DISCLAIMER: I don't own Yami no Matsuei nor does I own Yu-Gi-Oh!, they belong to their respective creators and the companies who also have copyrights to them.

Note on dialogue: 'Sennen Spirit talking through a mental link'

A/N: See notes at bottom for creative liberties taken with the Yami no Matsuei series.

"And if it comes to murder, don't tell and we won't ask
You how you sleep at night. When the lights go out,
You're all alone with the ghosts of lesser humans
Whose lives you've split to suit your own."

-"Don't Tell and We Won't Ask," Thrice.

Life after Death
Chapter Seven: Ghosts of Lesser Humans
-bohr-d

"It's most likely a cardiovascular problem, from what we can gather due to your grandfather's medical history, but we're going to have to run some more tests just to be sure."

Yuugi sighed, gaze firmly resting on the small room in the intensive care unit where his grandfather was resting, "I see… thank you."

The doctor flipped through his notes, "Unfortunately, our head cardiologist is on vacation for the next two weeks and we're a bit short-staffed; our team is more than capable of taking care of your grandfather, but we've sent in for a replacement who'll be here within the next day or two."

Another sigh and mumble came from the teenager, but the doctor wasn't fazed by it. Yuugi was obviously preoccupied with thoughts of his grandfather. With a scratch of his head and a sigh of his own, the doctor took his leave. Yuugi stood there for a few moments, mind replaying what the doctor had told him.

"Sensei," Yuugi said as the doctor stepped out of the room where his grandfather had been rushed to upon entering the hospital, "What happened to my grandpa? Is he okay? Can I see him?"

The doctor sat down on the bench next to the teen, "I'm afraid your grandfather suffered what seems to be a stroke, Mutou-san."

"A… A stroke? Are you sure?"

"Yes, Mutou-san… we figure that a blood clot formed originally in his heart was small enough to travel up into his brain and cause it. While this may not sound like much comfort, if the clot had stayed in the heart instead of travelling up, this might have happened sooner and before anyone could have found him. It's both fortunate and unfortunate that he happened to be driving at the time, and after talking to the EMT that brought him in, he apparently hit a guardrail and luckily only suffered from a few bruised ribs and a minor concussion."

"So… he'll be all right, won't he?"

"Mutou-san," the doctor said after a moment, "At your grandfather's age, a stroke, however minor it may be, is never a good sign. Neither is the concussion and bruised ribs. And with his frequent visits in and out of the hospital as of late…

We're going to run a chest x-ray to see the extent of the damage from the crash as well as an MRI and CT scan to get a glimpse of his heart and make sure he doesn't have any severe brain damage, though we cannot be sure of that until he wakes up. However, with your grandfather's history of heart trouble, and the fact that the clot originated from his heart to begin with, it's most likely a cardiovascular problem…"

"Yuugi! Yuugi!"

Turning violet-colored eyes to his left, the duelist saw Mokuba running down the hall towards him. The boy skidded to a halt in front of Yuugi; his breath coming in short pants. After seeing the look on Yuugi's face, Mokuba frowned and took a seat on the chair next to him, looking up at his foster brother. Admittedly, Mokuba would never claim to be as close to Yuugi's grandfather as Yuugi himself, but he was still close to the older man, and was quite worried. Mokuba didn't want anything happening to his new family. He couldn't bear losing another person close to him, not after…

'It's probably nothing to what he's feeling at the moment, though.' He thought, gaze resting on Yuugi, his mind diverted from other worrisome thoughts.

"Is he going to be okay?" Mokuba asked, "What did the doctor say?"

He didn't get an answer right away; the violet-eyed teen in front of him was seemingly wrapped up in his thoughts. Mokuba noticed this; right after the car accident with his brother, he too had been the same way. Offering comfort in the only way he could think of, the boy hopped in front of Yuugi with a smile on his face.

"Don't worry about Jii-san, Yuugi. He'll be fine! He's strong, what with surviving getting his soul captured and all. Just as strong as my brother was. And he's not going to let a little thing like… like… uhm, what does he have again?"

Yuugi chuckled, offering Mokuba a half-hearted smile, "I don't know, Mokuba. But we have to hope for the best."

"So wait, let me get this straight… they're not really going to be doing anything?"

Watari almost laughed at the look of perplexed annoyance etched onto his partner's face, "That's right. We're in charge of the Chijou part of this case, while the Retrievalists are going to be manning the research and supposedly the weaponry portion. Something about fighting with magic and games… how odd. Fascinating, though."

Seto voiced a scoff after Watari's last statement, along with a few muttered words as the brunet returned to flipping through the scientist's notes from the meeting. A couple things here and there sparked his interest, and Seto committed those to memory before moving on to the case file that he got.

