"But, right now there's an even bigger problem looming on the horizon." The pale trespasser added. "Truth is, we're both being closely monitored," he pointed to Marik as well as himself, "-and we have a dangerous choice to make." He glanced at his hefty comrade, and they exchanged grim looks. "And we're running out of time."

"What do you mean, 'running out of time'?! You've both been claiming to be time travelers! Or did you forget that 'fact'?" Malik added somewhat snidely.

Bakura ignored the slender blonde's comment and pointedly added, "the problem is, now we've failed in our mission. We didn't manage to kill either of you, nor did we snag your organs to bring back with us. And to the Ashitasu Organization, failure is not an option. And soon other Reapers will be sent to hunt us down."

Ryou tilted his head in speculation. "The 'Ashitasu' Organization? That sounds like a portmanteau of the words 'bringing' and 'tomorrow'."

"So, they claim to 'bring you tomorrow,' then?" Malik mused.

Marik scowled in disgust while Bakura went on. "Oh yes- in fact, they promise the best of health to anyone able to pay them a mountain of gold. But the rest of us plebeians (who currently lack a mountain of gold) simply call them the 'Severers of the Future,' since you could also translate the phrase that way."

The blonde 'Reaper' suddenly snarled, outwardly irritated for the first time. "Don't let the 'cutesy' name fool you- they're a ruthless group of literally cutthroat-investors. And they're eager to make a massive profit by providing the wealthy with the one thing they'll pay anything for."

Ryou swallowed in blunt realization. "More time."

"Yes."

The pale homeowner felt his stomach churn. "How horrid... so rather than spending all that time and funding on a cure towards the benefit of everyone; instead they're just looking to save the few elite?!"

Bakura nodded grimly. "Rather like if Noah had filled his ark with only one of each animal- it's pointless, as they'll never preserve enough of a gene pool to overcome the underlying issues. But hey, if the world's totally fu-" Ryou's right hand subtly moved towards the nearest magazine, and the paler intruder hastily corrected himself, "-er, screwed anyway,why not go down drowning in champagne and caviar?"

"..."

The white-haired homeowner seemed lost in his own contemplations, but Malik was evidently starting to let his skepticism fade. "Wow, so you guys have really solved how to time travel?!"

"NO, the company we work for has. And believe me, they guard that process more fiercely than any secret on Earth."

"Oh." Malik put one bronzed finger to his chin in thought. "So, you can't go back to, like, Ancient Egypt and be worshiped as gods or something?"

Bakura shook his head and began rapidly counting the reasons off one one hand. "Not possible. First of all, there's the different biological problems (such as ancient bacteria and viruses that our bodies no longer remember how to fight off, for one thing). Then you have the cultural issues, such as the language barrier- we have various texts, but the exact pronunciations and colloquialisms have been lost over time- you'd have no way to learn how to accurately speak the language beforehand. Not to mention, the distance itself would be too great."

"Distance?"

Marik nodded rather firmly. "That would be a trip of thousands of years, not just hundred or so."

Bakura continued with his statements. "It's complicated, but evidently the further back you go, the more strain it puts on your body. It's like putting a plastic doll in a blender- keep it moving slow enough, and you won't do much damage. But set the thing to 'frappe'..."

Ryou's nose wrinkled in disgust. "Ew."

"Exactly." The recovering intruder nodded. "You might be able to manage a one-way trip, but you'd never survive the journey back home."

"Oh."

The group was interrupted by a very faint buzzing noise coming from Marik's wrist. The darkest-skinned teen deftly pressed two buttons in direct succession before glancing back up.

"So that's really cell phone?!" Malik stared at the strangely lit square resting beneath the other blonde's skin.

"No, it's a SID- a Sub-dermal Implant Device." Marik explained rather openly. "It certainly does a lot more than a primitive 'cell phone'."

Curious, the 'modern' foreigner moved closer, watching the other's wrist with great interest. "Wow- so, how do you charge it when the battery runs low?"

The other purple-eyed male seemed amused by Malik's astonishment, and he somewhat boastfully stated: "oh, there's no charging- it's always at full power, because the outer synthesized tendrils absorb the electricity that naturally occurs along the body's neurological pathwa-MHPTHH!"

"Idiot!" Bakura hissed anxiously while keeping one hand firmly planted over his partner's mouth. "We're not supposed to tell them about stuff like that! Have you completely forgotten your training?!"

"But he asked!"

Bakura blinked dully before turning to the two present-day youths. "...in case either of you two were wondering- he wasn't assigned to be the brains of this operation."

"HEY!"

The hickory-toned eyes of the homeowner's son flickered in realization. "So that means- you're being monitored by a group of people who're situated in the future... which means they already know everything you're going to do?"

Bakura felt a bit impressed by his near-clone's deductive reasoning skills. 'Rather clever, that one... shame he's on the Organization's sh*t-list...' "More or less. They definitely track all of our jumps. We're supposed to report back immediately following a successful mission, otherwise..." He took his index finger and made a quick motion across his throat. "And they wouldn't be slow about it- we'd basically have less than a few hours to solve a problem no-one else has managed to cure in over two hundred years."

"Not good odds." Malik admitted.

Ryou looked thoughtful. "You said the SID's draw power directly from your body- I'm guessing the tracking implants you mentioned use the same source? Then, what if you were to overload the circuits?"

"Genius idea, except you'd probably blow out your own heart." Bakura grimly tapped his own chest. "Don't forget, we're running on damaged goods here."

"Minimal... disruption..." Ryou began pacing the floor, with one hand on his chin. Malik watched with mild interest- he knew how his friend got when he was deep in thought.

