Okaa, Okaa
Gray-Hazel
Chapter One:
Juuko Kawai
Jonouchi Katsuya braced himself for a 'pleasant' run-in with his drunken father as he unlocked the door to his apartment, face slightly averted. Instead, he came face to face with a cinnamon-haired Shizuka Kawai.
"Onii-san!" She cooed at him, hugging him gently. He stared at her, uncomprehending as she dragged him into the apartment.
"Wha- What's going on?" He asked, sounding slightly lost. "Who died?" Shizuka's troubled smile faded a little as she gripped his arm. The sight that met his eyes was truly bizarre indeed.
His mother, Juuko Kawai, was standing, hands on hips, over a speechless Tanaka Jonouchi. Her green-hazel eyes gleamed angrily beneath her scruffy blonde hair, and despite being over thirty years old, she could have easily passed for a very pissed off college student. "Tanaka-bakayarou! Have you seen what you've done to yourself? To my son? You idiot!" She yelled angrily, picking up an empty green wine bottle and brandishing it at him with utmost fury.
He stared at her, and, by the look in his eyes, Jonouchi could easily tell that he was struggling not to punch her. "Mind your own business, bitch! You've got no reason to be here, so get out! GET OUT!" He screamed, the veins in his temples standing out. She looked at him cooly.
"I believe I do have a reason to be here, Tanaka," She replied, eyes narrowed to cold slits. "I won the hearing."
He glared at her, and Jonouchi was fairly sure that he had no more idea what she was talking about then he did. "So? What the hell does that mean?"
She rolled her eyes in disgust, and planted a heel into his stomach as he began to trudge drunkenly towards her. "It means that I'm taking the boy." She stated coldly, slapping the paperwork down on the stained coffee table. "He's coming to live with Shizuka-chan and I in our new apartment."
Tanaka stared at Juuko, and then bellowed in anger, charging towards her. With the catlike reflexes her son so displayed, she dodged nimbly around him and brought her elbow down on the back of his neck. He crumpled, breathing lightly. "Sleep well, dobe," The blonde woman spat.
"Okaa-san!" Shizuka chided, looking a little miffed. "Did you have to knock him out?"
Juuko looked over at her with the patience reminiscent of motherhood, and started at the sight of her gobsmacked son. "Katsuya!" She cried, face lighting up with a gamin grin. She pulled him against her bosom in a crushing hug, causing him to stumble slightly at her ferocity, and he returned her hug awkwardly. Gently pushing the estatic woman off him, he looked down at her, head buzzing with questions. She interrupted him before he even opened his mouth.
"Come on," She said, fiercely triumphant, lithe body a coiled spring. "I'll explain everything when we get to the apartment."
-Okaa, Okaa-
Bakura looked at Ryou with an expression somewhere in between boredom and indifference as the boy excitedly talked to one of his friends on the phone. Large garnet eyes closing lightly, he leaned back against the sofa cushions, and offhandedly eavesdropped on Ryou's conversation with razor sharp ears.
"-know... I'm at my mom's apartment- she's moved into North Domino because she has a job opening here." Bakura cracked one eye open in curiousity at the hopefulness that had crept into Jonouchi's voice.
"That's wonderful, Jou!" Ryou said whole-heartedly, a smile brightening his pale, effeminate face. "We'll be over as soon as we can, okay?"
"Bakura's coming too?" Jonouchi asked warily, and a smug grin crept onto Bakura's face.
Ryou smiled obliviously. "Well, you know, I don't think I'd be able to stop him, even if I wanted to."
"Damn straight!" Bakura yelled to him, causing the white-haired hikari to choke on his next few words.
-Okaa, Okaa-
Juuko Kawai was a pixie- there was no other way to put it.
Slim, lithe, and ferocious, Juuko had many of the defining qualities of her son. She was energetic and voracious, creative, intuitive, perceptive and opinionated, and completely without modesty.
She lay languidly on the couch, dressed in a pair of old, loose jeans and worn tank top, looking more like a teenage slob than a working mother. In her mouth was a silver spoon, moving slightly as she chewed on it absentmindedly. "So, your friends are coming here, Katsuya-kun?" She asked lazily, tilting her head back to look at him.
Her apartment was spotless, due to Shizuka's efforts, and sparsely furnished, not because of lack of funding, but more because of lack of interest.
He grinned, looking, for perhaps the first time in his life, his age. "Hai, Okaa-san, they should be here any minu-"
Ryou and Bakura burst in with a kick of Bakura's boot, the latter grinning impishly, the other chastising. Bakura's eyes roamed over the large apartment with a whistle, and hovered on Jonouchi's mom.
"Who's the hot chick?" He asked, looking her over while Ryou and Jonouchi blanched.
"That's my mom, you sick fuckard!" Jonouchi yowled, face gone a strange colour between white and purple. "Tha- That's just sick!"
Bakura grinned wildly, snickering, and put his hands behind his head in an indifferent pose. "So? She's single, right?" With a cry of indignation, Jonouchi literally threw himself at Bakura, tripping over the coffee table instead and landing flat on his face. Bakura cackled. "I'll take that as a yes." With a wicked grin, he stepped over Jonouchi and sat on the edge of the couch, grinning at the afore-mentioned mother.
