Blood Only Glows in the Dark Chapter 28: 28, 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!)

Here's the next chapter. Happy Pyromaniac's Day!

Disclaimer: See last chapter

Claimer: What did I just tell you?

The monster assigned to take care of those who fell prey to the stone limpet spoors didn't even bother with being subtle. Even hallucinations of nothingness couldn't completely block all outside sounds.

It sounded big. And it was moving slowly, but that was reasonable - its' 'prey' was supposed to be running around in little circles or frozen in fear, it didn't have to be particularly fast. This was almost an improvement, since the bigger and slower a monster was, the less likely it was to be particularly smart.

Since they still had a moment, Yami closed his eyes and listened, trying to determine what exactly they were dealing with. Definitely big and bipedal, dragging a heavy tail…a sharp scent, just a little too sharp for the spoors to completely disguise, told Yami this beast also stank of sulfur.

Rosa's snarls reached a new pitch of fury as the approaching beast paused to take notice of her.

"Shouldn't we be backin' up?" Jou hissed, staring at the seemingly-empty air that the VineBeast was raging at.

"Probably," Honda hissed back, moving a step behind him.

That sudden movement drew the monster's attention back their way and it instantly lunged forward with a deep, throaty growl. The humans scattered, Jou immediately running into a parked car - the bang this made was accompanied by a very loud profanity - and Yami snarled under his breath as a leathery tail soundly clipped him.

Rosa, on the other hand, sprang at the monster with a roar and sank her teeth and claws into it. Judging from how she was dangling, she'd been aiming for the thing's neck but missed. It growled again, and Rosa lost her grip and went sailing into Jou's parked car with a yelp.

"Oh no!" Yugi cried - he was on the other side of the street from her and Jou, near where Yami was now - but just as the boy was about to take a step towards them Yami yelled, "Don't move!"

"What?" came the various mortal's voices, "Why?"

"It can't tell where you are if you don't move," Yami told them.

"You can see what it is, Yami?" Yugi asked next.

"I don't need to see it," the mage-demon replied, "It's a fire-breathing Crocodilicus."

"Just what we needed, a monsta croc!" Jou complained loudly.

The Crocodilicus was making annoyed sounds, able to hear its prey but not being able to see it. Knowing for certain that it was there gave Yami's senses a bit of extra power against the influence of the stone limpet's spoors and he could almost see it now.

"Won't it, um, try to roast us with fire if it breathes fire?" Honda inquired.

The brunette sounded farther away from Yami then the other two mortals - and Yami had completely lost track of Ryou or Bakurah. Well, hopefully Ryou was still all right.

"No," Yami replied calmly, "They're really rather stupid. It can't see us if we don't move, and even though it can hear us, it can't count. Its getting agitated because it thinks there's only one of us here and it can't figure out how that one person is moving without it seeing them."

"…Man, that IS stupid," Jou blinked.

"Hey back there! How's the stupid mutt liking this meeting his long-lost cousin?" Bakurah's voice sounded insolently from somewhere in the distance.

Growling in frustration at hearing this new voice, the Crocodilicus stomped around, turning sharply from side-to-side in hopes of finding its elusive and aggravating meal-to-be. Unable to see it coming, Yami was knocked back to the ground by the Crocodilicus' enormous tail with a curse.

'Why does this keep happening to me,' Yami mentally groaned as the monster's tail whipped back around to land squarely on top of him before he could move out of the way.

It was blasted heavy and to make things worse, as if sensing it had managed to pin down its elusive prey, the Crocodilicus leaned back on the tail to ensure that Yami couldn't wiggle free, crushing him down against the pavement.

"Hey, why don't ya try squishin' me, ya ugly overgrown handbag!" Jou taunted, jumping around to get the monster's attention.

The fire-breathing Crocodilicus was stupid, but it wasn't a complete idiot: it watched Jou carefully, waiting for the blonde to come close enough to be snapped up in its huge jaws, but it didn't release even a fraction of the pressure on Yami.

"Yug'! Is Yam' doin' okay under there?" Jou called over next, detecting that his plan was failing miserably, "Tell 'em not ta worry - I'll think of somethin'!"

Ignoring all of this, Yami dug his claws into the leathery pile holding him down as deeply as they could go. He'd already known that it wouldn't be enough pain for the Crocodilicus to move its tail - it would take an hour for the stupid beast to notice if he'd been able to cut its tail off completely - no, Yami was just feeling extremely frustrated and needed to take his feelings out on something.

"Are you okay Yami?" Yugi called over.

"What, me? I've never been better," Yami grumbled sarcastically.

Taking a deep breath - not easily done underneath a ton of tail - Yami aimed his head down the way they had come and roared, "WILL YOU GET OVER HERE AND KILL THIS THING ALREADY GRAVE ROBBER!"

"Hmph," came Bakurah's voice - he'd gotten closer without anyone seeing him, "You're so damn impatient, Pharaoh. You need to relax…

"Boy!" Bakurah snapped, back towards the way he himself had come from, "Are They coming yet?"

"…Yes…here They come now," came Ryou's voice.

The white-haired mortal did NOT sound happy about 'They', and the realization of who 'They' were was like a thunderbolt in Yami's brain. He should have known that Bakurah would go back to his old tricks…

"All mortals and ingrates should keep their heads down," Bakurah announced, "…Muwahahaha….let the fun begin!"

The fire-breathing Crocodilicus seemed to detect something was up, because it braced itself - lifting a bit of weight off its tail and allowing Yami the chance to squirm to freedom. He only made it a little ways before the Crocodilicus, sensing its prey was escaping, pressed down on its tail to crush him again. Even in the face of danger, the beast wasn't about to let go of its meal.

Several somethings sprang out of the spoor-induced fogginess and jumped on the Crocodilicus. It roared, and snapped around with its jaws, and slashed around with its clawed hands, but it failed to hit a single attacker.

Even as the monster started screaming in pain, it refused to lift its tail off Yami, making a possibly five-minute-long fight to the death into a paltry thirty-second death-struggle. As a last resort, the Crocodilicus bellowed and started belching flame everywhere, thus living up to its name in its last few seconds of not being dead.

A foul stench filled the air as stone limpets left and right cracked in the heat and died. That smell easily broke through the spoors and the street returned to full visibility.

Once the stupid beast finally stopped moving, Yami dragged his still-pinned legs out from under the limp tail and looked around. All over the road and even on some of the buildings, strange brownish jellyfish-like things were turning gray and giving off more foul-smelling smoke.

Dominating the scene was the dead Crocodilicus, and standing next to its head was exactly what Yami expected to find.

Six skeletons, standing at attention and glowing with the influence of Bakurah's magic.

"What the heck are THOSE things!" Honda yelled from a safe place behind everyone else.

"Its just a bit of basic necromancy," Bakurah sneered, striding up to inspect his new servants, "What do you think, Pharaoh? Five thousand years and I've still got it!"

"I SEE DEAD PEOPLE!" Jou and Honda screamed, hugging each other in mortal terror…until they noticed who they were embracing and shoved each other away with more screaming.