Yami's koi: I have returned! Hello I'm Johnny Knoxville and welcome to Jackass! Gets tackled down by Bakura
Bakura: GIRL! HE'S IN MY HOUSE AGAIN! And you've decided to be stupid and make Ryou nearly get raped twice, attacked by the Pharaoh, his hikari, a few Gods and his Dad... WILL THE INSANITY END?!
Neutral Man: not likely. How do you think I manage?
Yami's koi: meanie. Don't you agree that my friend here can be mean?
Bakura: WHEN WILL YOU QUIT TORTUTING RYOU? I WANNA FUCK HIM!
Yami's koi: we'll discuss this at the end, Bakura!
I wince as I inspect the slashes made from my fall. I need water – sanitary water, mind – to clean these with, before they become infected. And yet, deep down, I know that I'll never get it. Not now that Yugi has... well, what?
How can I declare that I've been cast off, disowned, when he – and Jou – claim to have never seen me before in their lives, save for the fleeting chance in class?
Class? I bring my knees up to my head and I rock slightly. Great! Everything is just so peachy. I've got no where to sleep, no money to buy food or drink with, no friends, tasks yet to be set from those bastard of the Gods, and, oh yeah, amidst all that, school!
Behind me I hear a door open and a small click. I turn and see the two Mutou's holding the gun. I freeze momentarily, staring straight back at them, terrified. Yami curls his hand around the trigger to punctuate his next words.
"What part of piss off don't you understand, Ryou?"
I feel my face contort with emotional pain, my heart clenching with it. I rise and turn away, walking down the street dejectedly. Their eyes bore holes in my back, even as I walk away from them. 'Even peachier,' I muse dully, 'I have to face them and Jou at school tomorrow. If it still stands.'
I sigh heavily. With no where to go, the large chance that I would be slaughtered, and the scent of an unmistakable storm in the making, with any luck I'd be dead on the morrow.
Wait... didn't Mokuba once tell me that he and Seto went to an orphanage before they inherited Kaiba Corp? What if it still stands?
With the dim hope of refuge in mind, I pick up a steady jog, timid at using a shortcut through a side passage. In the dark, with barely any light radiating from the street lamps, they look even more sinister. I shiver, remembering at how I had seen a dead body today and, more importantly, the one who had killed it.
At the flood of memories I pause. I feel sick gathering in my stomach, but no matter how hard I try, it won't come up. In my impatience I use two fingers, putting them down my throat until they touch the back.
Needing no more encouragement, my puke rises and flows out, my fingers barely making it in time. I keep coughing the putrid, half-digested food up until my sides ache.
Bakura
I glance up at the Pharaoh and his light, noting too quickly that they weren't moving.
"Onegai tasukete, hikari... Pharaoh. Don't just stand there, start looking!" I plead, ignoring the little voice in my head that taunts me for asking the Pharaoh for aid.
Yami heaves a heavy sigh. "Bakura..." He murmurs, choosing his words very carefully, "There's just ONE problem. We don't know what section to look under! We don't know what type of book: it could be under myth, lore, magic, spell..."
"He's right, Bakura." Yugi agrees, laying a hand on my shoulder. I slowly pick up the book I was looking in, and stare at them in disbelief.
"The mortal saying is right then. Grief truly can blind and dull the senses. Have you lost your minds? You look in the index!"
Yami blinks and looks almost as if he is going to apologise, before Yugi did so for him.
"Gomen nasai Bakura. We're just so shocked at this, we can't really think straight, and – ITAI!"
Yami's head instantly turns to his aibou, whose face is scrunched up in pain. He rushes towards Yugi's side, who is now whimpering incoherently. Whether or not the Pharaoh can decipher any of that, I know not.
Then the Game King's eyes widen, and he winces. I stare at them morbidly, finding no other possible thing to do. I see the Pharaoh clutch his side, and I pry at his fingers. He desperately tries not to loosen his grip, yet I know how far his limits are. When he at last relaxes, I lift his shirt... and I stare.
