Fate: FREE TIME!!! Two updates relatively close together! I'm on a roll! maniacal laughter
Disclaimer: chases random lawyers and hits them with her clipboard Shoo! Go'way! Get thee hence!
::chapter four::
"You know, I asked you to go fast and all, but something tells me that we're going too fast," Bakura remarked as he and Anzu blazed down a side street.
"There hasn't been a speed limit sign yet," Anzu replied primly.
"I was thinking more along the lines of the thing chasing us with the shiny lights," Bakura pointed out.
Anzu glanced in the rearview mirror at the police car. "Shit."
"Is this going to delay us?" Bakura demanded.
"Yeah," Anzu said with a sigh.
"Then don't worry about it," Bakura said with a demonic grin. He twisted in his seat and leaned out the window, eyes sparkling. Anzu rolled her eyes and ignored him as well as any girl could expect to ignore a very easy-on-the-eyes undead maniacal teenaged boy.
There was a muted yell from the police car, a deranged laugh from her passenger, a bright gold flash, and the sound of plastic clinking against plastic. Bakura flopped back into his seat and rolled the window back up, propping his feet back up on the dash once more. "Ryou is going to kill me," he mused after a few seconds of silence.
"Why?" Anzu asked, accelerating tentatively. The police car didn't chase her--or even have any occupants anymore--so she stomped on the gas.
Bakura held up two Monster World dolls between his fingers.
"He told me that the next time I offed a police-person, I had to make them into cards, because some of his Monster World dolls kept trying to arrest some of the other ones. He doesn't think that cards will be as violent. I keep telling him to stop playing Monster World in the Shadow Realm, but he's so damn good that it gets boring any other way, according to him."
"Ah. Thank you for taking care of them," Anzu said, nodding.
Bakura looked at her suspiciously. "You're not spazzing. You're not hitting me with your purse and telling me to send them back. What the hell?"
"Two things. One, Ryou is my friend, although a bit of a creepy one, and I don't like the idea of him being loose with Seto Kaiba, who's even worse. Believe it or not, I want to help you, and that means putting up with you." Anzu shot him a sideways glance. "The other thing was that I didn't want another speeding ticket."
Bakura thought about this. It seemed reasonable enough. "Okay," he said. "Just wanted to make sure you weren't going to murder me as soon as you stopped driving."
"I thought you were already dead," Anzu pointed out. "And Ryou's going to kill you again anyway, as you said."
"There is that," Bakura agreed, and set one of the Monster World dolls on the dashboard next to his feet. He started spinning the other one between his fingers idly as Anzu spun the car to the right, careening through an intersection and onto a much smaller road.
"We're almost there," she pointed out.
"How do you know where you're going, anyway?" Bakura asked, finally fulfilling his curiosity.
Anzu blushed. "I have gone to his home countless times to drag away a comatose Jounouchi who mixed it up with your prey, or to bring back our favorite shopkeepers after a night of games, drink, and rock and roll. And then there's been the crack-of-dawn house calls in which I hammer on the door for ten minutes and scream at whoever answers the door to give me Seto Kaiba so I can stomp on his conscience with hobnailed boots every time he does something mean to one of my friends. I come here a lot, actually," she said speculatively.
Bakura blinked. "So my arriving and reaming him out may be fairly well received?"
"Perhaps," Anzu said with a shrug. "You never really know, do you?" she concluded as she braked just shy of where the pavement ended and the gravel began.
"No," Bakura said introspectively. "You never really do." He carefully set the other Monster World doll next to its counterpart, then climbed out of the car window after a few seconds of futile attacking the door latch.
"The door was locked," Anzu told him. "You flick that switch to open it. Just for future reference, you know."
Bakura glowered at the door for a few minutes, then looked up at the girl. "Keep the Monster World dolls." With that, he turned on his heel and took off around the perimeter of the fence.
Anzu rolled her eyes, then yelled out the window, "You're welcome!" Following that, she executed a near-perfect three-point-turn and roared off down the road, her eyes slanting over to the two plastic dolls sitting harmlessly on her dashboard every so often. Finally she smiled, shook her head, and gently turned the car down a different road home.
Just in case.
"Bakura-san?" Seto began.
Ryou blinked, gasped, and scrambled gracelessly to his feet. "What?"
"I think...I think that you should know more about the impetuousness that drove us to this situation," Seto said, hesitating slightly over the words.
"That would be kind of you, Kaiba-sama," Ryou said, mocking struggling to reassert itself in his voice.
