Anyway, that's my two cents on an entirely unrelated subject. In other, unrelated news, I'm planning a series of parodies on that little HTML banner thing with a little rainbow and "Marriage is love" under it. Because I hate it so. Too mushy. So far I've got "marriage is publicity," "marriage is obnoxious," (for my novel-in-progress which focuses on celebrities, reality verses idealism, and open-mindedness- we should all be open about other's views of issues such as religion, sexual preference, and giant robots-) "vive le arranged marriages!" (My friend's idea, who is sick of hearing nothing but love-related songs and romance fics.) And "screentone is love". Because screentones ARE love, I tell ya. Nothing beats screentones.

Excuse the lack of update! Current projects include getting my webcomic into some sort of engine that'll make it easier to update, hopefully without selling my soul to keenspace. My comic is Take Me To Your Captain, soon to be renamed, "Happy Tale of a Demon and his Boy". Stars Dark Bakura (I gives him a new name: Rekka Mnemosyne, or just M'emo...or Nemo in case I have to move to one of those places that only allows original comics...) It's here:

And the official Thief Bakura/Kisara not-so-mushy fanlisting, All Thieves Go to Heaven and featuring the heavenly song, Banditos. "...or we could talk it out over a cup o' Joe, and you could look deep into my eyes, like I was a supermodel. Uh huh.":

And my YGO fanfiction contest, whose deadline IS in July, thank you. I encourage you all to enter and ask for my help if you need it:

....other project: Getting into highschool (I got accepted into both private schools with honors, by the by. I think it was my overly cynical entrance exam essay. I wish I had an extra copy of them. I'm so proud of them.) and organizing a Monty Python skit for the Spring Show.

Really apologize for the gargantuous A/N.

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The day began considerably earlier than Kisara had first intended, and hardly in a way that she would have intended. She woke up to utter darkness and a sharp pain in her gut. It must have woken her up. She sat there unblinkingly as her eyes adjusted, hoping that the pain would leave her. What was she to do otherwise?

And so she waited, praying that the pain might leave in one gruesome way or another, but to no avail. And after several minutes of this, she discovered the cause. Oh, please, she thought to herself, please not now. It's too soon.

I mean, I just had it a . . . month . . . ago. . . . Ohh. . . .

She moaned at this thought and writhed a bit.

And thus was the problem. There was a certain sort of feminine-related pain that didn't really go away in the normal way that stomach pains would, and she knew she would have to ask for help soon. Suddenly she yearned for her younger sister, who had in all her blessings discovered a reliever to these sorts of things.

Slowly she crawled over to Bakura's hammock, by now quite desperate. But what was she to say? He was, after all . . . a guy. And regardless of sexual preference, there were certain requirements in the way of sympathy in this particular situation that men . . . simply wouldn't work with.

Bakura's coat had slid a ways down, revealing his tanned and muscular shoulders. Kisara couldn't help but take pause for a moment at this, and she stood studying that revealed skin. The boy was so . . . so . . . what was the word for it . . . ?

Cerebellum, she confirmed groggily. Yes, that was the word for it. An odd occurrence, since that was hardly a word found in ancient Egypt. How she came up with it was a complete mystery to her, but, then again, she was feeling rather sickly, and her thoughts were prone to run wild.

"Bakura. . . ." she whispered, her fear of the man lessened by the urgency of her situation. Now the thief was, understandably, a light sleeper. It was certainly a necessity to be able to wake in the common event that someone was trying to hunt you down with a knife. This event, however, did not involve someone hunting him down with a knife, and because of this his subconscious deemed it an unnecessary interruption to his slumber and made him indeed very irritable upon waking.

"Wha- wait-, what is it, Kisara?" he said groggily, his face barely visible under his sleep-tangled mat of hair, his eyes all squinted from unwillingness to open.

"Bakura, my, uh. . . ." She paused for a moment to decide upon the correct wording for Bakura. "My stomach hurts."

The thief looked at once both astonished and annoyed. "And you woke me up just to tell me that, did you?"

"I- I-" Here she had to pause, for the sudden return of a particularly sharp pain in her gut caused her to moan again and her knees buckled momentarily. "Is there anything you could do to help? Please?"