Ryou
It's only after you're sick that you begin to shake, so forcibly that you can barely stand properly. I do so now, wrapping my arms around myself as I lean against the wall of an abandoned warehouse. I've got to get to that damn orphanage, and fast. I set off at a slow walk, hoping to anyone who may be listening that I wouldn't be followed.
Almost as if to motivate me, I feel a small droplet of rain fall onto my head. I glare up at the stormy grey heavens, cursing it for singling me out. Out of all the things in Tokyo it could have hit, it had to land on me.
I try to quell my shudders now. I hug myself harder in a feeble attempt of comfort, but it seems that nothing in the world – nothing at all – can solace me now in this dark place. And dark it is. A distant chime of a church clock resounds a mere eight times.
I blink at that. The shadows are really beginning to lengthen now when its only eight, it was the midst of summer when I left Bakura, and – Bakura...
Just at his name I feel down spirited. I made him be the one who has to pay, in all of this. Only when I realised that he was a reason – if but one – to live, did I comprehend how foolish, and even selfish I was being to him. Often suicide is mocked, or scorned, but no one would be pushed that far for no reason. And Bakura? He confessed his love to me, and then I did to him. I just hope that he took heed to my words, that there is always something worth living for, even if at first you can't see it.
I stop my walk in my despair, and fall to my feet. Maybe this is truly where I belong, alone and with no guide or form of comfort to encourage me. No person to love and care for me, no one to wipe away my tears when it all becomes too much. No one's shoulder to cry on when I need it most.
Then I reflect back on my life as it was. Well... often I just cried by myself, alone in the gentle confines of either my soul room, or mine and Bakura's room. I suppose that isn't too much of a loss to me. And yet now that my reason is, most probably, far away from me, why should I live in this time, too? What would happen if I am to suicide in this time?
Fuck them Gods. What could they do to hurt me? If anything, they could condemn me perhaps to the shadowy terrain of the Underworld. Unless, of course, this is where I already am.
I feel a sharp jab of coldness tickle down my back, making me arch.
You ask what we Gods could do to hurt you, little Ryou? I think we're doing a good enough job at the moment, don't you?
I whirl around at the voice, bewildered, before I growl lowly.
"Why hello, almighty Ra," I hiss, crouching into a fighting position. When I next hear his deep, authoritative voice next, it is filled with amusement, and I see his image in my mind. And I am again, unnerved by the sight of his orbs which replaced the eyes he so long ago had burned away from the light in his dwelling.
Greetings, Another voice says airily, Do you bode well, young master? Or would you rather prefer a nice, cosy spot in the Otherlands?
"I'm surprised I'm not already there," I spit fractiously, beginning to stalk away. I have no time for witless words from mindless, premature pricks who can't bring themselves to look like their own creations, which they claimed were beautiful and good to look upon. But oh no, they are the supreme beings in this world, they shouldn't have to look like their callous, shitty creations.
Bakura
...And I stare some more.
Burned into the Pharaoh's side is a black, tinged with purple, eye-like mark. I gently run my fingers across it, and the form beneath me gasps in what I identify as pain. I pad swiftly across to his hikari, lifting his shirt slightly.
Yugi's mark is... not as dark as Yami's. Instead of the purple there are shades of navy, and the black seems somewhat lighter, if possible. When I compare the two, Yugi's is smaller, too.
"...What is this magic?" I whisper aloud, heedless of the whimpering beside me. I turn and grasp a book on Egyptian Spells, thoughtfully collecting the ones about the Gods, too. I am almost certain that they have a part in this.
"Bakura...?" Yugi winces, his face twisted in pain, "What is it?"
I say nothing, but gesture to his side. He twists to see what I point at, and his face, if possible, becomes paler.
"Holy shit..." Yami mutters, rising and shucking his shirt. "Ryou's in serious trouble. The Gods can only make this mark. Something has seriously gone wrong with Ryou in the Afterlife."