"You are here through a misunderstanding," Seto said with a vague smile. "However, I should like for this to turn into an excellent opportunity for me to work with you and your other half to figure out just how...things work. You will be compensated, I assure you."
Ryou blinked, mentally sorting through Seto's lyrical turn of phrase. He blinked again and his eyes narrowed as he glowered up at Seto. "Oh. So I'm your precious little guinea pig, the perfect experiment because I have no backbone and no will to resist?" Ryou began, his voice deceptively soft and lilting.
"You are slightly mistaken," Seto replied. "I told you in the car that there were a few things I did not wish to discuss regarding my...reaction," Seto said. "I've told you all I wish to tell you, and I think that complicating the matter further would be a mistake."
"Oh, really?" Ryou snarled.
Seto's eyes widened infinitesimally at hearing Ryou do something as violent as snarl. Despite the car ride, his ideas of what Ryou was like was still firmly entrenched in the 'wimpy, abused, femmy-boy' area. "Yes," he said simply.
Ryou took two steps forward, grabbed Seto's shirt by the collar, and pulled him down so that the two were face to face. "No more bullshit, Kaiba-sama, and no more pretty words. I'm not a politician or a rivaling business company to be lulled to your whims and lured to your side by your veiled commands. Now you tell me why you brought me here and no more of this 'concern for my safety'. It's about you, isn't it? It's all about you. You don't give a damn about me! You just want us here for you to throw into a cage and poke at, to make us squirm or scream. You're making us your pet Jekyll and Hyde!" Ryou spat into his face, dark eyes furious and empty as one. "You have no right to do this to me, and I demand that you face your own damn demons as to why you spirited me away before you came up with this brilliant idea!" Ryou's voice dropped to a whisper as he added, "Or you'll have my own personal one to deal with as well."
Seto angrily shrugged him loose and stepped back, gazing coldly at Ryou. The boy was completely devoid of color in his ire. What little color that had been in his face had vanished, his lips were pressed together into whiteness, and his eyes had darkened to snapping black.
You're beautiful when you're angry...
Where the FUCK did that come from?! Seto thought wildly in response to the words passing unbidden through his mind. It sounded like a quote or a snatch of a song, but he couldn't place it...
And, of course, it was also very true.
"Don't threaten me," Seto snapped, his temper completely snapping. "Don't even bother trying. You couldn't lay a finger on me if you tried. I could break you in half with a look," he sneered, turning his back swiftly on the seething creature pressed against the wall.
The only warning Seto had was the whisper of cloth as Ryou leaped at him, knocked him to the floor, and launched a quick left to his jaw. This spawned more than a short time of near-senselessness as he tried to cope with the pain lancing through him. Holy...fucking...SHIT! he thought, even his thoughts coming in quick gasps.
"That's what they all say," Ryou hissed, and Seto realized he'd spoken aloud. "That is exactly what they all say, right after, 'Oh, you poor thing, how can you live like that?' Is it everyone's goddamn life campaign to humiliate and subdue me? Is it?" Ryou screamed at him.
"I don't know, but I don't think I could humiliate or subdue you if I tried," said a small voice from the direction of the staircase.
Ryou's head whipped around as Seto closed his eyes, feeling his face burn.
"M...Mokuba-san..." Ryou whispered, horror keeping his voice soft. He then leapt off of Seto and fled away down the hall.
"Niisama!" Mokuba exclaimed. Seto found himself being helped to his feet and then summarily shoved into a chair. "Sit. Do you know your name?"
"Of course I do," Seto snapped, pain making him even more brusque. "Stop fluttering, kid."
"Stop being such a damn brat!" Mokuba retorted. "It's your own damn fault you got hit like that!" As Seto's vision began to clear, he saw two fuzzy versions of his younger brother swiping angrily at his eyes, sniffling, then glaring fiercely at him once more. "For once you brought it on yourself!"
"I understand, but what would you have me do?" Seto demanded bitterly.
Mokuba's shoulders slumped. "I apologize, niisama. You must have a headache and I'm yelling at you. I'm going outside." He flashed Seto a quick smile and left the room with practiced swiftness.
Seto rubbed his jaw, blinked ferociously for a few moments while the number of objects in the room dwindled to their normal amount, and then wobbled to his feet. After a few more minutes of careful reorientation — better to take the time while he had it rather than to wait and be worse off — he started out of the room, praying he wouldn't run into Ryou.
At least it was only Ryou he had to worry about, and not his yami...
