Hidey-ho I'm back again! I really hate homework! I have too much stupid homework and then I only have time to update one story a week (usually this one) and only on the weekends! Fortunately, this week looks like it may be a little slower, so maybe I'll be able to update before next Friday. I hope so! Oh, and me and a friend of mine got to go to the museum to see and Egyptian exhibit yesterday. It was so cool!!! And I learned a lot from it too. I hope to put some of the stuff I learned in future chapters, won't that be fun? Oh, and in case you're wondering they will all make it to Genkai's eventually. I just realized this morning that they all set out to end up there almost three chapters ago now. Yes, they will all get there at some point and the monsters will start showing up more and more as well. Oh, and there's some nice explanation stuff coming up, so if you have any questions about what's going on or how their going to beat the monsters or what is up that bracelet already, just read carefully and I'm sure everything will be answered soon. Oh, and if you're wondering why I made such a big deal about them not using honorific in the last chapter (I think I already explained this, but I might as well say it again.) it was because only really close friends or...ahem...more then that, or family members call somebody by their name without an honorific. In fact if you use someone's name without an honorific and you aren't that close, they can actually find it quite insulting. Now enough of my boring rants...ON WITH THE FIC!!!
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Kessen: Bakemono no Hishi (Fight to the Finish: Secret History of the monsters)
-Duel 8: Kimochi Rokku Naka (Feelings Locked Inside)
Kurama and Arumi now sat on Arumi's bed in her room, Arumi having retrieved the first aid kit she kept under her bed so Kurama could help her bandage her wounds. Her room was probably the cleanest in the house, with her father's study being the only possible exception. Her desk was clean and her bed was made and everything was where it should be with nothing lying discarded or forgotten on the floor like in the rest of the house.
Kurama was hard put to hold back the anger bubbling inside of him as he cleaned the wound on Arumi's head. There was only one gash, but it was deep and nearly two inches long. She would need stitches.
'How could she do this?!' Kurama wondered for the hundredth time, years of training to remain calm at all times the only thing saving him from letting his anger out and virtually destroying the room. 'How could her own mother do this?!'
What made him even more infuriated was the obvious hints that this was by far not the first time her wounds had been this bad. The way the amount of dried blood staining Arumi's school uniform didn't bother her in the least and the way she didn't even blink when he began to clean the wound with alcohol. Having finished cleaning the wound, Kurama pressed a cloth to it to stop the blood that continued to drip from it, his thoughts lingering on the extent of the wound and the need for stitches.
"Arumi..." Kurama began. Arumi looked at him and he continued, "This wound..."
"It's bad, I know," she answered, the anger rising in Kurama once more as he realized the only reason she was taking this so lightly was probably because she had had far worse in the past.
"Hai, it is bad. In fact...I think..." he trailed off again. He had the seeds for a thin, pliable branch with one sharp edge that he had often used in his former life, his life as Yoko Kurama, to stitch up wounds that were this bad. But he also knew that it hurt terribly, and he was hesitant to put Arumi through anymore pain.
"It needs stitches, right?" Arumi asked. He nodded. "And you can do it?" she continued. He nodded again. "But it will hurt?" she finished. He nodded a final time. Arumi only smiled. "Don't worry about me, just do what you have to," she said, still smiling. Kurama sighed and complied, retrieving the seed from his flaming red hair.
The seed was big, about the size of a sunflower seed, and a pale orange color. Arumi had never seen anything like it and so assumed that it must be a demon flower. Assuming demon's had flowers. They did, didn't they? She was about to ask when the seed suddenly expanded, growing quickly as though someone had pressed fast forward on a remote somewhere. It was thin and stringy with one end growing into a stiff point.
Arumi gulped slightly as she turned to look straight ahead of her, giving Kurama better access to the wound on the side of her head. She had had stitches before, and now could see why Kurama was concerned this would hurt. Although the sharp end of the limp, string-like twig Kurama now held was about as thin as a plant could get, it was still much larger then the needles they used at the doctor's office. And if there was one thing she had learned from tetanus boosters, it was that bigger needles meant more pain.
Kurama removed the cloth he had been using to keep the bleeding at bay and placed his left hand against the back of Arumi's head to steady it. He gave Arumi an apologetic glance before pushing the needle through her skin. Arumi gave a strangled gasp and bit her lip.
