Small Troubles

by HCG and WSJ

HCG: @_@ Bleh. Took a while. Moving and computers be EVIL. WHY do you like computers so, Kaze?!

Kaze:....because....I've been raised with them since I was ten?

HCG:....That's not a good enough reason! >_<;;

Kaze: *siiiigh*

WSJ: It's because all computers are male, and Kaze's male. *nods sagely* Hmm... Except Kaze can multi-task as long as he has coffee... Does that mean he's not male? X_X

Disclaimer: We don't own Yu-Gi-Oh. Too bad, eh, or it'd probably be a lot more interesting with tons more Ryou torture, isn't that so? The Negative Realm, its occupants, and related theories and ideas belong to High Crystal Guardian. Damon and Horus belong to Wingleader Sora Jade. NR Yugi/Naosu's particular personality here is Ebony Kuroneko's.

Oh, and a side note from HCG: some of you seem to be getting confused, and I know Ebony made a note about this in her fic, but I'll clear it up here for those of you who don't know. The Negative Realm Yugi belongs to HCG, but this particular personality/version of him, which goes by 'Naosu,' belongs to Ebony--it's her take on NR Yugi and does not belong to HCG. Get it? Got it? Good. Roll fic!

WSJ: And yes, we've broken the timeline!!! *CACKLES*

()()()()()

"SPIDER!!!!!!!!!!"

The mixture of surprised, terrified, and just plain grossed-out screams hit a high pitch and made the poor little chibi Damon wail even louder and cling to Kaze's sleeve, making the trench coat fabric grow damp. Kawari looked partly grossed out, but mostly scared to death for his yami, who was struggling wildly within feet of the spider. Saguru was cowering behind the white-haired three (and a half) year old, displaying a surprising case of arachnophobia that had been rather unexpected. Naosu's naturally wide eyes were even more naturally wide from worry for his own yami, and Pegasus just looked surprised at the whole situation, his one remaining eye blinking rapidly in disbelief.

And Kaze? Kaze was seriously wishing he'd had another cup of coffee while he'd had the chance, because he was fed up with dealing with this stuff, and was equally seriously considering demoting Pegasus several ranks for drinking the coffee that should have been rightfully his.

Nozomi, meanwhile, was trying to get a better look at the spider to see just exactly what was climbing all over his head while trying not to hyperventilate at the thought of a giant spider climbing all over his head. He got his look as it moved a little, and soon wished he hadn't. The spider was huge, much larger than any spider, even a tarantula, could naturally grow to, and the same sickly green as the webbing, which they guessed was why they hadn't first noticed it was there. It was extremely hairy, with four big sets of glassy black eyes, and clicking mandibles, and (ignore the arachnophobic authoress(es) royally panicking at this point at having to describe this...just keep reading...*cough*OH DEAR GOD IT'S DISGUSTING! AAAGH! *cough*) a large, bulbous spider butt (excuse us...thorax...). The whole thing rested rather lazily on Nozomi's large mass of spiky hair, and then, equally lazily, it stretched out one long leg and placed it on Nozomi's forehead as it began to descend downward.

Nozomi, understandably, freaked.

"Oh, by Ra, it's on my face! It's gross! And hairy! And gross! Did I mention gross? Get it off! It's gross!"

"Okay, so it's gross!" Kaze snapped in irritation. "We heard you the first three times!" He watched as the spider placed a second leg on the yami's face, and thought vaguely that if the situation wasn't so perilous, with the risk of the two yamis getting eaten, it would have been damned funny to see the once-greatest-terror-of-Japan spazzing out over a larger-than-average, weird, green-colored spider. Wish I'd thought of this a couple months ago.

"Is not loff!" Naosu piped up from the sidelines, watching his darker half's obvious distress with an unhappy look on his face. "Not loff! Make it leave mou hitori no boku alone!"

"'n Kay'u too!" Kawari added, determined to get his two cents in. "Dun want Kay'u to get eated too!"

"Er..." Kaze grimaced a little, not quite sure what to do about the situation, but knowing it needed a reaction, and fast. "Pegasus? Can you dispel it or something?"

"Noooo," Pegasus answered slowly, still blinking a little, as in disbelief. "Damon uses different magic. It isn't the same as Millennium Items." He shrugged.

"Er..." Kaze managed to get out again, a little annoyed. Damon being on their side, he'd never bothered to make sure his magic was in check, and was now severely regretting it.

"Hurry it up and make a decision, fast!" Nozomi yelped--yes, folks, it is indeed possible for a Yami Yugi to yelp--he yelped quickly, attempting to twitch away from the green spider with very little success. "This Ra-damned thing is gross! And it's gonna try and eat me!"

