Blood Only Glows in the Dark Chapter 27: 27, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

(NOTE 3/8/06: Chapters have been restored to their original order! Assuming nothing ELSE goes wrong, here ya go!)

Lemme know if I'm updating too fast for ya'll, k?

Disclaimer: Chaos Chao does NOT own Yugioh

Claimer: Chaos Chao does SO own the plot and alllllll the little made-up evil monsters soon to be haunting your dreams...and let me know if you want to borrow some of them. I 'll be more than happy to give you their stats and stuff...

"I guess we'd better give him a good name," Yugi said as they continued down the street, wary for hidden traps and monsters, though their group was one stronger now.

"How about Spike?" Jou offered, "He looks all spiky ta me…"

"…You might want to know that 'He' is actually a 'She'," Yami pointed out next.

"Dat's a girl monsta?" Jou blinked.

"…Well, then we can call her Rosa," Yugi said cheerfully, "Because roses are nice, but they have thorns too, you know."

Bakurah, being forced to hear all of this since he was traveling in their group, stuck a finger in his mouth and made retching noises at all this fuss over the monster's name, which Yami made a point of ignoring.

'Rosa', on the other hand, wagged her tail and gave the smaller spiky-headed member of their group a big lick on the cheek. Her tongue left a clear trail of ooze on Yugi's face.

"Uh, that wouldn't happen to be some kind of poisonous acid or something, would it?" Honda asked nervously.

"It only feels sticky to me," Yugi blinked, reaching up to touch the spot gingerly.

Without really thinking about it, Yami carefully reached down and wiped the stuff off of Yugi's face with his hand. Ignoring the looks he was getting, Yami sniffed at the goo, before licking it right off his fingers.

Spying it out of the corner of his eye, Yami distantly noted that Yugi had gone bright red in the face.

As for the goo itself, it was harmless. Didn't taste too badly, either.

"A combination of nectar and tree sap, as far as I can tell," the mage-demon concluded aloud.

"Great," Jou grinned, "We'll neva need ta buy pancake syrup again!"

"He'll save a fortune that way," someone whispered.

Jou turned to glare immediately at Bakurah, who laughed in his face. Ryou, who was the only one willing to stand close to the fiend, protested that Bakurah hadn't actually said anything.

"Then why'd he laugh?" Jou demanded.

"Because you're pathetic," Bakurah answered, his tone falsely sweet.

Any further argument was postponed when Honda gave a yell from the front of their group. Accompanying the yell was the sound of something soft and wet going 'crunch' as it was stepped on.

"Oh great, what NOW," Jou groaned, as the rest of the group turned their attention to this latest peril, "Somebody remind me why we gotta take dis stupid trap-filled road anyway?"

"Well, I suppose this IS the sort of place they really wouldn't be looking for us in, right?" Ryou ventured.

"Finally, someone uses the sense the gods gave them," Bakurah huffed, "At least one of you has a brain."

Jou was too incensed by this latest stab at his intelligence to pay attention to anything else, including where he was walking. Very shortly afterwards, the blonde yelped as he stepped on something soft and wet that went 'crunch'…except that nothing was there when he lifted his shoe.

"Let me guess, more invisible monsters?" Honda asked, checking his own shoes in disbelief at finding nothing.

"Um…is the street getting murky, or is that just me?" the brunette added a second later.

The way ahead - formally clear, obvious, and lit brightly by the midday sun - was indeed becoming dimmer. Yami swiftly checked behind them to find the way they had come was also becoming gray and misty and empty. It would take a lot of magic to physically alter the entire street, and even a cloaking spell to simulate a area of nothing would be detectable.

"Ugh, I recognize that stench," Bakurah mentioned suddenly, blowing air out of his nose as if to clear away some unpleasant smell, "Hey Pharaoh, can you catch that? Smells sort of like wet mutt - stand away from this one so the scents don't confuse you too much…"

"Why you -" Jou began.

"Maybe," Yami interrupted, "Though I don't recognize it."

"Wouldn't dare expect that much from a uncultured partbreed," Bakurah shot back, ignoring Yami's immediate snarl, "We're standing in a field of stone limpets. And the idiot duo set two of them off."

Both Jou and Honda looked angry, but their hurt feelings were totally unimportant - okay, maybe they were only slightly less important if Yugi looked that upset on their behalf - than their current predicament.

"Want to know how they work?" Bakurah offered, sneering in glee at knowing something Yami didn't.

Yami refused to dignify that with a response, even though without any information he'd never get anywhere and the white-haired fiend knew it. This standoff would never have ended any time in the reasonable future without some sort of intervention, and Ryou, the shy-yet-much-more-powerful-than-he-himself-realized mortal, was just the person to intervene.

"I would like to know how stone limpets work, Bakura," Ryou offered.

Bakurah eyed the mortal with narrowed, suspicious eyes, before giving a long-suffering sigh.

"Fine…stone limpets are plants. They draw nourishment from stone, but its not always enough. So, when an unlucky creature happens into a field and steps on a stone limpet, that limpet releases its store of special spoors into the air. The creature in question inhales them, their powers go into effect, and they wander around in an illusory maze until they get sucked dry and die and decompose and all the other usual things happen. Pretty basic plant behavior, really."

And speaking of plant behavior…Rosa the VineBeast was investigating something the others couldn't see, right where Honda and Jou had stepped on their stone limpets. Before their eyes, Rosa ripped into something that was both invisible and close to the ground, cracking its shell (apparently) with loud cracks and devouring the insides with plenty of happy slurping sounds.

"And that's pretty basic plant behavior too," Bakurah chuckled.

"All that aside," Yami said, gesturing to the street - in both directions, there was nothing but formless grayness, "These were place here for a specific reason, and I hardly doubt their normal illusions look like this. What does THAT tell you, Oh Wise and Enlightened Thief?"

"Clearly, all victims are to stand here and wait quietly until they're finished off," Bakurah retorted sarcastically, "Stone limpets ARE intelligent enough to be controlled, fool."

As if on cue, Rosa lifted her head from the remains of her stone limpet snack in alarm, before flattening her ears and growling sharply. Being a plant herself, she was the only one of them not being influenced by the stone limpets' spoors.

Looking in the direction she was growling, everyone saw nothing, but they still readied themselves for battle as best they could. From behind him, Yami noted that Bakurah was staying in the back of the group instead of readying himself for a fight, just like the coward he was.

Or was he preparing something? Bakurah made a strange gesture with his hands, and Yami sensed a sort of vaguely familiar magic being put to use.