"Gomen," Kurama apologized.
"Iie(1), daijobu. Just hurry up and finish," Arumi muttered, giving him a pained half-smile.
He sighed, but continued. Arumi never cried out, but after the second stitch she closed her eyes and griped the bed sheets she sat on, her grip so hard it turned her knuckles white. It took seven stitches in all to sew up the wound.
"Done!" Kurama announced as he secured the last stitch and carefully removing the excess bit of plant he had left.
"Finally!" Arumi exclaimed, letting out a breath she had been holding for the last few minutes. She turned to him with a smile, but the expression died on her lips when she saw his dark, narrowed eyes. Now that her wounds where taken care of and he no longer had anything to do to preoccupy his mind, he was finding it more difficult to suppress his anger.
"Why?" he asked finally.
"Why what?" Arumi asked innocently as she turned to stare straight ahead once more, placing the glasses that she had retrieved from the study's floor and been holding for the last several minutes in her lap back on her face.
"Why do you let her hurt you like that?" Kurama asked, some of the anger leaking unbidden into his voice. Arumi didn't answer. She lowered her head so that her bangs concealed her eyes and drew her knees up, resting her chin on them in thought.
"Arumi!" Kurama began again, grabbing Arumi's arm and forcing her to look at him. His anger died as he saw the sadness and distress her eyes held as they glistened with long unshed tears. "Arumi," he asked in his usual, gentle voice as he placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "What is it?"
"I never meant for it to go on this long," Arumi began, her voice cracking with emotion. "After Otosan died, she got really depressed and started drinking. The truth is, the house looks like a wreck now, but my family is actually very wealthy. Otosan inherited all this money from his ojiisan, which is what I guess made 'kassan the maddest. He didn't need to work, neither of them did, but he had a passion for archeology so he did it anyway. I think that's what really got to her when he died, just the fact that there was no reason why he had to be there in that cave other then that it was a hobby of his." Arumi paused and sighed, taking a shaky breath before continuing. "Since she didn't have to work, and we had maids to do all the housework and everything, she had nothing to do and so took up drinking. Pretty soon, the place began to fill up with empty bottles and all the maids quite because either they couldn't deal with the huge messes, or they couldn't deal with 'kassan. I think it was both.
"After they left, she started taking her anger out on me. She thought I was closer to Otosan then she was, so she started blaming me. I liked archeology and spent a lot of time going over Otosan's notes with him, and since all he did most of the time was work, that meant that I saw him a lot more often then 'kassan did, and she hated me for that. At first, I thought it was something that would pass, that she would just get over in a couple months, so I let her do what she wanted to me, the house, the maids, and everything else. But...before I knew it three years had passed and things were getting worse instead of better."
Kurama was silent. Arumi was close to tears now and he almost didn't trust himself to speak and not somehow say the wrong thing. Finally, he quietly asked, "Why didn't you leave?"
"Nani?!" Arumi cried, staring at him in disbelief.
"Leave," Kurama repeated. "Nothing justifies the way she's been treating you. If you had talked to a social worker, or the school councilor, maybe--"
"Iie." Arumi said flatly, cutting him off and letting her bangs shadow her eyes once more. "I couldn't do that. I could never do that."
"Why not?" Kurama asked, although he knew it was for the same reason why he had never left his own mother.
"Because no matter what she does to me, I know it's just because of the sake. You heard her yourself. She may have overreacted, but she was worried about me when I didn't come home last night. You think she's bad now, it would absolutely destroy her if I left." She looked up now, tears spilling from her overflowing eyes and down her cheeks. "And...and I..." she choked, the tears coming more quickly. "And I need her too!" she finally cried, pulling her glasses off and burying her face in her hands. "I ca--I can't lose Otosan...and her!" she sobbed, her speech broken by her cries.
"Arumi..." Kurama muttered regretfully, mentally cursing himself for having pushed such a sensitive subject. "Arumi, daijobu," he whispered gently as he gathered the sobbing girl into his arms. Arumi gladly accepted the embrace and wrapped her own arms around him, but found herself unable to stop the tears.
"I--I--" she tried to choke out an apology but she had held her emotions back for far to long and now it was like a massive dam had collapsed and she could do nothing to fight the flood of disappear she was drowning in.