"Well, we can't get rid of it!" Kaze snapped, growing increasingly irritated by the situation. "What the hell do you want me to do?"

Despite the situation, Damon, Saguru, and Kawari all gasped in surprise. "Bad word, Kaze!" Saguru said reprovingly, giving him a look.

Kaze's jaw dropped slightly as he lost a hold on that perfect, unemotional Kaiba stare. "Nozomi and Kaeru are going to get eaten and you get mad because I said 'hell?'"

"'said it again!" Saguru yipped angrily, glaring up at the Blue Eyes. "Bad Kaze!" And he gave the leading agent a little chibi punch as 'punishment.' Under normal circumstances Kaze would have barely felt it, but as it was he was unfortunate enough to get hit near the old wound on his bad leg, and he gave a startled 'eep' of surprised pain. "Ow! That hurt!"

"Then no bad words," Saguru ordered calmly, shaking a little finger at him.

Kaze's eyes twitched. "You're one bratty chibi. I think--"

"Hello?!" Nozomi interrupted, sounding panicked. "Kaze?! The spider?!"

"I just told you I can't get rid of--"

"Then kill it! Kill it kill it kill it quick!"

"Oh." Kaze blinked. "Yeah. Why didn't I think of that?" Still a little surprised with himself, he reached in his trench coat and pulled out one of his many throwing knives, taking careful aim at the spider atop Nozomi's head.

"WOAH!" The former pharaoh's eyes widened at the sight of the knife. "What do you think you're doing, trying to kill me?! If you miss I'll have a knife in my skull!"

"No," Kaze answered dryly, "I won't miss, and I'm trying to kill the spider, not you."

"You're not playing William Tell with my head!"

"I can't get close enough to kill it, all that green goop is there. Besides, I could always let the spider eat you, if you don't want me to use this knife of mine."

Nozomi's eye twitched, but the shifting spider legs seemed to change his mind. "Alright, alright, do it quick!"

Kaze held the blade between two fingers, took careful aim once more, and sent the blade spinning out, slicing clean into the spider and causing it to squeal in surprise (yup, folks, it turns out spiders can, indeed, squeal. Or this one can. Hey, it's a magic spider, right? It can do what it wants, right? It's special, right? Shutting up now...) and twitch backwards, legs wriggling. It turned and attempted to go for the smaller target, Kaeru, but another two well placed knives sent it flopping on top of Nozomi's head, legs twitching as it died and a disgusting, squishy green goo sprouting from the knife cuts and dripping all over the spirit's hair and head, flattening the spiky style and tingeing it green.

Nozomi was not amused.

Everybody else was, though.

The entire group in the room stared at the flat-haired, grossed out, annoyed looking former pharaoh, still entangled in green goo and now with more green goo dripping down his head, and a spider sitting like some sort of strange, hairy crown on top, and abruptly burst out laughing. The sight was just too priceless, once the grossness of the situation had been passed by, and every one of them thought it was hysterical.

Nozomi blinked his eyes amidst the goo and gave his giggling hikari an almost forlorn look (it shall be noted that this looks just as odd as a Yami Yugi yelping). "Worthy Light," he complained, "stop laughing and get me out of here!"

Now that he was assured his yami was safe, however, the Negative Yugi was having a blast; by now, he'd sat down in the middle of the floor to keep himself from falling over and was currently giggling his little heart out. "Naosu can't help it!" he managed to call through his laughter, "Mou hitori no boku look so silly!" The others appeared to agree, as all the chibis--even Kawari--were rolling on the ground and laughing. Well, Kaeru would have been, if he hadn't still been stuck in green, sticky spider web also.

Nozomi almost whined. "If I didn't think I somehow deserved this," he muttered, "I'd be really angry about now…" the others ignored him.

Once the laughter had died down and everything was calm--or as calm as it could get with two people trapped in a massive spider's nest--Kaze finally shook his head, sighed, and removed a few knives, beckoning Pegasus forward to have him help cut the two trapped ones out of the webbing. Kawari wanted to help free his yami, but Kaze refused to allow the chibi to use a knife, much to Kawari's displeasure.

"But I know how t'use Gin Hewwi!" the little chibi hikari complained, staring up at Kaze. "I kin use those toooooo!"

Kaze still said no.

Whereupon Kawari sat down in a huff and refused to speak to him again ever in his whole life.

Cutting Kaeru and Nozomi out of their bindings was difficult, as the webbing refused to want to yield to the sharp edges of Kaze's knives, but they managed with only a little difficulty. Soon two yamis, trailing wisps of webbing in their hair and clothing and on their skin, were freed and standing in the middle of the room. This caused a whole new bout of giggles from Naosu and the chibis (except for Kawari, who was still throwing a tantrum over not being able to use a knife), which in turn caused Nozomi to look a little more sullen.

