.:.Hellfire.:.
Summary: Yami no Malik and Yami no Bakura have been sent to Hell. And they're about to drag their hikaris down with them.
Chapter 5: Down to Earth
"What?" Ryou cried in shock.
"I'm going to go bring the Earth to the brink of utter destruction, and rule whomever, or whatever, survives. It's fairly simple, ne?"
"Well, yes, but–" he protested.
"It seems like a fairly dumb thing to do." Bakura remarked. All the constriction had left him the minute his hikari had touched him. "I mean, wouldn't you need subjects if you want to rule it?"
"I told you. I'll rule whatever survives. If it can't survive a bit of molten rock, I don't want it."
And with that, she wavered out again.
"She'll be ruling a kingdom of archaea, then." Bakura said nonchalantly, looking around at the apartment they were in.
"Bakura!" Ryou cried. Oh great. Here we go with the hikari being a good-hearted person. "While I'm amazed you paid enough attention to my Biology class to learn about archaea, we still can't let her reduce the Earth to that!"
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because! Think of all the innocents who'll die! And our friends!"
"Your friends, Ryou, your friends. I don't understand your attachment to those damn friendship worshipers."
"Bakura has a point there, but we can't leave Rishid." Malik said.
"Or Isis-nee-chan!" Mariku put in.
"I was getting there, 'Ri!" Malik said, irritated. "We can't leave them there to die!"
Damn it. He was outnumbered. Damn the Egyptians for having attachments.
"Come on, Bakura, we have to find a way to go back and stop her!"
He scowled at his hikari, which was a mistake. The boy was peering up at him through white-silver hair, brown eyes glowing in the firelight from outside, a pleading look on his face.
"Oh, fine!" he snapped. "At least I'll be able to rub it in that blasted Pharaoh's face that I escaped."
"Thank you, 'Kura!" Ryou cried, linking himself around his neck.
"Stop it." Bakura muttered, glaring at the ceiling.
"So what does silver-thief think we should do to get out?" Mariku asked, draping himself over Bakura from behind.
"What makes you think I'd know?"
"... are we dogpiling Bakura?" Bakura stared at Malik, horrified.
"Yeah!" Mariku agreed enthusiastically, distancing himself to allow his hikari to tackle Bakura, after which he flung himself on.
Bakura twitched.
"Get. Off. Me."
"Not until Ryou gets on!" Malik was muffled between him and Mariku.
"Um..." Ryou hesitated.
"Tadaima!" a voice rang through the house. "Shinrya?" The girl they had met before, Filora, came into the room and blinked. "Am I interrupting something?" she sniggered.
With a growl Bakura crawled out from under the lanky forms of the other yami/hikari pair. She blinked.
"If you weren't dressed different I'd say I was seeing double. Did you find Lucifer?"
"Yep!" Mariku chimed. "But then fire-hair–"
"Mariku, do you just have a problem with using names?" Bakura demanded.
"Yes. Fire-hair said she was going to take over Earth now!"
"Mariku, 'Riku, who's this?" Malik asked, bouncing slightly. The blonde never ran out of energy.
"Filora." Bakura cut in. "She knows the other girl."
"Oh, Shinrya?" Filora asked. "She's my daughter."
"She– what?" Mariku asked, agape.
"So she's finally gone to start taking over Earth? Funny, I thought she was going to wait another five years, at least."
They all stared at her.
"But we need to go stop her!" Malik cried.
"Oh, really?" Filora raised an eyebrow at him.
"Yeah!" Mariku shouted.
"We're not gonna let her kill our friends!" Ryou said fiercely. She blinked at them.
"Well, I'm not gonna stop you from stopping her!" Filora said. "If you wanna, go ahead, have fun. Need a lift into the Earth dimension?"
Bakura snorted in amusement at the looked of shock and disconcertion on the other three faces, enhanced by the strange lighting.
"Oh... okay..." Ryou said cautiously.
"Sugoi!" Mariku said, bouncing.
"Right. Off we go then."
Malik blinked as the furnishings of Ryou's apartment replaced the other one. The first thing that caught his eye was his own body lying on the couch.
"Ra! It's me!" he cried, running over to it. However, his hand went right through it, dissipating it like mist. Meep. That was freaky. He looked up, to where Ryou was waving a hand through what had been his body.
"What the–?" Mariku asked.
"Shinrya turned you to the 'physical spirit' form so that you would be able to safely enter Hell. That leaves behind a 'ghost' of your Earth physical form that dissipates when you come back."
