I recently found out something about the movie that…changes things. I didn't actually watch the movie; I only saw screenshots and read the wikia article about it. If you want to avoid movie spoilers then skip these author's notes and go straight to the story.
DOSD spoilers in 3…2...1
Ryou is adopted! The stepfather he's living with right now isn't the same father who got him stuck with the Millennium Ring! And now I feel even more sorry for poor Ryou.
This raises some questions though, like, is Amane his stepsister or biological sister? And is "Bakura" an adoptive name or…? Why exactly does Ryou share a name with the Thief King anyways? Did one of Ryou's fathers deliberately choose to take on the name "Bakura" because of its association with the Millennium Ring? And if so, how would they have known? Does anyone have a good explanation for all of this?
By pure coincidence, this revelation actually supports my story because it would explain why Mr. Bakura treats Ryou more like a roommate than a son. And if you assume that Ryou changed his surname after he became adopted, then I didn't necessarily contradict canon by calling his stepdad "Mr. Bakura." idk…writing within canon is hard. But this is just a dumb fanfic so who really cares all that much if it's inaccurate.
Ryou was having a bad case of artist's block. Like all typical artists, Ryou did what he usually did when he didn't know how to proceed on a project: he procrastinated.
For the last couple of days, Ryou had been doing everything except work on the diorama of Egypt. He wrote stories, visited haunted places around Domino City, and even did his homework for a change. On the third day of his rampant cycle of procrastination, he ran out of things to do, so he just stayed in his room and started playing around with the Millennium Eye.
It wasn't the real Eye, of course. No, definitely not the real one. This one was just a fake that had been in Pegasus's soup. Ryou thought it looked cool, so he had brought it home as a souvenir from Duelist Kingdom.
Ryou tossed the Eye like a miniature basketball, aiming for an empty pencil holder that was on his desk. It hit the edge of the pencil holder and bounced away onto the floor. He picked up the Eye, backed away from his desk, and tried again. This time when he threw it, the Eye landed inside. "Score!" Ryou cheered triumphantly.
"Stop throwing it around! You're going to break it!" the Spirit called out from inside the Ring.
"It's supposed to break apart, silly. Watch this." Ryou took the Eye out of the pencil holder and pulled on it with both hands, trying to break it in half, but for some reason it refused to pop open. "What? Why isn't it working?" Ryou said confusedly.
The Spirit watched on in horror as his host repeatedly slammed the Eye against the surface of the desk as if he were cracking an egg. "Wow, it's really stuck," Ryou said, cocking his head. With a shrug, he gave up trying to break it open and started to juggle it back and forth between his hands, but then he tossed it too high and it hit the ceiling with a loud, ear-splitting crack.
The Spirit decided he had had enough. He promptly took control of Ryou's right arm in order to catch the Eye while it was falling back down, and then he opened Ryou's desk drawer, put the Eye inside, and shut the drawer firmly. Only after that did he relinquish control of the arm.
Ryou scowled with annoyance. "Spirit, you don't have to be so protective of a mere replica. It's not that precious," he said, clenching and unclenching his right hand to test out his control of it.
The Spirit didn't say anything in response. Ryou decided he was bored of playing with the Eye anyway so he lay down on his bed and let anxiety wash over him. "Arrgg, I'm never going to finish the diorama in time!"
"If you're so worried about it, then why don't you hurry up and finish it?" the Spirit said.
"Easy for you to say. You're not the one who has to work on it," Ryou mumbled.
"Stop being lazy, Landlord."
"Oh hush. I have tons of time left. I can afford to be lazy."
"It might seem like you have a lot of time, but due to the sheer magnitude of the project, we can't afford to waste a single minute," the Spirit growled.
Ryou tossed around to lie on his stomach and buried his face into his pillow. "Please don't talk like that. It makes me even more anxious."
"I can't just sit around and let you slack off on such an important project! The diorama has to be completed on time. I cannot allow you to fail."
"Why are you so worried about it? It's not your father we're trying to impress."
Without warning, the door to Ryou's bedroom creaked open and Mr. Bakura poked his head inside. "Ryou? Who are you talking to?"
Ryou jolted up on his bed. "Dad! You're home early!" he cried nervously. Of all the days that his father had to come home early, this had to be the worst possible timing.
Mr. Bakura caught sight of the Millennium Ring hanging out in the open on his son's neck, and suddenly it all clicked. "Did the Spirit of the Millennium Ring finally reveal himself to you?"
Ryou's mouth dropped open with bewilderment. "You know about the Spirit?!"
Mr. Bakura nodded.
"But when did you f-find out?" Ryou sputtered in disbelief.
