Hiei: [mutters to himself]
Kurama & Bakura: [sweatdrop]
WSJ: [pokes Bakura] Disclaimer! Now!
Bakura: [glare] SJ doesn't own YYH or YGO. Yay.
WSJ: Right then! We've already had a long enough delay, so on to the show! ;)
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Like a Thief in the Night
Part One: Thieves of Makai
Chapter 4 -- Predator and Prey
The Hunter took a menacing step forward, and Bakura and Kurama both pressed back against the alter, unable to retreat any farther. The sword the hunter was holding was a long broadsword. Any human would have had to use two hands to lift it, but the demon weilded it easily in only one. His eyes glowed faintly red, and his grin was almost manic. "At last," he said, his voice almost hissing from between his fangs. "At last I can fulfill my oath, and rest in peace."
"What oath?" Bakura snarled, snapping his wrist down and shooting one of his rose seeds out into a staff. He made no move to attack yet, holding the staff in front of him defencively and keeping a wary eye on the Hunter. "Why have you hunted me all these long centuries?"
"The oath I took the day my sister was murdered by your kind!" the Hunter snarled. "I swore I'd kill off him and all his kin, and you are the only ones left!"
Kurama snorted. "Obsessed much?"
"Quiet fox!" the Hunter snapped. "You have no conceivable idea what your ancestor did to her! She was my little sister, and I swore I'd protect her. And so I shall! I'll kill you!" He roared, and suddenly dove forward, the point of his sword poised to impale Bakura. The okami threw himself aside, as did Kurama, and the brothers rolled to their feet easily, Bakura shrinking his staff back into a seed and, lacking the time to put it back into his hair, channeled his energy so it took root in the palm of his hand. The Hunter's sword smashed into the alter, which crumbled and began to hiss and steam. By mutual concent, Bakura and Kurama leaped for the door, hoping to be able to make it to the rocky hills where at least they'd have some advantage.
"Damn!" Kurama hissed as they heard the Hunter coming after them. "He's completely insane! That blade of his is cursed!"
Bakura nodded grimly. "Apparently so. But we won't go down that easily, right Kurama?"
The kitsune nodded, and both of them slid to a stop about halfway down the tunnel, where it widened out slightly. They'd been allowed to choose their battleground, and it was here that they chose to fight. The rocky tunnel was vaguely round, about twenty feet in diameter. There was also very little light, giving Kurama and Bakura a great advantage, as both of them could see extremely well in the dark and could blend into shadows despite their light skin and hair. The Hunter, on the other hand, while he wore dark clothes, stuck out like a sore thumb because of his glowing eyes.
The Hunter was in the tunnel with them now, and was searching in vain among the protruding rocks for his prey. He muttered a curse and clutched his sword tighter. "Come out, come out little demons,"
"Why should we?" Bakura asked from the darkness. He was crouching on a small ledge about halfway up the left side of the tunnel, a few feet away from the Hunter's current possition. Kurama was hidden on the floor in a crack in the wall on the other side, his vulpine eyes peering out at the Hunter's exposed back. The way Bakura's voice echoed among the rocks, the Hunter had no way of telling where it came from.
"We should be the ones hunting you," the okami continued, his lips twisting into a sneer. "You killed our father, and Kurama's mother. My own mother is in hiding, maybe dead for all I've seen of her the past thousand years. Malachai and Kuronue, both old and dear friends, are missing, probably dead, probably because of you. Kurama and I are constantly on the run, not just because of the thieves we are but because of your 'great revenge'. So one of our ancestors killed your sister. So what? You've killed our entire family, a lot of our friends. It's us who should be seeking revenge, not you."
The Hunter appeared unmoved by the speech. "You know nothing of love. How can you possibly comapare your pitiful losses to the way my heart died the day Ankhas did? I've lived in hell for fifty thousand years because of my own foolish oath, but now I can kill you to fulfill it!"
Kurama glowered in the darkness and quietly shifted to his fox form, five tails swishing dimly in the darkness. He might have never known his parents or Malachai very well, but Kuronue had been his best friend growing up. The thought that the Hunter might have killed him chilled him to the bone. Bakura had the Hunter distracted enough so that his guard was down, his sword at ease at his side. With a roar, Kurama shot out of his hiding place, his claws extended to their full, terrible length and his jaws open wide, ready to tear into the flesh of the Hunter. The Ankh flared brightly in the darkness and perhaps that's what ultimately gave him away.