Malik blinked.
"Are all fire spirits deep endless wells of information?" Bakura snapped.
"No, just those that've lived over 2000 years."
"I've lived over three thousand years," the silver-haired thief complained. "But I don't know all of this crap."
Malik considered informing him of the admission inherent in this statement... but decided against it.
"Well, obviously you weren't out and about–"
At this, Malik couldn't resist.
"No, he sure wasn't." he said, snickering. Mariku broke down laughing, and even Ryou had to stifle a giggle. Only Ryou would ever giggle. It was cute. Adorable, even.
Bakura glared at them until they stopped laughing. (It took a while for Mariku to calm down).
"Well, ANYhow... You're all physical, and good to go, and whatnot... I'll go find my kid, and, oh! I'll send Ukemi over to keep an eye on you. Don't mind who's with him; Zangan can be a little... odd, sometimes."
"Wait, what?" Mariku demanded, but she was gone. He whirled around and grabbed Ryou, picking up his arm and staring at it. Ryou stared too, his pretty, long-lashed eyes open wide in shock.
"But... I thought the yamis could only touch each other and their own hikari..." he whispered.
Bakura strode over and tugged on a lock of Malik's hair.
"Yow! Hey, don't do that!" Malik protested, swatting the offending hand away.
"It would appear that it is now otherwise." Bakura remarked unconcernedly.
"You know what we can do with this?" Mariku asked.
"Rub it in the Pharaoh's face?"
"Well, that too, but I was thinking of... going to get something to eat!"
Bakura face faulted. Malik rolled his eyes. Should have figured if you'd been in Hell for hours and the Shadow Realm for even longer, and then suddenly gained a physical body, you'd be hungry.
"I can fix us something." Ryou said, going to the kitchen.
"Do you have any of that hamburger stuff?" Bakura asked eagerly, following him.
Malik grimaced in distaste.
"No, I don't, and I wouldn't be giving it to you half-raw even if I did have it!"
Ryou was cleaning up after the meal– Mariku had offered to help, but Ryou wasn't sure whether to trust him with breakables- when the doorbell rang.
"You expecting visitors?" came Bakura's harsh voice.
"Ack! It's probably Isis-nee-sama and Rishid! Hide me!" was Malik's cry.
"Why would you want to hid from them?" Mariku's confused answer.
"Well, let's think about it. I 'stayed the night' over here when I wasn't supposed to, I didn't bother to tell them I was unable to breathe for the better part of two hours- stop that, I'm all right now, oh, and did I mention some crazy anorexic lady transported us to Hell and–"
Ryou, drying off his hands, walked by the bickering pair and opened the door. And looked up. And up. And up.
The tallest person he had ever seen stood there. At least, he thought it was a person. Strange featherlike appendages replaced ears, and jewels adorned his forehead and lined the edges of his emotionless, coal-black eyes. Burgundy hair was tied back in a ponytail, sweeping out to touch the floor. The ends looked strangely black and charred. A long, loose black robe reminiscent of a Jedi's hid his other clothes from view, aside from a peek of a red shirt and blue jeans sticking out at the bottom.
"Ah... hello?" he greeted them, wondering who on Earth this could be. Behind him he felt the stares of his yami and the two Egyptians.
"Okaa-san said we should come here!" a voice piped. The cloak flapped aside to reveal a tiny shadow of the tall person- except the jewel on the forehead was black, as was the hair, and the eyes were bright red. He was wearing shorts and a white button-down shirt with stockings and tennis shoes. A plushie bearing a remarkable resemblance to the person whose leg he clutched was tucked under his arm.
"Oh! Oh! Oh! They must be the Zangan–" Mariku bounded up alongside him to point to the shadow, "and Ukemi," he pointed to the tall person, "people!"
Two sets of jewel-lined eyes blinked at him, then the black ones settled in a glare.
"I'm Zangan. This is the squirt."
"Douzo yoroshiku!" the little one piped. "I'm sorry we were late. I had to feed Daddy."
"Um." was all Ryou could say.
Notes:
Tadaima: I'm home!
Sugoi: Amazing
Nee-sama/chan: big sister. The honorifics imply different levels of respect. (Thus we understand why Malik calls her 'sama' and Mariku calls her 'chan')
Okaa-san: Mother
Douzo yoroshiku: Literally, 'please take good care of me;' the equivalent of 'nice to meet you.'
Thank you to all readers! And especially reviewers! (hint hint)
