Thank you all for the lovely reviews! They made me smile…..

And, as a key:

Yugi - /Speech/

Yami - /Speech/

Ryou - /Speech/

Bakura - /Speech/

And once again, I (Most unfortunately!) Do not own Yu-Gi-Oh, Harry Potter, or Yu Yu Hakusho. But I'm working on that!

Mortals

Gathering his composure for the worst, Atemu strode towards the figure on the ground. As he knelt down beside her, she felt his presence and twitched violently. Her eyes flew open as he gently touched her shoulder.

Composing a calm and reassuring face, he muttered, "You're going to be alright. Just stay still."

She smiled and grit her teeth against the pain. "I am not. You know it as well as I do. Please…" she fumbled towards a pouch connected to her hip, and Atemu stayed her hand and removed it from her belt. "Take these letters and d-," she gasped, breaking off her breathy sentence.

Yami spun around just in time to see a spiked vine heading directly for his back. Strengthening his shield of Shadow Magic, he watched as it bounced off harmlessly, inches from his face.

"Who are you?" A silken voice hissed from somewhere in the surrounding greenery. Atemu belatedly realized the position he was in – surrounded (enclosed, really) by thousands of concealing trees and shrubbery. The menace of the foliage was almost tangible.

Not the best place for defending oneself.

"I," he announced to the dark greenery, "Am Atemu, Master of the Shadows. What business do you have attacking me?"

He sensed a rustling from the nearby woods, and sent the Shadows in small bursts to find his attacker. Darting quickly, they moved east, west, south, west again, and finally congregated in the north.

Smirking and turning to face his enigma, he stated clearly, "And I believe I shall now take my leave of this bloodbath. Until we meet again," and melted back into a portal, confident the woman would be taken care of. He'd felt a layer of honor on the silken voice, and had no worries as he transported himself back to his aibou's room.

Sure enough, as the last bit of him disappeared, a lightly built, red haired demon bounded out of the nearest tree, green eyes flashing as he tucked a rose seed back into his hair.

"Sprout-san?"

Ryou sat on the other end of a compartment from Bakura, watching his yami amuse himself with darts of Shadow Magic. The fact that he had no board to play it with seemed to be of no consequence – Bakura would never miss anyway.

Ryou rolled his eyes as the thief king completed a complicated sequence of throws that looked suspiciously like a beheaded Atemu, recalling how they had ended up on a bouncing train in the first place.

/Bakura, you realize you're at a train station, right?/

/…/

/Bakura?/

/…Maybe the ring's malfunctioning?/

Ryou groaned and earned himself a few odd looks from people around him. /There's no way we'll find anything here./

/Just keep walking, ahou./

/What, into a wall?/ Ryou was quite sure his yami had lost his mind.

/If that's where the Ring points, that's where we go./

/You're kidding me, right? Please tell me you're kidding!/

/Do you want me to take over?/

/I am not bloody letting you run my body into a wall!/ Ryou scuffed his shoe angrily against the too-clean pavement.

Bakura took slight control over Ryou's right arm and placed one hand on the wall. /It's not actually a wall, Ryou. Think of it as….a Duel Monsters illusion./

/Which is especially comforting when you factor in that the Duel Monsters came to life./

Bakura growled as the train came to a screeching stop – the motion had made him mis-throw and a dart had ended up landing in his hikari's hair.

Though the girlish squeak he had emitted was rather endearing.

/I heard that, you horrible baka./ Ryou pouted adorably from his side of the room, and disappeared into the Ring, leaving Bakura in charge of their body. /Now go make a dramatic entrance, will you?/

/Will do./ And Bakura sped off, adding some extra magic to the ends of his cloak to add just a bit of extra lift, and henceforth, extra intimidation.

'Life,' Kurama mused, 'Is a very strange thing.'

After rushing to the help of the crumpled woman, (Whom his plants had informed him had the name of 'Sprout') he had realized something fundamental.

The woman was going to die.

Masking his horror with the sweetest face he could muster, he crouched next to her, whispering words of courage. Her eyes were closed in a rather eerie sort of way, and as he fussed over her (Why did this woman bear no true wounds? Something should be outwardly wrong with her!) he saw her face break into a painful smile.

"Stop it," she had croaked out, "You're not going to save me. Just take the letters in my bag and….make sure they get to the right people."

As she took her last breath, Kurama made the silent wish that Botan could make her smile again.

Shaking off the memory, Kurama stared waspishly at the letters in his hand. 'These are the kinds of things that made you stop believing in coincidences' he thought, seeing the first and foremost letter had been addressed to him. The two of the three underneath were addressed to Hiei and Yusuke, respectively (it was going to be hell giving them those letters, he just knew it!), but the other one….

Who the hell was Yugi Mouto?

Kurama guessed he should tackle that first.

"YAMI!"

Atemu phased into a room quite unlike the one he had been summoned out of an hour or so ago. Clothes littered the floor, Yugi had managed to overturn the bed ('What the…?'), and….was that the door lying on the carpet?

The Pharaoh had almost decided on taking a Shadow Portal to a safer place (A lava pit, perhaps?) when his aibou's eyes landed on the ancient spirit.

Yugi, torn between grief and anger, launched himself at his yami. Atemu cringed and prepared himself for the worst (Puppy eyes! Enraged glomping! Such things were not dignified for a pharaoh to fall to!) when he was saved by his aibou suddenly tripping.

Over a spiked vine?

The dark spirit's eyes flew open, and with a small "Eep!" (Which he would never admit came out of him) blasted the vine with a rather explosive bit of Shadow Magic. His muscles tightened, and he spun around the room, looking for the strange attacker.

"Hey look! A letter!" squeaked Yugi into the hard-wood floor, holding up said parchment.

'Sometimes,' Atemu mused, 'My aibou forces me to redefine the meaning of the word 'dense,'' staring in horror at what Yugi held in his hands.

"'Mr. Yugi Mouto and Company,'" read Yugi, oblivious to his darker self's looks, "'Due to your knowledge of obscure magic, you have been invited to teach the Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.' Do you have any idea what they're talking about, yami?"

/Not one idea, aibou. Though I don't particularly like the idea of being addressed to as 'And Company'./

Ignoring the spirit's disgruntled aura, Yugi continued reading. "We await your owl or your presence no later than August first? Yami! There's no way we'll get there by then! Today's August second!"

Atemu fixed his light with a hopeful look. /Does that mean we don't have to go?/

Yugi looked horrified at the very suggestion. "Of course we're going! How could we not? These people might need us! We'll just….have to go see Kaiba! There! That's the solution! Maybe with time zones or something…." Yugi continued his rambling as he grabbed a coat and fled out the door, his other half highly unamused with his fate.

/Oh yes. Piss off the highly imposing CEO. There's a winning game-plan./

Reviews

Thank you to…

Frosty Vermillion Petals, Green Phantom Queen, Kale, Flamethrowerqueen, Everyone's Anti-Valentine, PenPusherM, Sphinxfox/Lori Kimaya, Neko-Chibi-FaithKitty, Crazy Hyper Lady, Anonymous, ComputerFreak101, Fanfic Maniac, Fatti, LadyKatsu, and Chara13.

Ja ne!