And Bakura, to her amazement, seemed to consider this greatly for a moment, as though somewhere in his mind he really did care for her welfare. This was quite entirely false, by the way, but Kisara was quite one to hallucinate. "No." he said with a yawn. "Go lie down for a while. If you have to throw up, do it somewhere else. I don't want to wake up a cleaning job." And with this, he pulled up his robe past his shoulders and laid his head back down to rest, not to be roused again for the remainder of the night.

Kisara stood there for a good, long while, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. Now, more than ever, she was aware of how helpless and alone she was- interesting how cramps can bring about such awareness. She stared around for a long, long time, only stopping every once in a while to keel over and grimace. But after a while she figured-and this is a paraphrase, now-oh, screw this, and lay down decisively on the floor, face down, and refused to move the remainder of the night.

You can imagine the odd mixture of amusement and puzzlement on Bakura's face upon seeing this bizarre sight the next morning, for there she was, seemingly a large and long clump of silvery hair sprawled out on the floor in no orderly fashion, with two small feet sticking out at one end. He checked briefly to see if she was still breathing, and, confirming this, went away to forage for more food.

Kisara awoke shortly after to find Bakura gnawing absentmindedly on a loaf of bread-he didn't seem to acknowledge her existence, at least not yet. The sun was already quite far up, its rays sparkling in her eyes and the sand below. She wasn't so much in pain anymore- they rarely lasted more than the first day of her little monthly ordeal. Still, she curled herself up into a little ball, allowing the wind to blow the dirt out of her hair as it flowed out in front of her.

It was a while before she realized that Bakura had yet to take any interest in her. At first she believed this to be connected to her silence, but she later saw that he was indeed quite aware of her, yet chose to ignore her. She was to take food from the previous day's hoard for herself, though no doubt he was watching her from the corner of his eye to see that she did not take too much.

Eventually her relief of being ignored turned to irritation, and she began to discreetly eavesdrop on exactly what he was doing. It really wasn't anything she couldn't have guessed on her own- he was planning a discrete return to the capital to retrieve the Millennium Ring, which was apparently something that would do him a considerable bit of good.

Whenever he spoke of the Ring, Diabound tended to slink into a corner and stay quiet.

"You do know that you're coming with me when I return to the city?" Bakura inquired casually, sometime that afternoon.

"What?" said Kisara, rather startled.

"It's a virtual invitation for you to escape," he said, a little put-off by her lack of enthusiasm. "Despite what I'm sure that bastard Set told you, I do actually honor those who deserve my respect. If, while in the city, you do manage to escape me, then you can do as you please. At least I actually acknowledge when it's my own fault for messing up on something."

Kisara would have been taken aback with this considerable offer had she not known him better. He would be giving her an unmeasurably outstanding opportunity with no reasonable advantage for him. Thing was that she knew it would be quite impossible to escape Bakura under any sensible conditions, and this was yet another attempt at gaining her trust.

Of course, not everything he did was for that purpose. It was indeed true that he seemed to consider a good few things to be below him, something Kisara could never have guessed before. Now that she thought about it, he really hadn't done a thing to harm her since he took her away from Set. He was a passive creature for the most part, but, then again, considering the situation, how could he be otherwise?

He hadn't killed or hurt her- but that was because killing would ruin the whole ransom idea, and hurting her might have resulted in a coma, and her ka would come and kill him. He couldn't really force her into some demented slavery because there wasn't anything he could order to do while keeping a low profile. Going anywhere outside the cave would result in her being cut up by one of the bandits outside, possibly resulting in coma, see problem one.

He couldn't- well, actually he -could- rape her, only he really didn't seem interested in the prospect. This had been her greatest fear upon arrival and she had, in response, checked for any signs of perversion, sexual innuendo, and general lustfulness, and was relieved if not greatly confused to find none. Bakura always seemed to be preoccupied with something or another, as though anything physical about Kisara were superfluous to anything he could possibly care for. She had observed a similar trait in Set. In fact, they also shared the rather laid back approach to life, the spiteful reproach toward the Pharaoh, their near neglect of their captives, and the idea that winning over her trust would certainly be a good thing.

