Fate: Hee. Hee hee hee. I've been wanting to write this chapter for a while.

Disclaimer: It ain't ours. Shouldn't you have figured that one out by now?

::chapter seven::

"Oi!"

Mokuba turned around. "Y-yes?"

Bakura glared at him, hands on hips. "Where's my hikari? He won't answer me."

Mokuba shrugged. "How should I know?"

Bakura shifted to lean against the door, tapping one finger on the metal plate screwed into the middle. "Isn't this some kind of surveillance room?"

"You can read?" Mokuba asked, then mentally slapped himself for his idiocy.

Bakura's glare intensified. "Yes. Maybe. Sort of. That's beside the point!" he finally spat. "Those screens show everything, don't they?"

Mokuba mentally slapped himself again. "Right."

"So, look for him!" Bakura insisted.

"Why can't you?"

Bakura's glare returned with a vengeance. "Because he won't let me."

"He has that much control?" Mokuba asked. "Can't you just...push him aside?"

Bakura's glare turned sulky. "...don'wanna."

"Why?" Mokuba asked, folding his arms. "You don't seem the type to not want to hurt your host."

"See, that's where you're all wrong!" Bakura exploded. "None of us wantonly hurt our hosts for the hell of it! We've all done some stupid shit, and that's all you can remember! Do I look like a sado-masochist?"

Mokuba thought about it. "Yes."

Bakura spluttered incoherently for a few minutes, then glowered some more.

Mokuba examined his nails. "So did you want something?"

The door slammed.

Grey eyes stared at the inside of the door. ...wait a minute. That door was so locked.

And if he can't read...has he been picking all the locks looking for his hikari?

Mokuba jumped to his feet and yanked the door open.

The spirit totally ignored him, instead focusing on a whirling circle of gold with five points flaring off of it. The glow lent color to his bloodless face and turned his red eyes a muddy, ominous shade of vermilion.

"It's not working, is it?" Mokuba asked quietly.

"He's somewhere around here," Bakura growled. "I'll handle it."

Mokuba looked at all the doors hanging open. His had seemed to be one of the last ones Bakura had come to. "You really want help?"

"No," Bakura snapped.

Mokuba raised one eyebrow. "I'll start looking, then," he said, and turned back into the surveillance room. He then slammed and locked the door before Bakura could follow.

"Damn bad-tempered spirits," he muttered, resting his head in his hands briefly. He wheeled over to the main console and picked up the headset again. "Hey."

"Hel-lo," the computer replied. "Who was that?"

"No one you need to worry about," Mokuba said hastily. "I just need you to look for him, or his lookalike."

"And why's that?" the computer asked as she began scanning all the camera feeds.

"Because the fact that he doesn't want to be found worries me. Oh, and where's my brother?"

"That one's easy," the computer replied. "In his office, like always. I think he's got company, too – he turned the camera off."

Mokuba blinked. "Override that and turn the camera back on. Now."

"You sure?" the computer asked. "It might be a little scarring for you – "

"It'll be physically scarring for him if anything of the sort happens," Mokuba said hastily. "Turn the camera back on!"

"Can't, hon," the computer said after a moment. "Unless you know his password."

Mokuba's shoulders slumped. "Oh, never mind, I'll go up there myself. God, if anything happens, I'm moving to Aruba. Reserve me a plane ticket, will you?" he asked, throwing the headset down and storming out of the room.

"You," he said, pointing at Bakura. "Yeesh!" he added as a knife flew at where he'd been standing seconds before. "What the hell was that for?"

Bakura glared at the knife. "I need to redo the grip on that. What good's a knife if I keep losing it like that?"

Mokuba sweatdropped. "No comment there. Look, you pick locks, right?"

Bakura shrugged, picked up the knife, and went back to his contemplation of the Ring.

"I think I found Bakura-san," Mokuba said.

"Yeah, and?" Bakura asked.

"The reason that thing is spazzing out is because he's moving in a circle around us," Mokuba said patiently. "Seto's gotten paranoid, so his office slowly moves around so it's never in the same place twice, should he ever invite someone in. The crawl space to get in is underneath us, but it's locked. I don't have the key."

Bakura tilted his head one way, then the other. "Mortals," he finally said disdainfully.

"Look. Lock. Have fun," Mokuba said, pointing to the panel in the floor. "If Bakura-san – "

"Call him Ryou," Bakura said as he knelt, pulled a couple wires out of his sleeve, and set to work with a malicious grin. "I don't like getting confused."

"...if Ryou-san is, well, blocking you out, then I'm a little worried about...why," Mokuba finally said, sounding rather disoriented. "Why call him Ryou?"

"Because I'm Bakura," Bakura said triumphantly. "That's what everyone calls me."

"It's his name too," Mokuba said.

"So? It's mine now." This was punctuated by the trap door slamming open.

"You're fast," Mokuba said.

Bakura shrugged. "Whatever." He then dropped down into the dark area and out of sight.

Mokuba waited a few seconds, then jumped after.

"Hang it, why are you coming?" Bakura hissed.

"Because I want to," Mokuba said mutinously.

Bakura rolled his eyes and stalked away into the darkness.

And walked straight into a wall.

"GOD-FUCKING-DAMMIT! WHO put that WALL there?!"

"....probably the same people that built the house. You know, people who weren't counting on homicidal tomb robbers storming off without looking."

"Shut up." Bakura tugged at the Ring. "Light. Find him."