"Hmm..." She hummed softly, inspecting him from behind wire-rimmed glasses, mouth pursed, and still laying on the couch slothfully. "No. You couldn't keep up with me, gaki." Her mouth twitched up into grin, and she stretched and turned over onto her stomach, dismissing him with an offhand gesture.
He gawked. Jonouchi and Ryou burst out laughing as the latter helped Jonouchi up, face creased with mirth. "Well, I have to say, Yami, you kinda had that coming." Ryou beamed, a little smile plumping his cheeks.
Bakura's eyes flashed, and he slid off the couch edge and took a seat on Juuko's bottom, ignoring her reproachful noise, and struggling glare as she squirmed beneath him. "Hentai! Gaki! Ecchi! Get off of me!" She crowed, looking over her shoulder with a displeased scowl and pulling at the edge of the couch in an attempt to pry herself from her compromising position. "Get off!"
With a smirk, the white-haired Yami crossed his legs and leaned back against the cushions, ignoring Juuko and her son's indignant cries, and his hikari's chastising.
Standing in the doorway with unamused expression was a Yami no Yugi, accompanied by his hikari, Hiroto Honda, Anzu Mazaki, and a very displeased looking Seto Kaiba.
Jonouchi groaned in humiliation.
-Okaa, Okaa-
Yami no Yugi looked at Jonouchi from across the kitchen table, a grave expression haunting his stern features. "Jonouchi-kun, after much debate, we've come to discuss a serious matter with you."
Seto Kaiba snorted incredulously, inspecting the millennium rod in his hand with a bored expression and scowling. "You debated it, maybe- I still think this is all nonsense, but if humouring you will get you to leave me be, I suppose I must." He said gruffly, twisting the rod between his fingers, and watching the light gleam of it in a beautiful array.
Jonouchi glowered at him, then turned to Yami, curious. "What's this? Well, get on with it!" He looked at him through narrowed eyes, leaning over the table. Bakura sat with his hands folded behind his head, the ring gleaming on his chest.
"We have reason to think you're a millennium item holder," He said boredly, white hair scruffy around his face. "And Kaiba's right- the baka decided to tell you, not us."
Yami no Yugi glared at him, one hand fondling the puzzle in an attempt not to maim the white-haired fiend. "...yes, thank you, bakayar- Bakura, that is quite enough," he said stiffly, jaw clenching, and smiled tersely. "Well, as he said, we, yes, um, have reason to suspect you an item holder. The holder of the millennium eye, in fact."
Jonouchi furrowed an eyebrow and looked ast him in disbelief. "B- but that was in Pegasus' eye socket! I have to shove that in mine?" He asked, sounding horrified.
"No, no!" Yami said quickly. "As a proper holder, you should be able to use the eye without, um, installing it. The powers should be accessible through touch, as in holding it, or having it against your skin. We- I came to the conclusion that it was yours at the discovery that when Bakura came near our group, it reacted, but upon trying it with everyone else- including Kaiba-san- it had no effect. Therefore, the only one it could have been reacting to is you. You may think it strange reasoning, but I assure you, it's perfectly logical, considering the circumstance."
Anzu and Honda both nodded, and reached out and touched the eye to no effect. Jonouchi stared at them in puzzlement. "This is so... sudden. Why didn't you tell me you were looking for the holder? Wait, never mind- 'This is none of my affair', right?" With a scowl, he reached out and touched the eye, giving a sharp pull of shock as a burst of sound rushed into the mind, and pulled his hand back. "What the hell!?"
Yami nodded, satisfied. "So, it must be you. I'm actually rather glad, Jonouchi-kun. It's good that we could bring this to an end before you're mother returned- I find the idea of her walking in rather unappealing and hard to explain."
Jonouchi's eyes lingered on him, filled with confusion and the merest traces of anger, and he shook his head violently and took it in his hands. "But... why me? I'm not reincarnation, nor do I have a Yami! This doesn't make sense."
Bakura snorted and leaned forward. "You may be a reincarnation, baka- we just don't know who of. Just because you don't know something doesn't mean it's not true."
"Jonouchi? Can you help me with the-" Juuko Kawai came to a dead halt in the doorway of her apartment, staring at the table. Her face paled to a truly frightening colour, and her pupils contracted as violently as if they had been hit with a sharp stream of bright light. The brown paper bag of various edibles crashed from her suddenly shaking arms as her eyes snapped from the millennium ring to the millennium puzzle to the millennium rod, and then fixed upon the shining golden eye on the tabletop. An appalling noise burst from her slack lips, like the dying groan of a wounded animal.
"No..." She moaned, one hand fixed on the doorknob, lips barely moving, word barely audible.
"Okaa-san?" Jonouchi asked carefully, paling, and reached remove the offending object from the table. "Okaa-san, it's okay, it's just an antique."
"NO!" She screamed, wild-eyed, and he jerked his hand back from the eye. She took a shuddery step back through the door, and bolted down the stairs at a dangerous speed.
-Okaa, Okaa-