"I've known since the very beginning," Mr. Bakura explained calmly, pulling up Ryou's desk chair and sitting down in the middle of the bedroom.
"But how come you never told me?" Ryou said through gritted teeth.
Mr. Bakura shrugged. "I didn't want you to be scared. You were too young to understand at the time."
Ryou couldn't help but feel a bit angry. "But I'm all grown up now, aren't I?! How long were you going to keep me in the dark about this?"
"I just wanted you to grow up thinking your were normal. If you thought that there was something wrong with you, it might have made you not want to try."
"Try what?" questioned Ryou.
"Everything! School, friends, careers…I wanted you to try living a normal life without thinking you were different from other kids."
Ryou mulled the explanation over in his head, trying but failing to see his father's logic. "I don't completely understand your reasoning," he admitted.
Mr. Bakura brought out his cell phone and began checking his text messages. "Think it over. You'll understand with time," he said, losing interest in the conversation. He scowled in disappointment when he saw his phone's empty inbox. "Ms. Chono still hasn't replied to any of my messages."
"Are you still upset that she dumped you?" Ryou felt a little bit guilty.
"No, I'm just upset that she went back on her promise to help me get an interview with Mutou Yugi. I was really looking forward to it."
"You could just ask me to talk to Yugi for you."
"Thanks, but I doubt he'll want to talk to you. He doesn't even know you."
Ryou gaped at his father in astonishment. "Yes he does! Yugi's one of my closest friends at school!"
Mr. Bakura looked up from his phone and raised an eyebrow at Ryou. "He is?"
"You didn't know that?!"
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you never asked!"
A greedy look of excitement appeared on Mr. Bakura's face. "In that case, you need to help me get an interview with him ASAP! There's so much I want to ask him!"
"Wait, Dad – "
"All this time, the solution was staring at me right in the face! I can't believe it."
"Dad! Please listen to me for just a second!" Ryou was raising his voice against his father, which was rare for him. He willed himself to calm down before continuing. "Before I can let you talk to Yugi, I need to know what you plan to do. Are you after the Millennium Puzzle by any chance?"
"You make it sound as if I'm planning to steal it. It's not like that. I'm just going to ask to borrow the Puzzle for a while. For research purposes."
Ryou's eyes hardened into a look of determination. "I can tell you right now that Yugi's not going to let you borrow it. His Puzzle is very important to him. He wouldn't part with it for even a minute."
"Oh. That's too bad." Mr. Bakura's glasses glinted dangerously for a moment.
"You're not actually going to try to steal it, are you?" Ryou said worriedly.
At first Mr. Bakura seemed to be considering it, but then he sighed and shook his head. "No, it's not worth it. I know firsthand what can happen if a person who hasn't been chosen by a Millennium Item tries to possess one." He stared at Ryou's Ring longingly for a couple of seconds. Then he got up and headed for the door. "I'm getting hungry. How about you?"
"I can cook something," Ryou offered.
"No that's okay. How about we order take-out instead?"
Ryou jumped up from his bed and joyfully followed his father out the door. "Good idea!"
When was the last time Ryou had a one-to-one meal with his father? A couple of years maybe. Take-out sounded really good right about now, and it was very easy to ignore the Spirit's complaints about it being unhealthy.
Just when Ryou thought he had seen everything there was to see about the Spirit's soulroom, something new would appear. New people would pop up out of nowhere, occupy spaces that had previously been empty, and go on with their lives as if they had been there the whole time. The soulroom itself seemed to have a mind of its own, as it only showed Ryou what it wanted him to see when the time was right.
The soulroom had also developed two brand new mechanics that were quite useful. One, it was now possible for Ryou to fly around instead of walking. That, combined with the ability to fade through walls, allowed him to explore almost every corner of Ancient Egypt imaginable.
And two, the entire room now worked like a videotape, meaning that Ryou could pause, rewind, and fast-forward to any point in time that he wanted. This was very useful for when he needed to sketch someone who would not stay still. The only limitation was that he only had access to a period of about five years. When he tried to command the room to move before or after those five years, everything would automatically freeze.
Within the walls of the Pharaoh's palace, there lived a young Prince who looked exactly like Yugi but with darker skin. This was very obviously Yami Yugi's past life.
Ryou spent hours upon hours at the palace watching the ten or eleven-year-old Prince run around and play games with a girl who looked oddly similar to the Dark Magician Girl. In Ryou's opinion, the little Prince was a very adorable child who resembled the regular Yugi more than Yami Yugi. Ryou was itching to tell both of the Yugi's about this, but that would involve telling them that he'd been wearing the Millennium Ring again. Perhaps someday he would be able to reveal everything to his friends, but not yet.
