The Polaroid Effect
Disclaimer: Forgot about these things, ya? Oh well, I do not own it, and nobody gives me money for writing this stuff...
A/N: Mentions of blood and such. Do note that the President of the U.S. in this is a completely fictional character that I haven't even bothered to name. Boowah. Yugi has a potty mouth! :O
You can sort of... ignore the title. It made sense at the time, but I'm not entirely sure if it still does. shruggs It makes a vague sort of sense.
Unsure pairings. Though I do mention past YugiAnzu-ish-ness. Don't worry about it though, it doesn't stick. Names are mix and match Japanese/Western. Spoilers. I foresee spoilers. For like... the end of YGO or so and crud.
Thankies to the-person-who-left-no-name (Glad you like 'em! I do too. XD And Bakura – as in Ryou – will no doubt show up at some point, but I am not entirely sure about Bakura – as in the yami), lilmatchgirl007, Silvershadowfire (No, it was gradual, read on! And as for the rest you'll see), Jaysinya (You are correct in that you are wrong, but you still get a cookie for effort. ), SoulDreamer, LuCiFeR, Weeping Angel (Yupyup, you have to WAIT for an explanation of the Joey-thing. And Yugi KNEW Yami was gone, it just didn't really hit him what that meant for a while. Marik doesn't know that the person is Yugi, yet. CAKE! The preciousss...), Ecea, i love athrun, bast4 (You'll see on both accounts! Anything else is giving away plot. XD), DaugherofDeath, and ZidaneLover167 for your reviews. Apologies for misspelled names.
Ooh, and because some people don't know about the end of YGO and it's kinda important to the fic... A short, spoiler-filled summary!
They find Yami's name (being Atemu), at some point Yugi duels Bakura and he like... gets sent to the Shadow Realm or such. Later Yugi duels Yami and wins, becoming the King of Games and Yami goes off to the afterlife or summat, and all the Millenium Items fall into a pit of d00om or such. Yeah. In the manga at least.
And man, is SO seriously cramping my style... can't make emoticons or 'actions' 'cause asterixes, the funny triangle bracket, at signs... yeah. None of those show up... What the puck?
Please be reviewing! Now on to fic!
Chapter 2:
I was still okay at first, after it finally set in that he was gone. Really I was. The date with Anzu went fine, and I laughed and was happy. But then after I had gone home and was lying in bed alone, something started to ache. Nothing physical, just something deep down inside me that I couldn't quite place.
After that night I started noticing things. Little things that were different now that he was gone, the emptiness inside my head, the way I had no one to talk to when I was alone, no one I could just ask for advice whenever I wanted... Little things.
But I wasn't unhappy! I wasn't. I just wasn't... as happy. I could still smile and laugh and joke around with my friends. Just not as much.
So things stayed as they were, I went on more dates with Anzu, Joey and Tristan teased me about it, Seto didn't really seem to care...Everything should have been good. Should have.
But I still ached, and more and more often I found myself forcing a smile, or pretending to laugh. I was becoming less and less happy.
One night, Anzu kissed me. It was my first kiss, but we kissed more afterward, and then I went home. I know I'm not an expert on kissing, but I'm pretty sure that when you kiss someone you're supposed to feel happy, or something like that.
When I was kissing Anzu I felt dead.
"Hiya Marik!"
The blonde man ejected his mouthful of coffee in surprise at the sudden onslaught of a familiar voice. He coughed a bit and a reassuring hand patted him on the back until he stopped. Wiping his mouth, he stared at his unexpected visitor in shock.
"Sorry about that," Yugi Mutou said, looking sheepish. The dark-haired man wiped at the table top with a handful of napkins. "Didn't mean to startle you."
"Wha- Yugi?" the ex-tomb keeper had yet to snap out of his shock. As far as he knew, no one had seen this wayward duellist for five years and suddenly poof! Here he was and acting all friendly.
"Long time no see, eh?" the shorter man asked.
Okay, scratch the friendly. Because now his impromptu companion was smirking in a very unfriendly and un-Yugi-like way.
"I wasn't too surprised to find Kaiba out here, with his company and all," the dark-haired man started, examining his nails idly. "But you, I didn't expect. What are you doing here, Marik?"
Everything about the little – though he wasn't as little anymore – duellist contradicted what he had come to expect from him, and was rather unnerving. The Egyptian refused to be intimidated by this uncharacteristic attitude though, he had faced worse. Had been worse.
"Business," he answered simply, adopting a bored look.
Yugi simply raised an eyebrow and stared at his blonde companion with his strangely dead-yet-lively eyes. Marik stared back, refusing to look away even as that haunting violet gaze raised goose bumps on his arms. The staring contest lasted minutes, until he finally gave in and turned his paler purple eyes away. The King of Games triumphed again.
"So," the ex-tomb keeper said, trying to sound casual. "You hear about the President."
Yugi smirked. "Bastard deserved what he got."
The darkly tanned man was glad that he hadn't taken another swig of his coffee as it would surely have joined it's predecessor upon the table top. That was very un-Yugi-like behaviour.
