In a Shallow Grave

x.x.x

After Seto had finished his duel and collected the star chips he had won, he descended from the dueling platform and found Yugi happily talking with a tanned blonde boy. Mokuba climbed down from the large rock he'd chosen for his seat, hurrying over to the group.

"Wasn't that the greatest duel ever?" Mokuba demanded proudly. "My brother is the best!"

"I'm hardly the best," Seto said. "But it's nice you think so. Who's your new friend, Yugi?"

"This is Malik Ishtar," Yugi introduced. "We've been talking, he's really nice. He's from Egypt, too!"

"Egypt, huh?" Seto murmured. He frowned thoughtfully at Malik. "Seems like a lot of interesting things have been turning up from Egypt lately. But if Yugi likes you, you're welcome to stick around."

"Speaking of weird things from Egypt," Mokuba murmured, looking around the surrounding woods suspiciously. "Where'd the Tomb Robber go?"

"Tomb Robber?" Malik asked, his eyes widening a little. From what his darker side had said, that would probably be the holder of the Millennium Ring.

"He means Bakura," Yugi explained to Malik. "He's kinda been… following us around lately."

"More like stalking Seto!" Mokuba put in. "He's not very nice at all. It's weird that he's not here though…"

"What's the matter, little dragon?" said Bakura, emerging from the woods, dragging something heavy behind him. "Miss me?"

"Hardly," Mokuba muttered. "What'cha got there?"

"Lunch," Bakura explained. He dragged a cowering Noa into the clearing. "Found the little voyeur spying in the bushes. From the trail, it looks like he's been following us for a while. Friend of yours?"

Seto groaned. "Noa, I told you to stay the hell away from me."

Malik blinked, eyeing the sniveling boy on the ground, then looking at Seto. "Just how many stalkers do you have, anyway?"

"Too many." Seto glared at Noa, then at Bakura, before grabbing his backpack and turning away. "Those two are just the most annoying of them all."

Bakura's grin was predatory, like a cat watching a mouse it planned to tear apart for the sheer fun of it. He grabbed Noa's shirt collar, hauling him up to his feet. "Let me kill him for you, Seto."

Seto tensed, wondering if Bakura realized he'd just phrased that as a command. "You can if you want to," he said slowly.

Noa yelped, trying to struggle out of Bakura's grip. "Seto! You can't mean that! I wasn't doing anything wrong, I didn't mean anything, I was just…"

"Stalking him," Bakura finished for him, holding out Noa's binoculars. "I've seen the way you hang all over him. It's disgusting."

"Oh yeah," Mokuba muttered. "Like you're so much better. You may be able to tell Seto what to do, but I am not going to let you kill anybody. Not even a little worm like Noa." He stomped down hard on Bakura's foot.

Bakura let out a startled cry of pain, dropping Noa. Noa quickly scrambled to hide behind Seto, peering over at Bakura fearfully. Seto just sighed, watching the whole thing with a long-suffering sort of look. Yugi's violet eyes blended into crimson, and Yami carefully stepped between Mokuba and Bakura, to protect the boy from what was sure to be Bakura's swift revenge.

And a hundred different plans for revenge came instantly to Bakura's mind as he glared at Mokuba. They ranged from swift death to tearing Mokuba's soul into tiny pieces and trapping each within a different duel monsters card. It was only Ryou's swift intervention that stopped Bakura from trying any of these options.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you!"

"Well you're not me," Bakura snarled back at Ryou, clutching at the Millennium Ring and feeling its power surge. "If you were me, you'd want to kill him now too."

"So he hurt your foot, big deal, you'll get over it," Ryou said quickly. "He didn't break anything. Besides, if you think about it, that was really MY foot he just stepped on, anyway."

"I'm not going to let some runt of a child get away with that."

"Well, if you insist," Ryou said with a sigh. "But Seto will be so upset if you kill his little brother." When Bakura paused, Ryou pressed the point. "You know how much Mokuba means to Seto. More than his own soul. Which really is what got Seto into this mess in the first place."

Bakura glowered, but finally relaxed his aggressive stance. He eyed the Pharaoh and Mokuba with contempt, then turned away. "Well come on already. We're supposed to be meeting up with the others." Without even waiting for a response to that, he walked down the path into the woods.

The others blinked after him in confusion.

"What do you suppose that was all about?" Malik wondered aloud.

"I don't know. I was sure he was gonna hurt me for that…" Mokuba said.

"Well what do you know…" Yami said. "Maybe the Tomb Robber is developing a conscience after all."

"I doubt it," Seto muttered. "Come on, the others are probably at the caverns by now. And you-" He glared at Noa. "Don't follow us!"

Noa watched as the group followed the trail after Bakura. He'd been caught by surprise once, but it wasn't going to happen again. He grabbed his binoculars off the ground, dusting them off, then determinedly followed after Seto.

x.x.x

Joey, Mai and Duke were waiting for Yugi and the others when they arrived. Joey spotted them first, jumping up from his seat and waving at them.

"Check it out!" Joey said, holding out his gloved hand, where three new star chips gleamed on the cuff. "That makes six of them. Those duelists didn't know what hit them!"

"We're pretty sure it was his body odor that hit them first," Duke added in a conspiratorial tone.

"Hey, shut up!" Joey snapped at him.

"That's great, Joey!" Yugi said. "At this rate, we probably will make it to the castle by lunch. Where's the next dueling arena?" He dug out his map, frowning at it. "There should be one around here somewhere."

"I think," Malik said quietly, "the next arena is down there." He pointed a ways down the path, to where the entrance of a cave was half-hidden by scraggly shrubs. The path disappeared down into the gaping entrance.

"Well if our next challenge is down there, then let's go!" Joey said. "I'm on a roll, nobody can beat me now!"

"Well, if you insist," Yugi said with a laugh. He followed after as Joey sprinted into the cave.

Even with their large group, they all fit within the cave entrance. After only a few yards in, everything was already enshrouded in darkness. Joey and Seto dug their flashlights out of their path, shining the beams of light down the long tunnel.

"I can't see a thing," Mai complained. "Are you sure the next arena is down here? Why would anybody in their right mind put a dueling platform down here?"

"That's what the map said," Yugi murmured. "It should be around here somewhere, probably not much farther, and-" He yelped suddenly as he tripped on something on the path, tumbling to the ground. "Owww! What the heck is this?" He prodded at the jumble of hard, thin sticks he had tripped on.

"Let me see." Seto shone his flashlight on the mess, illuminating a partially unearthed skeleton.

Any cry of horror was immediately drowned out by the sound of something heavy grating on stone, the tunnel echoing and quaking violently. Everyone ducked for cover, but in moments the tremors had subsided.

"What just happened?" Duke asked in the sudden silence.

Joey shone his flashlight back the way they had come. "That's what happened."

A very large boulder now blocked the cave's only exit.