But to think they were similar was a silly business. She might have laughed at the thought, had she the enthusiasm to do so. The comparison was not unlike something someone would think up between good and evil. Nice as a concept, but in all practical manner she would never find the knowledge necessary. After all, had it not been Set, not Bakura, who had saved her life and gained- effectively- her trust?

But for all his obscurities, Bakura, in his natural state, was prone to attracting the attention of Kisara, especially when jotting down notes on what was presumably his revenge attack on the government. She was not entirely sure why this concept was so fascinating to her at the start, in fact, for a very long time she still puzzled over the fact. It was only presently that she realized, with a start, that what had been attracting her concerns for so long was in fact that Bakura could read. And not only that, but write as well.

This amazed her greatly. No one she had known in her youth had been able to write. Not even Set could- and this had bothered the priest greatly, mind you. Akunadin- who had been, for the most part, his overseer and guardian- had not approved of the idea of royalty toiling over labor that could be easily done by servants. He had, as of late, been attempting to sneak self-taught lessons to himself, but until he could achieve full literacy, he was slave to his personal scribe, to whom he spent at least one hour a day dictating this and that.

Learning to become a scribe meant a dawn-to-dusk day of sitting in a stuffy adobe room in a class that didn't come cheap for years-on-end. It was more of an investment for the distant future than an apprenticeship. And thus it made absolutely no sense that Bakura could know how to write. And teaching one's self took dedicated time, effort, and a certain amount of genius that she was quite sure Bakura lacked. She could not accept it.

Of course, she couldn't generally accept anything about him, anyway.

This may sound rather blunt and sudden, but it did so happen that Bakura discovered a cave in his hideout. Now, I know it's not very usual for someone to miss something as large as a cave, but when things are hidden, things like that happen. It wasn't really his doing that had found the cave, either. It had just so happened that he had finally figured out some method by which to order his captive around, that of instructing her grouchily to pick up a bucket of water and carry it over to the other side of the cave- he was getting desperate- and she had tripped and spilled most of it onto Diabound. It had been the snake half that had been splashed, but the human half, so startled by the sudden movement, retreated suddenly- as in retreated most of his arm into the wall, which just happened to be hallow. And all this could've happened quite without Bakura noticing had not a large chunk of rock hit him on the head in the process.

It was at this point that he took some actual interest in the prospect, and commanded that the wall be beat down until the cavity inside became easily accessible, a command that Diabound carried out with great ease.

Now, Bakura was actually quite something for such exploratory movements as spelunking. He was known- or rather, he knew himself- for taking up a few bizarre, solitary habits. Generally ones in deserted places that absolutely no one else did. He enjoyed his little pastimes greatly, and when he did something he enjoyed, he tended to forget certain things, like the fact that Kisara was standing there, with absolutely no idea of what to do. Fear of scolding made her follow him in, and he made no remark to her as she did this.

"This is new," Bakura murmured, running his fingers along the cave wall. "Very new. Someone must've forced a cave in. This definitely wasn't blocked off originally." Kisara made no effort to answer. When Bakura talked to himself, he didn't like anyone else butting in on the conversation. Kisara, silly girl that she was, really couldn't see anything all that special about the cave. But apparently Bakura did. He ran his fingers along the wall, examining the minerals that made it up, picking up some unfathomable information from it.

They went on for a while in silence (this was at least partially attributed to the fact that Diabound was too large to fit, regardless of whether he was traveling in a physical form or not) until they at length came to a small crevice that seemed to say, All right, we're all done here, go home, although there was a good deal of cave left to explore. At least, it was at this point that Bakura stopped entirely to examine the wall even more closely than before.

"A warning." he muttered, tapping his finger against the stone. "Fairly customary. Tends to scare away the little children. Not that there's anything actually the-" But he was cut short by the thing that wasn't actually there, which let out a low but piercing screech.

"Oh," said Bakura, staring down the rather large guardian beast that had materialized a few feet away from him, and did another thing he knew how to do fairly well- he ran. If he could just get the beast to follow him through the entrance, he reasoned, it would be within Diabound's range. This would, of course, require that he himself be out of range, which would generally require his hostage be out of range as well, which, as he realized with a start, she was not.

She was indeed standing right where he had left her, no, had fallen prostrate at the feet of the giant beast, looking quite pathetic, if not entirely dead.