One day when Ryou visited the palace, the little Prince was in the courtyard by himself playing with a ball. Right when the Prince threw the ball into the air, Ryou shouted "Pause!" Immediately time itself was frozen, and the ball stayed floating midair.
"Fast forward five years," Ryou commanded, and time quickly moved forward to obey his wishes.
Ryou floated through the walls of the palace and found Prince sitting on the throne. Now at the age of fifteen or sixteen, the Prince resembled Yami Yugi a whole lot more than before. The former Pharaoh had died recently and it was time for him to take his father's place on the throne.
Some of the members of the Pharaoh's court looked strangely familiar, such as the advisor who looked like Yugi's grandpa, the priest who looked like Kaiba, the priestess who looked like Ishizu, and the other priest who looked like the Dark Magician. All of them bore Millennium Items, and it looked like they were about to have a ceremony or something. Ryou was never completely sure what they were doing because he couldn't understand what anyone was saying.
Everything paused again, this time without Ryou's prompting. For some reason the soulroom never showed anything past this point in time, and Ryou found it very frustrating.
Ryou decided that he was bored with the palace, so he floated through the front gates to go someplace else. As soon as he passed through, he floated into a man he'd never seen before. Thank goodness this wasn't real life or Ryou would have crashed straight into this person.
The man had white hair, a scared face, and a long flowing red robe. He was dragging a mummy through the sand on his way to the palace, frozen in place because the soulroom was still on pause. At first, Ryou was under the impression that this man was much, much older. But upon closer inspection, the man had an incredibly young face, possibly even younger than Ryou.
"Play!" Ryou said, but nothing happened. It was like he had reached the end credits of a videocassette.
"Rewind," Ryou said, and the man began to run backwards.
"Play!" Ryou said, and the man ran forward through the sand only to automatically freeze in the same place as before.
"Rewind!" Ryou said again just to mess around. "Play! Rewind! Play!" The man ran back and forth over and over again rapidly.
Ryou giggled to himself. Manipulating with time was loads of fun! But now he had to get to work. After summoning a notebook and pencil, he started to sketch the man in order to make another figurine.
The next day, Ryou rewinded the room two years and went to the marketplace to watch the townspeople go about their lives. Merchants showed off their wares and civilians bargained with the street vendors. Everything was relatively peaceful.
But all of a sudden, people started screaming, and everyone ran into their homes and barricaded their doors and windows. The streets became deserted and eerily quiet.
Then the sound of galloping horses rang out as a group of men on horseback came riding closer. Ryou momentarily forgot that he was invisible and looked around for a place to hide. Once he remembered, he slapped himself in the face for his own stupidity and floated several meters into the air so that he could watch from above.
The leader of the group of horseback men was none other than the white-haired, scar-faced man from yesterday, albeit two years younger. The ancients clearly regarded him as an adult, but if one were to measure his age by modern standards, this man would be considered barely a teenager.
The group dismounted from their horses and raided a nearby shop, stealing food and other merchandise. They're a band of thieves, Ryou realized for the first time. Once they were finished they remounted their horses and disappeared into the desert, and the townspeople came out of their homes and resumed business as usual.
Ryou followed the thieves around for the next couple of days. Watching them was even more interesting than watching the Prince, and the leader of the thieves was definitely one of the most fascinating and complex individuals Ryou had ever met.
The man was ruthlessly skilled and always got what he wanted, but he never did things the easy way. Whenever he stole something, he always had to leave a trail or a sign of some sort to let everybody know that he was the one who had done the job. He also had a complicated moral code; he only stole from extremely wealthy upper-class or from individuals who had done abhorrent deeds. He usually spared innocents unless they got in his way.
One day, the leader separated himself from the rest of his group and walked far, far away by himself to visit the deserted, haunted-looking village. Ryou followed him into one of the half-burnt buildings where the thief pushed aside a sarcophagus to reveal a secret underground passage.
Ryou was surprised. He had been to this village multiple times and had already added everything to the diorama, but he never believed that this place served any greater purpose. Feeling curious, Ryou flew into the secret passage ahead of the Thief.
It was very dark inside the passage. The only source of light came from the entrance, but the thief was covering it up. Once he had completely blocked the entrance, the Thief began lighting the torches hanging on the walls, and soon the passage was consumed by firelight.
Without warning, physics started working normally and Ryou fell to the floor. He confusedly stood up and tried jumping into the air, but his body fell right back down as it would in the real world. That's strange. Why can't I fly anymore?
While Ryou was jumping up and down, the thief stalked closer under the cover of the shadows. It took Ryou a moment to notice that the Thief was there, and yet another few seconds to realize that the man was staring directly at him.
