Book Dragon: "Sorry. School's been hell and I had writer's block. This probably won't update every three days again, though I have an idea where this will be going so don't worry. I promise I will finish this. I have the ending already written out. Please be patient. And Thank You for the Reviews!"

Chapter 30: Into the Jungle

Silence.

Yami stared at the words. There was something clearly unsettling about them. His skin prickled and goose-bumped even with the humidity around them, feeling a sudden chilling trickling in his veins. Yugi didn't speak. There was no sound for a second as that strange uneasy feeling washed over him until Joey broke it.

"Who the hell is Beore?" Yami didn't answer him. He stood rigidly staring a blank stare. The question was not 'who' but more of a what. He raised his finger to ask how she, he, or it knew Kaede when more words swept the surface of the mirror.

The Black Emperor rises. King of Sand must find madam before It eats. Behind mirror is passage to other room. Luck Good. Good Bye.

Yami watched the words vanish in front of him and stared at the empty fogged up glass as the feeling of discomfort increased insanely. The words were echoing in his head like ringing bells. Ringing dark bells.

"…Eats?" Yugi asked inside the chambers of his mind. Eats.

"Yami?" The Egyptian King, the King of dessert, the King of Sand, woke from his trance and looked at the man next to him. It had been concern in his questioning voice. He waved his hand, saying in the gesture he was fine when he really wasn't. He wondered for the first time if this might actually be bigger than he had originally thought. And if so how large? He didn't know. All he knew was that when Joey opened the mirror, where you'd usually find toothbrushes and painkiller when your head hurt like hell the next morning after a crazy party, there was now a dim lit thing and a passage barely big enough for them to squeeze through.

He sighed, knowing that at least in a small way this wasn't his going to be his day.

(…)

He was sick of finding dead ends. The TombRobber stormed his way down the black hallway, his Ring clenched in his palm and pointing ahead of him, ending gold light up at his face and making him look more monstrous than thought possible. His rage was thick and deep. Not even Javas asking if they were fine and if he could do anything changed his direction of thinking. Nope. It was very deep; too deep to even be needling Marik, who would jump at every shift in shadow and kept annoyingly close behind him. The man was unsettled, and that was understandable. He'd feel better when they were in the light, were his eyes were better, and he had his rod back. Then he'd be as right as rain.

TombRobber expected him to have better night vision than that. He had grown up underground for Ra's sake. It was probably a spell that was making the black more black than usual. He was protected with his Ring, but Marik was left bare. He'd would've been messing with his head had he been in a lighter mood. He wasn't. He was closing to killing someone. The thought of killing the stranger was making a sinister smile peel out onto his face. He forced himself that he had been worried because this Earthy Magical shit had played around with his emotions. Like a little kid pulling a puppet apart by the strings.

His pace was fast, and Marik had to jog even with his longer stride. All he wanted, T.R found, was to get the girl back, to rip who ever took her away to shreds very, very, slowly. Break free from this idiot bond. Kill Bakura. Kill the Pharaoh. Rule the world. And have his way with-

A sliver of light blinked into sight. T.R bolted toward it, leaving Marik momentarily panicked, just for a moment, until he broke out into sprinting as well. He followed the bobbing light source a head of him, feeling better at the light crack, and suddenly started by the force and sickening noise the door made under the pressure of T.R's foot. The door caved easily and Marik was met with a blast of light that made his heart leap.

(…)

Yami climbed down from the open cabinet, careful not to step on the smashed bits of plates. Joey was flexing his shoulders, which Yami found himself doing soon after. Being stuck in a two by two foot crawl space for ten minutes was enough to start his early case of arthritis in his hands and make his back a little uncomfortable.

"Did you have to make a mess?" He asked the blonde, trying get out of the disaster area. Joey stopped clicking his hands and raised them over his head.

"How else was I going to get out? I couldn't pass them back to you."

"Shoving them out onto the floor was the best solution?"

"Seemed like it at the time." They had been Bakura's best plates. Yami rolled his eyes, but decided not to argue. He knew, that Joey knew, that the sudden noise had made him jump out of the conversation with Yugi as well as the deep thought process he was in, had made him slam his head against the top of the passage and made him see stars. Joey was nice enough not to point that out, so he decided no one needed to know about that. Like Kaiba.

"What the hell was that!" Kaiba's voice buzzed in his ear. Yami and Joey looked at each other.

"Some plates fell." Yami replied.

"Why?" Joey shrugged at him, but the grin on his face was growing too quickly.