"This is beyond unfair," the Negative Yami muttered to himself. "I'm even behaving! I'm almost sure I don't deserve this!"

Pegasus shrugged. "You did start it," he couldn't help but point out.

"How did I start it? All I did was come out of my soul room!" Nozomi looked extremely irritated and attempted to pull some of the green goop out of his hair, where it was tangling his (*INSERT: GORGEOUS MYSTERIOUS AWESOME-LOOKING* *HCG is promptly thwacked by WSJ*) bangs, but he only succeeded in making it worse and hurting his skull. "That's it. I'm going back to sleep. Getting up in the morning should just not be allowed." He began to fade out, going to a more transparent, spiritual form before he disappeared completely.

But he didn't get the chance to leave, because Kaze leapt forward. "HOLD IT!" he called loudly. "We didn't even finish what we CAME here for!"

Nozomi, still transparent (and now without the goop and dead spider in his hair, since it had all fallen off when there was nothing physical for it to cling to anymore) paused and gave him a look. "I thought you wanted to see if I made them chibis. Well, I didn't. Satisfied?"

"Actually," Kaze answered, "we need you to tell Kaeru how to get back into his soul room. He…er…doesn't remember." The Opposition leader couldn't help but sweatdrop.

"So?" the five-year-old Kaeru growled, choosing this moment to enter the conversation. He glared up at the two towering over him, obviously not happy after his little spider ordeal. "Don't hafta go back, do I?"

Kaze gave an exasperated sigh. "You have to try, at least," he answered. "At any rate, it will at least get all that…stuff…off you."

Kaeru stamped his feet. "Fine then. How?" He turned to stare up (yes, there's something we'd never thought a Bakura would do, stare UP at a Yami) at Nozomi and gave him a questioning look.

"Er…" Nozomi paused. Truth be told, he'd never really had to think about going to his soul room, so it was difficult to explain. "Try…thinking about the room. Do you remember what it looks like?"
"Yeeeeees," the chibi thief answered, still looking up.

"Okay…er…just try thinking about it really, really hard." The former pharaoh couldn't help but realize how dumb that sounded, but he didn't really care. He just wanted to get some sleep. That, or some really, really strong coffee.

Kaze gave the Seto Kaiba equivalent of a person's jaw dropping, since Kaibas don't normally go around dropping their jaws on a regular basis--you know, that whole stony face, can't-show-any-emotions thing? Yeah, guess what, Kaze has that too. Go figure. Where were we? Oh yes. So Kaze gave the Kaiba equivalent of dropping one's jaw, which showed his extremely annoyed disbelief at the answer Nozomi had just given.

"That…was IT? 'Think about the room really really hard?' No magical tricks?"

Nozomi considered momentarily. "Yes, that does seem about it."

Kaze's eye twitched, and then he took a deep, steadying breath before speaking. "Then why the hell did we come down here in the first place?!" Whoops, the steadying breath didn't work so well.

The chibis gasped again. "BAD WORD, Kaze!"

The Blue Eyes looked irritated, but glanced over at them. "Sorry, sorry, I won't say it again. Promise."

Nozomi, meanwhile, just shrugged. "Why don't you ask yourself that question, since I didn't make the decision for you," he said, looking just as irritated that he had been woken up, annoyed, and nearly eaten in the morning.

Kaze looked positively exasperated, but finally sighed. "Kaeru," he muttered, "just try what he said, okay?"

"'kay," the chibi yami finally agreed, nodding. He stood still for several moments, face scrunched up in concentration as he tried hard to…well…think of his soul room really, really hard. After a few moments, he vanished, reappearing another two minutes later…

As a now clean, but still obviously not adult, chibi.

"Da-" Kaze saw the tiny chibi glares swivel around to his direction, and hastily edited himself. "Darn. Why didn't it work?"

Nozomi snorted. "I don't know, and at this point I don't particularly care. If you will excuse me…" and he finished returning to his own soul room, transparent form winking out in a heartbeat.

Naosu made a face. "Mou hitori no boku grouchy in morning."

"No kidding," Kaze said dryly. He sighed.

Pegasus shrugged. "It must just be an extended spell," he offered. "Whoever or whatever made them like this, obviously they don't want them to change back immediately."

"Wonderful," the Blue Eyes snapped, tapping his foot impatiently. "Well, let's go. Maybe somebody else might have a clue on what's going on. Come on, guys," he added, calling to the chibis and motioning to the door. "We're leaving."

