Her Sweetness: Thanks for the creampuffs! I got some from a reviewer. Tee hee. Oh, please excuse the last chapter. I know it was short, and I wanted to write more, but I've been sick as a dog for the past two days.

And when I finished that chapter, I was so utterly exhausted that I couldn't even proof read, myself. I had to pay my little brother to read it to me.

So, anyway, hope this chapter makes you giggle, that's what I'm all about.

A Tale of Two Idiots

Chapter 24:

No one knew what time it was, exactly. Ryou's watch had long since been gone and none of them knew how to tell time according to the moon's position and so they just guessed it was around midnight. After Mokuba had joined their party Marik only went about five miles an hour for only the first twenty minutes, but then grew tired of the slow pace and went back up to around eighty or ninety.

Mokuba had been filling them in on everything that they had missed and everything he'd seen whilst flying above varied cities and towns across the world.

"And I expected to see riots everywhere and chaos and just… explosions! Boom boom!" Mokuba threw his arms up in the air to show his meaning while making childish exploding noises. "But I didn't. It was all kind of orderly and everyone was doing just what the Spike Patrollers said."

Ryou turned to him, "Well, I don't get it. Their rule is awful and makes no sense, normally wouldn't people object and rebel against them?"

"That's what BAYAMS was, though, wasn't it?" Malik asked.

"Uh-huh. But they couldn't have been the only people objecting to Yami and Yugi's power, right?"

Mokuba nodded, "They seem to be. But maybe they were the only people who weren't under Yami's control or something. It's possible that he could've had everyone else hypnotized with the puzzles and that's why they're obeying."

"You can't do that, though." Marik finally spoke up, sparing the young boy a glance. "Trust me, we've tried, it doesn't work that way."

Everyone except Malik looked at him, surprised, "It doesn't?"

"Nope. That was a real bummer to me when I found out that you couldn't do that with the puzzles, leastways not the whole world. So, they must've had another way of getting these people under their control without going through too much trouble."

"But to do what they've done, they'd need a huge system of influential or hypnotic distribution."

Bakura shifted Mokuba's weight on his lap so that his left leg could have more blood circulating through it. "Well, couldn't they use the Spike Patrollers to get them under control? If memory serves me, that's what you guys did with your army."

"Yeah. But, c'mon, have you seen the Spike Patrol? They suck on ice. They're all scarred of their own shadow and a lot of them are fat and out of shape." Malik rolled his eyes.

"So, then…" Mokuba thought to himself for a moment before speaking again, "They must be using something else! But what is it?"

Everyone shrugged.

Ryou sat back in his seat, warming up his shoulders by rubbing his hands against them, "Well, we're going to have to figure it out and soon. If we manage to get the puzzles away from them and everyone else is under some other influence, the millennium puzzles aren't going to add up to a hill of beans."

"Well put." Malik nodded.

Bakura sighed, "Y'know… About a month ago, I saw this late night movie on where the world was in a similar situation. See, there was this guy who took over the world with the hypnotic powers he possessed inside his bellybutton."

They blinked.

"Whenever he lifted his shirt to somebody, these swirling rays would shine out from his bellybutton and cause the person to fall under his control. M-Maybe Yami has a magic bellybutton that no one knows about! And this is how he controls all the people!" Bakura looked expectantly at his friends with a little twinkle in his eyes as though he were looking for their praise or for someone to call him a genius.

When no one said anything, he blinked and asked, "What's wrong?"

Ryou sighed and patted Bakura on the head, sympathetically, "My poor yami…"

"… I don't get it."

Marik and Malik coughed and Mokuba turned away, sweatdropping.

While driving and listening to Ryou try and console his yami who was lost beyond belief, Marik whispered back to his hikari, "Is it me, or does Bakura get dumber everyday?"

"Maybe it's something he ate. … Like food."

"Too true."

"Eep! MARIK!" Called Mokuba's voice. It sounded frantic and panicking and Marik turned around from Malik and to the front of the jeep, just in time to see them ram right into some large black wall. The airbags on Bakura's side of the car deployed and both Bakura and Mokuba were fine. Marik, on the other hand, was not so lucky and after he had already banged his head on the steering wheel and fell to the floor in agony, the airbags on his side deployed slowly.

"Crap! Stupid, delayed jeep!" He shouted as he rubbed his nose and forehead.

