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. Some swearing.
You can sort of... ignore the title. It made sense at the time, but I'm not entirely sure if it still does. 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 i love athrun, bast4 (All I'll say to most of that is that Yami is currently quite dead or whatever. But for the last thing, I guess I might have been a bit vague or confusing... Yugi isn't after Kaiba. The person looking for him at the hotel desk was Marik), Kekewey (I don't know when I'm gonna update AC. My muse for it is taking a vacation or something. And I don't think Kaiba changed all that much), kikoken (Marik is devilish. Or at least he'd like to think so), Padawan-Travina (I guess that's two people I confused. Sorry! But it was Marik looking for Seto), shadow/phantomness, Aldrea, Shinigami (Is the hikari, they got rid of that pesky alternate personality in Battle City. Fanart eh? Hmm... Don't worry about spoilers, I'm well aware of Yami's fiery exploits XD And I wouldn't say it's so much without dark there is no light as so much without one there is no contrast for the other...), Amber Eyes23, Alaskantiger, SoulDreamer, LeDiz (Ee! YOU are reviewing my fic! You are such an awesome author. W00t. And I'm not sure if that's ever happened to me...Hmm...), AzzieAz, Silvershadowfire, lilmatchgirl007, Weeping Angel (Well, the cards Yugi left weren't so much used ON the people as being kinds... representative of who they were, or why he did what he did to them. The two mafia-related cards are the originals, the others may be, gained through Marik's connections), oracale, HANDHELD Uber Rei Model 05 (I honestly couldn't tell you what relationship they might have. It is beyond my knowledge currently. Sad when I'm the one writing the damn thing) and anyone I missed. Apologies for misspelled names.
Please be reviewing! Now on to fic!
Chapter 4:
I sometimes wonder if maybe I am related to a phoenix. Because a week after I broke up with Anzu, I died.
I had been out with Tristan and Joey and we'd stayed out late, but when it came time to go home I didn't want to spend any more time with them. They were still my friends, and they were fun to be with, but I still wasn't happy. And pretending to be happy took a lot of effort, and even though I didn't want them to know I was unhappy, it still hurt that they didn't notice.
So I walked home alone, which I admit was very stupid of me. I was walking past an alley when I was grabbed from behind, pulled into the darkness away from the streetlights.
He held a knife to my throat, demanded that I give him all my money. I fumbled for my wallet, pulled out 1000 yen. It was all I had! But he didn't believe me, he'd recognized my face from TV, thought that a famous duellist like myself would have more money, but I didn't and I couldn't give him what he wanted.
So he beat me, and let me tell you, getting beaten up in high school has nothing on getting beaten by a criminal. Broke two of my ribs, my right arm, smashed my head against a wall... surprisingly I only blacked out for a few minutes. In that time he had taken my wallet and anything he deemed valuable – my bracelets and boots – and left.
Lying broken on the ground, watching the blood pool around my head I began to cry. He should have been there to save me, Yami... he had saved me so many times, my friends... but now, now he was gone. He had left me alone and vulnerable to the horrors of the world.
Eventually someone found me and took me to a hospital, but it was too late by then. Yugi Mutou had died from a reason altogether different than his physical ailments, swallowed by the ache in his soul. And in the shadows, he was reborn. From the ashes of this broken boy, from his blood and tears came me. And I would never be hurt again.
"So," spoke Seto Kaiba, "You're telling me that over the past five years, Yugi Mutou has killed, disabled and driven insane 142 people all across the globe?"
"Correct!" Marik confirmed, leafing through a small notepad. 'Little Book of Big Evil' was scrawled across the front of it in marker.
Joey scowled. "I thought he'd killed more people than just the President... but 142? That's just crazy."
"It does seem very strange," Ryou said. "I mean, what would drive Yugi of all people to kill so many? If it had just been the President of the United States, perhaps it could have been passed off as assassination with base in politics, a hired killing maybe, but all those people? It just doesn't make sense... I think we're missing something."
Joey snorted. "He's crazy, is what. The guy doesn't need a motive."
The snowy-haired man hm'd, then answered with an unconvinced sounding "Perhaps."