Watari was also looking through his own copy, noting how thorough the Society of Osiris was with their histories.

'Everything from what diseases he had a child to who his friends are is listed in here… if only the Meifu's computer system could handle such extensive research into our catalogues. Maybe I'll make a note to Tatsumi about that. It's a perfect excuse to order a whole new set of computers for the Shokan… wouldn't want to be lagging behind other Divisions, would we, Tatsumi-san?'

While the golden-haired scientist was scheming to himself off in his corner of the laboratory, Seto was beginning to get a headache from reading his partner's horrid handwriting, or so he surmised. Moving from the notes to the neatly typed out sheets of paper within the folder, the teen found that his headache was only getting worse.

'I probably just didn't get enough sleep last night or some trivial reason for that matter…'

Reaching for his cup of coffee, Seto drank a mouthful before choking and spitting it out. The spray landed on the birdcage in the corner, and the various birds inside voiced their complaint loudly. Watari frowned and got up from his seat, wondering what was wrong with his partner.

"Kyouji, are you all right?"

Seto swatted away the hand that was reaching out toward his shoulder, "Perfectly fine, Watari-san. Just… fine. I don't know what came over me. Now if you'll excuse me."

Amber eyes crinkled in amusement at the slight flush of pink creeping up Seto's face. Oh, that had to be embarrassing! Once he had departed the room though, Watari looked at the cup of coffee that had caused such a little outburst.

"Now that's strange," he said, noting that the Styrofoam cup was cool, even cold to the touch, "He just filled this up ten minutes ago, if even. And given that this type of material is highly endothermic, it should be at least decently warm."

003 poked her head out of her human's mess of hair, peering down at the cup before back at Watari, as if saying that something was up. Watari nodded, "You're absolutely right, 003. I think we might have to watch Kyouji a bit closer, wouldn't you say?"

Tsuzuki sighed as he flipped through the pages of another book on demonology, "Why don't we just ask Watari what kind of demon it is, 'Soka? He's bound to know…"

"I told you, don't call me that!" Hisoka frowned, "And in case it slipped your mind, Watari-san's busy with a case of his own."

The pair in charge of Kyushu was sitting at one of the tables in a reading room of the Meifu Library. Both Gushoshin had been very reluctant to let Tsuzuki in, what with his track record of destroying the place, but Hisoka had reassured them that he would keep his partner in line.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. But still… this is boring! I'd much rather do paperwork than search through these books," Tsuzuki frowned, looking with undisguised boredom at the text he was skimming.

A small smirk crept up the younger of the pair's face, "Well, if that's what you'd rather be doing…"

Tsuzuki's eyes got wide, "I didn't really mean it, Hisoka! Looking through these books is much better than going back to the office and writing line after line after line…"

"…Just shut up and start reading."

Tsuzuki still seemed in a daze, though. "…after line after line after line…"

Eyebrow twitching at Tsuzuki's idiocy and the despair rolling off of him in waves as he recalled exactly how much paperwork he had yet to finish (most of it from before Hisoka came to the Shokan Division), the young empath was seconds away from hurling a particularly heavy book at Tsuzuki when the door to the reading room opened. Watari looked at the scene quizzically for a moment, "Uhm… hey Bon. What's wrong with Tsuzuki?"

Hisoka turned to the scientist standing in the doorway, "Unresolved paperwork issues."

Watari nodded his head, understanding completely as he himself had the same problem every once in a while, "Have you seen Kyouji anywhere? He disappeared a little while ago, and the Retrievalists want to fill us in on a few things before we head down to Chijou tomorrow."

The empath paused for a moment before answering, "I don't think I've seen him, Watari-san. I'd try the historical section, though."

"Oh…" Watari's slightly crestfallen look accompanied this statement, and Hisoka shrugged slightly, as if saying "what do you want me to do about it?"

"After line after line after line…"

"Oh shut up!" Hisoka growled, launching a volume of The Otherworldly Encyclopedia of Demonology at Tsuzuki with dead-on accuracy. Watari, feeling it an appropriate time to leave, did so while the Kyushu pair were busy.

Bakura Residence, Domino City, Japan- Chijou

"Stay tuned for the eleven o'clock—"

Bakura Ryou yawned as he shut off the television in front of him, exhaustion creeping up on him all of a sudden and telling him it was time to go to bed. He had school in the morning, after all, and if he didn't get his sleep, he'd end up miserable and cranky the next day.

'Let's see… I've got a math test tomorrow, I know that much. Did I do the translations for English class? I hope so… eh, I could always do it during lunch if not.'