Bakura screamed in frustration. "That girl has no instincts!" he raved, "No wonder she keeps getting stoned by those people!" And he ran back to get her, just as the great beast was leaning down, snapping its beak-

And then he saw it. A huge, winged dragon, blindingly white and beautiful. It seemed far too large to fit inside the cramped cave, and yet it did, and with a smooth elegance that seemed unfit for any living creature. It thrashed its tail and roared, keeping its wings and hind legs protectively over its master.

Bakura took the hint and hid behind the nearest rock, fully aware of what would happen if it turned around and saw him.

The Blue Eyes White Dragon, however, seemed preoccupied enough with its original target enough not to notice him. It effortlessly blew apart the beast and watched it shrivel back into the rock, then nudged Kisara lovingly to make sure she was all right. Seeing as she was, it folded its wings and faded away, leaving a magical silence that left the great and notorious thief lord in awe. It also left Diabound in awe, but of quite a different sort entirely.

Bakura soon went to pick up Kisara's small, fallen form. She was quite entirely unconscious, with no apparent intention of waking up for at least an hour. He came out of the cave rather awkwardly to a scowling snake.

"Perdy . . . she-dwagon. . . ." the human half was saying, staring off into nothingness. In his little Ka mind, little images of hearts and dragons were flying about in his mind.

"Oh, just shut up!" snapped the snake.

Bakura did not inquire further into the matter.

Kisara awoke as the sun was setting with only a vague recollection of the matters of the preceding events. She'd been dreaming for a while, and the headache-inducing rays of the sun were something of an unwelcome comfort.

She'd been having this one dream for a while now- it was not of an unpleasant sort, and in that way she often took refuge in it, let it wrap around her like the warm blankets she'd had back home. It was a strange dream- she was a grey landscape, grey as in the hour just before dawn, and yet the sun never rose. That place had stopped, frozen forever in that hour before daylight. It felt tranquil, yet sad.

Sometimes she could see further, and there were trees, black and barren trees littered about, devoid of all growth, yet they seemed not to be foreboding to her, she feared them not. And sometimes, sometimes in the midst of all this, she could see glimmers of gold hanging from the branches, but she dared not touch them, and she always woke up before she could find what they were.

She couldn't quite figure what it meant. She looked up and saw Bakura, gazing casually off into the distant horizon, into the city, no doubt. She noticed Diabound, who had a curious look about his human face. She wondered briefly if her Ka had tried to attack him.

She wasn't really sure- she wrapped her arms around herself as night enveloped the area. The moon was bright that night, and the stars cast their smiling gazes at her. She almost wanted to smile back, but she found she could not, not quite.

After a time, she looked back at Bakura. He was at that point staring at nothing in particular, a point on the ceiling, perhaps, but nothing more.

There was a curious look about him, too, but she didn't think it was about her Ka.

Somehow it seemed too grim for that.

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Me begin symbolic pattern with the way I close all the chapters to this fic. There are also other clues, too. Can you see them?

Current awards won by this fic:

The "Worst Pairing Ever With an Interesting Plot" trophy

The "For a Second I Thought You'd Sold Out, But You Made This Pairing Actually Make Sense, Hooray!" trophy

As for how Atemu died....well, use your imagination. He fell down the pit-like-thing and then the big Monty Python foot of wonderfulness smushed him like a bug, okay?

And I'm slightly disturbed by this creature called 'Melody.' Hugs and kisses for the review, but I somehow think you missed the concept that this is The One Pairing To Defend Against the Mushy and Romantic.

Oh. My God. Excuse the extra-longlong AN, but you people have to see this:

For those far too superior to the average human being to see this completely hilariously inaccurate site, I quote it:

"Kisara/Yami Bakura (-I don't know much about this couple, but a couple weirdos thought that she and Bakura had a past relationship. Bzzzt. Wrong.)"

Ordinarily, I would be laughing my head off at this, but it turns off the entire site is a joke-site . . . which, ironically, makes it suddenly very un-funny to me. I just think the person handled the irony and sarcasm in the wrong way. Also, judging by the rest of the content, this would suggest that thief Bakura/Kisara IS canon. And that pisses me off.