Misanthroshipping (Thief King Bakura x Yami no Marik x Yami no Bakura)


He should be dead...mostly. Yami no Marik had quite enjoyed watching the white-haired spirit disappear – laughing as he faded. It was a dark laugh that only a mind like Yami no Marik's could truly appreciate, and it had sent pleasant chills down his spine, knowing that, in the end, the other spirit still survived. They would face each other again.

It would give Yami no Marik something to look forward to after the pharaoh was dead.

He sat in his dark room on the blimp again, waiting somewhat impatiently for the dawn to arrive and the next series of battles to begin. He was so close to spilling the pharaoh's blood. But he could only entertain himself with visions of various forms of death for the pharaoh for so long. He stood up again and began to pace, rolling the Millennium Rod between his fingers. He could go...pay a visit to some of the other passengers. But no, that would probably not be for the best. Seto Kaiba might be allowing him to continue participating in the tournament for his God Card, but Yami no Marik had a feeling that Kaiba's generosity would not last if he started murdering his other passengers.

That could wait until after the pharaoh was dead.

But he was bored. Perhaps he should reenter the shadows again and visit poor little Ryo. His spirit partner had dissolved into the shadows themselves, but Ryo had merely gotten caught in the crossfire, and was probably even now wandering pathetically through the shadows, calling out for some friend of his to hear him. The thought brought a grin to Yami no Marik's face. Well, it would certainly amuse him for a few hours.

He let the shadows filter out and wrap around him, drawing him silently into their domain. He loved this place – the all-encompassing darkness and emptiness, dripping with hopelessness and despair, because those who fell into this world did not leave it easily.

Yami no Marik glanced around him, his smile fading slightly. Now...where was Ryo? He had thought he had arrived just in the spot where he had last left the boy. Hm. The shadows must have gotten him turned around. The thought was not a happy one – he didn't like to admit that he wasn't as proficient at handling the shadows as he liked to pretend. After all, he hadn't had much time to practice using them. Marik himself tried to avoid this place as much as possible. The weakling

Shadows hissed past his ear. Yami no Marik glared at them – they weren't supposed to do that.

Then he realized where the sound had come from, and a grin spread across his face.

"Ah, Bakura. What do you think you're doing?"

The shadows hissed again, and there was the faint touch of Bakura's poisonous accent to them this time. Yami no Marik couldn't hear what the spirit was saying, but it didn't really matter. Bakura wouldn't be able to touch him until his Penalty Game was over, and that could be a very long time – centuries, even, before he managed to break free and materialize back into a physical form.

Yami no Marik grinned at the shadows, wondering from which angle Yami no Bakura was glaring at him. Perhaps all of them. The spirit had dissolved directly into the shadows themselves. He was harmless in his current state, but perhaps Yami no Marik could have some fun with that.

"Does it bother you, knowing that I can wander around in the shadows with ease and you can only watch?" he asked. "I'm sure it does. After all, you tried to tell me that you were the ruler of these shadows. How unfortunate to have been brought down by someone so much younger and weaker than you."

He could almost feel the shadows seething at him. Yami no Bakura was angry, now. It was probably because Yami no Marik had been "playing" with Ryo earlier. The ancient spirit seemed to be intriguingly possessive of the human boy.

"Would you happen to know where little Ryo is hiding, hm?" he asked, taunting the incorporeal being. "I'd like to play another game with him."

The shadows writhed a bit, but still, Yami no Bakura couldn't hurt him. It wasn't allowed under the rules of the Penalty Game.

But Yami no Bakura had one little trick up his sleeve, it seemed. The shadows hissed past Yami no Marik's ears again, but then they went silent. For a moment, Yami no Marik thought Bakura might have vanished entirely. But, no, there was a strange column of blackness there, a little thicker than it should have been. Frowning, Yami no Marik approached it. He poked at it with the Millennium Rod, but the metal passed through it. It was probably just an optical illusion.

A hiss came from behind him. Yami no Marik grinned, almost lazily, over his shoulder.

"Is this supposed to be scary? All the hissing?"

In his motion to look behind him, his hand brushed against the dark pillar. His fingers passed through it, but –

Blood on his fingers, a laugh bubbling in his throat. His knife was sprouting from the neck of the unfortunate soldier that had thought to get in his way, laying dead on the ground behind him as he retreated back into the darkness.

Yami no Marik stepped back, blinking against the sudden image.

The dark pillar solidified, and then, in front of him, a young man was sitting crosslegged, an easy smile across his face that was strangely disfigured by the scar down his cheek. He looked like Bakura, if Bakura had cut his hair shorter and sat out in the sun for a very long time. The shadows-Bakura behind Yami no Marik seemed to hum with a sort of amusement.

Yami no Marik raised his eyebrow.

"And who are you supposed to be?"

"Could as you that," the Egyptian Bakura said, grinning lazily.

His eyes found Yami no Marik's Millennium Rod.

"Ah," he said. "You're from the future."

"And you're from the past," Yami no Marik said, noting the Millennium Ring on the boy's chest.

"Hm. Time never did run the same in here."

Yami no Marik had to look around at the shadows. What on earth was Bakura trying to do? Or...perhaps he wasn't trying to do anything at all.

"You've beaten me...in the future, I see," the ancient Bakura said, not sounding very perturbed by the thought. "Because I appear to be here twice."

He was looking at the shadows behind Yami no Marik, looking strangely amused. Yami no Marik smirked at Bakura.

"I have," he said.

"Interesting," the ancient Bakura said. "I'll have to remember that."

A slow smile grew across his face.

"So that I can be thinking about how to get out of the Penalty Game ahead of time..."

Yami no Marik laughed shortly.

"It would take you centuries to get enough the power to simply reform in here, much less break out of the dimension before your Penalty Game is over," Yami no Marik said. "You'll just have to wait."

The ancient Bakura just smiled.

"Oh, but I have been thinking about it for centuries," he said, his eyes half-closed like a content cat. "Or rather...I will have been."

With another wide grin, he disappeared –

And behind Yami no Marik, Bakura reformed from the shadows.

Yami no Marik swore, whipping around to stop Bakura's attack, blocking the rush of shadows with an explosion of his own. He leaped backwards, out of the shadows, back into the physical world, listening to Yami no Bakura laugh and laugh, the sound echoing in Yami no Marik's ears.

He still wouldn't be able to exit the realm. Not until he could find Ryo and reestablish a connection – difficult to do while Yami no Marik had the Millennium Ring.

After a beat, Yami no Marik chuckled. Then he began to laugh, his own laugh echoing across his room.

"Oh, Bakura," he said, grinning madly. "You are a clever little bastard. I look forward to killing you a second time."

Because Bakura would come after him. There would be no question about it. And Yami no Marik would be waiting with a smile on his face and a knife in his hand...


A/N: I have to let this out before I explode: TKB'S NAME IS NOTAKEFIA. I read a couple of Misanthroshipping oneshots for some inspiration (bad idea, by the way) and everyone insisted on calling him Akefia. That's not his name. Stop calling him that. His name is Bakura, and if that makes it confusing to write about him and Yami no Bakura, well, tough, so what, you're a writer, make it work. Okay. I'm okay now. And also, I totally just ripped of Day of the Doctor in this one, in case you hadn't noticed. I just watched it last night. I probably shouldn't watch or read other things while I'm writing a project. Because I start stealing things. XD Next is Mirrorshipping (Seto x Noa).