Disclaimer: Me no own Yu-Gi-Oh!. No sue Yuffie, please?

Thanks to all you reviewing ppl. I'm too lazy and half-depressed from the oncoming and inevitable doom that is school.

Thank you Kristina for beta-reading!!!! YAY!!!!!!!

Chapter 16

Bakura and Rei walked calmly into the building as the chaffuer parked their car. The building was a very expensive looking hotel on the bottom 20 floors, while the top floor was the restaurant. The pair of teens quickly entered the elevator (one of those outside-ish ones, you know, all windows except for the door and the floor, moving along the outside of the building...), and Bakura pressed the button for the twenty-first floor. Rei stared quietly out the window while Bakura stared (sideways glance, corner of his eye kinda thing) at her. Suddenly, Rei turned around to face Bakura and the door. He jumped a little bit at the sudden movement, and then the elevator stopped.

The door quickly opened, and the two were greeted by a rather young woman ('college student by the looks of it,' thought Bakura) in a black blouse and a knee-length black skirt, apparently the uniform. She had black hair, cut fairly short in a style that framed her tan face. Her amber eyes were framed by gold-colored eye-shadow and heavy black mascara. Bright red lipstick and a little bit of blush finished off her facial appearance. She gave a rather large grin as she saw them.

Girl- "Hello! Welcome to Top of the City. My name is Aya, and I will be your waitress this evening! For two, is it?" Bakura nodded, Rei simply looked nonchalantly at the woman. "Very well then, please follow me!" She walked through a small opening in the low wall separating the kitchen and entrance areas from the dining area. Both teens followed the young woman, and she seated them at a small, candlelit table for two by the windows.

Aya- "May I get something to drink for you?" She handed each of them a small menu, for beverages only. Bakura's was folded to the page of alcoholic beverages, while Rei's was turned to the front. Bakura raised an eyebrow at this, but didn't say anything as he flipped to the pages of non-alcoholic drinks. Rei quickly glanced through her menu and quickly handed it back to Aya, while answering in a clear, though somewhat quiet and respectful for the other diners, voice.

Rei- "I would like a strawberry daiquiri and a glass of water, please." (No alcohol daiquiri. No drunken Rei or Bakura. Tho it would be funny....)

Bakura- "I would like a glass of water and a Mountain Dew, please." (I don't own Mountain Dew!!!! Just a few bottles of it...... MINE! mwuahahahahahahahhahahahaha!!!!)

Aya- "Mountain Dew and water for you, sir. And, for you, miss? Oh, heavens, I seem to have missed your order! Would you be so kind as to repeat it?" (She was staring at Bakura.... witch...)

Rei- "I ordered a strawberry daiquiri and a glass of water, thank you."

Aya- "Oh, Um... Okay then. I'll be right back with your order!"

Bakura- "Brain-dead kid."

Rei- "Yeah, we keep getting more stupid, don't we? I'm sure you had a lot of geniuses back in ancient Egypt, right? Super computers hidden back in those pyramids, right? I'm sure Kaiba was buried with about ten, right?"

Bakura- "That's a technicality. I'm saying that we had common sense, and average people now do not."

Rei- "Yeah, sure. And, I suppose that I'm one of these average people?"

Bakura- "Of course not. You must've been something in ancient times. Otherwise, how could you possibly have known about my being a tomb robber, Yami being the Pharaoh, and even Kaiba being the High Priest? I mean, even he didn't know about that."

Rei- "Oh? Do you think so? I thought it was all just a lucky guess?"

Bakura- "You're being sarcastic and avoiding the question again."

Rei- "Am I? And here I thought that there was no question posed... Maybe I was simply some gossipy peasant in that past life...."

Bakura- "Rei...."

Aya- "Here you are, sir!" She had apparently come back. She handed Bakura two glasses, desperately trying to get him to look at her with some importance.

Bakura- 'Not likely, stupid woman.'

Aya- "And, your daiquiri, miss." The dark haired woman placed Rei's drink and her glass of water in front of her. "Do you know what you would like to have to eat?"