The intruders both watched as the pacing youth hesitantly spoke. "Hmm... I think... the best thing would be something specifically designed to shock a person without killing them..."

"Like my taser?" Malik helpfully interjected.
"Yes, exactl- wait, what?!" Ryou turned and stared incredulously at his now-grinning classmate. "Malik... are you sayingyou have a taser?!"

The blonde shrugged before whipping a heavy, black rectangle out of his right-front pants pocket. "Well technically, it's Ishizu's- you sounded so freaked out over the phone that I grabbed it from her purse before heading over here."

Ryou felt his emotions bubbling to a boil as he recalled their earlier struggles with the two 'burglars'. "And you didn't use it before... why?!"

The bronzed buddy shrugged. "I forgot I had it. Believe it or not, I don't usually make it a habit of electrocuting strangers."

Marik let out an amused snort, but Bakura seemed lost in thought. "That device... how much voltage does it use?"

"The label on the side says ''1,000 volts."

"That should be enough..."

"More than enough." Marik pointed out rather bluntly. "Bakura, you could die."

"...Yes, true." The white-haired deviant snorted. "Still, I'd rather die making my own decisions, rather than allowing some greedy butchers to enslave and eventually end me." He spoke the last few words of this declaration in a firm tone without pause.

"..." Ryou felt his face growing warm- he had to admit, the injured time-traveler's speech was highly impassioned. 'He's quite brave...'

"Ryou? Ryou?"

"Oh!' The distracted teen quickly tore himself out of his thoughts. "Sorry, Malik."

The younger blonde raised an eyebrow at the delayed reaction, but didn't comment. "So, that's what'll help you guys? A quick shock?" Malik then flicked the switch, and a burst of blue light zapped instantly between the contact points.

The two trespassers eyed the electric device warily, flinching when Malik flipped the lid shut again.

Sensing the mood, Ryou quickly held out his arms to stop his over-eager companion from making a rash decision. "Hold on a second, Malik." The pale youth turned to the 'time-travelers'. "One major piece of this story still doesn't make sense. Given our genetic compatibility for your, erm, 'harvesting' demands; it's likely that we're related, right?"

Marik gave a single nod while Bakura spoke. "Distantly, yes. There's several generations between this decade and ours."

"But still-! If you kill us, then you two would never exist, right?!" Ryou frowned, wondering if the Organization wasn't playing a horrible trick on its unfortunate employees. "I mean, you'd be removing one of your ancestors from the time-line!"

"Not exactly." Bakura's blase response unnerved the two modern friends. "Family trees exactly don't follow a straight line- and evidently you're a pair of side-branches that can easily be pruned."

Marik nodded in casual agreement. "Besides, we've seen the historical charts- neither of you ever produces any children."

"Oh." Ryou's face flushed a bit at that line, but Malik only laughed.

"Not that surprising! Pretty sure it's impossible for two guys to get each other knocked up!"

"MALIK!" Ryou embarrassedly admonished his loud-mouthed comrade.

Marik raised one eyebrow in disbelief. "You two... are sleeping with each other?!"

Bakura's face started turning green, and his left eye began twitching.

"NO! We're just both... alternative." Ryou's face now looked warm enough to spontaneously combust. "Supportive allies of each other."

"Besides, I'm waaaay out of his league." Malik winked as he playfully grabbed his friend's shoulder.

Ryou rolled his eyes, but made no comment.

Meanwhile, Bakura's own face slowly regained its usual pallor. "Oh, thank f***ing goodness." Ryou was too distracted to reprimand the foul-mouthed teen, but Marik seemed rather amused.

"Oh-ho? You sound awfully relieved there, Bakura." The darker time traveler wore a devious smirk as he teased his comrade. "~You're not crushing on your target, are you?~"

"Wha-?! NO!" The more rough-voiced partner scowled. "Newsflash, you dimwit: those two dorks remind you of anyone?!"

Marik glanced quizzically between the blonde and white-haired teens in front of them. After a moment of realization, his face turned green, and he made a strange 'urp'-ing noise.

"My reaction exactly." Bakura dryly remarked. "Anyway, it doesn't matter- we're not going to kill you now. Which means we need to move. We have to find someplace safer to stay, someplace we can keep out-of-sight for a while."

"Well, I do know-" Ryou tried to offered helpfully, but he was suddenly halted by Bakura's sharp interruption.

"NO. No close friends or family- they'll have all those addresses on file. Remember, the Organization isn't just a group of witless thugs; they're a massively wealthy corporation with the funds to gain any access to any resources necessary."

"AND they're hundreds of years in the future. So whatever we know, they'll know." Marik reaffirmed.

"Right." Bakura grimly continued with is explanation. "Which means everything has already happened- at least to them. They know of our betrayal, and they'll be sending some of our 'comrades' soon enough to finish us off."

The homeowner's son frowned and raised a hand to his chin. "So it has to be a place that's unexpected; something they can't definitively link to either of you..."

Malik immediately raised one eyebrow and grinned at Ryou, who promptly started choking in shock. "Wha- no! I know what you're thinking, Malik; and the answer is NO! Mr. Ishida entrusted me with gathering his newspapers- that's all!"

"But he did give you a spare key, right?" The bronzed student prompted.

"In case of an emergency, yes!" Ryou hastily argued.

"Trust me, this qualifies." Bakura added firmly. "Unless you don't consider us all being murdered

'emergency' material."

"..." Ryou was clearly less-than-enthused by the suggestion, but he soon realized that he couldn't offer a better solution. So he quietly waited as the others spoke.

'This is all beginning to seem too real... yet from the sound of everything these two 'time-travelers' have said, I'm really hoping that it's somehow not!'