Saguru skipped forward towards the door cheerfully, now pleased that the big scary spider was no longer there, while Damon, still sniffling a little but quickly recovering, trotted after him. Kawari had run to meet his yami when he had reappeared, and now the two left last, Kaeru acting like some sort of guard around his younger 'charge.' Pegasus hastily went after them to make sure they didn't cause havoc, while Kaze turned back to Naosu.

"Sorry about all of that," he said, indicating the mess of goop. "I'll send somebody down to get it cleaned up."

"Is no problem, Kaze-san," Naosu said, looking cheerful. "Can Nasou come too? Mebbe Nasou can help!"

"Er…I guess." You're probably the only one who can get hyper enough to communicate with those chibis, anyway, Kaze couldn't help but silently add in his mind.

"Yay loff!" Naosu practically bounced excitedly, and paused only momentarily to place his Puzzle on the bed, since Nozomi would probably not appreciate being dragged around to baby-sit several chibis, particularly after the latest ordeal.

"Er...right. Whatever you say."

And so they were off. Kaze had no idea where he would take the chibis, but he did know he had to find someplace to keep them. On top of that, he now had somebody bouncy and hyperactive enough to take the place of another chibi as a new companion, and he had a feeling that things were going to only get more difficult now.

So they wandered, but not for long. The chibis had rapidly begun to get out of hand within only a few minutes; Kaze had been busy reprimanding Saguru for chasing Damon down the hall, and Naosu was busy trying to entertain chibi-Kawari, which didn't work so well thanks to the very limited chibi-attention span the white-haired kid now had. Kaeru, meanwhile, was claiming Pegasus' attention for scribbling random, possibly Kurueruna-based hieroglyphics on the walls with a marker he'd found somewhere, completely ignoring the American as he was told, several times, to stop.

Which was why Kaze was extremely annoyed when Roland decided to show up right about then.

"Sir!" the man had called loudly, running down the hall towards where the group of seven was currently standing, "sir, I thought you'd--" he paused. "Er…what's going on?" he asked slowly, eyes sweeping the hall and staring at the chibis.

"If you ask that again," Kaze snapped, quickly losing his patience, "I'm going to fire you."

"Yessir!" Roland answered hastily. "Er, it's just that, I'd thought you'd left already. I had your transport set up and everything."

Kaze raised an eyebrow. "What was that?"

"You know, your meeting with the Ishtars. They're arriving at our air base soon, and you said you wanted to go meet them, remember? They're here for their meeting…the one you have with them every three months."

Kaze swore, causing the chibis (excluding Kaeru) to gasp once again, but he ignored them for the moment. "WHAT?!" he hissed. "That was today?!" Now he remembered what had been gnawing at his mind. A meeting with the Ishtars, and he had totally forgotten about it due to this whole chibi business!

"Yes, sir," Roland yipped. "Er, your transport's ready, I'm sure you can still make it…um…"

"Are we gonna see Mawik?" Saguru asked excitedly, bouncing.

"And Isis!" Damon continued, looking up at Kaze with his good eye, which was filled with excitement.

"'n Rashid!" Kawari finished, naming the last of the group.

Kaze looked exasperated. "I am, you are not," he stated firmly, unwilling to let chibis leave the base.

"NO!" all of them yelled, throwing tantrums at the same time. "WANNA SEE MAWIK! WANNA SEE ISIS 'N RASHID!"

Pegasus and Naosu covered their ears, and after several seconds the American called over the noise. "I suppose there's no harm in bringing them," he said loudly. "It is a secure area!"

Kaze gave him a flat look. "You aren't serious."

The chibis had heard, too. "YAY! Pegsy's not a meanie-head!" Saguru cheered, glomping onto the Eye owner's leg. Damon followed, clinging to the other leg, and Kawari, left without a leg of his own to latch too, just bounced up and down instead, chanting the Ishtars' names repeatedly. Even Kaeru had lost interest in his doodles by this time and was watching the proceeds, though he didn't seem as eager to see the Ishtars as the others did.

Kaze looked exasperated, but finally nodded. "Alright," he said, sighing a little. "Fine. Fine. It is safe enough…okay, guys, you can visit Malik and the others."

The chibis all squealed, and Kaze had a vague impression that things had just gotten ten times worse.

()()()()()

HCG: Oh. My. God. I actually finished writing this.

Kaze: *dryly* What a surprise.

HCG: ^^ YAY! Now MALIK'S entered the mix!

Kaze: Yay. -_-; I think my headache's about to get worse.

WSJ: *grins* Oh come on, it's Malik! Hmm... Speaking of... why do I get to write him? @_@ You don't even have a personality for him yet, HCG! *dies a twitchy death*

Review, folks! ^_~