How many of you are getting bored of this story? Raise of hands please? Well, I dunno if I've made this far too boring by keeping it going, and I realize that it is a very very long story, but I hope I'm not boring you as far as to make you not want to read it…

Mariku's vision began to leave him and his body was beginning to give into the darkness that was taken him over. He was exhausted and now gasping for air, it felt like his chest was closing in on his heart and lungs and it was painful.

With all of this pain he was enduring the thought of saving Ryou seemed pretty pointless since he was having to go through this. He was then asking himself why he sacrificed himself to save some hikari just for some raider that he wanted to have forgotten about. He found himself asking such questions.

Through his blurred vision Mariku saw shadowed figures racing towards him. They were endowed with black robes that draped down over their ghostly figures. They carried large scicles with a sickly blade that was at the least six or seven feet long from what Mariku could make it out to be. They had piercing red eyes that bore into his own and had reduced him to trembling and actually fearing for his own life.

These robed figures were none other than the Reapers of this hellish land. Heading the group of four there was a much larger reaper that had chains dangling from almost every inch of his body and he wore skeletons as if they were a fashionable jewelry. The skeletons themselves screamed at Mariku as if to warn him of their fate; the same he would soon have to endure.

"Great…the welcoming committee…" Mariku said quietly and sarcastically.

The reapers surrounded the unlucky male and rose their blades high in the air before bringing them down swiftly and cutting into Mariku's flesh; repeating this painful process as a form of torture that they played out before killing their unfortunate victim. Mariku tried and tried, but he could not keep himself from crying out in pain as they tore away at his human vessile.

Bakura had left not more than half an hour prior to Mariku fading out of Bakura's mind space. His mind was clouded with worry for the other; he continued to run the worst case scenarios in his mind as if they were really going to happen and he couldn't bare it.

He looked frantically for a proper portal into the realm of shadows and hoped and wished that he was not too late to save Mariku from such a terrible fate as death in that land of the dead.

He felt a strong energy reaking from in front of the fire hydrant. He cocked his brow and shrugged before tearing open the entrance to the Shadow Realm. He stepped in and the portal closed behind him.

Bakura looked around and saw nothing but darkness, grave markers, and skeletons hanging from the dead branches of surrounding trees. The raider instantly felt a strong pressure starting to close in on him. He remembered this s strength very well. He sighed and walked off north of the entrance he had discovered. As he went he called out Mariku's name.

The tomb keeper winced the moment he was given a chance to do so. The reaper's moved a foot or two away from Mariku and held high their weaponry and moved apart as the larger reaper came in through the surrounding assasins.

"Who the fuck are you supposed to be…?" Mariku growled at the leader.

The reaper gave him no answer and picked him up by the neck and held him high off of the ground, he dangled there helplessly, clawing at the demon's hand and gasping for air. "You….bastard…." he managed to squeeze out between both lightly blue tinted lips.

Bakura was walking along more quickly and was looking around frantically before he heard the one familiar voice he had come searching for. His hair spiked up sharply and he bolted off towards the sound of pain coming from a new direction. "I'm coming Mariku! Hold on!" He called and ran more quickly.

He saw the circle of reapers and the taller one in the middle holding Mariku up high by the neck. He leapt into the air somewhat over them all and came down spinning about and knocking all of the reapers away, landing on the tallest one and knocking him down to the ground quickly.

Mariku had also fallen to the ground with the leader of the assasins. Bakura ran to his side and knelt down beside him and sat him up. Mariku was bleeding from every angle; he was bruised terrible, many shades of blue, purple, and red; his clothing was ripped to a great extent and he looked like he had endured hell. "M-Mariku?" Bakura whispered and looked his face over frantically for some sign of life.

Mariku whimpered slightly and that was proof enough that he was still alive. Bakura heard the rustling of cloth as the reapers regain their height from all sides of him. The shadow assasins standing before him started to creep closer to him and Mariku; he began to back away from them, and then suddenly, one of the reaper's sliced him widely on his back with his scicle.

He had not time to scream in pain and agony, instead he leapt in the air and kicked the head off of the reaper that had injured him, and then picked Mariku up quickly in both arms and fled the enemy.

Mariku struggled to open his pain-filled eyes, he got as far as to see a new blur before him. His sight began to better and he recognized the pure white spiked hair, but he didn't recognize the pained expression on his hero's face. "Bakura…are you injured….?" He was able to whisper.

"It doesn't matter right now. Can you still breathe?" Bakura inquired himself.

He completely ignored Bakura's inquiry and gave him a grim look. "I…I told you not to come…"

Bakura glanced down at Mariku for a moment and then back at the grave soil pathway. "I wasn't about to let the shadows take you from me." Bakura hadn't realized that he had said what he did, but Mariku was on the verge of tears. He smiled thinly and winced when Bakura had leapt over the grave marker.

"Sorry." Bakura apologized and tried to be more carefully as he ran for the exit to the living world with the spectors close behind him, their scicles held forward and ready to kill.

Bakura glanced back and saw the spectors gaining on him quickly; he began to panic for the first time in his life, not for himself, but because Mariku was fading quickly and he knew that he would die if anything ever happened to the love of his life.

He reached the exit and tore it open, leaping out of the hole and landing on both feet with Mariku held against his body tightly. He glanced back and then quickly lunged away from the portal as he closed down tightly on the reaper's scicle and snapped it into two pieces.

He watched the sharper half fall to the ground and sighed with relief that none of the spectors had been able to follow him through the portal. He looked back at Mariku who was unconscious and on the ground beside him. Bakura smacked himself across the face because when he had lunged away Mariku had hit his head on something and he was bleeding from his left brow.

"Damn it," he cursed and picked up his unconscious boyfriend and carried him home quickly to take care of his many injuries.

Once they had arrived Ryou was awake and sitting quietly on the couch curled up in a blanket. Bakura removed his jacket while juggling Mariku and tossed the blood-stained cloth aside. He stumbled into the living room and looked to Ryou who was shocked at the sight of Mariku and had not yet seen the mess on Bakura's back.

"Bakura! What happened to him?" Ryou quickly stood and ran to the pair and gently pushed Mariku's hair out of his face. "I need a medical kit immediately. It is upstairs under my bed." Bakura had ordered and without waiting Ryou had gone to retrieve it.

Bakura dragged Mariku to the dining room and sat down with Mariku on a chair in front of him. Mariku just sat there, head tipped back in his unconscious state. Ryou quickly returned with the kit and handed it off to Bakura. He then hurried to the kitchen to dampen a few clothes to clean off the blood-dredged Mariku.

He handed off the first cloth to Bakura and went to open the kit while the raider gently brushed Mariku's blood heavy skin with its wetness. After wiping him clean he would bandage the area and go to the next, all the while not even giving second thought to the injury on his back.

I'll drop it there and start on the next chapter. Lata!