"Hush now," Kurama gently silenced her efforts to speak. In his youth he had taken a fascination in psychology one summer and had read enough books to know that this was good for Arumi, and if she just let it all out now she would be all the happier for it later. Arumi did just that for the next several minutes until her tears finally dried up and her sobs turned to hiccups.
"There now, do you feel better now?" Kurama asked kindly as Arumi wiped her eyes and put her glasses back on.
"Yeah, actually, I do," she answered in surprise, managing to smile. Kurama smiled back, not noticing that his arms where still locked around her, holding her close.
"Gomen for upsetting you so," he apologized, running a hand absently through her hair.
Arumi shook her head. "It wasn't your fault. That was long coming. I should have known that if I kept everything bottled up inside it would explode in my face."
"It takes a strong person to admit their mistakes," Kurama commented wisely, making Arumi laugh.
"Arigato for everything," Arumi said so softly it was almost a whisper.
"Do itashimashite (You're welcome), Arumi-koibito(2)." Kurama answered, his voice equally as soft. Arumi blushed furiously at 'koibito' but Kurama barely noticed as he pressed his mouth to hers in a gentle but passionate kiss.
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Shizuka wondered where her oniisan was as she and Mai sped down the highway.
"Just another ten minutes or so," Mai reported from next to her. She nodded. They had yet to come across any monsters so far, but Shizuka had the bad feeling that their good luck wouldn't last.
"Hey, Mai!" Shizuka suddenly exclaimed, a familiar car catching her eye as it passed them. "Isn't that Kaiba's limo?"
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Mokuba stared out the window as his brother sat across from him in the back of the black limousine, glaring at nothing in particular. The younger Kaiba brother sighed. Why did Seto always get like this when it came to Yugi? He knew his brother had a lot of pride, but he was tired of these constant fights. Why couldn't his brother be content with everything else he had accomplished? Why was it so all important that he beat Yugi?
Seto always had to make everything a contest or else make it far harder then it actually was. In short, he was good at taking the fun out of everything. Even their childhood dream, Kaiba Land, was most definitely not turning out the way Mokuba had always imagined it. Mokuba wanted to have fun on the project. He wanted to use his imagination to design the best rides anywhere and to make the park fun and exciting. But Seto, on the other hand, was only concerned with one thing, as always, business. He was only concerned with how many parks they build, how high the prices where for everything in the park, how much money the parks made. He didn't seem to care at all how enjoyable the park was, he didn't seem to understand that that was the whole point. But, then again, Mokuba could see how someone how had forfeited their whole childhood in favor of making a life and name for himself could be unconcerned with how much fun something was.
There had been a time, after Duelist Kingdom and their run in with Crawford Pegasus, when Seto had mellowed out a little and Mokuba had hopped he might change his ways and go back to being the old Seto, the oniisan who used to call him Moki. But then along had come Battle City and the God cards.
Mokuba sighed for the second time. His oniisan had always been there for him, but somewhere along the way he had become a completely different person, and now Mokuba was losing faith that he would ever change back.
"We're almost there, sir," the driver said over the intercom--yes, intercom. Nothing was too good for Kaiba Seto.
"Excellent," Kaiba answered. "We'll get to the bottom of this soon enough."
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Yugi and Anzu rode in the front seat of the pick-up truck as Yugi's ojiisan drove and Jonouchi and Honda sat in the back on the truck's bed.
"How much further, Ojiisan?" Jonouchi called over the wind from the back of the truck.
"About ten more minutes and then we'll be in Tokyo," Yugi's ojiisan answered.
Yugi, who was staring out the window, was slightly startled as the spirit of his puzzle suddenly appeared before him.
'I can sense it now,' the spirit said.
'You mean the Millennium Item this girl is suppose to have?' Yugi asked, receiving a nod from his counter-self.
'It has great power...' the spirit continued, trailing off.
'Yeah, but power for good or for evil?' Yugi asked.
'That we will not know until we meet the girl who holds the item,' the pharaoh replied as he dissipated like smoke from Yugi's view and retreated to the puzzle once more.
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(1) Iie means no.
(2) Koibito means lover or boyfriend/girlfriend.
So, how'd you like it? Please let me know! The more reviews I get the sooner I'll try to update, I promise! Ja ne!