Bakura- "I would like your porterhouse steak, rare, with the garlic mashed potatoes."

Aya- "And, for you, miss?"

Rei- "The roast duck with orange sauce, if you please."

Aya- "Very well. I will be back later. Please expect a bit of a wait." She leaves, again.

Bakura- "Well?"

Rei- "Well what? The roast duck is very good and very popular."

Bakura- "That's not what I--- wait, have you been here before?"

Rei- "Once. With my mother. Before she died."

Bakura- "Oh... oh! Sorry, if this brings back bad memories or something...."

Rei- "No, no. Not at all! Actually, I think that it's one of the good memories. Before my mom started to get depressed."

Bakura- "But, that picture.....?"

Rei- "Oh, that? The picture in my laptop? That was from right after I was born, that was when my father had to leave. He didn't abandon us, he still sends me presents for my birthday, and money every month, and calls every week to check up on me. I can't wait to see what he does when he finds out that my dearest Auntie kicked me out. She never did like him..."

Bakura- "Then why are you still here? Couldn't you have moved to America with him?"

Rei- "hm, I could. But I choose not to."

Bakura- "Why not?"

Rei- "I tried it for a while. I found it to be boring, all the good Duel Monsters players are in Japan. So, I came back, and, I found that there seems to be very few good players here also."

Bakura- "Emi said that you used to beat up kids to get them to duel you for practice."

Rei- "Did she now? Well, that would be like her. It's not wholly true. I did pressure people into dueling with me. Others simply challenged me because they thought I looked weak. What she was probably going from there was when some moron tried to steal my deck during a tournament. I caught him and made the jerk duel me for my deck. I had to humiliate him, you know. After winning, I received his deck. Absolutely worthless cards."

Bakura- "What tournament?"

Rei- "Battle City, of course."

Bakura- "Why weren't you in the finals? You could have made it."

Rei- "Aww, and ruin dear Yami Marik's fun? Of course not. I was simply acting as an independent eliminator. And then I watched the finals from my laptop. I had to make sure that only the right people got into the finals. It was easy enough to get by Mokuba... He was even my camera. After I hacked through the security systems on everything though."

Bakura- "Mokuba was your camera? Mind explaining? Not to mention, you hacked the Kaiba Corps security systems?"

Rei- "I just had to make a small hole in it. Just big enough for the micro-camera to avoid detection. Actually, I placed the camera in Mokuba's hair. That's enough cover as it is. I got to him when he was captured by Marik's rare hunters. It was easy enough. So, I got everything, from Noa's virtual world, to the battle City Finals at Kaiba's duel tower, from little Mokie's point of view."

Bakura- "So, what Emi said....?"

Rei- "Lies."

Bakura- "Then, what happened to your mother?"

Rei- "..........."

Bakura- "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

Rei- "She... she got sick. When I was 9. Soon enough, she got really depressed. She couldn't get out of bed, she couldn't play with me. She couldn't even think straight enough to duel with me. One day... she.... she took an overdose of her medicine. A huge overdose. I found her after school that day. I thought that she was still sleeping. That maybe she just took a nap. So, I called Auntie. I asked her to come over and play cards with me. When she asked why, I said that my mom was still asleep, and she wouldn't wake up to play with me. Auntie came right over and called the doctor when she saw my mom. She called me an idiot and kicked me until I started to cough up blood. I had no idea why. So, when the ambulance got there, I had to get in it too. Tanaka cracked one of my ribs with her high-heels, and I had various other bruises.

"I remember the funeral like it was yesterday. I still didn't understand. I thought that my mom was just playing a trick on me. She always loved fooling around like that. I thought that she was going to jump out of the coffin and yell 'surprise' or something. And then everyone would stop crying. We could have a party. It was my birthday. I.... I opened the coffin. My mother was there, her eyes were sunken and she looked so blank... It was then that I truly understood what was going on. I went to live with my dad for a while after that. I got really involved in Duel Monsters, because that's what my mom really liked to do. My dad does whatever he can to help. He even took me to Egypt for Christmas. I stayed there for a few months, really. I never really stayed with the group. My dad let me do whatever I wanted. I ran off a lot. There's your answer to that previous question that you never really asked."

