Part 2 (Chapter 7) – Not so Innocent Anymore
"Hey," a sweet voice spoke up behind Mai.
"Yipes!" Mai looked around, but Seto had already left. Turning around slowly, she made eye contact with the slightly shorter Kira. "What do you want?"
Kira shrugged. "I just said 'hey'. What's wrong? I'm not allowed to say hi to my friends anymore?"
Mai scowled, "It's not that and you know it."
"Whatever you say." Kira grinned at her, "You must really be nervous about something though. You jumped a good ten feet."
"Right," Mai replied sarcastically. "l don't know what you're planning, but I'm not going to fall for it."
Kira held open her hands. "Mai. What gives you the idea I'm out to get you?"
"Maybe because you are," Mai pointed out. "I already saw what you did to Seto."
Kira laughed. "I told you yesterday, 'no hard feelings'."
"You also told me to watch my step. I don't know about you, but I sure consider that a threat."
"Whatever," Kira didn't seem bothered. "Anyway, there was a food fight in the cafeteria. I couldn't resist. That's all."
For the first time, Mai noticed that Kira had applesauce in her hair. Still, it wasn't enough to convince her that Kira wouldn't still try something.
Kira shook her head after a moment, "You're paranoid, Mai. I've got to go. See ya around, and have a nice afternoon."
Mai uneasily watched her go. Yup. I'm definitely in trouble here.
"So then after you've drawn your cards, if you have a monster you want to use, place it here," Yugi motioned to the marked areas on the table. It was after school, and he was following through on his promise to teach Kira the basics of Duel Monsters. "You'll put the rest of your deck here...and this spot will be your graveyard. Whenever you use a magic or trap card, or whenever a monster is destroyed, that's where you put it."
Kira nodded, trying not to let her impatience show. True, the game and all its rules were new to her, it was just that a lot of it was common sense. And althought she still wasn't sure about learning the game, the little girl in her dreams had been so insistent on it. Besides, she couldn't let a perfectly good deck of cards go to waste. So she sat quietly, letting Yugi continue.
"Each turn you get to draw a card. You can place as many cards on the field as you want, face-up or face-down. Face-up monsters can be placed in attack or defense mode. You can decide what's best based on what's already on the field and what each monster's stats are. See?" Yugi pulled out Silver Fang.
"The 1200 is the attack, and the 800 is the defense points. In head-to-head combat, the monster with the higher attack total wins, unless you can counteract with some sort of magic or trap. And if a monster is in defense mode, that's how much of an attack it can withstand. Monsters destroyed in attack mode take away from your life points. Monsters in defense mode don't..." Yugi continued to lecture Kira on a few strategic points, how to use different effects, and how tributes worked.
"Sheesh," Joey was gathering his things together. "I didn't need that much training, did I?"
"No," Tea laughed. "More." Joey made a face, but Tea continued. "It took you a week just to figure out what happened when Yugi used his Monster Reborn for the first time."
"Did not," Joey grumbled.
"Hey, man!" Tristan stuck his head in the door. "We gotta go."
"Right!" Joey gave a wave to everybody and winked briefly at Kira. "We're taking off. Catch you all tomorrow."
"Bye, Joey," Yugi looked up to return a wave.
Kira nodded to both the guys. "Have a good time."
"We will," he smirked. "We will."
Mai sat watching for a little while longer, trying to push from her mind the couple uneasy looks Tea sent her. To her utmost surprise, nothing bad had happened yet. I'm an idiot, Mai told herself. Kira was just psyching me out. I should have figured - what with all the sweet acting and all. Still, Mai had stayed after to make extra sure. And from what she could tell now, Kira and Yugi were busy in a practice duel and showed no signs of leaving soon.
"You heading out yet?" she asked Tea.
Tea looked at her for a moment, then glanced back at Yugi and Kira. "No. I think I'll stay and watch for a while."
"Suit yourself," Mai shrugged. "I've got plenty of work tonight, so I'll see you tomorrow."
"Bye," Tea replied.
"See you tomorrow, Mai," Yugi spoke without looking up.
"Yeah," Kira did glance up briefly. "Have a nice night."
Mai narrowed her eyes and muttered under her breath. "Loser." Kira continued to smile a moment longer before returning her attention to the game. Mai could just hear their voices as she left.
"Ha! The Flame Champion - with an attack strength of 1900!"
"Not bad...but you've still got a lot to learn. Reveal face-down card as the Dark Magician!"