The Hunter was not at ease at all. In a flash, his sword was up and he'd pivoted on his right foot. Bakura could only watch in horror from his place on the ledge as things seemed to slow to a snail's pace. Kurama, poised in midair, tails streaming behind him as he prepared to fall on the Hunter. The Hunter himself, a look of determined malice on his face, spinning on one foot and driving his sword deep into Kurama's side. The thrust cut the leather cord that held the Ankh around Kurama's neck, and it clattered to the stone floor. The light from it died, but now both Puzzle and Ring were shining brightly, so the light was more than enough to see the deep red blood spurt from Kurama's wound and splatter across the Hunter's face.
"Noooooooooo!!!"
Time sped up again. Kurama fell heavily to the ground, the Hunter's sword still embedded in his side. The Hunter smirked calmly, licking Kurama's blood off his lips. Kurama was obviously unconcious, blood pooling under him, but when he spontaneously reverted to his humanoid form, Bakura knew he was dying.
"You bastard!!" Throat choked his rage and grief, Bakura launched himself off the ledge, driving headfirst toward the Hunter. This time he wasn't expecting an attack, and had no sword to defend himself. Bakura's palm smacked him in the face, and both of them tumbled to the ground. Blinded by anger, Bakura let loose all his spirit energy at once, consentrating it on the seed he had embedded in his palm.
It burst into bloom, and the Hunter screamed as the sharp, thorny canes tangled around him, caging him in their green masses. One of them caught him in the eye, and he howled in pain. Bakura threw himself backward, not allowing himself to become tangled up as well. The thorns writhed as if they were things possessed, until they completely covered the form of the Hunter. A moment later heavy golden blooms sprang forth, releasing the sweet scent of roses into the tunnel. Bakura could not see the Hunter, couldn't see whether he still lived or not, but at the moment he didn't care. His spirit energy was exhausted, he had nothing left to give. Turning, he stumbled to Kurama's side and dropped to his knees.
To his surprise, the kitsune was still stubbornly alive, sucking in every breath with what had to be great pain. When Bakura gently eased his head into his lap, Kurama's eyes fluttered open and his lips moved weakly. Bending over his brother, Bakura strained to catch his words.
"Ningen... child... take my spirit... will live again... find me... my brother..."
"I will," Bakura said, nodding affirmation. "If you are cursed to live as a human, my brother, I will too. We'll find each other again, I swear it." He took hold of the hilt of the sword and in one swift motion jerked it out of Kurama's side. The kitsune gasped in pain as blood spilled from the wound, and Bakura smiled thinnly. "On my blood and yours, we will live again."
Kurama nodded and weakly reached up a hand to cover Bakura's on the hilt of the sword. "Meet... again..."
With the promise made and the spell ready to take hold, Bakura plunged the sword into his breast, feeling the curse on it begin to eat away at him. He fell next to his brother, and the two demons grinned as well as they could.
"Unseal the soul and... let it go... travel between... worlds unknown... till it find a host... to claim... as its own..." Bakura spoke the spell that would send their spirits to the human world, and clasped his brother's hand in his. "Well met... Kurama..."
Kurama nodded, eyes sparkling with unshed tears. Bakura was surprised to find that among the blood that was trickling from his lips and soaking into his hair, their were tears on his cheeks too. "Yes, fare thee well... Bakura..."
As their blood mingled on the stone floor, their hands clasped and eyes staring into emptiness, Kurama the kitsune and Bakura the okami, once the greatest thieves in all the worlds, died.
For a long time all was still in the cave. The heady fragrance of roses, Bakura and Kurama's trademark, mingled with the smell of blood and sweat and the faint salt of tears. But eventually there was a gentle rustling among the rose canes. Slowly at first, and then faster, the rose blooms withered and died, golden petals turning brown and dropping to the floor like tarnished snow. Then the canes themselves turned brown and brittle, until they were easily broken by the figure that emerged from among them.
The Hunter stumbled to his feet, his clothing torn and dripping blood from a million cuts and thorn punctors. His right eye was a mass of blood, and he was trembling in sheer anger. When he saw that his prey were laying already dead on the cold stone, he cursed violently. But then something stopped him, something peculiar. There was something not quite right about the corpses. The Hunter had lain among the thorns for at least three days. The demons' bodies should have decomposed at least a little by now, but it appeared they hadn't. In fact, when the Hunter stepped forward to yank his sword out of Bakura, the blood underfoot was still warm and sticky, and the corpses were not yet stiff.
