Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! belongs to Kazuki Takahashi.
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#16: The Tower

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When Honda dumped him off at his apartment building, Ryou walked up the stairs, went inside, and locked the door behind him. Then he crouched down and covered his head with his arms. He bit his lip to hold back the sobs that had been building since he left Honda.

(If you're going to have these guilt trips every time you eat, it will grow tiresome very quickly, landlord.)

He was shaking, but he wasn't crying. It would be okay. It would be okay.

It wasn't okay.

I feel like I just raped someone, Ryou whispered, biting his lip harder.

There was a silence for several moments, and then a pair of sneakers that matched Ryou's own appeared in the corner of his eye. He looked up.

Bakura was leaning against the closet door, his arms folded across his chest and staring down at Ryou. (You essentially did.)

Ryou was wracked with another violent shudder, but he didn't look away.

(Any court would convict you of assault at the least,) Bakura continued. (But she isn't dead. That's what you wanted, right?)

"I. . . ."

"When are you going to accept that you aren't one of them?" Bakura asked in annoyance. "You can either use them or kill them, but that's the only choice you can make."

"But I don't want to--"

"I know you don't want to," Bakura said, cutting him off. "I have to listen to this drivel, after all." He was still staring at Ryou with cold eyes. "Get over your morals, landlord. You. aren't. human. anymore."

"Shut up."

Bakura ignored him. "I wish you would just kill them. It would be a lot less risky. Or have you forgotten why your fingerprints are registered with the local police sta--"

"Shut up!" Ryou surged onto his feet and punched Bakura in the face.

His fist went straight through the intangible form and hit the closet door; and Ryou quickly brought it back, cradling his arm to his chest with a hiss. He bit his lip again, and soon sank back onto the floor.

Bakura watched this, and a sneer twisted across his face. "Pathetic, host," he muttered. "Just when I was thinking. . . ."

He didn't finish, and disappeared into the Ring again, leaving Ryou on the floor.

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They went back, a week later, and surprisingly found Shouko there again.

She wasn't there six days after that, though -- either they simply missed her, or she had become skittish. They left the place and went somewhere across the city, and found another woman.

Ryou slid into the old roles so easily it unnerved him. He had never been very good with girls his age, but older women . . . he'd forgotten how easily they fell into his lap with just a little charm and a lot of straight-forwardness. At least, that's how it went with the ones that he picked as marks. Honda glared at him a lot while he worked, but didn't say anything. Bakura said things that made him feel disgusted with himself, but that was nothing new. It was very easy. There were only two people Ryou had worked on that didn't make suitable marks.

The first had been a woman. He hadn't spent enough time on her to remember her name; something about her had felt wrong, and he'd left before really getting into the conversation. Honda later told him that she had a blood disease, and Ryou made a note of the way he'd felt for future reference.

The second had been a college guy, only a couple years older than him and also drinking on a fake ID. Ryou wouldn't have had a problem using Shuichi -- he was so persistent, it would have taken less than three minutes to get him out the door and into somewhere private -- but he knew Honda wouldn't stand for it, so Ryou kept turning him down. Finally Shuichi wrote his phone number on an old flyer and tucked it into Ryou's pocket before leaving him alone, but Bakura took over his hands and tore it up once Ryou and Honda were outside.

Mai's birthday had come and gone, and the police had all but given up on her case. There were other crimes every day in Domino, and hers wasn't the first strange death they had seen. Ryou was spared from finding an excuse not to visit her grave by Jounouchi flatly telling him he wasn't wanted. Honda had been planning to go, but the day beforehand he told Jounouchi that he had to watch Johji for his sister and couldn't get out of it.

And then it was December, and Ryou traded his plastic gloves for a pair of cheap cloth convenience store ones. They were easier to travel with, but he still burned them in the school incinerator and bought new ones each time they changed bars.

They were on the seventh bar and the eighth woman in the third city when they got caught. In hindsight, it wasn't surprising -- they'd gotten sloppy recently, staying in the same bar over three times, since the woman, Mearii, kept returning.

Ryou hadn't been paying attention when they'd walked in. Mearii always sat in the same area, and he was preoccupied with pulling off his gloves. He didn't look up until Honda, who'd been walking in front of him, stopped abruptly.

"What is--?"

"Get out. Now," Honda hissed, not letting him finish. He turned around and yanked Ryou's hood over his hair before pushing him towards the exit.

Ryou went, but asked "What's wrong?" at the same time.

"That's a plainclothes policeman," Honda said under his breath. "Sitting next to that bitch. I can tell. Go."

