Blood Only Glows in the Dark Chapter 31: 31, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

You want it, you got it! Here's the next chapter! And none too soon, I imagine...

Okay, weird thing. I was just recently re-reading some of the original Yugioh manga (pre-Duelist Kingdom Season One stuff) when I noticed I sort of assigned some of the characters in this fic their Monster World Indentities! So Yugi is sort of like a Beast Tamer again (Rosa) and the White Wizard is...Ryou!

Ryou does make a very cute little figure too...but I digress.

Here's the fic!

Disclaimer: Yugioh not owned by me

Claimer: I own the stuff I invented...and the stuff other people let me borrow belong to them. Duh.

"Err, I'm not really certain if this is such a good idea," Ryou mumbled as he was duly made to march in front of their group.

"Ah, don't sweat it Ryou!" Jou cheerfully called out - from the back of the group - "We're all right behind ya!"

Everyone else sweat-dropped at hearing that. Not at all reassured, Ryou came to a stop in front of the blue house's front door - a rather intimidating-looking, oversized gray thing - and looked over his shoulder, seeking guidance on what to do next.

"Shouldn't I knock before going into someone else's house?" the white-haired boy asked.

Bakurah looked increasingly unhappy with his choice of mortal. Growling, he snapped, "We're trying to attack them, not invite them over for a bloody tea party! Use your magic to smash the door down!"

"…How do I do that?" Ryou blinked, before hastily swallowing at seeing Bakurah's expression and murmuring, "Ah, well, um, I think I'll just figure it out on my own…"

"Maybe there's something in your bag that'll help, Ryou," Yugi suggested.

"Oh!" blinked the teenager, "I forgot - there is! I was worried when it seemed like the city was going to be invaded, so I decided to prepare something to defend myself with…"

Ryou rummaged in his backpack before making a little 'ah hah!' sound and pulling out his weapon. And the rest of the group stared at it in utter disbelief - even Rosa and Bakurah's four remaining skeletons stared, because that's how unexpected Ryou's choice of weapon was.

It was a flyswatter.

"Ryou? Ya sure dat's what ya brought ta defend yerself with?" Jou finally managed to ask.

"Oh yes," Ryou nodded enthusiastically, "Although I don't normally use flyswatters - I do think flies deserve just as much of a chance at life as all other creatures -"

Gagging noises erupted from Bakurah, but the fiend contained them before anyone besides Yami realized where they were coming from. Undaunted, Ryou continued, "But the book I found said it had to be something used to 'deliver death to the living', and…"

Ryou trailed off, apparently embarrassed, and turned back towards the door. With a quite mutter of "Here goes nothing", the mortal raised the flyswatter over his head in a two-handed grip, before bringing it down against the door as hard as he could.

The smack of plastic against wood was nearly instantly drowned out by the sound of a small explosion and wood splintering as the door was blown inwards and into little pieces. As the dust settled, Ryou stared at his flyswatter with astonishment before saying, "Oh dear…I think I might have made it a little too powerful."

"Oh no," Bakurah was quick to reassure him - shooting Yami a smug glance in the process, "You're fine. That was fine."

"That was freakin' awesome is what it was!" Honda and Jou immediately crowed.

With that over with, their group moved inside the house - into the heart of enemy territory. Right away Yami noticed that things had changed since his last visit.

"Hey, dis wasn't like dis last time," Jou pointed out, "Remember, Yug'?"

"There should be a staircase right there," Yugi agreed, pointing to various locations, "And the living room should be just there, and that should be the way to the kitchen."

Instead of any of these things being present, there was only a corridor, leading deeper into the house than the house actually went. It was wide, and tall, so that their group could go quite comfortably. An obvious difference from the outside of the house was that the whole corridor - walls, ceiling, and floor - were all made of well-fitted stone.

And it was dark, very dark. Certainly, there were sconces for torches, but the flames were all composed of the pale-blue substance known commonly as witchboil, which didn't produce too much light.

It was widely preferred over regular fire by those beings that had extremely good night vision or were vulnerable to flames or sunlight, such as gasts, vampires, and of course demons.

"Anybody got a flashlight?" Jou wondered.

"There's plenty of light," Bakurah huffed, "Come on! They'll have noticed our entry by now."

True enough - the doorway hadn't even gotten all the way out of sight before Yami picked up on the various scratching, oozing, and breathing noises that indicated they were being watched and followed.

On and on went the corridor, and the witchboil sconces started being farther and farther apart, reducing visibility to near zero.

"Just making sure…we didn't step on any more of those limpets, did we?" one of the mortals - Honda maybe - ventured to ask as the light got worse.

Finally, they reached a point where there were no sconces whatsoever past the last one, where they stopped to discuss their ever-decreasing options.

"We'll be in complete darkness after this point," Bakurah mentioned, "You know what? This is starting to look almost like a trap, Pharaoh."
0

"Or an ambush, I agree," Yami replied, "They've gone to so much trouble…we might as well let them spring it."

"Are you nuts!" Jou hissed from wherever he was standing, "What if they catch us!"

"Don't let them catch you then," the necromancer-demon purred.

Reluctantly, they walked forward, out of the last pale patch of witchboil-light and into pitch darkness. Yami listened for the sounds of the watchers, but they had stopped at the last sconce. This WAS a trap, then, but not exactly an ambush yet. Someone was probably about to show up and threaten them.

Sure enough, they were all blinded for a few seconds as, in a flash of light, a floating head appeared in the air in front of them. It was of the creature that the girl worked with, or maybe for - human-like appearance, long black hair, blue eyes. The projection gave off no extra light, keeping everything else disguised in darkness, including their group, but as a precaution Yami subtly moved himself to block Yugi from the thing's line of vision.

"There's more of you than I expected," the floating head began without preamble, "Good; my servants get bored quite easily. If, by any chance, you make it through the next levels of my lair alive and discover a wish to join me, by all means I will gladly welcome new faces."

The head smirked. It wasn't a nice expression.

"All you have to say is, 'Lord Hauru, I swear to serve you, and only you, with all my body and all my soul, for the remainder of my existence', and you will be painlessly set free - to do my bidding, of course. Otherwise the way to me will be quite…painful."

"Go suck on a pig's hooves!" Bakurah yelled, unable to resist breaking the momentary silence that followed Hauru's statement.

Whatever method Hauru was using to appear before them, he could apparently hear their responses perfectly well, because he sighed and rolled his eyes at Bakurah's childish response, his whole manner completely unsurprised and sarcastic.

"Such poor manners…I will let my servants have their fun, then - its been quite long and they're so hungry, after all…" Hauru sneered.

The projection vanished, and in less than a split-second later the pitch-black corridor erupted in violent snarls and screams as the watchers from before surged forward to those they would now prey upon. This wasn't nearly as bad as the fact that the floor underneath Yami and the others' feet had just decided to vanish completely.

Somewhere in the middle of this sudden plunge, Yami was the first to discover, the pitch-darkness of no-light exchanged itself for the black oblivion of unconsciousness.