"Hey, Marik," Bakura looked up, "Is this the sign I was looking for?"

Marik and everyone else wearily looked up and only the tanned pair recognized the building with the large chicken head rotating at the top as the Happy Chicken facility. Of course, everyone else assumed that this was the place, knowing that chances were slim to none of their being another well-armed fortress in the desert, just sitting there.

They all got out at once; Bakura shooed Mokuba away from him so he wouldn't think that lap thing was a permanent arrangement.

"Jeez, Marik, look at this. You totaled Cody's jeep!" Malik shook his head and pointed at the damage done to the front of the jeep. Both headlights were out and the vehicle was scrunched up to look a foot shorter in length.

Marik shrugged, "So what? He's not going to use it anymore."

"…Oh, you're awful!"

"C'mon, you guys! Let's go!" Mokuba was running around the side, showing them the entrance. They followed and began to open the door.

The fat man had been nervous for the passed three hours. He wasn't given any information, no call from the Pharaoh, and no instructions as for what to do next. This hadn't happened before, especially not since he was put on the millennium item retrieval case. He wasn't even allowed to go back to Happy Chicken. The jet that came to pick him up told him Pharaoh Yami's orders were for him to come back to the palace immediately and that was it.

Yes, he was nervous.

The jet neared the rooftop of the large, golden palace, the statue of the Pharaoh was well in view and soon the jet landed and Happy Chicken Man was escorted off. The pilot told him that he was go to the throne room, then got back in the plane and took off.

Happy Chicken Man's journey to the throne room was not a long one. He, unlike most others in the castle, refrained from taking the stairs and so he was always on the elevators. Not only did he not take the stairs because he was lazy, but he had an incident with the stairs in this castle that he did not like thinking of. About two weeks ago, he'd been rushing down the stairs and he'd not been wearing his belt that day. So his pants weren't safely secured to his large gut. As he rounded a corner, part of his stomach hung out over the top of his pants and he tripped over himself, falling down and landing face first in someone's cake.

Pity about that cake.

"You may enter." Stated the guard as he opened the large door to the royal throne room. Happy Chicken Man stepped into the room, wary and a bit frightened about what might become of him. Of course, thinking the way he was, he expected chanting and death spells to come over him, but no, it was just the normal throne room, decorated in it's normal jewels and golds and in the midst of it sat the rulers of this land, examining their fingernails and whispering quietly to each other. As Happy Chicken Man took another footstep inside, they quickly narrowed their eyes at the man, and tilted their heads to the side in unison.

"M-My Pharaohs." He bowed majestically before them, hoping to distract them or stall from what punishment was sure to come, "My, don't you look ravishing tonight, Pharaoh Yugi, have you lost weight? A-And might I say that, Pharaoh Yami, that your head looks even shinier than the last time I laid eyes upon it."

Yugi blinked and lifted his shirt a bit before whispering, "Yami, do I look skinnier to you?"

"Not now, Yugi, focus!" He scowled and stepped, lightly, down from the throne and made his way across the room until he was face to face with the man, "Flyswatter, don't attempt your ridiculous flattery techniques, it won't work."

"Well, I don't know about that…" Yugi mumbled, blushing, 'My aerobics must be paying off…!'

Happy Chicken Man fumbled for something to say, "I-I…! My Pharaoh-"

"Don't 'my pharaoh' me, Flyswatter. Listen, you and I both know what happened at the cult's base so let's just cut through the old crapcake. The bottom line is you're incompetent as a leader of anything and cannot get the job done. The Spike Patrollers would be better off without you to screw them up. And, of course, if you have no place in the army, then you have no place on this earth." Yami casually walked away, his cape swinging, smoothly behind him. He twirled a lock of his hair between his fingers before finally speaking again, "I'm leaving it up to my hikari to decide when you die… I already have a human plaything to amuse me..."

Needless to say, Happy Chicken Man was at a loss for words. His jaw hung low, his eyes wide and blank and his face had gone so white, all his veins were showing clearly. Yugi raised his eyes to Yami's and tilted his head, asking a quiet question, receiving only a smirk in answer.

"M-M-My… P-P-Pharaoh…! G-Gah…! M-Me? D-DIE?" He had finally found his voice and babbled on, words meshing together to form a stream of unintelligible pleadings.

Yami looked back at Yugi and he blinked before turning to one of the guards standing at the door. "Take him away, put him in with Heidi. And while you're in there, don't forget to cut Heidi's next finger off, it's twenty passed midnight."