Mai began smiling to herself the moment she left the school building. She had been wrong after all. Here she was, home-free, and her greatest enemy of the moment was too wrapped up in a game of Duel Monsters to even consider coming after her. Or maybe Kira had just been too chicken to confront her. They had taken care of Seto during a food fight, but maybe they just weren't bold enough to confront her personally. Maybe...
SPLASH.
Mai's musings were cut short as ice cold water flew across her shirt. She shrieked, but the sound only brought a second chilly burst. With a suddenly fierce anger, Mai whirled about on the source.
The school lot was strangely vacant, but a third splash on her back told otherwise. Mai whirled about again. Still no one. She looked back in the first direction only to see a bright red spot in her vision before the overloaded water balloon broke across her face. Two more attacks came from the second direction.
By now, Mai's carefully sculpted hairstyle was a mess, raggedy and loose about her face, and her clothes clung to her chilled skin. Three more balloons arched across Mai's path, one hitting against her arm, and a second one filling her shoes with water.
"I saw you that time!" Mai raged. A hand had appeared to throw and quickly disappeared into a nearby bush. Mai stormed over, and yanked aside some of the green branches. However, before she could see anything else, her attacker had dumped the rest of a large bucket of water down her front. Mai could only stand and sputter as a second bucket was dumped on her moments later from behind.
With two rather familiar laughs, the attackers took off running while Mai rubbed furiously to get the water from her eyes. She managed to catch a glimpse of the second before he was completely around the corner.
"Joey Wheeler! You are so dead!!!"
"Hey guys," Yugi walked in the classroom moments before the bell rang.
"Hey," Kira gave him a cheerful wave. "Good morning."
"Hi, Mai," Yugi spoke to her, with a slightly nervous smile.
"Yugi," she gave him a brief nod.
He placed his things on his desk. "You're not sore about yesterday, are you? It was all in fun, you know."
Mai shook her head. "Nah." She glared over at Joey and Tristan who froze in the middle of their conversation, then looked back at Yugi. "Those two have it coming. But all-in-all, it's like Kira said: no hard feelings."
"Uh, right," Yugi sat down feeling rather less happy than when he had first come in. However, only moments later, he shot back up, "Oh no!"
The whole class glanced over, and the teacher looked up from his attendance sheet. "Something the matter, Mr. Mutou?"
Mai was clutching her sides and cracking up, and even Seto had to hide his face behind a hand. Horrified, Yugi placed a hand on his seat, and lifted it only to find his palm coated with a thick, black color. Paint. He slowly looked at the back of his jacket and pants then raised wide eyes to meet a shocked expression on Tea's face before running out of the room.
"I shouldn't be surprised. I really shouldn't," Kira was mumbling darkly to herself. "It's only fair, and we agreed to no hard feelings." But she had felt extremely sorry for Yugi that morning. They all knew he didn't handle embarrassment easily, and even Seto and Mai had stopped laughing when he had run out of the room. But that didn't mean they were going to stop at their tricks. Yugi had ended up walking around all morning with a "Wet Paint" sign stuck to his back before Tristan finally pointed it out to him.
"Kira?" the teacher interrupted her thoughts. "Where's your book?"
With a sigh, Kira lifted the thing from the floor with two fingers. It was completely black and still a little sticky, just like the whole inside of her locker.
Frowning, the teacher marked it down. "That's twice in a row something has happened to your text. I don't want to see it again."
"Yes, ma'am."
Joey and Tristan both ended up with black sneakers during the next period, and got an hour detention after school scrubbing paint from the hallways. Then, during lunchtime, the same hallways were egged, and empty cartons were found in both Seto and Mai's lockers which they had "forgotten" to close.
"So now Seto and Mai have to clean halls after school too," Kira was telling Yugi. He stood in the door of his science class, as she turned to walk down the stairs. "Catch ya after school and be careful."
"I will..." he trailed off, as Kira, not watching where she was going ran into someone from the opposite direction.
"Oh!" she looked up surprised. "I'm sorry. I..."
"I'll bet," a voice growled. An elbow flew into Kira's side with enough force to shove her breath harshly from her body. Losing her balance, Kira let go of her books, and in almost slow motion, they tumbled to the floor. But the person kept shoving, almost deliberately, and Kira continued to tumble backwards.
Yugi opened his mouth, but couldn't manage a single sound. It was as if time stopped. A hush flew over the students passing nearby as everyone froze to watch. Her arms flying loosely through the air, Kira squeezed her eyes shut as her legs lifted up and her head crashed into the edge of one of the steps. Her body rolled sideways and continued to tumble in a odd sort of rotation, dragged down by gravity to the floor below where Kira collapsed, face-down, one arm spread above her.