Ryou headed up into the bathroom, turning the sink faucet on and grabbing his toothbrush. Mind still preoccupied with thoughts of the next day's routine, the boy almost choked on both toothbrush and toothpaste when the image in the mirror in front of him shifted into a familiar, similar version of himself. Coughing and gasping for air, Ryou glanced back up into the mirror only to see not his own soft brown eyes staring back at him, but harsh red ones crinkled in sadistic mirth at the boy's obvious fright and confusion.

'No… not again… no… NO!'

All Ryou could do was stare in horror, slowly backing away from the mirror as the reflection grinned maliciously at him. Ryou couldn't take it anymore, how could this have happened? The Sennen Items were gone now, save Yuugi's Puzzle… the Ring was destroyed, and he himself watched the Shrine collapse and the Items fall into the abyss!

Yet the Spirit of the Ring was a conniving one, and he had no intention of leaving so soon, not while the Pharaoh lived on and there was revenge to be had and a world to see fall to ruin… no intention of leaving at all.

The Spirit of the Ring sent his host a mocking wave as his features began to meld back into Ryou's own in the mirror. Lunging forward in frustration and anger, Ryou punched the glass hard enough to crack it, hoping to somehow hit him. Deep, highly amused laughter rang in his ears as he pulled his hand away, cursing under his breath at his stupidity.

"I'm… I'm not afraid of you! I'm not going to let you use me anymore! You hear me?" Ryou yelled up into the air, voice growing stronger with each word, "I am not your puppet anymore! I don't know what you want, but you better leave me alone or so help me…"

"And what will you do, my host? Hmm? Are you going to go rat me out? Who's going to believe you… you have no proof that I exist except for in your own mind, after all."

The Spirit of the Ring's voice grated in Ryou's ears, he knew this feeling well, and knew that what he spoke was true. For the Spirit wasn't speaking out loud, but rather through the mental link between them that only the Ring could grant.

'I've got to find Yuugi… before it's too late!'

With that thought, Ryou ran down the stairs and bolted out of the house, trying to get as far away as possible. And oddly enough it worked, much to the Spirit's chagrin. It had taken him all the strength he possessed to save himself from certain doom and to get back to his former host, and while he could have forcibly put the Sennen Ring on Ryou as he had done once before, it was just not a possibility at that moment.

And so he sat brooding within the confines of the Ring, wondering if he had shown himself too soon, and wondering where his new sense of defiance of Ryou's had come from. He would have to crush it once more if he was ever to succeed in his plan to take the Sennen Puzzle and destroy Atem once and for all.

The Spirit of the Ring chuckled to himself, things didn't always go easily nor exactly as planned for him, it seemed. "Well, I did always enjoy a bit of a challenge…"

Watari sighed as he paced around the third floor of the library, checking every row for his missing in action partner. Finally, after a good half-hour of searching, he found the brunet hiding in a far-off corner with a pile of hieroglyphic inscribed tomes and parchments.

"About time I found you! I've been looking for you ever since you stormed out," Watari huffed as Seto glanced up at him, "What was that all about, anyways?"

Avoiding the question, Seto muttered to himself, "Damn Kurosaki… I told him to keep his mouth shut."

Watari pushed his glasses up in a faint imitation of Tatsumi and sighed, "Now don't go off on a tangent on Bon. We're partners, Kyouji, and it's a bit hard to work a case when one of us goes and runs off on his own half the time."

Seto quirked an eyebrow at his partner, and shook his head, "I found your notes were lacking in details of the Sennen Items, and since they're magical artifacts I took the liberty of researching them myself."

"…Or you could have just waited until we got our individual briefing from the Retrevalists who probably know a lot more about them than any of these books could tell you," Watari smirked, letting the insult about his notes not get to him.

Seto frowned at the amber-eyed man, who just smiled in return before picking up one of the parchment scrolls, "…Can you even read this?" Watari asked.

"Some of it… there's a lot I don't know but a few symbols make sense to me," Seto sighed, picking up a book from next to him and throwing it at Watari, ignoring the headache pulsating against his forehead that three aspirin couldn't even abate, "Then again, a key also comes in handy, but it's just a lot of work to go one symbol at a time, so I'm trying to figure out a way to program the symbols into my computer and make a translation from that to Japanese, at least a rough one."

Watari nodded, "Like the Demon Language converter we have on the mainframe in the Lab, right?"

"Precisely. But what the problem is, is that the time of the Nameless Pharaoh is unknown, all that's known is that it happened between five or so millennia ago, and there were a few versions of writing back then, so it could be Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, or Enma knows what… so I have no idea what dynasty to look at to get a comparison off of to read this pile of garbage."

Seto ran his hand through his hair before picking up another scroll and glancing at it while typing away furiously on the keyboard. Watari was surprised at how much information Seto was sharing with him, as well as the fact that the boy hadn't insulted him through all of that, and even more… was actually admitting his frustrations and shortcomings to him. It was a bit uncomfortable for the scientist… what was he supposed to say to that?