The Hunter smirked, realizing what the demons had done. They'd sent their souls not to the afterlife, but to the human world, where they would find new hosts and live as humans with demon powers. Oh this was truly sweet! Both demons had been thoughroughly exhausted, so as likely as not they would sleep unaware in their hosts minds for many years before they awakened. The Hunter could have his revenge yet.
But in a small way, he was glad they would not awaken for awhile. He needed a rest too. He was not the kind of man to go hunt down the hosts and kill them in ignorant innocence. No, he would wait until the demon parts of them awakened, and then he would take up the hunt again. A challenge was what he delighted in, and he wanted those fool demons aware of the moment he killed them. Besides, he had waited for fifty thousand years to kill off the last of this rediculously huge clan. Another eight or ten years wouldn't hurt. He would take up the hunt again in a decade, he decided with saticfaction. And until then, he'd need a name. It had been a very long time since he'd had a name...
"Darkness," the Hunter mused, glancing around him with his one good eye. "Darkness and shadows. Yami. I'm Yami."
And it was so.
But there was still the matter of these bodies. They'd need to be really and truly dead when Koenma's agents arrived, not just the soulless dead they were now. Swiftly, Yami brought his sword down to hack off first Kurama's, and then Bakura's head. There, now they would die, the bastards. Oh, not their spirits. He'd kill their spirits in a decade.
Tossing his sword down beside the bodies so Koenma would know whose handiwork this was, Yami pulled what was left of his ragged cloak tightly around him and vanished into the shadows. He'd report back to Koenma in a decade or so. Now, he needed to rest and regain his strength. He needed to heal. Maybe a sleep in the back of a mortal mind wouldn't be so bad.
So Yami, too, set out for the human world.
And so it was that the two greatest thieves the worlds have ever seen passed out of Makai. Koenma's agents, led by Botan, came upon the cave not an hour after Yami's departure to find the two bodies and Yami's sword, along with the tangle of dead roses. Rumors flew with the speed of a hurricane, and before long they reached the ears of Koenma, who happily declared both of the demons dead.
Yami knew otherwise, of course, but he was saying nothing. He had found a suitable host among the humans, and now slept quietly and regained the strength that three days in a briar of demon roses had sapped from him. Koenma wondered where his Hunter was gone, but was none too worried. He knew that if Yami were missing, he had good reason for it and would be back eventually.
Coincidentally, Koenma knew nothing of Yami's hidden agenda. He didn't know Yami had ever had a sister, nor did he know the real reason Yami hunted Kurama and Bakura so adamently. He didn't even know how dangerously close to insane Yami was. He only knew he was a good and valuable agent.
The Sennen Ankh and the Sennen Ring, taken from the corpses of the two thieves, were given over to the Abdul family, the same line that protected the Scales. There they would stay, enshrined with the other Item, until someone else with a worthy heart claimed them. Considering who their last owners had been, Koenma sincerely hoped that that was a long, long time away.
It would be another ten years before anyone realized what Yami already knew, that the thieves were indeed still alive. For as they died, Kurama had sent his spirit into an unborn ningen child, waiting for the day he could awaken again. Bakura did as well, purposefully choosing someone he knew would cross paths with Kurama in the future: the cousin of Kurama's new human body. But Bakura misjudged the timing. The host he chose was indeed an infant, but had already been born. As such, he could not erase the babe's personality and replace it with his own, as Kurama did. Instead, he could only reside inside the baby, as a seperate personality. Little Ryou Bakura, though he didn't know it, had been possessed.
Bakura let himself sleep inside the child's mind, resting from the final battle with Yami. Kurama too, slept. They regathered their strength, knowing in the backs of their minds that they would meet again. Destiny wasn't done with them yet. And so they slept, their demon memories and powers hidden from their human bodies and souls until the time when they were awakened.
The adventure was just beginning...
End Part One
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WSJ: :D Well, there you go!
Kurama: . You killed me...
WSJ: [hugs him] Aww, I know it was mean, but it's necessary for the plot! You're alive again next chapter anyway.
Kurama: Oh, that's okay then. =)
Bakura: [sighs] SJ's going to be out of town from June 13-June 22, on a missions trip in Mexico, so don't expect anything out of her at that time. Although she swears she'll get right back to writing as soon as she gets home, I somehow doubt it.
Hiei: [gets poked by WSJ] Fine! Reviews please. [grumbles about having to advertise]
God bless minna-san!