Bakura glowered up at the gate. His climbing skills were none too great for the simple reason that there was little to climb in a tomb robber's life. He had briefly considered simply going in to join Ryou, then discarded the idea on the principle that he didn't want Ryou to get any angrier than he was. Ryou hadn't said anything, but he was so obviously furious that Bakura felt it quite strongly. It was only serving to fuel his own ire, anyway.
With a reluctant sigh, he removed his shoes, threw them over the top, and began hauling himself up the side of the gate.
Most of the spikes on the top were bent or had been carelessly twisted off somehow. Bakura paused there, perched between spikes on the top of the gate, panting. It wasn't that he wasn't in shape so much as it was the, uh, the new muscles he was using.
Right?
Right.
"Oh my God," someone blurted out from the ground.
Bakura made a strangled squeaky noise and promptly fell over the side of the fence. He landed catlike — one of the few things about climbing that he did do well — and found himself nearly nose-to-nose with someone's shoes. He shakily straightened up to face the person.
They were about an inch shorter than he was, with gray-blue eyes and ratty black hair hanging in looping, tangled tendrils to his waist.
"Oh. You're not Ryou," the boy stated dumbly.
Bakura rolled his eyes. "Obviously." It actually wasn't always that obvious, but that little fact was forgotten in order to show up the astonished boy.
"Then you must be...the other one," the boy said slowly, his eyes narrowing. "Damn. Niisama is going to be pissed. Well, even more than he is already," he said speculatively. "If you're here to kidnap me, I'm going to shoot you. We clear?"
"Your older brother?" Bakura asked.
"I think you're looking for him," the boy said dryly. "Kaiba Seto. Ring a bell?"
"He kidnapped my hikari," Bakura growled.
"I'd noticed," the boy retorted. "Your other half is currently raising more than a little hell, by the way."
"I'm not surprised," Bakura said honestly. "Take me to your brother," he commanded.
The boy shrugged. "All right, but if you think he'll be able to think at all clearly after the blows to the head that he took, then you're as delusional as all the rumors say."
"What blows to the head?" Bakura inquired.
The boy looked at him sideways as he turned to face the mansion. "The ones Ryou gave him."
"Let me guess...a left hook," Bakura surmised.
"That would be his favorite?" the boy inquired.
Bakura merely smiled and touched a jagged scar marking the time Ryou had gone after him with a set of brass knuckles stolen from his soul room. "You could put it that way."
"Coming, then?" the boy said with a sigh. "You know, just to make my life a total and utter hell on fucking earth and all."
Bakura turned as well. Of course, the pretty mansion promptly distracted him. "...hot damn," he finally managed, eyes bugging out of his head.
"You're drooling," the black-haired boy noted dispassionately.
"Shut up," Bakura snapped, and popped his jaw back into place. He blinked a couple times to return his eyes to their normal size, then scowled at the boy. "Aren't you...?"
"Kaiba Mokuba," the boy said simply as he started towards the front door. "Shouldn't you know that?"
"Oh, right. Bait boy. Can I go tear your brother apart now?" Bakura demanded.
Mokuba hesitated for a brief moment at the foot of the steps, then took them two at a time, a slight smile appearing on his face. His eyes were hidden by his hair as he pushed open the door and said, "Welcome to our mansion."
Bakura pushed past him and stormed into the foyer, wrenching out the Ring and commanding it to take him to Ryou. As his footsteps faded away down the hall, Mokuba let the door fall shut. He stood there in silence, breathing deeply for a minute, then ripped his gun out of his jeans, flicked the safety off, and emptied the clip into the door.
The first alarmed guard found him still standing there, eyes glazed and hands shaking in fury.
"Mokuba-sama, I really don't want to make an enemy of you," she said, gaping.
"Good," Mokuba said shakily. "Want to call the repairman for me?"
"Yessir!" The guard snapped a salute, then retired to make a watchful phone call on her cell.
Mokuba stared at the destroyed door, then shoved his gun away and ran into the house without another word.
Poor kid.
Fate: pats Mokuba on the head Aww.
Kitten-- Mmmm, dark.
Saturn Imp-- But half the fun is taunting Yami about it!
Bakuraluva-- squish Plothole. Go with it.
Liviana-- A-fscking-men to that...
higashikaze-- Ack! Don't give him away!
Yukoma-- Aaagh...the pairing problems...the pairing problems...
Ice Puppet-- Otogi is fun. And Sensible!Anzu is equally entertaining.
R Amethyst-- Good okay, bad okay?
SweetMisery-- P-A-I-N. (i changed it, so this scene no longer exists. sorry)
Duel: grins maniacally and holds forth the Review Stick of Doom Bow before me and do as I bid thee! Review or all will be lost!