Ryou
Now, now, watch your temper. The voice of Osiris sighs, almost mockingly.
It only infuriates me further.
Leave me alone! Get me back to the real world!
Again I hear their laughter resounding in my mind. Oh, but this is the real world, Ryou. Or at least the world you shall discover is that world which you once lived in. Until you realise why it is like this, you will never be reunited with your lover.
Despite myself, my ears twitch slightly and I pause.
"You... you'll let me go back to Bakura?" I stutter, turning a corner. From my rough calculations, I'll be at the orphanage in about ten minutes. If I hurry.
I see an image of Ra in my mind, so clear I cry out. If he had eyes, I am sure he would have rolled them.
Come now, don't tell me you're unaccustomed to having a God appear in your mind? Considering, of course, that you deem us as beings much unlike your Bakura. For you hold him dearest than anything in the world, you value his life more than your own, correct?
My eyes widen for fear of Bakura. "Onegai... Ra... please, don't hurt him..."
I sense Osiris' amusement grow as he too, is pictured in my mind.
And we would do that because...?
"You've already done this," I whisper, hoping that I didn't sound too ill mannered. After all, they were my ticket back to my Bakura, my koi...
Do you want your first assignment or not, Ryou? We could just... leave you here, for all eternity, you know. That way you'd never get to feel those lips you'd wanted to taste for Soooo long...
I sigh, resigned to my fate. For now, and until I realise what this world is and why I'm here, I might as well do their petty assignments. How hard can it be?
"Okay, you have your way, Ra and Osiris." I say, reaching the end of this current block and wandering down another. "Tell me where I must go."
Ra smirks, his orbs flustering me once more. Osiris steps forward.
Reach the orphanage, Ryou. We know you're headed there already... when you get there, ask for a room and lodge there. When you're free to talk, we shall contact you again, and give you your task in its entirety. That shall be all, for now.
And with that, much like how it felt when Bakura closed the link, they were gone. Their images, their amused aura, everything. I spur on, desperate now to return. Return to the world I once knew.
Bakura
"One that only the Gods may inflict?" I echo faintly, the words stirring something in my memory, "Now there's a thought..."
For some unknown reason to me as of yet, I have a feeling that those words mean something deep to me, something... dark.
Yami's koi: aren't I mean? I am the suspense Goddess of Egypt, and no one will stand in my way! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!
Neutral Man: get a life. Now, plushies to reviewers, this time of either Pharaoh Yami or Tomb Robber Bakura. The choice is yours!
Yami's koi: now. I gotta thank the following reviewers for putting me on their favourite author's list:
blueyes08, Elizabeth Aiken Joey Wheeler, Yami Insomniac, himiko-da-evil-witch, sansty-san, MysticJunebugs, and Chrisoriented. Another thanks goes to these, who put me on their author alert list:
Chrisoriented, Elizabeth Aiken Joey Wheeler, Yami-loverOB1, himiko-da-evil-witch, sansty-san, bored miko, MysticJunebugs, and Repmet.
Now...I've decided what Ryou's task will be. He'll have to face something he doesn't want to, but it's not too tragic. Unless something else is cooked up.
Bakura: better not be too horrific, you foul mortal.
Yami's koi: and I am foul because...?
Bakura: you insist on torturing Ryou and me all the time! Why not the Pharaoh! Reads chapter again Urgh. I lifted his shirt...
Yami's koi: Bakura, I'll have you know that a Ryou x Bakura lemon fic is in the works! It'll be on , however. -- BYE BYE!
PS: The original Japanese name of cast:
Jou – Joey Wheeler. Shizuka – Serenity Wheeler. Anzu – Tea Gardner. Honda – Tristan Taylor. Otogi – Duke Devlin. Malik – Malik (hikari.) Marik – Marik (yami) (PPS: Just in case you don't know them... I probably won't use all of these, its just in case I refer to them in later chapters and you don't know.)