"Well, motives and reasoning aside," Marik butted in. "First order of business should be to find out if the little bugger is still even in the city. What do you say, Ryou, up to a little soul searching?"
"That was a horrible pun," the braided man said with a smile. "And I search for minds, not souls. What is this 'thing' you had in mind to help boost my abilities?"
The Egyptian flashed a page of his battered notebook, the sheet scrawled with hastily drawn diagrams and messy text. "Temporary enhancement spell! Depending on how you do it, it'll enhance everything from mind powers to-" A wink. "-Pleasure."
Seto gave a disgusted snort. "Just get on with it. Let's see if this 'spell' of yours will work."
"Ch. No sense of humour," the tanned man muttered. "Anyway, Ryou. Strip."
Red coloured the pale-haired man's cheeks. "What?"
"Your shirt, strip it off. Part of the spell needs to be drawn on flesh."
"O-oh," Ryou said, and shyly unbuttoned his shirt.
"Ooh, have you been working out?" Marik asked, smirking, as he pinched the pale man's bicep.
The braided-man slapped at his hands. "Stop teasing!"
"Fine, fine." With that, Marik began tracing out a circle on his companion's back, glancing back at his notebook now and then as he began to fill it in with symbols.
"...is that eyeliner?" Joey asked, blinking slowly at the tanned man's choice of drawing utensil.
"So what if it is?" the Egyptian said defensively. "It's a perfectly useful multipurpose tool!"
Seto rolled his eyes and muttered to himself. "I'm surrounded by idiots..."
Marik winked. "But you know you love us."
Throwing up his hands in exasperation, the tall brunette said something about a headache and stalked off to the bedroom.
The ex-Tomb Keeper looked strangely victorious.
After a few minutes wait, Joey got bored and wandered over to the fridge to see if it might hold food.
"Are you almost done yet?" Ryou questioned.
"Almost!" the longhaired blonde answered, finishing up the sketch. "Now, to just activate it..."
Standing back, the Egyptian spoke a strange word that thrummed in Ryou's ears and raised gooseflesh on his arms. Warmth suddenly blossomed between his shoulder blades and traced down his back so that he could almost visualize the patterns drawn there.
And then suddenly his mind was open and he could feel. He could sense the carefully constructed blocks in Marik's mind, shielding all but the most frivolous thoughts. Sense Joey's boredom and hunger, and that deeper sadness and anger, even deeper a buried longing for... And then he was in Seto's mind, and he felt the man's frustration, confusion and a tinge of self-disgust at his helplessness in this situation.
Then out, out of the room and into the surrounding building and the street below and all the many, many people with out even trying. It was amazing, breathtaking... It wasn't what he wanted to do. Not to mention that he was invading peoples' privacy without permission.
Catching hold of his mind's reach, Ryou drew it back in to himself, keeping his empathy confined to his own being.
"It work?" Marik asked.
"Oh yes," the white-haired man said breathlessly. "Definitely."
Then closing his eyes, he reached out again, this time brushing minds only enough to determine whether or not they were Yugi. Using this pattern he spread his mind like a blanket across the city, searching.
He was resting, floating peacefully in the vast confines of his soul room, when he felt the light brush to his mind. It trickled across his senses, rousing his attention, before coming back to prod more thoroughly.
Someone was reaching out to his mind with their own, and without his permission. How very rude.
"Well, if they so want to meet me," Yugi spoke to the darkness of his soul room. "Then let's invite them in and give them a proper greeting."
He opened his mind like a black hole and drew the questing presence in.
Ryou wasn't sure what had happened. One moment he had touched Yugi's mind and was trying to figure out where it was in the physical world, and the next he was here. Wherever here was.
He found himself floating in a seemingly endless darkness, empty but for large blocks of what appeared to be gold. One such block floated by him, and he had to duck away to avoid being struck by it. The thing was the size of a small house.
The white-haired man drifted slowly through the strange place, voicing the question burning in his mind, "Where the hell am I?"
"Welcome," a voice spoke from behind him, and he span around to come face to face with none other than Yugi Mutou.
He almost couldn't distinguish the other man from the darkness surrounding them, his hair and clothes fading into the shadows. Only the tanned flesh of his face, hands and feet were discernable against the background.