"They all got exactly what they deserved," the shorter man continued. "No more, no less."
There was an idea dawning in Marik's head, a very disturbing, impossible idea. The incidents he was researching had started five years ago... Yugi had disappeared five years ago... The latest incidents were in the US... Here was Yugi in the US... The attacks seemed oh-so-familiar... Yugi was one of the few who could use the shadow games...
"That's impossible!" the Egyptian shouted suddenly. "Not with the Items gone!"
His only answer was a mysterious smirk.
The dark-haired leaned over the table so that their noses almost touched. "I'm a forgiving person, so I can ignore the events of the past as long as they aren't repeated and nobody forces me to remember them. So a word of advice, Marik, stay the hell out of my way."
It wasn't until the violet-eyed duellist had left that he realized he was trembling. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, the ex-tomb keeper finished off his coffee.
Things had just gotten a whole lot more interesting.
Seto glanced at his watch, then back up at the landing strip impatiently. He had ordered one of his private jets to fly Wheeler over to the U.S., and it should have been arriving any second now. He wasn't entirely sure how the arrangement had come about, something about Joey not wanting to talk about what had happened over the phone and the possibility that the presidential assassination wasn't the only incident with Yugi...
He almost couldn't believe that Yugi would have tried to kill Wheeler, his best friend, but something in the mutt's voice convinced him that it was the truth. Knowing that, how could he doubt that he old rival would have the guts to kill a complete stranger?
What was really eating at him was how nobody had noticed the boy changing from the child-like duellist into what he was now, what he had become five years ago. No one could blame him for not noticing, of course, he wasn't that close to Yugi, but the kid's best friends? Shouldn't they have observed something that would make them suspicious, make them try and figure out what was wrong?
Seto shook his head. There were a lot of things that didn't make sense right now. Including why and how Yugi had killed the President.
"Well, Wheeler," he said out loud. "When you get here, you have some explaining to do."
Joey glanced out the window of the small commercial jet, watching as the ground steadily grew closer. With a slight jar, the aircraft touched down, taxiing to a halt moments later.
He really didn't want to be here. He didn't want to tell Kaiba what had happened, didn't want to talk about Yugi, didn't want to have anything to do with Yugi... But if his ex-friend was killing people, it was up to him to help stop the guy.
Turning to the man sitting next to him, he asked, "You ready?"
His companion smiled and nodded and they both got up and headed to the front of the plane.
Stepping down the set of stairs placed at the door, Joey was immediately accosted by an impatient Seto Kaiba.
"What, no hello?" he asked.
A hard glare was his answer. "You better start explaining what's going on here, Wheeler."
"Me? You're the one who knows about this whole President business!"
A small cough interrupted the two men before they could start an argument.
Kaiba started, glancing over Joey's shoulder. "Who?"
"Oh yeah," Joey said. "Forgot to mention, I brought along some reinforcements."
"Reinforcements...?"
"When Yugi tried to kill me five years back, it wasn't with a gun or anythin'. Whatever it was... it reminded me of the Shadow Realm. So I brought someone who knows more about it than either of us."
And standing at the base of the set of steps, pale hair pulled back in a long braid, was none other than Ryou Bakura.
He watched them from the shadows, unheard, unseen, wrapped in a cloak of darkness. They hadn't found it yet, but they would soon and then they would know. Then they would understand why he had to die.
They had followed the stains, the bloody hand and footprints that the children had left after exacting their vengeance. They had traced them back to the painting and behind the painting the safe. And now they would open the safe and understand.
He slipped behind them, invisible, intangible, and watched as they hacked into the large metal box. Watched as they pulled open the door, and recoiled from the smell. He himself knew that smell all too well, had experienced it too many times in his travels. It still made his nose wrinkle in disgust.
"Oh my god..." Someone whispered.
He understood their shock, for even though they had seen many horrible things in their career, few had seen things such as this.
There were four of them in the safe, all in various stages of decay. But that was just in the safe. There were at least three others that he knew of that had been disposed of at other locations... Four children that is. The bodies of children.
All of them were bruised, cut, mutilated. Tracks of dark, dried blood streaked their naked forms, especially around there, leaving the poor things utterly humiliated, even in death. But they had gotten their revenge, he had given it to them and now they could go and rest in some sort of peace.
A flashlight was shone into the dark space, glinting off the dull open eyes of the most recent victim.
"Is that...?" one of them said, voice trembling.
"It's the President's daughter..."
As he gazed upon the defiled, dead children, a prickling began in his eyes and so he left. It hurt him to see them like that, desecrated, lifeless. That man... he had taken from them everything, their pride, their lives, their future, he had taken it all and left a stain on their souls that would never, ever go away.
He left and as he went he let tears run down his face. He cried fairly often actually, but never out of remorse for what he had done. Why would he feel remorse for ridding the world of people like that man? People who raped the innocent and weak, who killed for money, or pleasure, or no reason at all. Why would he care about them? No, he cried for those who died or were hurt because he'd never be able to save them from someone who hadn't committed a crime yet. Yugi Mutou cried for the dead children locked away in a safe, and for all the victims of the dark side of humanity.