got up, laughing.
"Your face is blue!" a kid yelled. Takara got up and brushed herself off. She was the oldest kid in the orphanage, being five years older than the next. As a result, it was like she was wading in a pool of children. The smaller ones attached themselves to her legs, while the older ones led the way to the breakfast table.
"Mmm... Oatmeal," she said, grinning. "My favorite!"
"I thought you said bacon was your favorite," little Teany asked.
"Yeah, that too," Takara told the little girl.
"But you said that about eggs!" another boy commented.
"Hard boiled, scrambled, sunny side up, or even raw!" Kendal added. Takara grinned.
"I like everything!" Takara declared. The kids giggled.
"Don't forget your blessings," Matron said, sitting at the head of the table. They bowed their heads and said grace, after which Takara practically gulped down her food. She grabbed her bag and bolted out the door, yelling to the younger kids to never be as late as she was getting.
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Takara ran into math class all sweaty and slammed herself into her seat. She was panting hard.
"Hey Takara," Yugi said, turning around. Takara grinned at him just as the bell rang. The teacher wasn't in yet, so Takara decided that she should just tell Yugi about her dream the night before.
"I had the weirdest dream last night," she started. "I dreamed I had sixteen brothers, and sixteen sisters. It was just bizarre. I had sixteen of just about everything." Her blue eyes shone brightly as she said all this stuff. "And then I woke up, and it was really late. Actually, I woke on time, except that the kids. . ." she stopped. She smiled, hoping that Yugi hadn't noticed what she'd said.
Yugi, who was listening with rapt attention, asked, "What kids?"
"It's nothing," Takara said, taking out her homework. Yugi noticed the drawings on her folder.
"Can I see that?" he asked a little shyly. Takara handed it to him. Yugi studied it. They were hand drawn sketches of eyes, of all different shapes, but there were more of one type. He looked at Takara, who was busy erasing marks on her paper. They were her eyes. He looked down again, and opened the folder. He saw many sketches and drawings of kids on the looseleaf paper. They varied in age, from three to ten, and they were all in wacky poses, one toddler standing on a tricycle, a pair of hands with unseen origins holding the boy up. Actually, it looked like the hands were taking the boy down, and the boy was refusing to go down. He flipped through some more pages, and a few more pages later, he found a life sized picture of the eyes. He noticed something. The eyes looked very familiar. . .
While Yugi trailed off in thought, Takara snatched the folder out of his hand. "You know what? I'm going to use this as blackmail to get you to talk about those kids," Yugi told her.
"What kids?" she asked. The teacher took roll, and then she went on with the lesson. Takara wasn't listening, as she was busy drawing on the paper in front of her. She liked drawing eyes, and soon had a collection of eyes from people around her. Yugi's eyes were big and round, while Terri's eyes (the girl who sits on Takara's left) were narrowed into slits as she concentrated. She pulled out a small mirror, which she used expertly to see the eyes of the people behind her, as they were intent on the lesson. Except one. Kaiba was leaning onto his desk, looking bored as hell. Honestly, why was he here anyways? Takara took advantage of the moment of boredom to sketch his eyes. As soon as she was done a couple minutes later, she looked at it, thinking that it was really good, and that she was getting better at drawing eyes. Then she frowned a little. Those eyes. . . they looked just like. . .
"Isoda, are you paying attention?"
Her head pulled up to see the teacher, looking at her from the blackboard where an equation was there.
"No Ma'am." Most of the kids were still not over the shock of Takara's boldness and truthfulness.
"What are you writing there?" the teacher asked.
"Nothing, Ma'am." It was the truth. The teacher held out her hand. Reluctantly, Takara walked over to her and handed over the paper. The teacher looked it over, and handed it back to Takara.
"Put it away. If I see you doing this in class again, I'll throw it away." Takara nodded and went back to her seat to put the drawing away. She carefully avoided the feet of the immature boys that stuck out at her, trying to trip her. "Now who has the answer to this problem?" A flurry of hands went up. So this is what they were working on. Takara and Kaiba's hands both went up. "Keiri?"
"Twenty?"
"I'm sorry, that's wrong. Taichi?"
"Twenty-two?"
"Nope." Apparently, everyone who did the work got either of those answers, because only Takara and Kaiba's hands were left up.
"Kaiba?"
"Twenty-one and twenty-eight hundredths."
"Exactly." She wrote another problem on the board. Kaiba and Takara's hands flew upward. "Isoda?" The class groaned, seeing another pattern.
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"Soo... what kids?" Yugi asked, still trying to get the information out of her.
Takara grinned, still feeling great about having won her match. "I'm not telling anything."
"I'll tell about your drawings."
"Still no go." Takara thought a moment. "I'll tell you if YOU tell me YOUR biggest secret."
Yugi hesitated a moment. "Okay." They kept walking down the hallway towards their English class.
"The kids... are the ones at the orphanage." Yugi looked a little shocked. "The matron is distantly related to me. She's my great-aunt's third cousin. Until I find my brothers or get adopted, yeah right, I stay there. Until I'm eighteen. In my calculations, that is two years and four days. Three, days."