Bakura- "You found the..."

Rei- "Tombs? Yeah. they were actually quite interesting. They revealed quite a bit about Duel Monsters. It was quite entertaining. Especially for a little 12 year-old. I especially enjoyed the carvings. You know, the certain ones depicting Yami Yugi... Kaiba... etceteras...."

Bakura- "That still doesn't answer how you knew that I was a tomb robber."

Rei- "I found a few strands of long white hair at each site. Along with small, wonderfully connected tunnels with your own little cave paintings. A word of warning, don't draw portraits when you're a thief."

Bakura- "Hey, I never got caught, did I?"

Rei- "Not as far as I know."

Bakura- "So, how did you link that with us?"

Rei- "I saw Kaiba on tv. Yami Yugi, I saw a resemblance of him in Yugi Mutou after Duelist Kingdom. Then, after watching his duels in Battle City, Yami's presence was quite obvious."

Bakura- "That still doesn't explain me."

Rei- "Yes it does. You dueled also, if you don't remember."

Bakura- "Hn. So? What happened after your little history lessons in Egypt?"

Rei- "Well, you see, those tombs revealed a few expert strategies and extremely rare cards. After I spent a year practicing and obtaining those cards, every American duelist forfeited as soon as they were challenged. It became extremely boring."

Bakura- "What about that prodigy? That Rebecca child?"

Rei- "Her? She's no prodigy. I've watched her duel on television. She practices novice strategies. Too headstrong about everything. Not to mention, her talking to that bear is just plain sad. I decided to just leave her alone and let the pathetic American duelists have a heroine. She can be thier god, and I will remain their Satan."

Bakura- "And after that?"

Rei- "My, aren't we pushy. I get just a little side tracked and... well... After realizing that I had no competition, I moved back here, just in time to participate in Battle City."

Bakura- "Then how didn't Kaiba know who you were? If you were participating..."

Rei- "I wasn't officially participating. I just got some kid's duel disk after he got knocked out of the tournament. Like I said, I was an unofficial eliminator. I had to make sure that only certain selected people got into the finals. I shouldn't have worried though. Kaiba set a time limit, but... I had to have some fun while following you, Kaiba, Yugi, and Marik around. So, I knocked out the 'competition'. I guess that every country has it's delinquents. Wheeler being one of them. He was almost going to challenge me. I suppose that I should thank Kaiba for showing up then. Oh well. I moved back in with the Tanaka's then. That's when they gave me my 'apartment'. I got a weekly allowance, which meant I was to buy my own food, clothes, pretty much anything that I would need, and to stay away from them. Soon enough, Emi began to find it funny to annoy me... and, well, that's why I'm here, isn't it?"

Bakura- "Yeah, well..."

Happy, chipper, almost squeaky voice- "Oh! I thought that I heard my name over here!"

Rei- "And she annoys me to this very day."

Emi- "Hello Bakura-chan!"

Author Note- Oooooh! Emi's back! Who expected that? probly everyone... but that's okay. Well, Rei's past! Didja like it? You have to tell me! Baka! Otherwise saying READ AND REVIEW!!!!!!!! please. Well, this is school time, sophomore year. So, I've got a lot of chem homework, and also a set (30 problems) of math, complements of Algebra 2 Honors. Blech. So, I believe that I will only be updating on weekends, or nights where I have no homework, and my brother's at work and thus cannot annoy me. Well..... I might not update for a while... but this story needs a little attention, and I plan to update here a little more often than once every three months. But, if I don't, I'm sorry. A HUGE Thank You to Kristina, who's doing me quite the favor by Beta Reading for me. Thankee Kristina! Domo Arigatou! Well, that's pretty much all I have to say.... so.... Ja ne!

Yuffie Kisaragi, materiathief06