Disclaimer: YuGiOh and its characters do not, never have, and never will belong to me. The only things I own are the setting for this story and the OCs. Which there won't be many of. (If there are any at all)
Oh, and watch out for shounen-ai hints.
Possible. Not definite, but possible, pairings include (with characters at the moment) BxR, Mx,Yx,Jx? ('?' get filled in later, when the characters make it into the story.)
Gone a loooooooong time this time.
Sorry but I had quite a few things to do, a busy (and long) vacation of sorts (I didn't stay at my house so it counts as a vacation), nagging family, jibes at my life, a feeling of failure that refused to go away, and a massive writer's block to top it all off. Not to mention I'm setting up a GS fanfiction submission site and a personal site.
Come visit me! The GS site is www. freewebs. com/hziz and my personal site (with lots of tidbits from bunches of series that never made it to ffnet) is www. freewebs. com/darkling59 . (remove the spaces and cut/paste the links)
I'm probably going to be updating more regularly and with better edited chapters on my sites; ffnet has been screwing up what I send them.
Now that I'm finally getting my act together, I'm hoarding my updates. At some point there will be one massive update of all eight of my active stories (two YGO, one Slayers, one Surface, four GS) and possibly a revamp of my POTC one-shot in honor of the second movie (which was awesome).
Er…yeah.
Oh, and I'm changing my offsite screenname. While I will remain darkling59 on ffnet, my writing name on gaia will be hziz and on my website will probably alternate between the two.
Same goes for if you want to chat or just say hi, pm me at hziz. My other account (darkling59) is still active but it isn't where my fan fiction is being posted.
Reviews are a big part of what inspires writers to write. Also, reviewers get a preview summary of the next chapter if they're signed in! (if you'd like a preview but aren't part of ffnet or aren't signed in for some reason, state it specifically in the review and enclose your email so I can send it to you directly. At the moment, only reviewers who are signed in receive the preview) :)
If you want more….
Please REVIEW
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This chapter has been split into two segments (8.1, 8.2) to compensate for the warning note I put up last chapter. The reviews I got in response were enough to recall this story to my active list.
Thanks everyone!
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Italics – thoughts
Line -- - POV/scene change
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Freedom Through Inferno:
"You are in the control labs." A cold voice whispered from the darkness. "Specifically MINE."
"Gah!"
"Whoa!"
Challenging crimson eyes regarded the unwanted visitors scathingly "I'm Yami. Who are you and what do you want?"
Chapter 8.1: The Other Side
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Bakura assessed the newcomer suspiciously. Aggressive eyes equal in color to his own matched him glare for glare.
"I'm Bakura and this is Marik." Both men stood up slowly, observing their surroundings. They were not encouraging.
The room was fairly large; ten feet long, fifteen wide, six high; but had all the personality of a sanitized hospital room all the way down to the stark white paint. Each wall contained in the middle a single stainless steel ledge at about knee height, bordered by cabinets on each end. Light came from a single fixture in the center of the ceiling. The strangest, and most confusing, parts of the room were the four corners; each contained a door on the left side of the right angle intersection. All the doors looked alike; thick metal with stainless steel doorknobs.
"Well 'Bakura and Marik', what are you doing here?" a bit of hostility had left the stranger when he noticed their blatant confusion but he was still suspicious.
"I really don't think that's any of your business." Bakura sneered in response.
The hostility returned.
"Oh really?"
Bakura readied himself for a fight but Marik beat him to it, stepping in between the two potential combatants.
"You're Yami?"
"That's right."
Oh yeah, that was how he introduced himself, wasn't it? Settling into the background wasn't usually Bakura's style but when extenuating circumstances call for an exception... besides, in the background he could listen while examining and taking in the new setting.
"Why is Yami here?"
A quirked eyebrow was the only indication the shorter man gave that he had heard the odd use of his first name. "I took part in creating an experiment that…backfired. One of my colleagues sold me and another man out to a powerful billionaire with a hobby of collecting and creating…things much like my experiment."
"Experiment." Bakura cut in. "A human cat creature that closely resembles me?"
"The kitty?" Marik had come to the same conclusion.
"How do you know about that?" shocked and defensive, Yami didn't even bother to hide the truth.
"We were hired by a company called KC to pick up a rogue agent, a scientist. When we got there, we picked him up and burned down his house with everything inside."
The sharp intake of breath that greeted that statement did not go unnoticed but Bakura wasn't finished yet.
"However, something survived the flames; a creature with cat ears and a human body who obeyed the scientist's every command up to and including attacking us. Today –at least I think it was today- the four of us reached a road and the scientist tricked us into getting shot with tranqs. Next thing we know, we're waking up here."
"So he survived…good." Yami's mutter was almost inaudible but both arsonists heard it.
"I take it you know what I'm talking about?" the false congeniality didn't fool the other man in the least.
'Yes. The scientist you speak of would be the colleague that betrayed me."
"The bastard mentioned you!" Marik's statement caused both of the other men to snigger.
"He did?"
"When he told us his story. Remember, Kura?"
"Don't call me that. But actually, yeah. In the beginning when he was spinning excuses he fed us a load of crap about bio weapons, funding, the cold war, the creature, himself, and his two colleagues."
The arsonist turned an accusing glare on their fellow prisoner.
"And here we find one of them rotting in a doctor's office with no idea what we're talking about. Care to explain?"
"First off, this isn't a doctor's office; it's a cell."
"A cell? With four doors?"
"One's to a bathroom, two are to small rooms that occasionally pass as labs, and one is to the outside. That one's kept locked."