"Only way to get out." The Pharaoh muttered. There was silence from the other end of the line. Before Kaiba could ask the question of how the hell they ended up coming out of the kitchen cabinet, the loudest bang in the door came out behind them, and Yami found himself dodging a fast moving body. It narrowly missed him, slipped on the shards of broken clay and hit the floor like a sack of flower with an unearthly thud.

Looking down he saw it was a very fuming TombRobber sprawled on his back and nearly laughed his ass off.

"Watch out, there are broken plates on the floor." Joey said a little too late, the grin now fully on his face.

"I…noticed." Robber said in a curt grunt, looking up at the ceiling with madness brimming in his eyes. Yami decided to hide the smile on his face by pretending to cough, covering his mouth, and walk toward the door in which Marik was hurrying up out of the dark abyss. He was glad. The look of the door closing was comforting.

The edgy look on Marik's face, sadly, was not.

"What happened to you?" Joey asked as Bakura slowly rolled over onto his side with a silent groan. Marik shrugged, looking at Joey with the look of a man saved from doom and simply smiled.

"Long story." He said wearily. By this time Yami had regained his composure and T.R was up and dusting himself off, pretending that slipping on plates and falling down like an idiot didn't just happen to him. Joey made no comment; the grin just came back.

"Where to now?" Joey asked, "Should we try the refrigerator next?" T.R and Marik just stared at him. Yami rolled his eyes and decided, again, just not to say anything.

Instead, he went to the other door, the one that usually would've led into the family room, but who knows where the hell it went now, being carefully not to disturb the chairs or anything else that might blow up or what have you if it were moved, and gingerly placed his hand on the door knob. It turned easily.

A wall of green stalks met his vision, wild and over grown, and unyielding to what could be behind them, though of course, he had a funny feeling that it would just be more plants behind them. Like a Jungle.

"Green House." He heard Joey say boredly. Before anyone could suggest finding another way, the unsheathing sound of a knife made Yami turn. TombRobber was coming at him, his eyes filled with a barely contained madness. A butcher knife was clenched in his right hand.

Yami was out of his way in a flash.

The stalks came down like confetti as Bakura took two wide and powerful slashes at them and stepped through the opening, disappearing into the greenness. The other three adults just looked at each other and silently agreed that, yes; following was the better idea and did just that.

They followed wordlessly as a tiny amount of the rage shimmering in the boy was taken out on the forest of long lime green shoots, all of which fell easily at his hand and make-shift machete. Sap was thick on the sharp end of the blade and he was starting to get more than splattered with the sticky stuff. Yami thought it looked too much like blood splatter to watch him for long. He kept his eyes and ears open to the green wall-like plants around them.

(…)

Kaiba drummed his fingers on the table, his blue eyes filled with a fierce irritation as he told himself that, yes, she would shut up eventually. She would. She had to. How else was she going to breath probably? She couldn't just go on and on and on like that. There was no way. No. Damn. Way.

He cracked after five minutes.

"-and I couldn't figure out why Matt was being such an ass at the time, you probably wouldn't know, Javas, you're too sweet like that-"

"WILL YOU SHUT THE HELL UP!" Silence. Javas and Christa looked up at him with round eyes. His hands were pressed on the table, and the cup of coffee was dangerously near the edge of the table as he stood bent over it. When he stopped shaking he sat down, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes and listened to nothing. Listened to bliss. Silence was bliss. It was-

"-is your dad always so up tight?"

A coffee mug smashed against the wall.

(…)

"I think we're going in circles."

"We can't be going in circles. We'd find the path we made."

"Can't the house just make it grow back or something?" No comment. If anything else was said, Yami didn't catch it due to the loud buzz in his ear as Kaiba came back.

"Tell me your close." Growled his voice. Yami paused at the tone, unsure whether to tell the truth or lie. That tone couldn't be good.

"Uh…"

"MR. KAIBA THREW A MUG AT ME!" wailed a high pitched female voice and was followed by sobbing. Oh yes, lying was much better.

"We're close." Yami replied. He could hear Javas trying to calm her down in the background, around Kaiba's strange breathing, while wondering how exactly to shut off the ear piece and if Kaiba would have him killed after he did it.

"You better be." He hoped he was. The only thing that could result from Kaiba being this angry would be a murdered girl or his whole house destroyed. He was beginning to like Christa a little more. She was actually stepping on his toes enough so that he showed it.

He was grinning despite himself.

Though, that was wiped off is face when Marik yelled.

Book Dragon: "As always, please Review!"