They got outside easily enough, and Honda tugged the hood of his own jacket far over his head and face before fishing for his keys. They began walking down the pavement to where he'd parked his bike.

"So much for that," Honda muttered. "We need to leave this city altogether. So we might as well go home until--"

"Excuse me, boys?"

Ryou turned around reflexively before either Honda or Bakura could stop him.

There was an older man standing behind them, and a woman was next to him. Ryou looked at her, remembered seeing her drinking with Mearii the last time they had been in the bar, and realized just how deeply he had screwed up.

"That's them! I recognize the shorter one!"

Honda swore violently, and Ryou stepped backwards before Bakura took over.

The Ring glowed beneath his coat briefly, and the woman and the officer both collapsed.

"What a nuisance," Bakura commented. He looked over at Honda, who had backed away. "Go home," he told the brunet. "I don't trust you to properly clean this up."

Honda's eyes narrowed. "You. . . ."

"Ikeda-san." Another man stepped out of the bar. "Ike -- shit!"

"Hello," Bakura said. "I assume you're this man's partner?"

The second police officer pulled aside his coat and set a hand on his gun. "Put your hands above your head and turn around."

Bakura didn't bother to reply to that. He just smirked.

Honda noticed the few shadows around them -- behind the neon sign of the bar, beneath the cars parked along the street, under their feet -- growing, approximately one second before they swallowed the entire area. The officer, Bakura, and the two bodies were lost in a controlled and impenetrable fog.

Honda stared at it for several seconds, before wrenching his hood further over his face and running for his bike.

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He drove back to Domino immediately, and had to keep reminding himself to go the speed limit. A fake driver's license would do him no good if he got pulled over and had no proof of insurance.

Honda drove around Domino for several more hours once he arrived, and finally he pulled up in front of Ryou's apartment complex a quarter of an hour before two a.m.

Nobody answered the first time he knocked, so Honda kept knocking.

Seven minutes later, Ryou pulled the door open. He was wearing nothing but the Ring and a clean pair of pajama pants, and it was cold, but Ryou only stood in the doorway and stared at Honda. He had to make out the paler teenager's expression via the hallway lights, because the apartment was dark save for the light spilling from one doorway past the kitchen. It took the brunet longer to examine Ryou's face than it normally would, because he spent a good minute staring at the Ring.

". . . Let me in," Honda said, once he'd determined it was Ryou he was speaking to.

Ryou turned around and began walking back into the apartment, leaving the door open behind him. Honda stepped inside and toed off his shoes warily before kicking the door shut. He didn't bother to put on the guest slippers and walked to the doorway that the other teenager had gone through.

The door led to the bathroom. Ryou was standing in front of the sink, running cold water over the bloodied shirt in the basin. A garbage bag on the floor held a pair of unsalvageable jeans, neatly folded into a small square. Honda looked at the bag before glancing at Ryou.

The other teenager turned the shirt over. There was less blood on the back -- just two handprint-shaped stains near the hem, as if someone had clutched the fabric.

"I spend so much time around Yuugi-kun, I forget how terrified normal people get when they're forced into a darkness game," Ryou said, faintly stirring the water with one hand. He didn't look up as he spoke. "It's like they break as soon as they start. They never play -- they just beg for their lives, and that always violates some rule or another, and then I watch as he kills them. He always makes me watch, these days."

Once the sink was filled, Ryou flipped the shirt over again and shut off the water. He turned and walked out of the bathroom, and Honda stepped aside.

Ryou looked up at him again, and his eyes weren't cold, or blank. Just tired. It made the brunet curl up his hands and jam them in his pockets.

"If you don't have a reason to be here, Honda, I think you should leave."

Honda studied him for a few more moments before turning around and walking away. He shoved his feet back into his shoes and left without a word.

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Ryou had already showered, pulled the bed out, and arranged the quilts over it, so all he had to do was finish dressing. He tugged the shirt sitting on the arm of the couch over his head, and turned off the bathroom light before sliding under the top quilt.

The pointers of the Sennen Ring were still buried in his chest, so Ryou spent a few minutes trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in. He didn't bother trying to pull them out, or asking Bakura to do it -- he knew they would be out by the time he woke up tomorrow. After Ryou fell asleep, Bakura would no longer be punishing him, but abusing their shared body; and Bakura didn't do that unless he had a better reason than Ryou angering him.

He finally decided that it was easiest to breathe if he lay partly on his side with his legs curled up, so he settled into that position and closed his eyes.