Sickleshipping (Thief King Bakura x Yami no Marik)

Bakura tossed his knife lazily from hand to hand. The light played across the silvery blade, sending glimmers dancing along the shadowy alley walls that he leaned against. The movement, however, was only a mask to the uneasiness within.

Something had caught his attention. Magic, of some sort. Dark magic. Akin to his own, actually. But it was not his magic, and it was not the magic of the god who gave him his power, nor the magic of any of the guardians. So...whose was it?

Gold glinted in the sunlight. A foot crunched ever so softly on the ground. Mistakes that alerted Bakura to the unknown's presence.

He turned smoothly and the knife whistled from his hand and through the air. Before the knife had even come close to its target, Bakura had taken in the sight. A tall, Egyptian man, with platinum blond hair shooting upwards in spikes, staring at him with flat violet eyes –

He batted the knife aside, and was already moving forward. Bakura had time to be impressed at this new entity's reflexes. Then he removed a second knife from the folds of his cloak. The figure cut forward with a long knife of his own, but he was wild and did not seem to know how to correctly use the weapon. Bakura slid like water from the blow and slashed. The figure also managed to dodge. He came at Bakura with a diagonal slash, but Bakura still flowed out of the way.

He dropped his dagger and instead drew his own long knife. The metal clanged against each other as the weapons met. With ease, Bakura twisted just so, and his opponent's knife clattered to the ground. He flicked his wrist out casually so that the tip of the knife would brush the figure's neck – but he wasn't there anymore. With a wild grin, the man ducked downwards out of the way. Bakura had not been expecting so much competition. His swear was cut off as the figure rammed him in the chest with his shoulder.

But Bakura recovered from the shock quickly. He slammed against the wall, but as his opponent scooped up his knife again, Bakura was already forming a spell in his hands. The dark magic flung outwards like a net of sticky web, covering the man and causing him to stumble backwards. Bakura gripped his knife again. He shot forward, the blade aimed for the man's heart.

But the hint of magic tightened around him as he did so, and a similar net fell over him, tripping him.

The pair, both trapped in each others' spells, came to a brief halt, breathing hard and staring at each other. Bakura caught his breath first.

"You're not bad," he said, slowly. Cautiously.

The man grinned at him. It was a crazed grin, his eyes sparking with bloodlust.

"You're not half-bad yourself," he said. "This is more fun than I thought it would be."

Bakura smiled darkly.

"Fun, you say? Is that what this is? You attacked me for fun?"

"What else?" the man said.

"And why me, might I ask?"

"You looked like you might fight back."

They stared at each other, crazed grin to calculating one, and perhaps, at the same time, both realized the same thing. Neither of them was going to outmatch the other.

But that wasn't going to stop them from trying.

A/N: ...yeah. That's about the extent of the relationship I see forming here. Unless I start getting all erotic yaoi on you guys, and I don't like eroticism. So, next is Siblingshipping (Mokuba x Shizuka).