Though Happy Chicken Man did indeed struggle, he eventually tired and gave up as he was dragged away. When the door to the throne room closed silently, Yugi spoke to his other half, whose eyes were closed at the moment as he rested his elbows on an open windowsill, "Yami, what am I going to do with that buffoon?"

"… Whatever you want."

"Uh… But how should I kill him?"

"However you see fit." He answered, listlessly.

"Yami! Stop that, I don't want to have to deal with him; I've got my own problems. Young and the Restless comes on tonight and I've got a pedicure at the same time. I'm out of blank tapes and I don't know what color I want on my toes this week. So, as you can see, I'm much, much to busy to plan his death. We might as well just have him thrown off the castle walls." He turned away and laid his foot on the edge of his armrest and starred at them, thinking, 'I had Pumpkin Shade last week… So, maybe now Peach Glimmer? Or Bluewater Sparkle… I definitely like to sparkle.'

"Yugi." Yami turned around abruptly, eyes dark and narrowed, "Do you remember that trick we did regarding thinking like Ryou and Bakura just a few hours ago?"

"Uh-huh, so?"

"I just got through trying to think like Marik, to see if it would work."

He blinked, now more interested in this than his toe dilemma, "… Did it?"

"I think so… If I'm correct, Marik's heading back to Happy Chicken, for more suitable transportation. It was really fuzzy and so all I could see was him driving Cody's beat up jeep, but I know that Malik and Ryou and Bakura are with him. And knowing Flyswatter's idiotic way of thinking, he probably took all the soldiers with him to the cult's base and left minimum to guard the facility! They could just waltz in and take what they want!"

"Wow, Yami, this means we have real idiots working for us."

"Uh-huh." He rolled his eyes and then said, "So, that's why I'm turning over this operation to you, Yugi."

"… Come again?"

"Yugi, I can't be bothered with this sort of thing! I have my own affairs and problems to deal with!"

"Uh, hello?" Yugi gave him a 'duh' look and pointed to his poor, neglected feet, "Toes, here! My Pumpkin Shade is fading, and I don't know whether to sparkle or to glimmer!"

"Don't start with me, Yugi, I don't want to hear it! It's always painting toenails this and 'don't my feet look good today' that! I'm sick and tired of your foot fetish! You need to stop being so self-absorbed and take some responsibility for once! You're taking control of capturing and killing those fools and that's that!" He shouted.

By this time, Yugi was in tears, and he shouted back, "I do not have a foot fetish!"

"Oh, yeah? Well, what do you call that?" Yami pointed, blatantly to a large portrait of a very handsome foot hanging over Yugi's throne.

"I call it interior decorating!"

"Ugh! I can't deal with this!"

Yami had all but ripped his hair out as he went stomping for the exit and as he opened the door and was finally closing it, Yugi pouted and folded his arms, 'Oh, he is so sleeping on the couch tonight.'

The inside of the large institute was dark and dank, not a sound was made as the small tour group entered cautiously and looked about them. It seemed as though no one was there, it wasn't as Marik and Malik had remembered. They remembered small clumps of guards at every corner, discussing the latest executions and prisoners gossiping about who killed who with what and where, almost like a game of Clue. In the distance they would hear the frantic and shrill screams of chickens about to be decapitated and such. But now it was empty and silent.

"Are you sure we're at the right place?" Ryou muttered, inching closer to Bakura.

"No, maybe we should go to the identical well-armed fortress next door and see if that's the right place." Marik rolled his eyes, then hurriedly amending, since Ryou looked almost in a state of tears over the yami's sarcasm, that this was indeed the right place.

Mokuba had skipped ahead to the front of the group, looking around curiously and showing no signs of fear or anxiety about the apparent gloominess or the rotting chicken head smell. He tilted his head back, blinking at Malik, "Do you know if there are any light switches around here? We probably have no idea where we're going."

"I know where I'm going!" Marik growled at the boy. Everyone looked at him, expecting expressions on their faces. Marik blinked then hung his head in defeat, "…Okay, so I don't know where I'm going."

"… Right, then. Anyone got a match?"

Bakura held one up and ran it across Ryou's hair. The chemicals in his Sassy Girl hair gel managed to light the match and a small ball of light gave them something more to look at than just darkness. Malik sighed, "Well, that's a little better. But we're no better off now than we were five minutes ago, we don't know where we're going or where the jets or helicopters are at."