'Five hundred yen says that if I try to say something reassuring he'll bite my head off…'

After what seemed like ten years of an uncomfortable silence, Watari took his chances and yanked Seto up off the chair by his arm. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Watari-san," growled Seto in response to the treatment he was receiving.

"We're going to our briefing, that's what. You can't take on the whole world on your own, you know, and as much as you may want to believe it, you don't know everything," Watari said, still dragging the brunet by the arm. Seto was caught off guard by his partner's seriousness, "Now let's go catch us a Pharaoh!"

Seto sighed internally before yanking his arm away and following Watari out of the library, 'Should have known better. Since when is that bumbling idiot ever serious…'

Domino City General, Room 413- Chijou

The next afternoon found Mokuba dozing in a chair and Yuugi organizing his dueling deck for the hundredth time in his grandfather's hospital room. Both boys had taken the day off of school to stay at the hospital, waiting anxiously for him to wake up. Yuugi glanced sidelong over at his grandfather for the tenth time in as many minutes, and Atem, watching through Yuugi's eyes, sighed and opened up the mental link that ran between the two.

'I know how difficult this must be for you, Yuugi… but the healers are doing everything they possibly can at the moment. Why don't you rest and I'll take over for a while.'

Yuugi smiled at Atem's reference to the doctors being healers; some habits just weren't going to change with a five-thousand year old pharaoh, and that was one of them. 'Thanks, Atem, but I want to be here when Jii-chan wakes up.'

'You haven't slept all night, Yuugi… take a rest inside the Puzzle for a bit and if he begins to stir, I'll wake you right up, okay?'

'I guess that'll be okay, just promise me if anything happens you'll get me up right away? No pulling any of that "for your own good" stuff?'

Yuugi could sense Atem's hesitation before he agreed to it; Atem had an odd idea sometimes of what was in Yuugi's best interests, and he could be overprotective sometimes. Not just because they shared a body, but rather because they regarded each other as family. With a flash of golden light, Atem took over and Yuugi's spirit replaced his in the puzzle. Crimson eyes looked around the room and focused on Mokuba on the couch, muttering in his sleep. Atem got up and stretched Yuugi's cramped up muscles as a result from sitting in one position all night long before heading on over to the couch and waking Mokuba up.

"Hnnn… wha?" Mokuba mumbled, slowly waking up, "Mornin' Atem… where's Yuugi at?"

"It's afternoon, Mokuba, and he's taking a rest right now. Why don't you go down to the… cafeteria? Yes, the cafeteria and get something to eat. You've been sleeping for quite a while now."

Yawning and stretching, the boy got up, "How's Jii-san doing?"

Atem frowned, "He still hasn't woken up yet. Yuugi's very worried… he might not say it, but I could feel the nervous energy coming off him in waves through the link. I couldn't get a proper rest myself with that going on."

Mokuba frowned, but before he could say anything the door opened and the doctor from the night before stepped into the room. Luckily for Atem, his eyes were focused on the chart in his hand, so he was able to switch with a very groggy Yuugi without notice. Another doctor was with him, one that neither of the boys recognized.

"Good afternoon, Mouto-san, Kaiba-san," he smiled, "We've got the results of the chest x-ray back, and we're happy to say that there will be no lasting damage to your grandfather from the car crash. A few of his ribs are merely bruised, as we had suspected, and there seems to be no damage to any of his organs. Bed rest should take care of that portion on its own."

Yuugi and Mokuba both smiled and visibly relaxed at this news, it was at least something good to hear after a night of worrying. "That's great news, Sensei!" Yuugi said, "And what about the other tests…?"

The doctor nodded, "We wanted to make sure there was no damage to your grandfather that would interfere with the testing, so we have him scheduled to have those done in about an hour or two. But seeing as our replacement doctor arrived earlier than expected, I'm handing the case over to him and the rest of the cardiology team and they will take it from here."

Both boys looked to the other man who had accompanied the doctor into the room. Silver eyes peeking out from platinum hair and frameless glasses regarded each of them in turn, seeming to read all about them in one instant, which put both of them a bit on edge. Tall and imposing, this man just had the air of someone you did not want to cross. He smiled at them, which made Yuugi and Mokuba relax slightly. After all, this man was a doctor, and apparently a good one if other hospitals sent for him.

"My name is Muraki Kazutaka," he said, his smooth voice having almost a soothing quality to it, "It's nice to meet you."

A Note about the Yami no Matsuei series: It's never specified what kind of doctor Muraki is in the series nor any type of article I can find online, so for all intents and purposes of this story, he's a cardiologist. :)