(A/N: Two months! Thanks for sticking around with it! To all reviewers: You're going to have to wait until next chapter for an explanation! What is up with Ryou? You'll have to wait and see! For Cettie-girl: 26, 462 km says the converter. Thank yous going out to Subieko, Sirithiliel, lilmatchgirl007, koriaena and Cetti-girl for reviews!)

Chapter 10: Tver

Bakura wandered up and down the hallways of the nuclear plant, keeping to the shadows whenever someone happened to pass him by. He still marvelled at the luck he'd had... to get in here had not been the easiest thing in the world.

Raiza –the Russian bitch, as he liked to think of her- has marched up to the front doors, same as always he'd supposed, and began speaking in rapid Russian with the two guards on duty. More than once they'd looked at him suspiciously, then gone back to the conversation with their eyes narrowed. Finally, when Raiza was almost yelling, they let him in, though not without darks look and grunts of distaste.

Raiza had given him a weak smile after that, and handed him a card with some Russian printed on it. "You not lose," She'd said, "It make you okay to be here. Wear around neck."

And he was wearing it, to be sure. Maybe he wasn't doing what she'd asked (she'd told him to stay in her office while she stepped out for a moment), but he still had rights to be in here. The little piece of plastic dangling from the chain around his neck made that certain.

He'd already looked into multiple rooms, finding nothing remotely of interest. Damn it, where did they keep the dangerous stuff in this place? And he was sure Raiza would be out looking for him soon; she knew this place better than he did, so he was at a disadvantage.

Or maybe not. Thief, you know.

Bakura turned down a corridor and saw, at the opposite end of the hall, a door marked with two symbols he recognized: Radioactive and Danger.

Excellent.

Bakura went swiftly down the hall, wondering why he'd not seen any guards inside this place. Maybe they were secure in thinking that no one would ever make it inside, so they could lay off security on the inner works.

'How considerate of them,' Bakura thought nastily, approaching the door, 'Makes my time so much easier.'

There was a hitch. The door had some kind of security code panel box thing on it. Bakura assumed you had to swipe your card to get in –if you worked there. He didn't, and he didn't suppose they'd have been nice enough to give him a card with those kinds of capabilities.

Well, that was just peachy. Lucky he always came with a backup plan.

Bakura pulled off his shoe and took the steak knife from the bottom of the inside of it. They'd checked him for weapons when he'd entered, but Raiza had hurried him through that. She obviously thought he was safe.

Poor stupid girl.

He'd stolen the knife in her kitchen when she wasn't looking. And the only place he could think of where it wouldn't be at all detectable was his shoe. So in it had gone. You always needed a weapon when going into enemy territory.

Or places –say, nuclear plants- with lots of security -say, the little box he was methodically cutting off the door.

Bakura slipped his shoe back on, wincing very slightly because the knife had cut his foot. It didn't hurt much, but he hated the feeling of your own blood squishing around you. It made him feel weak, not one of his favourite feelings; his least favourite, in fact.

A loud 'click' made him jump; he hadn't been paying attention to what he was doing, and his knife had struck the door. He quickly eased it back into its proper position, continuing to work away at the cords and electrical wires binding it to the door.

There was a chance he might set off an alarm. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

In fact, he was counting on it.

See, if the alarm went off, people would come to him. People with half-decent weapons. Weapons he would gladly add to his formidable arsenal of tooth, nail and a steak knife, which was rapidly dulling.

A crash indicated that the security box had finally fallen off. Funny, he didn't hear anything in the way of alarms, or rumbling security guards, or anything of the sort.

How disappointing. He'd just have to continue on with his wonderfully dangerous half-dull steak knife.

He gave the door an experimental push. To his complete surprise, it opened easily. What was it with this lack of security? How was it that cutting a box off a locked door did not set about any protocol measures? Why was it so damned easy to get into a room filled with –he hoped- nuclear weapons?

He poked his head inside, and nearly fell to the floor with surprise. He'd thought there weren't many people around, and now he knew why. No less than a thousand (heck, it may have been three thousand, he couldn't count) people were milling around behind those doors, with the dark green outfit of guards showing up one in three people.

Bakura bit his lip. This was going to take some effort.

Then he smirked.

He hadn't had a challenge in a long time.

Interlude 10.1

Antsiranana

A crowd of jammering children swirled and danced around him, as he walked down the dirt road towards the South. Their numbers had dwindled; when they'd left the village some time ago, it seemed every child that could walk was coming. Now, hours later, only the oldest –and some of the more stubborn young ones- remained.

Mokuba felt very out of place. It wasn't hard to be dressed better than these scruffy kids, but coming from where he did, he made them look extremely tattered. Which was exactly why he was the odd man out.

It was one of the few times in his life he wished Seto hadn't won that chess game.

There had been other times... where he thought he might have liked to be an average kid. Times when things were weird, or messed up, or just plain annoying. He didn't want to be responsible all the time. He wanted to play around like a normal kid, make mistakes and laugh about them.

Seto had tried to make it normal for him. But face it; Seto wasn't 'normal'.

His life wasn't normal.

Mokuba had a lot of time to reflect on this dirt road; none of the kids around him spoke anything other than Swahili, and he didn't know a word of that. He'd somehow managed to communicate through crude drawings in the dusty ground, but beyond their rather weak drawing skills, they had no means of understanding each other.

He almost sighed. Right now, he was really wishing that he was at home. Just in that special place where he felt secure, not halfway across the world.

This wasn't normal.

Would someone like to tell him why he was in Madagascar? Would someone like to explain to him why he really didn't want to go home –even though that was the thing he wanted most?

His head hurt. Why didn't he want to go home? He didn't –though he desperately did- want to see his brother. Oh sure, Seto'd be glad to see him. They'd hug and laugh and maybe crack a few jokes even.

Then it'd go weird again.

Or maybe, it'd be back to normal.

Seto would drown himself in work, try to do everything for him, act like he was thirty-six and not sixteen. He, Mokuba, would be shunted from place to place, escorted round the clock, protected and his whereabouts known every second.

Maybe this once... just this once... he might never get another chance...

Freedom.

Mokuba stopped in the middle of the road, crouched down and pulled a pointed stick from his pocket. Immediately, the children around him stopped moving, and one of the oldest –someone the other kids referred to as Kwasi- knelt next to him. It seemed Kwasi had the best drawing abilities out of any of the children, so he'd been deemed their 'translator'. Plus, he seemed to be adequate at interpreting Mokuba's drawing.

Mokuba chewed his lip for a moment while he pondered how to do this. Then, he began the message. He drew a stick figure with a shirt on (which had come to represent himself) and then a four-pointed star, circling the southern part of it.

Kwasi nodded; he understood that Mokuba was supposed to be going South, to the big city.

Mokuba then proceeded to cross it out, and draw a new four-point star, circling the western part. He drew his stick figure again, trying his best to make it look like he was running.

Kwasi looked confused for a moment, staring at the drawings with intensity. Then he stood up and started muttering, pulling Mokuba up with him. He pointed to the South, where on the horizon a city was just barely visible. Then he shook his head and deliberately turned himself West, making a big show of it. Then he took a few steps in that direction, turned back to Mokuba and cocked his head. Was this what he meant?

Mokuba nodded with a smile; Kwasi understood.

They weren't going to the city just yet.