Everyone sighed, feeling a bit defeated.

Just then, Ryou looked up and his rather somber demeanor turned into that of a rather hopeful one. "Ah… Hey, look at that! On the wall!" He pointed to the wall adjacent to where they were standing. They all looked from Ryou then back to the wall and made their way over there, Bakura holding out the match.

Mokuba blinked, looking up at what seemed to be a large poster, with a very intricate floor plan on it and a big red sign that said, 'You Are Here'.

Marik nodded, "That's convenient."

Running his finger down the map, Ryou stopped at a block in the center of the floor, not far from where they were, "Look. It says the hangar isn't more than 200 feet from here."

"Ahem." Bakura coughed, jerking his thumb towards a place that said 'Mess Hall', "I still haven't eaten yet."

Everyone rolled their eyes and started off on their way to the hangar.

"But I'm hungry!" He wailed.

"Oh, Bakura!" Ryou groaned whilst dragging him along, "Now is not tummy-time. Now is go-stop-the-crazy-psychos-from-taking-over-the-world-time."

"But we did that last week!"

It was about ten to fifteen minutes later as they kept going in the same direction, Bakura now walking on his own, his complaining down to just unpleasant whispers. Mokuba was getting rather tired of the rotting chicken smell and Malik let him hold his chocolate-flavored lip balm up to his nose so he could enjoy a more pleasant aroma. Mokuba, who had been walking up front with Marik for a while, now walked behind everyone, leisurely sniffing the chocolate lip balm.

As they were coming to another turn and he heard Ryou say that the hangar was coming up, an open door with a blue light shining out caught the young boy's attention. He came to a slow halt and peeked inside as all the others continued on. Inside the room were merely a desk and a closed window; a computer left on was what was making the light. He crept in and looked behind the desk, soon sitting down and starring at what was on the screen.

"Hey, you guys!" He called, in less than a minute, fingers flying over the keyboard, "You guys, come here!"

Suddenly all four teens popped in the doorway and wandered in the room, Malik and Ryou sighing and saying in unison, "Mokuba…! Why did you sneak off like that, we were really worried about you! Weren't we?"

They addressed that question to the yamis who shrugged and muttered, "Not really…"

Mokuba ignored this and pointed to the screen, "You'll never guess what I found on here! This is part of Yami's world domination plans!"

"What?" Marik went flying over behind Mokuba to see the screen and soon they all crowded in, making Mokuba sweatdrop.

"There's all this stuff about a bible… Ah, I remember, Yami and Yugi's bible, Monkey Love!" Mokuba told them, partly reading off the screen.

Marik and Malik blinked then slowly turned to each other, "… Monkey… Love?"

"This is it! Look, see here?" He was now pointing to a new window that came up on the computer, a large map of the world, and on every country and every city, there sat a small picture of a monkey and a number and the word 'units' by it. Mokuba continued, looking at the bottom, "The religion is the Monkeyanisium… These are how many of their bibles have been used, sold, bought and traded everywhere in the world…!"

"They're everywhere…" Malik said in awe, noting all the monkeys on the screen. "This must be that 'system of distribution', then. They must have put a type of spell over the books or something similar."

"Oh Ra! Dammit!" Marik shouted, now banging his head on the desktop, which Mokuba scowled at him for, "This (bang) sucks (bang)!"

"You'd better stop him before he becomes even more damaged." Bakura informed Marik's hikari.

Malik nodded and put his hand between the desktop and Marik's forehead, that way, when he hit his head, at least there would be a fleshy pillow. When Marik stopped, he sat back in a chair up against the wall, "Well, that's it! Yami's won! We can't undo what he's done to the whole world with just the millennium items! They all obey him on another system now, he's got the whole world in the palm of his hand!"

"This is so depressing."

"Tell me about it, I'll never get something to eat now!"

"I can so not believe I went naked in the desert for nothing!"

"Wait."

"Huh?" The boys looked up at Mokuba who was still at the computer, he'd held up his hand and then turned around, excitedly, "There's still one place that Monkey Love hasn't been shipped to! This person hasn't been brainwashed, there's a chance he might be able to help us!"

"Oh, really?" Marik rolled his eyes, "And just who would that be?"

"Maximillion Pegasus!"