"Ryou!" Tea, watching from nearby, was the first to find her voice.
'Ryou' sneered at her. "What's your problem?" He gave her a shove, though not quite as hard. Tea landed on her bottom and her shoulder slammed against the nearby wall.
Kali? Wha...? Kira felt her voice, thick and drawn out.
Kira! The dark spirit looked surprised to see her. But how?
Kira looked through the shadows around her, I...I'm not sure. What happened?
Kali moved closer to examine Kira. Open your eyes.
Huh? They are...
Your real ones. Now.
"Bakura!" Yugi was furious now. "What did you do?!"
Slowly, Kira forced her lids open. Voices echoed in her ears, all jumbled for a moment before they began to make sense. An achingly familiar voice was the first to cut into her mind:
"You tell me."
No... "Ryou," Kira whispered, and rolled over with a groan. She clutched her head almost immediately as a fresh wave of pain assaulted her consciousness. No! She wanted to scream. The torture was back; she could remember it like it had just happened. The beating. Her skin being torn against the rough ground. The knife.
Her side began to throb where her spirit had been wounded.
Yugi saw with the slightest bit of relief that Kira had regained consciousness. "Bakura!"
Kira looked up through watery eyes. "Bakura?"
"Tell me!" Yugi demanded harshly, a bit of Yami in his voice. "How could you?!"
"I don't see why you're so upset," Bakura shrugged. "The paint didn't seem to bother you so much this morning."
"The paint!" Yugi couldn't believe it. "That was my clothes. This is dangerous, Bakura. This is somebody's life."
But the evil spirit only shrugged. "So? That has little importance to me. You all were playing a few pranks. I thought I'd get in on the fun."
Kira?
"No!" Kira shrieked, this time out loud. She could almost feel the dark magic entering her, ripping her apart.
Kira call down!
"Help me," Kira moaned. She was crying now, and had lost sight of Yugi, Ryou, and all the others as the pain threatened to engulf her.
Unable to reply, Yugi glanced down at the terrified Kira. A couple teachers fought their way through the crowd of students to get to Kira. One of them tried to calm her down while the other ran to call for help. When he looked back at Bakura, he wasn't surprised to see that the dark spirit had already gone. With a sigh, he went over to Tea's side, making sure she was okay.
This 'game' wasn't so much fun anymore.
poor yugi - i can just see him looking all shocked about the whole paint thing... he's too innocently sweet...
the scene with Mai and the water balloons i was sorta inspired by a fic called What if? in which Yami Bakura and Yami Malik team up and attack Sailor Moon with water balloons. neways...
ya know, it's funny how things you read inspire you - sometimes subconsciously - but yeah - in that last little bit, kira came out a little more emotional than i planned, and as i read back on it, it keeps reminding me of the 9th Mars manga in which the main character (coincidentally also named Kira, i swear i didn't plan it) freaks out because things happen that remind her of her abused past. wierd, ain't it? anyways, you should read that.
and i'm rambling, but i'm in that mood tonite. (at least i did it after the story, huh? that way you could read without the guilt of skipping my notes beforehand...)
oh yeah, and before i forget - special thanks goes out to...
yingfa - i just missed your review last time i posted, but i assure you, i was overjoyed to get it! i hope to finish just as much! thanks again!
Christina - yay yay! i made someone laugh! i'm not much of a humor writer, so if i can make someone laugh, it's the high point of my life! thanks again for stickin' with me!
R Amythest - poem? glances back at her last entry oh... its a verse from my YuGiOh "Music to Duel By" CD. I give it five stars. I'm a sucker for the really corney anime music. I like all the songs on there.... heh heh...; oh, and KAWAII! CHIBI RYOU! I WANT....realizes where she is and waves nervously to reviewers uh...hi?
mom-mi-oh - Seto's cool too...i wanna steal his computer sometime - the one that talks and has an attitude....but yeah, i've got too many bishies as it is...don't really need anymore...
Fyredra - sorry, i just get too lazy to type out the full words. DM Duel Monsters. But u've prolly figured that one out by now... i dunno where i heard of the ketchup bombs - i haven't actually tried it myself (baka cafeteria doesn't have packets) but i've heard it works. and as much as i'd like them to keep up the practical jokes, ryou has different plans - find out soon... thanks again!
hope u all enjoyed the long chapter. i hope to be back soon...
(maybe i'll even have a hundred review by then...)
pathetically crosses fingers
oh well....cya guys soon!
joey