Yugi blinked. "Do you know who your brothers are?"
"I have an idea. . ." Takara trailed off. "Your turn to share."
"Oh, um, see this puzzle?" Yugi pointed at the pyramid shaped thing around his neck. She nodded, telling him to go on. "Well, there's a spirit that lives in there. The spirit of an Egyptian Pharaoh." Takara blinked.
"Wow." Takara opened the door to the classroom. "That is. . . something." Grinning, she left Yugi, and went over to talk about whatever girls talk about with Nari. What DO girls talk about anyways? Yugi wondered, hoping she wouldn't talk about Yami.
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"Duke likes you," Nari told Takara on her arrival. "I'm a little jealous, but he's a bit of a jackass, after all. A totally cute jackass. . ."
Takara grinned. "Yeah well... it's not like I'm going to run and join his group of cheerleaders." Nari laughed with her. Mr. Yamiko silenced the classroom, and started the lesson. Of course, Takara knew what he was talking about, but she still pretended to take notes. . .
"Ms. Isoda?" Yamiko inquired.
"Hmm?" She looked up from the apparent gibberish that she was writing.
"Are you doing your notes?"
"Yes. . ." Mr. Yamiko held out his hand to take the paper from her. It was actually her own computer code that she had used to hack Seto's computer. She was writing a better way to cover her tracks, knowing that Seto already knew what she had been doing.
"What language is this in, Isoda?" Yamiko asked.
"Computer script," she replied blandly, as though it were perfectly normal.
Yamiko nodded. "Do you have any idea what we're talking about?" Takara shook her head no.
"Say this sentence in English: I will not write computer programs in class." Of course, Yamiko said this in Japanese.
Takara repeated him in perfect, unacccented English. There was a hush as the teacher straightened, and a slight buzz as Yamiko went back to writing on the board, but he silenced it with a glare. "Isoda, no more programs in class." He dropped the paper into the trash can on the way.
"That was smart," Nari told Takara sarcastically.
"It was, wasn't it?" Takara replied, staring at the table.
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"How's your neck, Seto?" Takara asked, putting her bag down."What do you think?" Kaiba glared at her murderously. Takara acted oblivious to this. Instead she asked,
"What're you doing with the comp?"
"Work," he said. He remembered something. "Why did you look up. . ."
"Because," she said shortly, not wanting to breech the subject. She grinned, looking at the back of his neck, which was bandaged a bit heavily. "That's going to leave a scar," she remarked.
"It's your fault," Kaiba growled.
"It's not as bad as this," Takara said, lifting the hair off her neck, revealing a red scar that ran from somewhere behind her left ear to her back. Takara grinned, seeing Kaiba's slightly shocked expression. "I was fourteen. One of my best friends was. . ." she was going to say helping to make crystal, but decided not to. ". . . cooking something. in the kitchen." Duh, where else would you cook. "I slipped and fell, hitting right here," she ran her fingers along the scar, "Against the table. Well, we didn't see going to the hospital as an option," because making crystal is illegal, "So he just patched it up by himself." She smiled, remembering the kid's soft hands wiping the wound, and patching it up clumsily with gauze. "Derek was so mad at him. . ." she trailed off. "I had known him for all of two weeks when that happened." Takara chuckled. "He moved a few months later. Haven't seen him since." She glanced in Kaiba's direction, but did say anything as she moved her chair away, and pretended to write notes on genetics. Wung didn't notice that Takara was actually taking notes.
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"You coming to the Kame shop later?" Yugi asked Takara.
"I dunno," she looked over the little group that sat at the lunch table with her. "I'm grounded, plus community service." Takara wrinkled her nose. "Damn Tammy, damn Tommy, damn Kaiba. . ."
"What does Kaiba have to do with anything?" Joey asked Takara, not having heard about her punishment.
She smiled sarcastically. "If Kaiba had told the truth, than I wouldn't have been accused of vandalism, therefore no community service needed."
"Well, it WAS your fault that you got me into the nurse's office anyways," said a cold, smirking voice behind them.
"Oh piss off, Kaiba," Takara said loudly, without turning around.
"Why should I?" Kaiba asked, sliding onto the lunch bench next to Takara.
"I know you hated doing that as much as I hate you for doing that," Takara said, not looking at him. Takara had the full attention of the group by now, but they went back to talking about the paper.
"I need to talk to you."
"About what?" Takara said, turning her head so Kaiba hear her better. "Hacking? Or defacing school property?" She still avoided looking at his face.
"One or the other," he said, "whichever you prefer to talk about first."
Takara turned and this time looked him in the eye. "Call me at seven-thirty," she told him. "Exactly seven-thirty." She got up from the table.
"What's your number?" Kaiba asked her, grabbing her arm.
"I left it on your laptop." She wrenched her arm out of his grasp and walked off.
Seven-thirty, Kaiba thought. I don't think that I'm going to call.