"Why did Yami call it a control lab?"
Glancing at Marik, he sighed unhappily. "Because that's what it is. This is where Pegasus keeps his 'control subjects'."
"Subjects." The statement demanded an explanation.
"Yes; humans with genetic codes similar enough to those of the felines to be studied and used to learn how their deoxyribonucleic acid differs from that of the average homosapien. Basically, he wants to learn how to make creatures like Ryou on his own."
"And we're the controls?"
"Judging by the way you look, yes."
"We look funny?" Yami blinked at Marik again. Talking between the two would take some getting used to.
"Not 'funny', just almost exactly like two of the cats. You've already met Ryou; he's the one Bakura's a control for. That sort of similarity is what I'm talking about."
"I have a mini me?" (1)
"Heh, yes. Malik looks almost exactly like you."
Both men fell silent at that, but only for a moment.
"Why do they look like us? And what's with their names?"
"And who made my mini me?"
"I'm not sure why they look like you; Yugi looks like me because I donated the DNA he was made from. It's a one in a million chance you two were the random sponsors chosen to create Ryou and Malik but it's possible. Their names are just names me and Jou came up with because numbers seemed too personal. And Jou is the one who created Malik."
"Where is he?"
"Jou?"
"Yes."
Worry lines appeared around Yami's eyes and his mouth turned down in a frown. "I don't know. They kept us here together for a while but recently they've started taking Jou away for longer and longer periods of time. He's rarely coherent when he's finally brought back but from what I've been able to gather, they're experimenting on him."
"Experimenting! Are they going to do that to us!"
A definitive headshake. "No. Jou wasn't a control. He's smart and one of the members of the team that created Ryou, Yugi, and Malik but he didn't donate his DNA and he doesn't resemble any of them so he isn't physically a control. I had hoped he was here for his knowledge, but now…" he sighed unhappily, sitting down on one of the ledges with a grace that spoke of long practice. "I'm beginning to think they're keeping him here to be uses as a test subject for recreating the modified DNA structures inherent in the felines."
No reaction.
"They're trying to turn him into a creature like Ryou."
"Can they do that?"
"It is possible unfortunately."
"The kitty was once a person?"
"WHAT!" Yami was horrified by the mere suggestion. "No! We wouldn't do that to any living creature! The three of them were created from scratch. They are how they're supposed to be. What Pegasus is trying to do to Jou is reconfigure his existing DNA. It, if they succeed, will be an extremely long and painful process."
"All right, time out." Scowling in annoyance, Bakura sat down on the ledge across from Yami and Marik began to pace around the room.
"We have no idea what you're talking about. At the moment, you don't look much better than the other scientist." That was a blatant lie; the fact that Yami had spoken out in favor of ethics put him far above the older man. "So why don't you start from the beginning and tell us the story from your point of view?"
"Alright."
"Eleven years ago, I joined a company called Kaiba Corp with a friend of mine. We were young, prodigies, and thought it would be a good opportunity to gain experience in the engineering field. The third person assigned to our team, the scientist you've already met, revealed Kaiba Corp was actually KC, a government funded program experimenting with genetics, chemicals, and poisons to create weapons. The effort was mostly geared towards enhancing the affects of chemicals like anthrax and cyanide to kill better.
Our part in the organization was to create living weapons. Me and Jou would have quit, but KC was the sort of company where you don't leave, you get forcibly 'retired'. After a long time, me and Jou figured out how to combine human and animal DNA; our partner found the specific codes to make the resulting creature a weapon like KC wanted. The company cut funding right after we began the creation process, supposedly because of something having to do with the cold war.
We couldn't let Ryou, Malik, and Yugi die even if they weren't really alive yet. It took about two years for them to grow to a physical maturity equaling seventeen years and for us to train them to act like real people. Me and Jou wanted to teach them to act like humans, as much as we could with their limited intelligence, and learn to cope with their animalin side but our partner wanted to train them to be killers so he could sell them to the highest bidder.
We had an argument about it and the two of us, along with Yugi and Malik, left. I can only guess what happened after that but I'm fairly certain our 'colleague' contacted Pegasus anonymously and tipped him off as to who we were, where we'd be, and what we'd have.
Two days later, we went to sleep in a hotel room in the nearest town while we tried to figure out what to do. When we woke up, we were here and Yugi and Malik were gone.
We've been here ever since, seeing each other and gaining information only when Pegasus deems it necessary."
"That's…huh."
"Huh? That's the only reaction you have?"
"The other guy had a story like that." Marik replied. "But different. It was opposite."
"Opposite?"
"He's right. The main events were the same but everything else was different. You just basically told us the same story from an alternate point of view."
"That is probably what it was, if he actually told the truth."
"Oh he did, but not all of it."
"Bastard was keeping secrets. So is Yami."
"He's right. So now the question becomes who do we trust? You or him?"
"Here's a hint; I'm locked in the room with you while he's the one who PUT YOU HERE! Who do you think you should trust!"
"…good point."
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TBC.
End Chapter eight.
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(1) Allusion to my other story, Confined Anomalies
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Thank you for reading.
Review!
Thank you for reviewing:
Special thanks go to:
Dragonlady222 (2x)
Thunderstorm101
for reviewing the last real chapter when no one else would. They were joined later, in either that chapter or the warning, by:
Cenzai Zphria
Sand dancer
T.Lei
Ilikeyaoi
Mushumellon
Lady Laran
Carmen-Nemrac
Silvermane1
Unseenwater
Kikyo's killer
Yume Ishimaru
LonelyNeko
Jakosh
Kitsune angel of darkness
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Seeya later!