"...you seem to have kidnapped me. Again."

"Yes, that's right. I get a kick out of it," Seto shot back.

Silence.

Seto, being generally unused to malicious dark spirits and the techniques that their modern halves had to develop in order to keep some semblance of order in their lives, did not realize that Silence Is A Bad Thing.

It usually means that whatever's happening, you aren't going to figure it out until too late.

Seto felt something tap his shoulder.

"What?" he snapped.

Tap. Tap.

"What is it?" he demanded, finally spinning around.

And promptly confronted a floating, half-decayed fiend facing him.

Seto did not scream like a girl. Seto screamed like a teenager who has just come face-to-face with a partially decayed human form. Oddly enough, that's exactly what he was. Funny, that.

"Sorry, but the pharaoh's not the only one who has a bit of a nasty deck, as you should well know by now," Ryou said after Seto had subsided somewhat. "Oh, fine," he added. "Here!" he called, raising one hand. The fiend floated back to where he was lounging at the table and knelt by its master. Ryou grinned lovingly at it, stroked what was left of its hair, and then patted it on the head. "Thank you!" he said cheerily. The fiend then vanished into the Ring around his neck.

Seto mouthed ineffectually for a bit, then finally squeaked out, "Is...is...what the hell was that?"

Ryou pouted. "I was feeling lazy."

Seto stared. "Never make that expression again?"

Ryou looked even sulkier. "Why?"

Because it's so bloody snoggable, that's why... "Because that is possibly the most disturbing expression I have seen in my life," he said coolly. "Anyway. That was sort of why you're here. Do you want to replicate that?"

"Oh, toss off," Ryou said. "Look. No matter who you set on us, yami and Father will take care of it. Yami doesn't mind killing and you can't arrest a spirit...or someone who has a perfect alibi. This has been fun, but if you're not going to give me a really good reason to stay here, I'm leaving."

Seto tensed. "I'll pay you to stay here and work with me."

"Why me?" Ryou asked curiously. "Why not someone...normal? Like Yuugi?"

"Because they are normal. And they have scruples," Seto snapped. "That gold pendant is fascinatingly powerful, and I don't know the half of what it does. Also your holographic projector for that Earl of Demise, that was – "

"That wasn't a holographic projector," Ryou said with a small smile.

"Well, what was it?"

"The real Earl of Demise," Ryou said simply. "It's a trick yami taught me to keep from getting beat up so much. He was getting bored with wiping the pavement with bullies. When he gets bored, he tends to go overboard and start doing amateur autopsies...and sometimes he won't wait for them to die. So I figured a little harmless Shadow magic would be better than having him kill my friends."

Seto mouthed ineffectually some more. "I have to learn how to do that."

"You have a yami?" Ryou asked.

Seto blinked. "Of course not." I...think...?

"Then good luck to you, but I don't see it happening," Ryou said. "You used to be one of us, but you're not now. No idea what happened, really. Blame it on Malik, I guess. Ambitious little prick."

"You are indeed different than I remember you," Seto said softly.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am," Ryou said coolly. "Having your arm sliced open to the bone will make anyone subdued, not to mention sharing a body with a homicidal maniac."

"You seem to be doing fine now," Seto remarked.

"You wouldn't believe the hell we both went through to get to this level of 'fine'," Ryou said softly. "You don't seem to have minded killing a man, but who am I to talk?"

Seto froze.

"It's in the eyes," Ryou said after a few minutes of silence. "Always in the eyes."

"Hn," Seto snapped, averting his gaze hastily.

"I'm waiting on that really good reason still," Ryou said.

Seto stopped. Then he whirled around and grabbed Ryou by the upper arms. "You really want a good reason? Do you?!"

"Hit me," Ryou said, his smile mocking and almost masochistic.

Seto considered it, then kissed him instead.

Bakura's eyes flew wide and he stopped dead in the middle of the passageway. Mokuba ran into him, then stepped back abruptly as his skin burned with the furious energy seeping off of the spirit.

"Let me in," Bakura hissed. "LET ME IN!" he screamed. Before the echoes died away, he was gone in a gold flash.

Mokuba stared at where he'd been for a very long time.

Dear God...what did Seto do?

Seto finally pulled back, his mouth bruised and somewhat bloody, as Ryou's lips had been chapped and torn.

"I've just made the worst mistake of my life, haven't I?" he breathed.

"Yes."

Seto's eyes flew wide and he stared at the boy he was clutching more closely. Furious red eyes, canines bared in a snarl, and one tattooed hand wiping away the blood on his lips –

"Oh. Shit." Seto whispered.

Bakura smiled.

Seto started praying for his life.

Hinges screamed as the doors began being manually cranked open.

In the split second that Seto looked up at the aperture, a bony fist met the bottom of his chin.

Everything faded except for the triumphant laugh resonating throughout the room.

Fluffy: Well. Someone's pissed. whistles innocently

kitten – Sankyuu!

Jargonelle – But there would be no progress without mistakes!

RunningInCircles – Thanks!

Hiso-chan – So do I. I'm just experimenting with personalities, here. Go me.

Liviana – Uh...sweet?

Psychopathic Sixth Grader – Thanks! grin

higashikaze – It's a lot of fun to write, too!

Elle-FaTe2x1 – Sorry this took so long...I do update quickly, just not the same story!

viva rose – Sharpy is your friend.

SweetMisery – Warn me if it does, yes?

Duel: Woo. Fear. Review.