"Who are you and how did you get in here?" the Thief demanded in modern Japanese.
"You can see me?" Ryou stammered.
"Che. Do you think I'm blind? Of course I can see you." The Thief began to threateningly walk towards Ryou.
Ryou back away until his back hit the wall. "Wait! Pause! PAUSE! ACK–"
The Thief grabbed Ryou, spun him around, and slammed him against the wall while twisting the boy's arm behind his back.
"Spirit! Help!" Ryou cried out, but then he fell silent when the blade of a knife touched his neck.
"Answer the question or you die. Who are you and why are you here?" the Thief growled threateningly.
"My name is Bakura Ryou and I found this place by accident. I never meant to cause any trouble," Ryou said earnestly.
"Che, you really think I'll believe that?" The knife dug a little deeper into Ryou's neck, breaking a little bit of his skin.
"It's the truth. Please let me go." Ryou's voice was barely a whisper.
The Thief withdrew the knife but didn't let go of Ryou's arm. "We'll see if you really are who you say you are. Come with me."
The Thief pushed Ryou deeper into the passage against his will. Once they entered another room, he threw Ryou to the floor and slammed the door shut, locking it behind them. Ryou felt a weird sense of déjà vu; he was pretty sure he'd been in a similar situation before.
"I will give you three tests to prove yourself. Here's the first one," the Thief said, pulling on a lever on the wall. The room shuddered and the floor opened up, revealing a huge pit containing a gigantic mechanical obstacle course. Life-sized humanoid statues wheeled back and forth, swinging their swords. It reminded Ryou of one of those video games where the player has to sneak through a dungeon while avoiding being caught by NPCs. In one corner of the room, water started dripping into a cup.
"The rules are simple," said the Thief. "You must get to the other side of the chamber before the cup is completely filled with water. And try not to die."
Ryou stared at the obstacle course with a feeling of dread forming in his stomach. "What if I refuse?"
The Thief shrugged. "Then I'll kill you. Good luck."
I wasn't sure how to explain why Mr. Bakura didn't tell Ryou about the Spirit, so I decided to base it upon my real life experience. My own father knew that I had ADD since I was a kid, but he didn't tell me about it until after I grew up and figured it out by myself. His reasoning was that if he told me I had a mental disability, it would've lowered my self-esteem and I'd lose the motivation to try at school. I'm not entirely sure if he made the right decision not to tell me, but he had good intensions, plus he's not abusive or neglectful and I love him so
Basically what I'm trying to say is that Mr. Bakura treats possession as a mental disability. It's probably not at all what Takahashi had in mind, but it works for the purposes of my story.
As a side note, Ryou has A TON of the symptoms for ADD. He's emotionally underdeveloped (and by that I mean he acts younger than his age), has poor social skills, is highly creative, spaces out a lot, hyperfocuses on activities he enjoys, fluctuates from being extremely quiet to extremely hyperactive, processes information faster than average (when it comes to Duel Monsters), and has a tendency to blurt things out without thinking of the consequences, such as the time he began to tell Kaiba about Shizuka's eyes and Jounouchi was like "Shut up Ryou! Don't say any more!" (Duelist Volume 3 Chapter 28 Page 4).
People with ADD tend to be very quiet and "spacy" whereas people with ADHD tend to be very loud and "disruptive." That's why I'm saying Ryou has ADD and not ADHD, although both forms of the disorder share many of the same symptoms.
Also Ryou often gives off the impression of being incredibly ditzy, which is the same impression that I give off to other people because of my ADD. It's actually not really a bad thing because since everyone already thinks I'm weird, I enjoy acting even weirder in front of my friends just to mess with them. And it's hilarious because Ryou does the same thing to Jounouchi all the time! Though it's debatable if Ryou does it on purpose or not…I'm just gonna believe he does it on purpose because it's funnier lol
Just as a brief reminder, here are some examples:
Duelist Volume 13 Chapter 119 Page 4
Ryou: See? It's an occult-themed deck!
Jounouchi: Ugh…o-occult…!? I'm definitely not dueling you!
Ryou: Don't be so afraid!
Duelist Volume 16 Chapter 143 Page 4
Ryou: I really have no problems at all!
Jounouchi: No problems…isn't it bleeding?!
Ryou: (pokes his injured arm) No…no pain at all. Wanna touch it Jounouchi?
Jounouchi: (freaking out) Don't joke around! It's better to go to the hospital!
Ryou's under Malik's mind-control in the second example, but it still counts because although his memories and pain receptors are being manipulated, his personality still shines through.
These author's notes got way longer than expected. Sorry about that. See ya!