The small man tilted his head and smiled. "Welcome to my soul room, Ryou Bakura. What a surprise."
"Wha-? Your soul room?" The pale-haired man glanced around in shock. He had never imagined a soul room could look like this... this bizarre emptiness.
Another thought occurred to him. He had known the duellist had shown supernatural abilities... but to do this, to pull another person into his mind... Ryou realized that he was far out of his league and completely vulnerable.
"Quite," Yugi replied. "You know, I don't know what I expected when I felt some rude person poking about my mind, but it certainly wasn't you. Strange really, especially since I met with both Seto and Marik just days ago."
The dark man turned from his companion, and Ryou almost lost sight of him. When he spoke again, something in his voice made him shiver.
"I was willing to pass it off as mostly chance when it was just the two of them... but now you? No, that's just a bit too coincidental for my tastes." Yugi turned again, now scowling. "I suppose Joey is with you as well?"
Feeling it would be a bad idea to lie, the pale-haired man nodded numbly, braid waving in the air behind him.
His companion's scowl deepened. "I told Marik to stay out of my business, and that goes for all of you. Go home, Bakura, go home and leave me alone and take the others with you. I won't give second chances."
There was a cold fire blazing in those violet eyes that made Ryou shiver, and suddenly Yugi's gaze softened.
"Just go home," he said again, this time more pleading than demanding. "You were my friend, Bakura. I don't want to have to hurt you."
The white-haired man furrowed his brow in confusion. "I don't understand you, Yugi. I know better than most the mind of a murderer, and you don't strike me as one."
"I'm no murderer, I'm just doing what's right."
"But-"
"I think it's time you went back. Just remember, next time you won't be so lucky."
Ryou felt a pulling sensation and the dark realm of Yugi's soul room started to blur.
"Wait! I just want to ask you one question!"
The world came back into focus and the braided man blurted, "How?"
"How can I use the shadows?"
Ryou nodded, and the small man went silent, as though determining how to answer the question.
"Doors..." he started tentatively. "When doors are opened in a person's mind, they never disappear, though what lay behind them may disappear."
"I'm not sure I understand..."
Yugi shook his head. "I'll show you."
And then they weren't in the dark-haired man's soul room, but a corridor that stretched infinitely in either direction. They stood by two doors, one closed tight, the other open to a room that Ryou knew only too well.
He gasped. "This is my mind!"
"Of course it is," Yugi stated. "I wasn't about to parade us around mine."
The pale-haired man shivered at the thought of his mind, his soul being trespassed upon so easily by another.
His companion pointed at the shut door. "Do you know what that is?"
"It... it's where the spirit of the Ring's soul room used to be."
Yugi nodded. "But now he's gone, and the soul room with it, leaving a void. Only... the void where doors like this lead, aren't so empty as one would have thought."
"...it leads to the shadow realm, doesn't it?"
The shorter man looked a bit startled. "Intuitive."
"I still don't see how you got shadow powers. I mean, I've been in the shadow realm before, and just opening Yami's door and going in wouldn't have-"
He had to stop as a chilling wave of rage washed over him, and he turned to look at Yugi. The man's face was contorted in a look of absolute fury, glaring wrathfully at the white-haired man.
"You have no right..." the smaller man snarled.
"Y-yugi?" Ryou stuttered, frightened. He didn't understand what had happened, the duellist had been fine just moments ago...
"NONE OF YOU! None of you have the right to talk about him!"
And suddenly, Ryou found himself falling backwards, and the door was suddenly open... He grasped the doorframe with one hand as he fell into darkness and shadows. He watched fearfully as Yugi stared down at him.
"Please," he whimpered. "Don't..."
The man just glared at him, and then was gone.
He felt something tug at his clothes and he sobbed. Swinging his other arm up, he began to painstakingly pull himself from the grip of the shadow realm. The darkness hissed around him, reluctant to let go of its newest catch, but as long as he still kept a link to his mind, it couldn't have him.
With one final heave, he pushed himself onto the floor of the corridor in his mind, then kicked the heavy door shut. For a few moments he rested, panting and shivering, before returning to the physical world. He didn't notice the scrap of shadow that dropped off his clothes and scurried away into his soul room.